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Epic, fumble to present.

The second thread about indie games I like to talk about. From demos to upcoming games to newly released, to underrated games. Since Halloween, Autumn, and Christmas Sales kind of cluster together within 2-3 months, I’m gonna dedicate this thread to the following 3 events.

I’ll aim to post about 2 games every 3 days, and all of them are either available/early access by the time I posted or have a dedicated Demo for it. And Again, you can also ask me what other games that’ve been of my interest.

and before I begin, here's a recap from the first thread:
[ UNBEATABLE [White Label] / By: D-CELL GAMES / Available (Demo) ]
[ Maiden & Spell / By: mino_dev LLC / Available ] {Update: roguelite spinoff in development}
[ Nine Sols / By: RedCandleGames / Available (Demo) ]
[ Annalynn / By: Cruise Elory / Available ]
[ Spark the Electric Jester 3 / By: Feperd Games / Now Available ]
[ PomPom / By: Willem Rosenthal / Now Available ]
[ Goodbye World / By: Yo Fujii / Available (Demo) ]
[ The Many Pieces of Mr. Coo / By: Gammera Nest / Available (Demo) ]
[ Last Command / By: DinayaHsu / Now Available ]
[ Berserk Boy / By: BerserkBoy Games / Demo Ended ]
[ Elsie / By: KnightShift Team / Available (Demo) ]
[ Quetzal / By: TissueInu / Available (Demo) ]
[ Dragon Drop / By: Sunken City / Available (Early Access) ]
[ Peppered / By: Mostly Games / Available (Demo) ] { Live KickStarter til Nov 9 }
[ Petal Crash / By: Flutter Sprite / Available ]
[ Psilosybil / By: bad_vertex / Available (Early Access)]
[ Buck up and Drive! / By: Fabio Fontes / Available ]
[ CROSSNIQ+ / By: FUTURE MEMORY / Available ]

Day [1-3]
Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass
By: Kasey Ozymy
Status: Available

I want to say that as someone who’s been on this rabbithole of discovering indie RPGs that are Earthbound-Likes, have influences of other Earthbound-Likes, and games that have no association with Earthbound whatsoever but be associated with it regardless. I find the game JatPM to be the epitome of this widely known/obscure subgenre along with Yume Nikki, OFF, Lisa, and Undertale. Especially how I think JatPM deserves more recognition.
Gameplay wise, you play as Jimmy, who has the ability to transform into certain monsters and use their abilities in both battles and overworld (basically a blue mage). On top it off, each form has its own level that increases a certain stat and allows a move/ability to to transfer to other forms. The battles in the first half of the game started off simple till you reach the second half where you gain access to so many tools for customizing completely different roles and even breaking the game into 1-hitting some bosses. Sooner if you completed the secret areas early and unlocked the ‘secret room.’ I don’t want to say too much about the story, but it made a big impact on me, especially the ending and the aftermath in Smile.

Funny enough, JatPM have similar themes to OMORI (despite JatPM came out first around 2018), such as:

• Having allegories towards a heavy subject that each of them execute their themes greatly without revealing the ‘truth’ throughout the game.
• Both have very ambitious scopes. Around 30-40 hours worth of playtime along with their own minigames, bonus sidequest, secret dungeons, and superbosses.
• Both games take place in a Dream, where you encounter aspects of the real world, facing their own fears, and partnered by family/friends who show more of their real-life counterparts and how they dealt with the circumstances.

I could go on, but I’ll stumble upon spoilers if I did. But what I’m saying is that if you want a similar, yet different experience, I really recommend this game.

Dono’s Tale
By: Super Item Studios
Status: Available (Demo)

Dono’s Tale is a16-bit 2D platformer in the style of Yoshi Island and various SNES games. The game is collectathon where you gather fruit and letters of the character’s name. Right out of the bat, you have 3 attacking moves (fireball, shell, and claw) and 3 movement moves (pegasus wings, thunderstrike, and power mittens) each of them can be easily swap in a single button, and can be used to traverse the levels and combat. In addition, the game is also momentum based with how each of the movement moves can be used to speedrun the levels in time trial and even be chained together in harder levels. Once you get the hang on swapping moves on the fly, you can seamlessly run through any level.

There’s a KickStarter campaign for this game. By the time I upload this post, it’ll be available til… 4 hours… fuck. I doubt the funding for the project would succeed, I guess it had to be poor timing. I’ve hoped the developer wouldn’t be discouraged about this and try their luck again in a relaunch project later on.

