Indie Game News/Releases

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Sly Boots
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Indie Game News/Releases

Post by Sly Boots » Mon Aug 27, 2018 1:01 pm

Obviously as indie games become more mainstream these will likely result in their own thread from time to time as buy and play them, but thought there was still room for a kind of catch-all thread for the more quirky or low-key releases.

In any case, this caught my eye just now on RPS... sounds interesting (and uncomfortable), and probably for that latter reason is not something I'll pick up, but still:

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2018/0 ... ld-sexism/
You might know developers Deconstructeam from games like The Red Strings Club, or Gods Will Be Watching, or from that time that they cloned themselves to satisfy Alice B’s burning curiosity about what happens when one meets one’s doppelganger. Anyway, they just released a short little game called Behind Every Great One, which began life as a prototype created for the Ludum Dare game jam, and it’s a bleak but poignant look at everyday sexism.

Behind Every Great One tells the story of Victorine, a housewife married to an artist called Gabriel. “Victorine doesn’t have any personal passions but supports Gabriel,” the game’s description reads. “They love each other.”

While Gabriel is hard at work painting in his studio, Victorine is expressly forbidden to enter. Instead, you control her as she wanders around the house, cooking, cleaning, maybe taking a break to read or smoke.

There’s never enough time in the day to do everything, and on the first day Gabriel showed up for dinner before I’d had a chance to sweep the dining room. He remarked upon how it was dusty, and Victorine promised to get to it tomorrow. “I wasn’t implying you should clean!” Gabriel protests.

Herein lies the core issue with their marriage. He might not have meant to put pressure on her, but he did anyway, because who else was going to clean? If he is worried about the dust, he (hopefully) knows how to tackle it, but he never makes any move to do so. At times he suggests that Victorine should get a hobby, but if she takes a break to read a book there are more complaints about the food not being well prepared, or his shirts not being ironed. He’s busy with his art, but neither is there enough time for her to finish everything alone either, let alone take time for herself.

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Re: Indie Game News/Releases

Post by Medicine Man » Fri Aug 31, 2018 2:26 pm

Donut County is out now I see. Looks right up my alley albeit a tad on the rich side for me at the moment.



EG review...

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2018 ... lot-of-fun

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Re: Indie Game News/Releases

Post by Medicine Man » Tue Sep 04, 2018 12:06 pm

Shakedown: Hawaii the Retro City Rampage follow-up gets a new trailer out of PAX...


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Re: Indie Game News/Releases

Post by Medicine Man » Tue Sep 04, 2018 12:08 pm

Phantom Brigade trailer, the next game from the Necrodancer folks...


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Re: Indie Game News/Releases

Post by Stormbringer » Tue Sep 04, 2018 2:38 pm

Medicine Man wrote:
Tue Sep 04, 2018 12:06 pm
Shakedown: Hawaii the Retro City Rampage follow-up gets a new trailer out of PAX...

Reminds me of the first GTA. I'm sure that's not a coincidence.
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Re: Indie Game News/Releases

Post by Medicine Man » Tue Sep 04, 2018 4:35 pm

I have a spare Steam key for the first game, Retro City Rampage if you're interested in it.

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Re: Indie Game News/Releases

Post by Stormbringer » Tue Sep 04, 2018 9:44 pm

Thanks, MM, but I am all right.
Between tedium and fright
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Re: Indie Game News/Releases

Post by Medicine Man » Tue Sep 04, 2018 11:25 pm

No probs. :)

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Re: Indie Game News/Releases

Post by Medicine Man » Thu Sep 06, 2018 12:58 pm

Frozen Synapse 2 finally has a release date...

https://steamcommunity.com/games/445020 ... 8371481270



September 13th

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Re: Indie Game News/Releases

Post by Achtung Englander » Fri Sep 14, 2018 11:33 am

This is a very interesting article on the problems that really good indie games have in getting audience traction

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/ ... l-delivery

From reading this it is enough to put bedroom coders from making a game. Without a better form of discovery good games will be looked over. I think the problem with this game is that it going down the same path of retro 2D which are now two a pennie.
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Re: Indie Game News/Releases

Post by DjchunKfunK » Fri Sep 14, 2018 4:00 pm

I agree that discovery on Steam and places like it isn't the best, but at the same time it has always been the case that you need PR for your game to get traction, ever since games were being made. It has never been the case that making a good game guaranteed you good sales so I sometimes feel this stuff is overblown.

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Re: Indie Game News/Releases

Post by Mantis » Fri Sep 14, 2018 4:06 pm

Agreed, this chap seems to be complaining that their game wasn't really noticed and yet they didn't make a deal with Devolver Digital to do any promotion for it at all until really late into development. He also seems to think that they deserve far more sales than they got purely because the unique selling point for the game is that it swaps from 8 bit to 16 bit part way through. Regardless of how solid the platforming is and how fun the game is, that is not an especially original idea and also does bugger all to really change how the game itself plays.

I'm sure The Messenger is very fun. But he's kidding himself if he thinks it offers anything at all unique that would draw people in of its own accord. It is exactly that kind of retro nostalgia vibe title that is lost in the white noise of Steam because it doesn't do anything new at all.

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Re: Indie Game News/Releases

Post by Medicine Man » Sat Sep 15, 2018 1:02 pm

Autumn release announced for Lucas Pope's Return of the Obra Dinn...




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Re: Indie Game News/Releases

Post by Achtung Englander » Sat Sep 15, 2018 5:56 pm

Mantis wrote:
Fri Sep 14, 2018 4:06 pm
Agreed, this chap seems to be complaining that their game wasn't really noticed and yet they didn't make a deal with Devolver Digital to do any promotion for it at all until really late into development. He also seems to think that they deserve far more sales than they got purely because the unique selling point for the game is that it swaps from 8 bit to 16 bit part way through. Regardless of how solid the platforming is and how fun the game is, that is not an especially original idea and also does bugger all to really change how the game itself plays.

I'm sure The Messenger is very fun. But he's kidding himself if he thinks it offers anything at all unique that would draw people in of its own accord. It is exactly that kind of retro nostalgia vibe title that is lost in the white noise of Steam because it doesn't do anything new at all.
superb analysis
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Re: Indie Game News/Releases

Post by Achtung Englander » Sat Sep 15, 2018 5:58 pm

Harold Halibut



Hopefully this is good as that other stop gap motion game I suggested back on Prey's World (whose name slips me) turned out to be rubbish
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