- By Ash
- in Indie Games
I have to give it to The Game Kitchen, they are not an easy studio to predict! They went from making point & click adventures to grim yet stylish Metroidvanias, and now they're working on what looks like a Commandos inspired real-time, stealth focused tactics game!
Set in an 18th-century Spanish monastery, The Stone of Madness will put you in control of five prisoners, each with their own unique skills and resources. However, unlike games like Commandos where you play with a team of hardened veterans, your characters in The Stone of Madness aren't exactly the most... stable bunch. So not only will you have to navigate obstacles and deal with all sorts of enemies with them, but you'll also have to manage their phobias and their dwindling mental health.
- By Ash
- in Indie Games
[Update #2]: Dredge's Patch 1.1 has now made navigation smoother and added quality-of-life improvements,
[Update]: Good news! Dredge is getting an expansion alongside a couple of quality-of-life focused updates!
Whether we're talking about real life or video games, I must admit I don't like fishing. It's a slow, boring activity that mostly seems like an excuse to crack open a few beers and kick up your feet. Yet despite this, I found myself really enamored with Dredge - a Lovecraftian exploration game that's almost entirely about roaming the isles looking for strange new fish to annoy.
The main reason Dredge got its hooks into me is the simple yet compelling gameplay loop. You need to catch fish and collect various materials in order to upgrade your ship, which then allows you to explore further and catch even bigger fish, which then lets you upgrade your ship with even more fancy toys, and so it goes. Most things take a bit of effort to unlock which makes acquiring new items feel satisfying, yet the process is never too grindy so you get to constantly enjoy a stream of new abilities and enhancements.
- By Ash
- in Indie Games
If you're in the mood for roaming the world in search of monsters to catch, and perhaps even creating a couple of your own, you might want to give Cassette Beasts a look. To put it quite simply, Cassette Beasts is a Pokemon inspired turn-based tactics game where you can fuse literally any two monsters together to amplify their abilities and hopefully get an upper hand over your opponents. Best of all, each one is fully animated, so discovering all of the combinations should be a nice bit of fun!
Besides smashing monsters together, Cassette Beasts will also task you with exploring an open world, solving puzzles, and delving trough dungeons. In true Pokemon fashion, certain monster abilities can also be used outside of combat in order to aid with exploration, so you'll definitely want to revisit old areas every once in a while in order to see what new secrets or shortcuts you can uncover.
- By Ash
- in Indie Games
In celebration of Risk of Rain's tenth anniversary, Hopoo Games have unleashed Risk of Rain Returns. This comprehensive remaster brings with it greatly improved visuals, three new Survivors, dozens of new stage variants, a brand new challenge mode, as well as a whole bunch of new items and enemies to mess around with.
Besides all of the new content, Risk of Rain Returns has also freshened up a bunch of the old stuff. You can look forward to a revamped multiplayer mode, alternate abilities for all of the original Survivors, extra lore to uncover, and perhaps most importantly of all, a large array of quality of life changes to make everything just a bit smoother.
- By Ash
- in Indie Games
If you're in the mood for a bit of puzzle-solving and general buffoonery, you might want to check out the somewhat recent The Holy Gosh Darn. Much like the team's previous games Helheim Hassle and Manual Samuel, The Holy Gosh Darn is a humorous and narrative-driven adventure that will have you go head to head with a variety of zany characters as you attempt to singlehandedly save the world from complete annihilation.
The big difference this time around, however, is that you have access to a time-traveling watch that allows you to skip to any point during the day in order to manipulate events, solve puzzles and most importantly of all, avoid awkward small talk. But enough of my rambling! Instead, have a look at the launch trailer below. That should give you a pretty good idea of what The Holy Gosh Darn is trying to go for:
- By Ash
- in Indie Games
If you're in the mood for something entirely out of the ordinary, I'd highly recommend you check out Cryptmaster. It launched back in early 2024 and I'm genuinely sad it took me this long to notice it, because its combination of dungeon crawling, wordplay and dry humor is utterly captivating.
So what is Cryptmaster anyway? Well, to put it quite bluntly, it's an RPG where you fight, interact with the world and chat with its inhabitants exclusively through typing. These can be either actual words that represent the idea you're trying to convey, or a variety of spells that you'll have to assemble yourself - one letter at a time! And while you're doing all of this the titular Cryptmaster will be closely watching over you, never really skipping out on an opportunity to sass you or judge you for your dumb choices. Yet despite how mean he might come across at first, I found him and his exasperated comments to be delightful!
- By Ash
- in Indie Games
If you're in the mood for something a little bit unusual, you might want to check out the somewhat recently released Slay the Princess. To put it quite simply, it's a narrative-driven horror game where all you have to do is slay the princess in order to save the world. Naturally, things don't stay that simple for very long as the story quickly spirals into a myriad of different directions, time loops and other bizarre scenarios, all of which will slowly lead you to the truth behind it all.
Since trying to explain all of this through words alone is a bit of a futile endeavor, allow me to instead share with you the freshly posted launch trailer. Have a gander, it should hopefully clarify a couple of things... hopefully:
- By Ash
- in Indie Games
If you're a fan of puzzles games and you're in the mood for something a little bit out of the ordinary, you might want to check out the remarkably charming Chants of Sennaar. Inspired by the Tower of Babel myth, Chants of Sennaar puts you in the shoes of a traveler attempting to decipher ancient languages in an effort to restore the connections between the now-divided peoples of the tower.
In order to do that you'll need to collect, catalogue and expand upon a variety of phrases, solve all sorts of tricky puzzles, and once you find yourself in some of the more hostile areas, even do a little bit of sneaking around to get to the bottom of things! What all of this looks like in action, as well as what it sounds like, that you can check out through the launch trailer below. Have a peek:
- By Ash
- in Indie Games
Much like Vampire Survivors from which it takes a great deal of inspiration, Brotato is a ridiculously customizable and equally addictive action roguelite. You'll start off each run with a fairly generic set of gear, and by the time you're done you'll not only have additional arms sprouting from your body, but each of those arms will be armed with some kind of absurdly overpowered (or just absurd in general) weapon that can rip and tear through the enemy hordes.
The big difference between the two games is that Brotato focuses a bit more on presenting the players with proper challenges while Vampire Survivors is all about the non-stop power trip. As such, Brotato not only comes with multiple difficulty settings to choose from, but also an additional set of sliders that you can use to fine-tune the settings in either direction. So if even you get good at it, you can still amp things up to the point where the fate of each run will rest at the knife's edge.
Slay the Spire 2, much-anticipated sequel to the phenomenal roguelike deckbuilder, is coming in 2025
- By Ash
- in Indie Games
If you're like me and you've done basically all there is to do in Slay the Spire and you're now hungry for more, you'll be delighted to hear that a sequel has just been announced! Slay the Spire 2 will bring with it a brand new engine with improved visuals and expanded mod support, new characters and mechanics, enemies and treasures, and naturally, a whole boatload of new cards to fling at people!
While it sadly contains no gameplay footage, allow me to share with you the freshly posted trailer as that should give you a bit of an idea of the sort of atmosphere Slay the Spire 2 is going for, as well as who one of the new characters is! Have a peek: