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What are some hidden indie gems nobody knows about?

Which indies did you discover and would love more people to know about? I’ll start: The Pale Beyond. Not sure if it’s a hidden gem tbh, but it’s such a good story rich game. I laughed, I cried and felt the characters struggles. If you like story rich games/ choices matter, check it out.

rockerface , (edited )

Iconoclasts - really nicely made metroidvania with pixel graphics

Tametsi - a collection of handmade Minesweeper puzzles with additional twists and mechanics. Extremely cheap on Steam

Gunfire Reborn - roguelite FPS with Borderland-ish graphics, decently made 4 man co-op (unlike Risk of Rain 2, you can actually revive teammates that got knocked down immediately) and a lot of difficulty scaling. Notably, still gets new content, both free and paid DLCs (those add new classes and some new weapons)

Edited to add another: Opus Magnum - an automation/optimization puzzle game with alchemy theme. Supports user-created puzzles through Steam Workshop

Underwaterbob ,

Tametsi

Tametsi just barely eked out being my most played game of 2023 over, duh duh duh!! Elden Ring. Yes, it took me longer to finish a $1 Minesweeper clone than to finish a massive Fromsoft Soulslike. Haha!

silentknyght ,

I’m currently totally hooked on Tiny Rogues.

solitaire ,
@solitaire@infosec.pub avatar

Citizen Sleeper - From the same publisher as The Pale Beyond, it’s another one of those story games that borders on visual novels. It’s a game about precarity and personhood set on an anarchic, decaying space station. Gorgeous art, fantastic soundtrack and it’s uniquely hopeful. Might be favourite game of the last few years.

Omegamanthethird ,
@Omegamanthethird@lemmy.world avatar

OMG-Z It’s a playstation mini for the PS3/PSP.

Warp on the PS3.

Donut County isn’t really a nobody game. But I never see it mentioned.

CH3DD4R_G0BL1N ,
@CH3DD4R_G0BL1N@sh.itjust.works avatar

After Hades, I hope some folks went back and played Supergiant’s other titles. I love them all. But even amongst them, Pyre is the underdog, unknown, shunned. And I think it’s fantastic. The music and writing is top notch. You can really see the bones of Hades in all their games, but they polished their world building and story telling to perfection in this one.

NOPper ,

I played it when it came out, and I still think about those characters sometimes.

CH3DD4R_G0BL1N ,
@CH3DD4R_G0BL1N@sh.itjust.works avatar

Same. It’s been years and they’re still with me

Ashen44 ,

Crosscode is one of my favourite games of all time. It’s an immensely charming action RPG heavily inspired by the 2D Zelda games. It has some absolutely insane combat and surprisingly challenging puzzles. The story is also very good and really touching at times. The devs spent 7 years making this game and I feel like it never got anywhere near the attention it deserved.

It’s just $20 on steam AND it has a free demo, so there’s no reason not to check it out!

Underwaterbob ,

I bounced off Crosscode hard. Which sucks because I wanted to love it. The pacing and difficulty were all over the place. And making the puzzle dungeons a race between you and other characters just made me hate them. I want to stop and think! After dying to a particularly nasty boss I was trying to beat as fast as possible so I could maybe eke out a win in the dungeon, I ended up cranking the difficulty all the way down, and was the last out of the dungeon anyway. I put the game down and haven’t looked back. That was about 25 hours in, and nothing of consequence had occurred with the plot by then, anyway. I might go back sometime and see if it gets better, but it left me pretty sour.

I love the entire 16 bit era, and JRPGs, and action RPGs, and Crono Trigger, and difficult games, but Crosscode just took all those elements and somehow made them unpalatable to me.

bartvbl ,

I think if I have one criticism of the plot is that it takes a while to get going. If I may, I’d recommend you to play thorough it at your own pace, possible also at the lowest difficulty just to experience the story. It’s well worth it just for that.

