Video games are pretty cool.
Unfortunately though, some of them don’t get nearly as much attention as they deserve,
which is why a while back I made a video shining some light on a bunch of my favorite lesser
known indie titles, and I wanna do it again.
So yeah, I picked out a handful of indie games to share with all of you that I think should
be played and talked about by more people.
Admittedly, none of them are super obscure—I didn’t scour the pages of itch.io to find
truly hidden gems, but from sales data I was able to find as well as just the number of
steam reviews each game I’m gonna talk about has, statistically speaking, you probably
haven’t played them, or at least not all of them, but if you have, good for you.
You’re in the great taste club.
Also, after this if you're looking for even more recommendations, I actually have a second
channel where I make a video every month giving some quick thoughts on the games I’m playing,
so maybe check that out.
With all that, let’s get into the first game I wanna talk about: UNSIGHTED.
As someone who misses when Nintendo made new 2D Zelda games, UNSIGHTED filled the void
they’ve left behind and then some.
Its dungeons, puzzles, bosses, and items are all wildly intriguing and fun to engage with,
and its combat system is responsive and rewarding.
These aspects alone would make it a great game, but what elevates it to the next is
that there’s a time limit.
Every character in the game, including your own, only has a certain amount of hours left
to live.
Whenever you talk to someone, you can see the amount of in-game time they have left,
and when that number hits zero, they turn into a mindless husk of themself, making it
impossible to interact with them anymore.
What makes this design choice so interesting is that there is a material that can be found
in the world called meteor dust that adds 24 hours of life to any character who uses
it.
This makes it possible to actually keep yourself and other characters alive, while also adding
in a bunch of interesting gameplay choices: like who should you prioritize saving?
The characters who are most useful or the ones who you like the most?
Or should you just hoard it all for yourself to make sure that your character doesn’t
run out of time?
There is actual meaning to the choices you make.
While time limits typically disincentive exploration, the inclusion of meteor dust allows Unsighted
to avoid this issue because players will want to find as much of it as they can, leading
to them checking out every nook and cranny of the map.
The timer also pushes players to engage with the game's other various systems.
For instance, I’ve long gone on record saying that I pretty much never use consumable items
because games typically aren’t balanced around needing them, but due to wanting to
be as efficient as possible, I constantly used them in UNSIGHTED in order to kill enemies
faster and survive tough encounters to save a bit of time.
It’s just a really great system that brings importance to every aspect of the game.
With all that said, even though I think Unsighted is best enjoyed with the time limitation in
place, there is an option to turn it off if that sort of thing stresses you out too much,
so don’t let it be a reason for you to avoid the game.
This is one of my favorite titles in the past few years, and well worth the play.
Moving from one game based around a time limit to another, let me tell you about Citizen
Sleeper.
In it you are trying to survive on a space station called the Eye, and there are many
different things that make that hard to do, ranging from the state of your character’s
synthetic body which constantly degrades unless properly treated to the corporation that technically
owns your character doing what they can to recoup their investment.
Each cycle, you get a certain amount of actions based on the health of your character, and
you are tasked with balancing a bunch of different things like doing odd jobs to make money,
finding ways to keep the corporate overlords off your back, building relationships with
other people on the space station, and keeping your character’s body from decaying.
As a cycle passes, a tick gets added to the various timers, bringing both new opportunities
and looming threats a bit closer.
The choices you make matter and shape the story you experience.
Now similarly to UNSIGHTED this might sound a bit daunting, but it adds just the right
amount of tension to give proper stakes to the gameplay and story.
Also, as at its core it is a narrative experience, failing to accomplish a task in time doesn’t
lead to a game over or losing your file; it instead guides the direction your experience
will take.
You never want these failures to happen, because that’s human nature, but when they do happen,
they don’t sting in the same way they might in other games, because they lead to new story
beats that can be just as intriguing as the ones that come from succeeding.
All in all, it combines a surprisingly addictive gameplay loop with some of the best writing
I’ve seen in a game to create an experience that is almost impossible to put down.
Like, I beat the base game pretty much in one sitting despite it being around 7 hours
long, and I know multiple other people who did the same.
There have also been a handful of free DLC expansions that are all incredible additions,
so it is one of the easiest recommendations I can give.
After that, we have Yooka Laylee and the Impossible Lair.
I imagine a lot of you are familiar with the original Yooka Laylee as it generated a ton
of hype before it came out and then had a fairly contentious reception once it actually
did, but its follow up Yooka Laylee and the Impossible Lair went pretty under the radar,
which is a bummer because it is very good.
Instead of being a spiritual successor to Banjo Kazooie like the first game though,
this one takes heavy inspiration from the Donkey Kong Country series.
