We live in a marvelous age for gaming. Games are everywhere, and developers have found exciting and scrappy new ways to make them. Indie games range from quick, experimental oddities to fully featured, day-absorbing epics. Here are a few of our current favorites.
"Honk!” In Untitled Goose Game, there’s a button specifically devoted to making this very sound. As a goose, you can honk to create distractions, honk to mock people, or simply honk to honk. In a game that’s all about ruining the lives of humans in simple ways (hiding their keys, stealing their glasses, etc.), the “honk” button is paramount.
Untitled Goose Game is as much a puzzle game as it is a sandbox goose simulator. But it serves another function, too: It’s a free pass to be mischievous, to be obnoxious, to be, well, a goose in a world of boring, buttoned-up humans. Though the game supplies you with a list of objectives that revolve around creative mischief-making, they could also be read as mere suggestions in a game that’s more about enabling unfettered freedom.
From Klei Entertainment, the makers of Don’t Starve, Oxygen Not Included is a survival game about developing a self-sufficient space colony from scratch. Your colony is made up of “duplicants,” human worker bees who randomly roll abilities and debilities upon spawning.
What’s most remarkable about Oxygen Not Included is the meticulousness of its systems. For example, duplicants who are loud sleepers must be scheduled to sleep at different times than others, so as not to disturb them. Some duplicants are more prone to contracting diseases than others and must be kept healthy. Even your colony’s gases must be managed and routed appropriately — you don’t want your duplicants breathing carbon dioxide, which naturally sinks to lower levels of the colony than oxygen.
All of this makes for a game that’s deeply rewarding to master. A space colony running like a well-oiled machine is a beauty to behold.
Magic in video games is often practical and easy to use: simply cast a spell and it deals its damage, heals a party member, or opens a door. Such is not the case in Noita, a roguelike action game in which every pixel on-screen is physically simulated. Since every pixel of the environment is capable of reacting to the magical effects of your spells, everything from the ceiling above your head to the ground beneath your feet is susceptible to destruction. This means casting a fire spell to dispel your foes might have disastrous consequences if it also happens to release a cluster of boulders from a ledge directly above you.
The result is a game that rewards playful experimentation and brushes with death. Who knew disorderly magic could be so fun to wield?
The first thing you’ll notice about Overland is its look: a minimalist, low-poly design and muted, sunset color palette. The game even has a “photo mode” dedicated to capturing particularly choice in-game visuals. You’ll want to capture these moments while you can.
That’s because the second thing you’ll notice about Overland is its urgency. The turn-based tactical combat game follows a group of travelers on a post-apocalyptic road trip across America. In every level, the screen slowly fills up with hostile aliens the longer you spend retrieving survivors or gathering resources. You’ll never rid a level of aliens, who are attracted to sound: You get what you can manage and get out as fast as you can.
Like a good boss fight? Dauntless is for you. This free-to-play action-RPG is nothing but boss fights, with each sprawling battle promising a major challenge and improved gear. Players spend the game studying each monster’s behavior through combat, memorizing their patterns and responding accordingly. Monster parts culled from successful hunts are used to craft better equipment to fight even bigger monsters.
You’ll be shocked at how intimately you might come to understand Dauntless’ fantastical creatures. That’s part of the fun; recognizing that you’ve mastered challenge after challenge, eager to take the fruits of your winnings into the next hunt.
Lonely Mountains: Downhill is a downhill cycling game that presents players with a unique blend of exploration and speedrunning opportunities. Your job as a player is to find the shortest path between point A — the mountain peak — and point B — the ground below. Crashing during a run yields penalties to your overall performance, as well as playful animations informed by ragdoll physics and low-poly charm. (Trust us: You’ll be seeing a lot of those animations.)
What makes Lonely Mountains: Downhill special is its gameplay loop. You’ll probably spend your first couple of runs down the mountain looking for shortcuts and scouting the layout of the level. After a couple of trials, you’ll eventually start taking the speedrunning element of the game seriously, hoping to refine your path downhill until it’s as efficient and quick as can be. It’s a game that rewards both your creativity and your technical acumen, encouraging you to experiment with the track to find better and better routes.