I'm gonna hijack this thread a bit to share an indie game that I really enjoyed lately: Ctrl Alt Ego
Its an immersive sim with a bit of Portal's aesthetics and puzzles where you play as a sort of disembodied consciousness that can possess machines.
The game isn't too hard and truly losing is "scientifically unpossible" at least on moderate difficulty, the fun of the game comes from finding ways to get through the areas either using the least amount of resources or challenging yourself with constraints like never getting spotted or not disassembling any hostile machines.
Its mostly linear for the first 6 chapters, but the last 2 chapters open up where you can do each of the objectives in any order.
Its currently on sale for 18 bucks and i'd give it a 9.5/10, my only disappointment is in the boss battles

Day [4-6]

Potionomics
By: Voracious Games
Status: Available

Potionomics is a shop management/dating sim/deckbuilding game where you run a potion shop run by Sylvia’s late uncle from a new town. You spend your days brewing potions, bargain customers for bigger pay, get acquainted with a bunch of the townsfolk, and upgrade your store to achieve her uncle’s dream… and his emmesarable debt. I gotta say, what got my attention about Potionomics is the animations, the expressions from the characters (especially the main cast) are so lively. It really encapsulates both their mood and personality in a world of RPG characters going on their everyday adventures. The three mechanics in this game go hand to hand. With how each decision gradually improves your business one way or another, leading you to the main goal, the potion competitions.

Rusted Moss
By: Faxdoc, Happysquared & Sunnydaze
Status: Available (Demo)

Rusted Moss is a twin-stick shooter metroidvania with grappling physics. A nice blend of action and precision platforming as you traverse in desolate landscape. Near the end of humanity, and soon to be ruled by faes. The presentation in the demo is excellent; the difficulty, customizable abilities, and secrets/lore are both available for players who want to challenge themselves in the harder grappling stages and whatever passage they can find around the map. On top of the games somber-toned pixel art.

Day [7-9]

Forza Polpo!
By: Monte Gallo
Status: Available (Early Access)

Forza Polpo is a first person 3D platformer inspired by the PlayStation classic, Jumping Flash. The gameplay is about you controlling a cute little robot called Polpo to collect data cubes from a time frozen Japan in an already destroyed world. While the objective is to get 3 data cubes each stage, you also have to manage your pink energy that function as both your health, jumps, and jetpack, and you collect them by both enemies, objects, and anything that looks pink. There’s also a highscore system that scores on how many enemies you defeat, the amount of fruits and pink energy, and your longest air time. I gotta say, this game can be quite tricky, you have to manage both the resources you have with you and what you’ve left on the stage to backtrack/return to the carrier. But it’ll be easier as you get the layout of the stage on your 2-3rd runs.

Invercity
By: Marudice
Status: Available (Demo)

A fun little puzzle platformer where a strange phenomenon occurs when someone handstands, the gravity around them and themselves flip upside-down. You play as a reporter who incidentally loves doing handstands, trying to find the mystery behind the occurrence. The demo is mostly focused on the first world, introducing the gameplay and interacting with the civilians. There's going to have a lot of mileage with mechanics in the later worlds/stages.

Day [10-12]

BROK: the InvestiGator
By: COWCAT

Status: Available

An interesting concept. Brok: the InvestiGator is a mix of point ‘n click and beat em’ up (or what the dev called, punch n’ click). The game is a narrative driven detective mystery about solving problems and crimes for town folks in a style reminiscent of Disney’s Afternoon shows, but pretty dreary given the light cyberpunk wasteland setting. Given the two conflicting mechanics, you can either think your way or punch your way or a combination of both from nearly any solution and those actions can affect the outcome of characters and the story.

The game has a bunch of replay value with how many endings you can end up with if you fail certain tasks and different approaches to characters. And quite convenient to backtrack to different routes since you can play back certain parts of each chapter after completing the segment. The hint feature in the game functions as a collectible that is hidden all over the world, 3 in each area in the game. consuming it will give out a small hint for the main objective or outright solution based on how much you use them. It’s both a great incentive to look around and allow just enough guidance for the player if they're lost in a certain part. A particular detail I like is that basically any item you carry for puzzles can be used as weapons during fighting with not that much repercussion.

Aero GPX
By: Aaron McDevitt
Status: Available (Demo)

If you haven't heard or seen the devclips from twitter, Aero GPX is a successor of F-Zero with all of its anti-gravity fast-pace goodness, with up-to-date QoL features and options to fit your preferred controls (it’s also the first time I heard of 2D steering and man it makes steering precise for maneuver). In addition, Aero GPX also has advanced techniques that also boost your speed and cut corners during gliding and drill diving. You can get crazy lap times once you get the hang of the mechanics. The Design of the game is fairly simple for newcomers and complex for those who want to master the mechanics. Not to mention, the demo was part of the KickStarter campaign that’ll run till Nov 16. if you like the demo, I suggest backing this project. I would love to see the developer could also implement a campaign that’s as campy as F-Zero GX’s cutscenes.