Carighan ,
@Carighan@lemmy.world avatar

I can’t even remember any plot. I know I got past some hourglass shaped pyramid and then a few more steps. But it all felt utterly disconnected. I might have actually finished it, but I can’t even recall.

Carighan ,
@Carighan@lemmy.world avatar

Not only that, the combat was also utter jank.

If you play with M+KB, you can aim as good as the game clearly expects you to. But you will rapidly develop RSI from the spam-clicking, nevermind how the melee attack has the weirdest input I’ve seen in a long time.

If you use a controller, most controls work fine, but in return you cannot aim that well. Which is still preferrable, but the game clearly originally built for precise aiming.

Combined with how janky all the enemy attacks and hit boxes are, it just feels frustrating. Plus the difficulty is wild, 90%+ are boringly easy, and then the odd totally normal enemy wipes you in seconds.

ChillDude69 ,

The comment you replied to reminded me how much I wanted to love Crosscode, and yet I also “bounced off” it (amazing phrase).

Your comment made me understand why I bounced off of it. I had exactly the same experience as you, with the controls.

Ashen44 ,

It really sucks that you bounced so hard. Some tips in case you ever do want to go back to it:

Enemies are puzzles too. Nearly every single enemy in the game has a specific trick to them that, once you get it down you can beat them much more easily. This includes bosses. Usually this is indicated by breaking the enemy.

Don’t worry about the races. I think I only ever won a single race in the entire game, and it has literally zero consequence other than a couple lines of dialog. It’s purely a feel good thing, and to connect you more with Emily through a friendly competition.

The story can feel a bit confusing and disconnected because there’s 2 stories happening at once: the crossworlds story and the actual story. The actual story only really starts to get serious towards the end, so until then just focus on enjoying the fake-mmo world!

If it’s not for you, it’s not for you and there’s nothing I can do about that, but I really want others to enjoy this game as much as I did because I do believe it’s something special.

ooli ,

rogue Lords: it is inspired by Slay the Spire (StS). Card game with roguelike element. Here, the cards are replaced by your minions skill. But the right set of skill is less frustating to build than in StS. Making it a more fun experience, and the graphics are way above StS(not hard). As in StS , with luck/skill you can manage to build some 'infinite deck" where you never let go of the control of the battle.

Someonelol ,
@Someonelol@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Shadow Tactics and Shadow Gambit are two brilliant gems that come to mind by Mimimi Studios. I discovered them a few weeks ago and just learned they went defunct back in August because they were too niche a genre and couldn’t make enough sales. They’re Stealth Strategy games where you control a group of ninjas/pirates through a heavily guarded level to the objective, stealthily murdering everyone along the way. If you get seen you can easily jump back to a quick save and try again. You’re not overpowered and can easily be killed by enemies so save scumming is deliberately built in to the experience to experiment with your approach.

Carighan ,
@Carighan@lemmy.world avatar

It’s in fact three games:

  • Shadow Tactics is set in feudal japan. This one has an expandalone.
  • Desperados III then takes the game to the wild west.
  • Shadow Gambit goes wild and gives us a magic ship and an undead pirate crew. It has two rather pricey expansions, one bringing in a character from the first game. It also has a hidden character to unlock after you beat the game, which is kinda cool.

You can notice how each game perfects the formula, but they’re overall extremely similar. I would very much recommend the last one if you have to pick one, as the focus on magic allowed them to go truly wild with the character abilities. Gaelle shooting corpses and partymembers around with her cannon is a particularly fun one.

Sidenote: Far as I can tell they didn’t go bankrupt or anything, they just … stopped. They’re done or so. Did the same concept three times, happy now, works for them.

Dulus_No ,

Void Stranger

Can of Wormholes

cafuneandchill ,
  • Beacon Pines – a charming mystery story with anthropomorphic animals. Has an interesting take on the visual novel formula by having you unlock new dialogue choices as you progress through the story; that way, you naturally explore different paths the story might take. Night in the Woods and (possibly) OneShot fans might like this one.
  • Oolite – a solid FOSS remake of 1984’s Elite. Has a bunch of mods for it; some expand the gameplay quite substantially.
  • Orbiter Space Flight Simulator – imagine a Microsoft Flight Simulator game, but you’re going to space instead. Or Kerbal Space Program, but without the rocket building mechanic. That being said, KSP fans (and fans of space in general) should enjoy it.
  • Transcendence – Star Control II meets Rogue. A cult classic in the space sim genre that’s been in development since 1995. Space dogfighting, trading, mining, smuggling etc, but also traditional roguelike stuff like unlabeled barrels and containers (= undiscovered potions) and permadeath (optional). Highly moddable, uses XML as the modding language. Has a free version (see link) and a Steam release, which includes the paid expansions.
spirinolas ,

I was playing Orbiter long before KSP came along. It taught me all I know about orbital mechanics. It helped ease the learning curve in KSP a lot. But after KSP came along I completely lost interest. KSP is a lot more fun and there’s a lot more to do.

Still had a laugh when my friend who made fun of me for playing orbiter ended up buying KSP, getting frustrated, rage quit and asked for a refund.

cafuneandchill ,

For some time, I considered Orbiter to be better at providing an arcade experience of “choose ship/scenario and fly away”. But now that KSP also has scenarios, maybe this argument doesn’t really stand now. But I still think that Orbiter’s MFDs are better than KSP’s manoeuvre planner (at least for precise manoeuvres)

Cornelius_Wangenheim ,

Starsector: It’s an Elite style open world space game. What makes it special is that it’s been in constant development for over a decade and has a crazy number of ships, weapons, lore and features. And a vibrant modding scene.

Also the devs are vehemently against DRM, so the only place you can buy the game is their own website. Or not buy. They put the full version up for anyone to download.

ICastFist ,
@ICastFist@programming.dev avatar

I’ll have to check that out. An indie game in a very similar vein is Evochron Legends. It’s available on Steam, too. I have a couple of hours in it, but it’s been a while since I last checked it.

mlg ,
@mlg@lemmy.world avatar

Superfighters (original web game) and Superfighters Deluxe (on steam)

Really good 2D platform brawler based around weapon drops.

_eHM ,

Paradigm

kaosof ,

Blasphemous.

Fantastic metroidvania meets soulslike game. The art style, the lore, the atmosphere, and by God - the music!

The combat is not super great, but it’s capable enough for a metroidvania.

I haven’t played the second one, I hear it’s kinda hit and miss.

ExLisper ,

You know that the art is based on Holy Week in Andalucia?

https://linux.community/pictrs/image/3cf952d1-3813-4ef3-8608-3d1b2b57676b.png

https://linux.community/pictrs/image/63c0d769-ac15-477d-a1ff-2e14c3045ab4.png

kaosof ,

As far as I know, a ton of stuff in the game is based on Spanish folklore etc as well.

learningduck ,

The first one also meh at releast until several patches later. The second one is on the easier side as the penitent one is now more agile.

MeanEYE ,
@MeanEYE@lemmy.world avatar

I got this game recently since I got hooked hard on Dead Cells, and needless to say combat was the disappointing part. Coming from DC it feels so rigid and limited, needlessly punishing. But I got the game for art, so that part is great. It’s also weirdly poorly optimized. They made the whole game in one resolution and are scaling everything, like whole screen. So your choice of resolution might end up weirdly stretched. An odd decision.

SinkingLotus ,
@SinkingLotus@lemmy.world avatar
  • To The Moon: Absolutely heart breaking.
  • Tales of Maj’Eyal: An incredible rogue-like with 30+ classes and God knows how many achievements.
  • Cataclysm Dark Days Ahead: Apocalyptic rogue-like. Zombies, bandits, aliens and Lovecraft shit. Want to raid a dojo? Learn Judo from a book and proceed to race around town on a pair of rollerblades practicing on the undead? Feel free.
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