Through a mixture of interesting theming, neat set pieces, and solid movement mechanics,
it provides an experience that lives up to the greatness of DKC while also feeling like
its own thing.
My 2 favorite things about the game are both related to its general structure.
Like many other 2D platformers, The Impossible Lair uses an overworld as a way to select
what level you wanna play, but unlike the vast majority of them that just have you move
from stage to stage, there are actually things to do in it.
While playing, I was taken aback by how much fun I was having exploring the overworld,
sometimes going long stretches of playtime without even jumping into a level.
There are all sorts of secrets to find and puzzles to solve, the best of which unlock
new versions of each level.
For example, there’s one stage that’s based around some water features and has you
platforming across moving geysers, but in the overworld there is a way for you to freeze
the level, transforming the geysers into blocks of ice, entirely changing the layout and turning
it into brand new stage.
The puzzles that unlock the level variations get more interesting as time goes on and they
also lead to some really fun themes for the stages.
My other favorite thing about the game is that you can attempt the final level whenever
you want.
It is unlocked from the start and the purpose of playing through the rest of the game is
to unlock bees that give you extra lives when attempting it.The stage itself is an absolute
gauntlet of platforming and boss fights, so chances are you’ll need to play the majority
of the game in order to stand a chance, but regardless, I love when a title is structured
in a way that lets the player decide when they are ready for the final challenge.
It’s just a really fun and clever game that I think anyone who enjoys platformers will
love.
To continue the reptilian portion of this video, this is Lil Gator Game.
It’s a small open-world title that takes cues from Breath of the Wild in terms of structure
and how it approaches exploration, and delivers a chill yet surprisingly moving experience
that is filled to the brim with charm.
Essentially, your character, the lil gator, is trying to reconnect with their older sister
who they’ve grown apart from for various reasons.
As the two used to play elaborate imaginary games together, the lil gator decides to create
one so big that it’d be impossible for their sister to ignore.
Doing this involves completing tasks for various folks around the island in the hopes of convincing
them to join in on the game and help build a massive fort to play within.
With a few exceptions, it doesn’t matter who you recruit, just that you bring on enough
people, giving a sense of freedom to how you progress.
In addition to its solid structure, it has a bunch of clever writing and fun little activities
that are really enjoyable to engage with.
Along with taking some design cues from Zelda, it also pays homage to the series through
its story in a way that I haven’t seen a game really do before and it definitely appealed
to my sense of nostalgia for The Legend of Zelda in a nice way.
So yeah, if you like Zelda as well as chill indie games with a ton of player freedom like
A Short Hike, you should not miss this one.
Cassette Beasts is a turn-based RPG very much inspired by the Pokemon series.
In it, you journey across a open-world filled with dangerous yet kinda cute creatures that
you both fight against and collect in order to get stronger.
Instead of capturing monsters to use them in battle though, you record them with a cassette
that allows your character to transform into them.
While you can collect as many cassettes of creatures as you want, you can only hold up
to 6 at a time, so similarly to Pokemon, you have to construct a well-balanced team that
can take on any challenge that might come your way.
As your character is the one transforming, they are actually an active part of every
fight, so you not only have to manage the health of your monsters but also the health
of your character as every time a monster faints, they take the leftover damage.
Additionally, you almost always fight alongside a partner, so when you’re choosing which
monsters to use, you also have to consider which ones will pair well together.
On top of this, you have the ability to temporarily fuse them together to make a single, more
powerful monster.
All of these things give you a lot to think about when in combat, and due to the 2 on
2 nature of the majority of fights, the answer is rarely as simple as just switching monsters
to have a type advantage.
And speaking of type advantages, the way they work in Cassette Beasts is far more interesting
than an attack just doing more or less damage.
Instead, they bring about different effects that vary depending on the relationship between
two types.
For instance, if a lightning type monster takes earth damage, they become grounded and
any of their attacks that would normally target multiple enemies will only hit one.
These status changes aren’t only negative though, like, if a lightning type monster
takes damage from a metal attack, they become conducted, meaning that their single target
attacks will now hit all enemies.
There are tons of different buffs and debuffs that come from these type matchups and they
all add a really interesting layer of complexity to the combat.
All things considered, Cassette Beasts is an evolution of the Pokemon formula that isn’t
afraid to challenge players and push them to be as strategic as possible, so for those
of you who love Pokemon and honestly just turn-based RPGs in general, this will be right
up your alley.
Next up is The Case of the Golden Idol.
It is a puzzle game where you are presented with the moment of a character's death and
tasked with figuring out what happened.
You gather information by examining characters and objects around each scene; whenever you
click a relevant clue whether it be a name, an action, a weapon, an item or anything else
really, it gets added to your inventory, and once you’ve gathered enough information,
you have to fill in a prompt about various things that occurred.