Day [13-15]

In Stars And Time & Start Again
By: insertdisc5
Status: Limited Demo / Available

The game is based off of the developer’s collection of short webcomics that eventually become the premise of this game. Both games have an interesting concept, in which you’re pretty much near the final town/dungeon to the final boss, with a full team near their mid-max levels. In which, Siffrin is aware that he’s stuck in a time loop whenever he dies in the game, especially at the final boss. Having been dying and reset so many times that he begins losing himself, and the only way he can break the cycle is to reclaim the memories of his close friends.

The game has a literal rock, paper, scissors strategy system. It’s very simple and straightforward, but given how the game is designed with you playing through the whole sequence, the battle system is as simple as it needs to be to prevent potential fatigue.

Start Again is both a prologue to In Stars and Time and an early concept of the game and characters. It’s not really recommended to play it first to get the context of In Stars and Time since that game’s demo is an abridged version during the first 2/3. But it’s there if you want to know the game started in the beginning.

Starstruck: Hands of Time
By: Createdelic, LLC
Status: Available(Demo)

Starstruck is about you traveling back in 20XX to prevent a catastrophic event made by Edwin. To do so, you must follow the boy and his pals’ lifes. Guiding them through music and causing enough chaos to change the timeline.

This game is what happens if you mix Guitar Hero with everything I love about the whimsical japanese games from gen 5 and 6 era consoles, especially the ones made by Love-de-Lic (now reformed as OnionGames). In fact, I'm pretty sure that the developer’s name is actually a nod to them as well. The game can also be played with a guitar controller during the musical segments. The demo is short, but there are secret areas in the town if you destroy certain objects. Few areas may include bonuses like the development of the character’s models, (which I got to say, I really enjoy the dioramic visuals of this game). After finishing the demo, there's a couple of bonus tracks in freeplay mode made by other people for some extra content.

Berserk Boy looks great, thanks for putting it on my radar

Day [16-18]

Beacon Pines
By: Hiding Spot
Status: Available

Beacon Pines is an interactive storyteller about how a single word can change the course of a story. You follow Luke, a boy who lost both his father and mother and now lives with his grandmother, as he tries to uncover the mystery of the town he lives in and people around him. As you explore the Beacon Pines, you’ll find charms that describe a certain word from Luke’s interactions and use them to fill in the blanks of the book. Some words lead to gameovers while others lead to different timelines that’ll end up as gameovers as well. But fret not, as it is an integral part of knowing certain aspects of the characters that you can’t get in the game and obtaining charms that’ll progress the story’s different timeline. Another point of the game is to find the proper conclusion to the story alongside the narrator.

The game is such a delight. From the gorgeous artstyle encapsulating illustrated books, to emotionally stunning music, to the endearing cast of characters each with their own quirks and problems, and the narrator’s wonderful performance that makes it feel like you’re reading along the tale with her.

Little Ghost
By: Leaf Riifuneko, Law Jun Yan, Jose Angel Romero, & Alan Abbadessa
Status: Available (Demo)

Little Ghost is a metroidvania style 2D platformer that focuses more on puzzles than action. Is a game about an animated drawn ghost in a cluttered office area, filled to the brim with real life objects, royalty free/public domain assets, and other mish-mash media. This game has a lot of things going on. But to me, I’m entranced by the weird/abstract vibe of this game.

Little Ghost did a similar thing that Moon: Remix did where the music in the game is within a tomodachi-like device that you can play any song and podcast in the overworld, in addition to collecting mp3s to add more to your selection. And just like Moon: Remix, the songs are composed by many artists, each with their own style and genre. And I must say, I’ve never experienced a game where I traverse to early 1600’s buildings while listening to 2 snobbish, philosophical college graduates talking about the nuance of Sonic the Hedgehog and reminiscing about the Sega genesis. The demo is quite robust with 2-3 hours worth of collectables, easter eggs from other indie games, a bunch of achievements, and some mini quests that are implemented with ¼ of the demo’s world.

Frogun
By: Molegato
Status: Available

Frogun is an old school 3D platformer with lite grappling physics. You play as Renata, a young adventurer who set foot into the ruins in search for her absent parents. The main objective is to reach the end of the level, but there is additional content such as time trial (requirement / dev time), find secret gems & skull, deathless run, collecting every coin for each level.

