The Indies, February 2009
When I first started writing The Indies in 2007, one of the biggest challenges I faced was defining what an indie was. While most consider independently developed games to be the equivalents of art house films or open mic night at the Apollo, an indie is much more than that. This Wikipedia entry defines indie game development as the "process of creating video games without the financial support of a video game publisher." While this is certainly true, there's more to being an indie than shouldering the financial risk.
Being indie is about freedom of expression: having the ability to create the kind of games you want without the corporate climate that stifles creativity. But it is also the spirit that drives the amateur game designer trying to learn the ropes, the artist who wants to extend his craft into new media, or the grizzled veteran who wants to strike out on his own.
Indie games are experimental works, improvements on old genres (match-three, word search, tower defense) or continuations of genres discarded or abandoned by big publishers (turn-based strategy, wargames); they are casual or hardcore games, artistic or savage in nature, dilettantish or polished in presentation. In the indie scene, games like Valve's Portal and Tilted Mill's Hinterland stand on equal footing with You Have to Burn the Rope and Braid.
So now that I've established what I think an indie is, I want to share with you the games that I'm playing right now, and talk about why they deserve your attention. I hope you'll take the time to download them, play them, and come back here to discuss them with us. On to today's picks.
Digging under these rocks will have serious consequnces.
Miner: Dig Deep, an Xbox Live Community game, is not social commentary on the plight of miners in the 18th century, but it could be. The game has an all-encompassing company store that takes all your money by marking up vital tools and supplies by 60 percent, dangerous cave-ins that can kill you instantly, and mine shafts that can devour you with one silly little misstep. And then there's the long wait for the rescue team to pull your sorry ass out of the tunnels into which you've dug yourself.
The game was created by brothers with a simple objective: dig to live and live to dig. It's easy enough to play; use the X button to dig, the A button to jump and the B button to use an inventory item. The goal of the game is to dig deep, find valuable minerals, gems and metals; and sell them for big profits -? without killing your little miner.
Of course, you never really die; instead, you live to fight another day sans the precious gems and minerals you managed to collect. Your little miner won't get black lung or have a permanent crook in his back, and he'll make millions of dollars. That's not representative of the thousands of mine workers that have died alone in a cave-in or misplaced explosion. Still, the parallels to the real-life occupation are mixed in there innocently.
Your meager accomodations and the deep blue sky.
The earth seems to go on forever; as you delve deeper into it using your equipment (pick, drill, ladder, elevators and lantern), avoiding rocks and locating minerals and gems that you can sell to the company store for more supplies, you realize that it's a vicious, never-ending cycle. The gameplay is as deep and bottomless as the mines and mazes you'll create in the hard-packed dirt, but the reward is finally hitting rock bottom.
But the most beautiful thing you'll see in the game is the clear blue sky, your meager accommodations and a small, sweet stretch of grass on the surface. The six-figure profits, with all those zeros, will also bring a tear to your eye.
Throwing objects and kicking like a sissy are your only means of defense.
Walkie Tonky is the William Foster of videogames; like the down-on-his-luck defense worker in "Falling Down," Walkie commits acts of wanton violence against society for no apparent reason -- but in the end, you feel kind of bad for the guy.
In the simple, side-scrolling Walkie Tonky, you use the environment and the objects around you as weapons. Walkie can raise or lower his legs to change his height (to walk over objects), grab and throw objects (mostly at other objects that are attacking him, like helicopters, police cars and tanks), and kick the clutter at his feet so that he doesn't get stuck or trip.
Sent to invade the Earth, Walkie kicks and throws his way through the streets of some bleak, unnamed metropolis, destroying anything he can. Naturally, the human race is having none of this, and Walkie figures this silly little romp is probably going to end badly for him.
Walkie can catch these red-hot bullets if he's quick enough.
Walkie's a killer robot, but much like Foster, he is so sad and so flawed. He's a big clumsy oaf who can't handle the clutter of buildings and vehicles under his awkward footing, who gets his skull split by red red-hot bullets lifted from Super Mario Bros., and whose only saving grace is an occasional heart he holds up to his broken metal skull.
You feel like it is the humans that are the bad guys here. But like Foster, Walkie is a monster, a destructive son of a bitch just trying to destroy the world -- he's just not very good at it.
A dragon, three Krakens and a mage walk into a bar...
Lost Labyrinth is the everyman version of NetHack or Angband, for those too spoiled to try a game that doesn't involve sprites, animation and mouse-driven movement. With those requirements in mind, this little gem of an open-sourced RPG game looks beautiful and is very easy to play.
It's described as a coffee break role-playing game that can be played in 10 to 45 minutes. The goal is to go as deep into the dungeon as you can, collecting treasure, disarming traps, leveling up, and killing monsters until you succumb to whatever vile hazard puts you down for a big, fat dirt nap. In the spirit of NetHack, everything in the game is randomly generated ?- from treasure to monsters, non-player characters and exits -- which means that you'll never play the same dungeon twice. One other interesting fact is the way that you level up in this game: Experience points and skill distribution are awarded only to those that find the exit; meaning that you aren't awarded experience points for killing things.
Final Fantasy called...
The game is enhanced even further by some deep customization options that let you choose whatever kind of hero you want to create. You can play straight classes like Thief, Mage or Fighter, or mix and match skills, spells and proficiencies to make your own type of character. You can even give your character a series of weaknesses to gain additional points, though choosing the wrong thing will make you more of a martyr than a hero.
While Lost Labyrinth isn't the only remake of NetHack out there, I like it because it is accessible to new players. Perhaps after playing this game, some of those newbies will try the original game and finally understand what all the fuss is about this simple RPG.
The invasion begins with a single mouse-click.
Galaxy Conquest is as simple as it is clever. It's best described as Master of Orion without all the details, and in real time. The goal of the game is to conquer all the planets, but the trick is to keep those conquered planets under your banner. You send half of your population per turn to invade and conquer one of the nearby planets. Over time your population grows back, but keeping the enemy at bay is a challenge.
As your planets grow, you will have more people to send, but getting carried away leaves your planet with very little with which to defend itself. Low-population planets will switch sides multiple times, and orbital cards (which are in short supply) give you a slight ability to whittle away at an attacker's force -- but never enough to stop it entirely.
Orbital cards are the only defense available, but supply is limited.
It would have been appropriate to call this game Galaxy Tug of War, because the balance of power is always just one planet away from being tipped to the other side. Diligence and some strategic planning go a long way toward winning.
Galaxy Conquest is interesting because it boils down gameplay to a series of simple mouse clicks. It's the perfect game for anyone that wants a dash of strategy without all the micromanagement, politics and trade.
