SIGNALIS (indie horror game). Very good, scary, I cried. Strongly recommend.
John Langan’s “The Fisherman”. Its a cosmic/folk horror novel but also a powerful meditation on loss and grief.
Most indie games will end up better than pretty much every AAA title. The best games I’ve played in the last decade were either indie or AA.
Roboquest, Pathfinder WotR, Dyson Sphere Program, Outer Wilds, Balatro, Helldivers 2, Deep Rock Galactic, Rogue Trader, Darktide, Abiotic Factor, Rimworld, Stellaris, DV Rings of Saturn, Hardspace Shipbreaker, Voices of the Void, Expedition 33, Blue Prince, Tiny Glade, Witchfire, Instruments of Destruction, Heart of the Machine, Tainted Grail Fall of Avalon, A Webbing Journey, Planet Crafter, Kenshi, X4, Ultrakill, Schedule 1, the list goes on.
All amazing games, none of them AAA.
Frisbee
Man from Earth.
Coherence.
Unpacking (game)
Disco Elysium
Blood machines. It’s only a half hour cgi movie. But it hits super hard for me.
It’s the one with the OST from Carpenter Brut, right? I need to watch this short.
DELTARUNE. toby’s been changing my brain chemistry for 10+ years now
TUNIC
It’s a good game in general, butspoiler
If you, as a kid, had to decipher an older sibling’s notes in game manual, it hits that nostalgia right on the nose. And then turns it on its head.
I remember feeling the feels when I first saw Garden State. I don’t know what it is about that film, but this quote:
Andrew: “You know that point in your life when you realize the house you grew up in isn’t really your home anymore? All of a sudden even though you have some place where you put your shit, that idea of home is gone.
Sam: “I still feel at home in my house.”
Andrew: You’ll see one day when you move out it just sort of happens one day and it’s gone. You feel like you can never get it back. It’s like you feel homesick for a place that doesn’t even exist. Maybe it’s like this rite of passage, you know. You won’t ever have this feeling again until you create a new idea of home for yourself, you know, for your kids, for the family you start, it’s like a cycle or something. I don’t know, but I miss the idea of it, you know. Maybe that’s all family really is. A group of people that miss the same imaginary place.”
This hits hard.
Primer. Like $12k budget, mostly cost of film.
Think it’s time for a rewatch thanks for the reminder
Relevant XKCD https://xkcd.com/657/ and the reason I watched Primer in the first place. After dozens of watches I think that perhaps it’s possible the graph is relatively correct (maybe)
This was just amazing. Also relevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3zTfXvYZ9s
Disco Elysium
The whole setting is so grim and depressing I couldn’t get myself to finish it. Excellent game though.
Cuno hurt your feelings too, huh? I had to find health and recover after I spoke to him.
That fucking little rat, played this game so long ago but still remember his voice.
I disliked the second one specifically because they gave it a decent budget. The original is genius for how it does so much with so little.
The third is an oddball. Made-for-TV budget and quality. It’s interesting for fans of the series, but nothing special.
Cube > Saw. First time I watched Saw the only thing I could think of is “This is Cube with a different aesthetic and a creepy puppet.”
Love the Cube series, knew it was low budget, but not ‘that’ low!
I’m sure the others had a bigger budget, but yeah, the first one was hardly anything.
Of course they only needed to build one room, part of another, and then just change the lighting over and over.