The game has simple controls with only relying on jumping and grabbing throughout the whole game. And with each world/level including a new mechanic that involves using the Frogun. Although the game can be a bit slow-paced in its base movement, your best way of moving is by relying on the Frogun. The game was meant to be designed for wider audiences for a great introduction in 3D platformers… But I think I intentionally and unintentionally abuse it on my playthrough. Just like old 3D platformers, the game has just enough jank to reach unreachable areas and cuts a good proportion of stages in time trial/speedrun. If there's a flat wall (no matter if it's decorated or a fence wall) you can hook on it. When you understand how the Frogun works in the game, you can pretty much get away with a bunch of stuff.

Decline’s Drops
By: Moulin aux Bulles Studio
Status: Available (Demo)

Decline’s Drops is a 2D collectathon/platformer fighting game. It's about a puppet named Globule who once took care of her garden, from another time, in another world. Till one day, the eternal corporation appears and changes the climate of the world, known as the ‘Decline’ across 6 worlds, that each are based on certain aspects that affect nature. As Globule set out and stopped the 6 hydras from ruining her garden and the rest of the land.

The combat is on par with Super Smash Bros. with dedicated tilts, dashes, and aerial attacks and smash. Specials aren’t implemented in this demo, but their unlockable moves that you can purchase in the final game. The demo includes 2 levels, a hydra boss fight, and secret challenge level from obtaining all the collectables. Given the game’s theme about the climate change, the levels (from both the demo and update clips) had some unique concepts that I don’t see that often.

Due to recent events and my own absent mindedness, I’m gonna double post to catch up on the missing days. In addition to including extra links just in case for now on.

Day [22-24]

Samurai Gunn 2
By: Beau Blyth, Nelson Boles, Valentin Seiche, Doseone, Adam Robezzoli, Evan Hemsley, & YellowAfterlife
Status: Available (Early Access)

Samurai Gunn 2 is a one-hit-kill, sword fighting, party game where the objective is to kill your opponent before they kill you. In addition to your 3 bullets per life that can be used for projectile and/or special attack. It’s a sequel to the first game that I have not played to know the exact improvements the second game includes, but from the videos I saw in comparison, it’s an overall improvement of the game’s mechanics and visuals. The game includes both online and local play, but there's a lack of cpu option for versus mode. But it does have a campaign mode, with co-op, in which you can fight off mods (it's also a good place to practice your moves with any character available). Each character has a unique playstyle and a bunch of hidden tech from both the moveset and environment. And even some guest characters as well.

The game features a manga style story following the premise/backstory of the world.

Peripeteia
By: Ninth Exodus
Status: Available (Demo)

Peripeteia is an immersive first/third person shooter, actionRPG. Taking inspiration from various cyberpunk/survival horror media, Peripeteia stands out to be one of a kind experience. You play as Marie, a once cybernetic agent who's now living in the ruins of a city as a mercenary, doing a hired task to live off and learn more about the truth about the old Union.

Gameplay wise, you can either rely on: stealth by using shadows and sound to avoid enemies, negotiate npcs and hack computers to unlock certain dialogue and a different approach to the objective, or you can just kill them with guns and other weapons. With the usage of both your accessibility to climbing any ledge in the world to access almost any area. and modifiers that help you out throughout the game for both combat and obstacles like night vision, super strength, super speed, invisibility, and bullet time.

Day [25-27]

Rolled Out!
By: Polarbyte Games & Skymap Games
Status: Available (Early Access)

I had to be honest, I kind of forgot about this game until one day I looked back at my email and brought up one of my old messages that my Indiegogo crowdfunded code that is still available. For about a year or so.

After finally getting the code for this and trying it out for so long, I gotta say, it's definitely Super Monkey Ball alright. But hey, you can’t go wrong with more ball-physics precise 3D platformers! I say if you want more out of this particular genre, Rolled Out is a swell predecessor. After the first year in early access, the game is still in development. With only a few playable animals left and a bunch of stages that haven't been implemented yet. The current game has over hundreds of stages ). Speaking of which, the stages in each world feature a gimmick that either affects the speed and/or gravity towards the player.

The customization for both character, ball, and tracks are neat, especially that you can import your own custom stages using blender and put them in the game with the ‘blendtorolledout’ plugin. Sadly there isn’t a dedicated ingame browser to search for community stages. But you can get the documents made by others via discord and create your own with a helpful online guide.

