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  • Pyre - I know Hades is amazing but I honestly believe Pyre is Supergiants best game and its not even close. It's a game explicitly about revolution and solidarity, it surprises me it doesn't get mentioned on Hexbear more.

    Return of the Obra Dinn - "Well that guy got stabbed, that guy got shot, THAT GUY HAD HIS ARM RIPPED OFF BY A GIANT SQUID AND WAS IMPALED BY A SPLINTERED ROWING PADDLE AND GOT SHOT IN THE HEAD WITH A CANNONBALL nobody has ever been MORE dead."

    Balatro - You already know.

    I'm also playing Pillars of Eternity again so that too.

    • I wanted to play pyre the other day but they never ported it to the switch :'(

  • I can't be arsed to figure out which of these are "actually" indie or just seemingly lower budget, so:

    • SIGNALIS - unmatched aesthetic & vibes, after finishing it the first time I kept thinking about it so went back for a second round on survivor/classic difficulty
    • Pizza Tower - it's just so peak
    • Nidhogg - I think this came out more than five years ago but I finally played it this year. Even though it's extremely basic and doesn't have a real campaign it's just so incredibly polished in its deceptively simple combat system that I kept coming back for more.
    • Return of the Obra Dinn - spent a wonderful Sunday afternoon solving this one sitting at my kitchen table with my steam deck and giant ledger notebook
    • Into the Breach - extremely fun, every single turn feels absolutely clutch; however you have to play basically perfectly in order to win so it is quite stressful
    • Night in the Woods - explicitly leftist game, one of the few
    • The Messenger - this one is really fun and has great music. My partner still remembers and talks about watching me play it.
    • Katana Zero - it's got that one hit kill/quick retry mechanic, excellent game. It's the game that Hotline Miami wishes it was imo.
    • Hyper Light Drifter - there are some massive unwarranted difficulty spikes but if you get around those this is a wonderful, beautiful game

  • Of course the big ones like Hades, Disco Elysium, Slay the Spire, Balatro. A few lesser known ones that I really like and wish got more attention:

    • Griftlands: two-track deck building roguelite by Klei (Don't Starve, Oxygen not Included, Mark of the Ninja) with rich worldbuilding and good stories. Honestly criminal how little attention it got.
    • Streets of Rogue: Immersive sim roguelike with lots of cool characters and situations you can stumble into. Eagerly awaiting the sequel!
    • Shadows Over Loathing: stick figure rpg with a unique setting and humor that's actual entertaining. Overshadowed by the success of its predecessor West of Loathing, and perhaps not as good, but still very enjoyable.

  • SIGNALIS and SYNTHETIK/SYNTHETIK 2

    Theres just something about isometric retrofuturist german games that have titles stylized with all caps y'know?

    • Love SIGNALIS, the anticommunist slant is cringe for sure, but the story and game itself are fantastic. I cried at the "true" ending, and it still pops into my head from time to time.

      Will have to check out SYNTHETIK, thanks for the recs!

      • I went into SIGNALIS totally blind and expected it to turn out to be queerbaiting. That scene after the false ending literally made my jaw drop. Agreed on the anticommunist slant, but atleast its not totally obnoxious and mostly says "people shouldn't be brutalized by the systems they inhabit" so I elected to reinterpret it as anticapitalist lol.

        One little bit about SYNTHETIK: either game is a blast and SYNTHETIK 2 is finally in a state where it is as fleshed out, if not more so than its predecessor. S1 is remarkably lightweight and runs beautifully however S2 has some issues with Proton and I have to periodically restart the program to prevent it from crashing my whole-ass system (Linux Mint). SYNTHETIK 1 has a freeware version called SYNTHETIK: Arena which will let you check out the mechanics to see if you like them, Arena also supports CO-OP play much like the base game! (I really like SYNTHETIK c: )

  • Love me some Noita. Falling Sands physics and coding-like wand building in a world far vaster than the provided path suggests. Difficult as fuck tho. Part of that might be my insistence on always making a wand with every explosive I find stuck in a single trigger which I inevitably misfire.

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