This may sound simple, but figuring out what happened takes a keen eye and a fair amount
of deductive reasoning.
It is chalk full of aha moments that will make you feel like a complete and utter genius,
and it also manages to never be frustratingly obtuse.
The structure it provides helps keep you on the right track, so you never spend too much
time following a fruitless lead, but it still makes you put in the work yourself to figure
things out.
It just strikes that perfect balance you want to have in a detective-esque puzzle game,
and I think anyone who values experiences like Return of the Obra Dinn or even in some
ways Outer Wilds, you’re gonna love the feeling you get playing this.
To stick with puzzle games for a bit longer, The Swapper is one of the best examples I’ve
seen of a title using its core mechanics to tell an impactful story.
At the start you are given a tool that allows you to make clones of yourself and also swap
your consciousness between, and you use this to work your way through an abandoned space
station.
At first this starts out by just using clones to stand on pressure plates for you, but as
games typically do, it gets more complex as you progress.In general, the puzzles present
a fair challenge that never feels cheap, making all of them satisfying to solve.
This central mechanic brings forward a lot of thoughts and questions about identity and
what it means to be alive, and the narrative of the game runs with those ideas in a bunch
of neat ways.
I’m not gonna say much beyond that as it's all better experienced on your own, but it
melds the story with the gameplay in a way few titles do, which I love to see.
I will say, as this game is a bit older, it hasn’t gotten an update for awhile and seems
to have a few issues when played on a newer PC, so if you don’t want to spend a little
time troubleshooting, you’re probably best off buying it on console.
However, if you do get it on Steam, switching the version of the game to compatibility mode
seems to fix most of the issues.
Despite this slight barrier, The Swapper is one of the coolest puzzle games out there,
and definitely worth your time.
Lastly, we have Nobody Saves The World.
On the surface, it may seem like a pretty simple hack n slash RPG, but it has an incredible
amount of depth within its various systems that I do not know how to adequately explain
in a short period of time.
The quick pitch is that you play as a guy named Nobody who finds a magic wand that allows
him to transform into all sorts of different things ranging from a rat to a bodybuilder.
Each form has its own moves and perks that are useful in different situations, so you’ll
often find yourself switching between them to solve a puzzle or be more effective in
combat.
Leveling up increases your base states and also unlocks more abilities, additional forms
and the option to mix and match certain moves between the forms, allowing you to combine
skills in interesting ways to find the best synergies.
All of this is supported by its progression system which is based around completing small
challenges.
So instead of just getting experience for killing enemies, you’re given tasks like
slash 3 baddies at once with the guard or use the mermaid’s tail swipe on land a certain
amount of times.
All of these encourage players to experiment with the full movesets of each form, and as
the game goes on, they get more out, often calling on you to utilize unique combinations
of moves that you may not have thought of on your own.
This makes it so you never just pick one form you think is powerful and mindlessly spam
the attack button; you actually have to engage with the game’s systems, which is great.
Ultimately, it has a lot of interesting systems at play that manage to be both intuitive and
satisfying, so I highly recommend you give it a look.
And that’s all of them.
Between these 8 games there is a ton of fun to be had and loads of great game design to
see, so I hope you enjoy checking some or all of them out.
Now, this video was obviously all about underappreciated indie games, but while working on this, I
also found myself wanting to talk about a handful of indie titles regardless of their
popularity., so I ended up making a bonus video of my Top 5 Favorite Indie Games, and
would you believe me if I told you that Outer Wilds isn’t even on the list?
Because you shouldn’t.
It’s number one, but you might be surprised by what the other 4 are.
If you’re curious, you can watch it right now over on Nebula.
Nebula is a streaming service owned by creators, myself included, and over there you can watch
everything I post on YouTube ad-free as well as a ton of videos that are exclusive to Nebula.
Anytime I have a new video here, I post a bonus one over there which ranges from typical
video essays to interviews to now, top 5 lists.
It is also one of the best ways to support me as a creator because when you sign up for
Nebula using my link the description I get a chunk of that money for as long as you're
subscribed.
And when you sign up using my link, it comes out to 2 and half dollars, and you not only
get access to the exclusive stuff I make, but also to classes that range from advice
on storytelling to how to sue people, videos that cover topics that don’t work on YouTube,
and a ton more.
Nebula has a ridiculous amount of great content for you to engage with and it also supports
me, so check it out and watch me talk about Outer Wilds again.
Anyway, thanks to Nebula for sponsoring this video.
For all of you still watching, hey.
I'd like to thank my patrons for making this channel possible and give a special shout
out to WilliamGlenn8 and Victor DUva for being an honorary bagbuten.
I hope you all have a great day and/or night, and I will see you in the next one.