Vernal Edge
By: Hello Penguin Team
Status: Available (Demo)

Vernal Edge is a stylish action 3D metroidvania about soaring to the skies, exploring the floating islands of Haricot, and beating up monsters. It’s a revenge story about Vernal seeking out on her dead-beat, long lost father. Company by a cyborg, as they both travel to the sky to seek answers.

The combat system in the game is similar to Devil May Cry for its juggling mechanic on mixing attacks on enemies for an uninterrupted full combo. But the game prevents you from potentially overwhelming every enemy in your path with the poise mechanic. In which enemies have a stun/knock immunity until you use either a charge attack, pulse attack (a pseudo lock-on mechanic that allows you to attack a certain enemy, in addition to heal), spells, or any move that deals poise damage. Breaking all poise allows you to do full-on combos till the enemies’ poise restore over time. On top of that, the combat also features customization of both spells and abilities (both platforming and combat). The demo had a handful that you can use to better chain your attacks consistently. It’s an awarding system for breaking as many enemies' defenses followed by a mix of ground/air attacks and specials.

Day [28-30]

Lunistice
By: A Grumpy Fox
Status: Available

Lunistice is a small, simple 3D platformer that greatly exceeds its genre. It’s a linear runner with a bit of collectathon of cranes and letters in offbeat roads for each level. The game is fairly easy with its very generous checkpoints, making it a good introduction to 3D platformers for younger audiences. There’s also 2 additional playable characters after finishing the game, with different approaches in levels and difficulty. For the main price of $5, it’s an enjoyable 2+ hour game.

I would love to talk more about this game like I did with the other mentions. But Lunistice just accomplished what it set itself, in both gameplay, music, and story. However, there is an upcoming sequel game that the developer announced not so long ago. And for how wonderful this game is, I say you should keep an eye on Lunistice 2 in the future.

Scratchin’ Melodii
By:LJ LephemStar
Status: Available (Demo)

You know, I’m kind of conflicted on picking this one. Mainly out of all the mentions I have on here, this is probably the most popular/recognizable indie game. It’s definitely a given when this game garners a lot of fans from the Friday Night Funkin community. Especially how both of them have similar tributes to a peculiar Playstation game.

Scratchin’ Melodii is a more faithful tribute to Parappa the Rapper. With its full controller button system, you have to either follow the repeated lines as well as supporting lines for higher score and passing the stage (in addition to mixing button inputs in between lines to gain extra points). And above all, the game follows the energy as Parappa with its cartoonish sequences for both the characters and set pieces. Although, the vocals for the game could make or break your experience. There are a few characters that are voiced by an actress, but most of the cast is voiced by a variety of voice samplers. Such as Microsoft Voices, Vocaloid Voice Synthesizer, and text-to-speech engines to make voices of characters.imo, I find it endearing for how silly the premish can be.

Now it just needs a widely available modding scene.

Day [31-33]

Jack Move
By: Edd Parris
Status: Available

Jack Move is a stylish, 16-bit cyberpunk turn-based JRPG about Noa Solares, a young hacker who discovers a corrupt corporation known as Monomind, that kidnapped her father so they would obtain his secret discovery for their own selfish gain. Jack Move is quite a short game, about 10 or so hours for a standard playthrough given its genre.

Gameplay wise, it's a simple and straightforward battlesystem with a few bells and whistles. The moves and abilities you obtain in the game are softwares and hardwares, respectively. Both of them can be customized with slots, while additional software slots can be unlocked through purchase. During battles, you can command install to change your moveset at the cost of your turn, which allows you to cycle through your strong, heavy hitting moves, and your weak, but cost effective attacks and statues. It’s a nice, bite-sized RPG for anyone.

Somnipathy
By: Tearcell Game
Status: Available (Demo)

Somnipathy is a point n' click, survival horror adventure game about Aggy, a sleep-deprived young woman with an unknown object that she once obtained, but has no memory of obtaining nor removing it. Said object causes her to travel to a nightmare realm where she experiences monsters hunting her down every night. Out of frustration, Aggy delves deep into the nightmare realm to find the cause of her horrors.

The longer you’ve been in the nightmare realm, the more difficult it is to escape from the chaser monster and roaming fiends. Losing in the nightmare necessary to progress the story and allows you to stock items and money in the real world. The puzzles often involved going to the real world as well to get solutions by interacting with people and certain objects. In which they later appear as distorted figures in the nightmare realm. It's a pretty good oldschool Pn'C game with a premise that makes you wonder what other implications involving Aggy’s nightmare realm is.

Not to mention, there’s an arcade mode about traversing endless, semi-generated areas to get a high score by collecting items, fighting off roaming fiends, and solving puzzles.