Indie games nowadays feel so much more valuable than AAA-titles for me. You can still see the heart and soul the devs can put into those. There's just so many one can recommend and whenever videos like these pop up, the comment section turns into a treasure trove of amazing titles.

Showed up for the Cross Code love, stayed for the Chained Echoes love.

Inscryption gives the same vibes as Outer Wilds, but in a different way. The more I talk about it the worse it will get. One of the most unique games I've played in a while.

Pure and simple Outer Wilds changed me life. I don't approach the world the same way anymore. The curiosity that game tugged at and the wonder of discovery it gave me transferred over into this world 1 to 1. Exploring physics, asking the biggest questions our universe has to offer, and working towards their beyond imagination solutions has been one of the great joys of my life and it's Outer Wilds that brought me to realizing just how amazing it all is.

I think this also shows the three ways you can succeed as an indie game developer: 1. Polish and improve a beloved but flawed formula (Chained Echoes) 2. Do something unique that may not be for everyone can be appreciated for what it is (Outer Wilds) 3. Just be damn good and make the best and polished exampled of an existing formula (Hades)

For me, A Short Hike is the quintessential indi game. Small, creative, low poly, made with love by one guy.

Outer Wilds will always hold a place in my heart as my favorite game of all time. At a time when I was mainly playing fast paced multiplayer shooters, Outer Wilds made me slow down and really think about the game I was playing.

Return of the Obra Dinn is a game that completely blew me away. Would recommend to everybody who enjoys a mystery and feeling smart.

"Hey kid... Ever heard of Katana Zero?"

The strength of indie games for me is that they're able to tackle such a unique range of ideas, mechanics, and art styles that big budget publishers are often too afraid to touch these days, so I don't think I can rank a Number 1 because they're so different in what they try to do. Disco Elysium has both some of the funniest and most emotionally impactful character building I've ever seen in a game. Hollow Knight reminded me of how fun it can be to get lost if you're in a world that's worth exploring. Katana Zero combines a gritty neo-noir atmosphere with sleek fast-paced one-hit-kill gameplay. Wildermyth is incredibly creative in how every player's experience can be different with their characters and their relationships organically developing over time as a group. SOMA was a horror game that had less jump scares and more existential crises. And Wandersong gave a spin on the classic tale of the hero's journey about a silly bard and cynical witch that made me both laugh and cry.

I’ve always really loved the granddaddy of all indie games, Cave Story. It’s definitely the sort of game you can tell was made by one person with no one else on the team to tell them “hey maybe don’t do that” which I mean in mostly a good way. In terms of “influence” I think it has to stand above all other indie titles just by default, and the fact that it’s a really excellent game definitely helps.

Strongly recommend Chicory: A Colorful Tale. The most basic way I can describe it is it's a 2D Zelda crossed with a coloring book, but it's also so much more than that. It has a great story that I think can resonate with anyone who's ever tried to do something creative, and the way it uses game mechanics as part of that storytelling is some of the best I've seen in a game. And of course the soundtrack by Lena Raine of Celeste fame is outstanding.

VA-11 HALL-A, OMORI, Katana Zero, and Hotline Miami are some of my favorite indies ^^

Signalis was the most recent hook that got me, made by two people that game blew me away its insane how a game can be resident evil, dead space, silent hill and metal gear all at the same time while simultaniously being none of those things and something completely new and fresh

Indies are awesome. Even though I don't like roguelikes so much that not even Hades could hold me, I absolutely recognize that it's an absurdly stylish and polished game and I still recommend it to people. I like every single aspect of Hades, it's just that my goopy goblin gamer brain doesn't like that I have to restart from the beginning every time.

I bought Chained Echoes and played for hours yesterday, it was a blast. Not only is the narrative quite compelling, but I was surprised to enjoy the combat as someone who wasn't into turn-based combat before.

Your experience with Chained Echoes seems to be similar to mine with CrossCode: I expected it to be just another game to complete on my list, only to be so hooked that it now one of my top 5 personal favorites of all time!

Games like Outer Wilds that are best played completely blind are so good because they really immerse you in the games world. I’ve been playing games like Rain World and Tunic recently that give the same feeling. Definitely try those games out.

I would recommend The Mark Of The Ninja Remastered. It's mostly gameplay focused with a cool story twist at the end. Really solid game for sure.

The fact that "best" is subjective doesn't even pose a problem when it comes to indie games, because their sheer genre diversity, creativity, and quality nowadays means that it's possible to find several fantastic games that will suit your personal definition of "best" almost flawlessly. I love RPGs and metroidvanias, so for me, the "best" indie games are things like OneShot, Ori and the Blind Forest/Will of the Wisps, and Undertale. And yes, also CrossCode. Also, I like mangos.

I think that Tunic is the closest game to outer wilds in term of discovering game mechanics to progress. I also wanna talk about evil tonight, really fun game, it's basically a 2d resident evil. Anodyne 2 is also amazing

Here's some indie games I like (minus ones that everyone knows): Horizon's Gate, Time Break Chronicles, Skul the Hero Slayer, Crystal Project, Fell Seal, Wildermyth, Tales of Maj'Eyal, Ara Fell, Rise of the Third Power, Siralim Ultimate, Fight'N Rage, One Step from Eden

A pretty great and overlooked roguelike I enjoyed recently is Revita. Has a pretty great system of using your health as currency for items, so every decision you make feels immensely impactful. Crown Trick is also great and similarly overlooked, but it's so unique, it's difficult to talk about it succintly.

