A few months back, I did a list of some of the games that have kept me sane while we while away the hours in our bubbles. A lot of them were the big hitters like God of War and Dead by Daylight, but recently I’ve started to deep dive into my Steam backlog to look at a lot of the games that I didn’t give enough of a chance or, more often, missed completely.
Some were bought through a Bundle pack, others were Early Access (a practice I now avoid, but that’s a rant for another day..)
So here’s a short list of some of the little Indies that I’ve checked out, a few I played to completion, and my thoughts as to whether they’re worth your time.
PORTAL RELOADED – Let me start with a cheat. This only recently came out, but I would be doing you a disservice to not mention it. Portal is two of my favorite games of all time, so a well done fan mod that adds a 3rd Portal made me wary. I’ve been hurt before. Fact is, it’s fantastic. The third portal opens a window to the future and the puzzles make you think in an entirely new way about lay out solutions. Highly recommended.
QUBE – On that note, let’s go with the ‘inspired by Portal’ game, QUBE. You wake up in a big white room and have big white gloves that give you powers over the space. The puzzles never twist your brain too hard and the ending is lacking – but you could do a lot worse than losing a few hours to this one.
GRIS – I have a fairly deep opinion of the good and bad ways to use vehicles like games as art. In short, they’re mostly not my thing… but on occasion, there is a game that is so gorgeously rendered that it is impossible to not fall into it. Gris is that. Every moment feels hand drawn and, where you will have very few real challenges in it, it hasn’t been since Transistor that I took so many screenshots just to revisit the world.
NANOTALE – I have a weird love of typing games. It probably is because I honestly have some fast words per minute and do enjoy stretching those muscles sometimes. I assume this is how sports people feel about holding balls.. maybe.. anyway.. Nanotale is the spiritual sequel to Epistory, another typing game by the same publisher, where you use words to adjust magic, discover nature, defeat baddies, and it is all done with a beautifully built world.
These are just a few of the games I’ve attacked the last few weeks, and I’m sure sometime in the future I’ll revisit this list, as there were some real bombs amongst these gems.
That said, I’m always looking for suggestions on little indie titles I may have missed, so don’t hesitate to reach out and let us know what you’re playing!