Hey, just got enough money to get one of these two: stardew valley or hollow knight. Need help. Edit: this got pinned by mhswoocer and a lot of people had hollow knight as their answer. Thank you all so much I an having so much fun with the game ❤️

I'll definitely play these games. As for underrated indie games, I recommend Phoenotopia Awakening

I think most people go into Hades not liking roguelikes/rouguelites and end up liking the formula over all because of the characters and story too... but I highly recommend you play risk of rain 2 or dead cells if you haven't tried those yet. Those are some great action roguelites. For some reason I didn't get that into Hades (maybe is the slow start it has) but I loved Bastion and Transistor. Maybe one day I will give Hades another shot.

Uuuuh Celeste vs Hades is a very very interesting discussion to have, i absolutely adore both games and think they are masterful in their own right. For me what tips the balance towards Celeste is that it's probably the best designed game I've ever played in the fact that it weaves gameplay, story, themes, and presentation (both visual and in terms of sound design) to an extent I'm not sure it's been replicated in the entire medium. Playing "reach for the summit" (that's the song not the level but you guys get it) for the first time was a near transcendental experience for me, it might be my favorite level ever created for any game, and I wouldn't say it particularly stands out above the rest of the game in terms of quality, it's actually because the whole game is so consistently incredible that the level becomes so special. Hades is the culmination (so far, i have huge hope for the future) of my favorite game studio, playing Bastion was one of the most important gaming experiences of my childhood, but Celeste is for me the culmination of gaming as a medium so far, not foregoing any of it's aspects in order to heighten others, but rather polishing and tuning gameplay, story and presentation in an unprecedented way.

It took me over a year to commit to playing the dlc for Outer Wilds for the same reason as you, I just didn't want to be finished with the game, I was also worried about it tainting the base game. Fortunately they absolutely nailed it and it felt like it naturally belonged. You won't be disappointed

god I love A Short Hike, it just got me to shut up and enjoy something, just listening to the wing rush by in that game gives me a sense of calm no other game ever has.

Pyre, blasphemous, fortune summoners, Recettear, Pyre, Oneshot, Disco Elysium, Return to Obra Dinn are some of my fav games ever also bananas

Three games I haven't seen anyone else mention: -Deadbolt: Violent stealth action with really intriguing lore in the background -Hello Charlotte: Weird RPGMaker adventure with some horror and lots of feels -Roadwarden: A fantasy RPG that elevates text-based games into truly feeling like an interactive novel, makes every other text adventure I've played look like amateur hour

Love these 3 picks as for a recommendation it would be rain world it is such a magical experience with a good amount of similarities to outer wilds but absolutely brutally challenging.

I thought I had already subscribed because your videos are so great. but the sub request joke totally got me!

Hollow Knight is the GOAT of indies, its not not only the best indie, it seriously challenges the best games ever made in its genre going back 4 decades, its really that polished and well designed.

Great video! There's so many great indie games out there. One that I would recommend that wasn't in the video is Death's Door. It's a game that I always recommend! Another one I personally love is A Hat in Time. I hope you enjoy the Outer Wild DLC when you decide to play it. I was a bit sad when it ended, but it still left me happy that I experienced it. [ also, strawberries ::) ]

Love this video, especially being a very big crosscode fan and that game being very dear to me, knowing its one of your favs just got me a little excited. Anyway watched your Chained echo vid a couple days ago and gonna get it so thank you for spreading the message that that game exiists cause I prob wouldnt have found it either way. Havent heard of outer wilds so ill prob check it out!

It's a toss-up between watermelon and mangoes for my favorite fruit, between my favorite fruit as a kid and the fruit I never ate as a kid but now really enjoy eating. I've long found indie games to be a fascinating market, because they thrive on thousands of individuals who grew up with video games deciding that there needs to be a game that merges concepts from multiple other games they played, or has a unique method of story telling, or even simply one with an aesthetic that they don't see often enough. Someone missed the Battle Network games, and came up with the idea for One Step From Eden. Someone lived for intriguing mystery writing and came up with Return of the Obra Dinn. Someone loved JRPGs (FF in particular) and wanted to merge that gameplay with open-world exploration and platforming, and came up with Crystal Project. A group of people were really into fighting games and a particular cartoon, and eventually created Them's Fightin' Herds from their passion project. There are *thousands* of stories like this for all sorts of amazing games, spanning every possible genre and inventing new ones. And the most incredible part is that their appeal can defy genre preference. As mentioned in the video, Hades is probably the strongest example, as it can appeal to people even if they aren't particular to roguelike/roguelite gameplay, just because the game at its core is what many might call perfection. Just to round off this comment, I'll list some indies I enjoy that I don't see from a quick scroll. 20XX and 30XX are a fun pair of roguelike games based off Megaman and Megaman X respectively, with co-op. UnMetal is a fun, comedic spoof of the old Metal Gear games. Astro Colony is a game that looked at Raft and thought, "but what if in space?" SYNTHETIK and its sequel are incredibly tight top-down roguelike shooters. Bug Fables is a charming recreation of the old Paper Mario aesthetic. Monster Sanctuary is a fun adventure that combines monster catching and metroidvania exploration. Lastly, The Fall and its sequel were the first time I ever played through a series of point-and-click adventure games, despite usually being unable to enjoy that style of game. I can hope that name dropping a bunch of titles like this leads someone to finding something new to enjoy.

Amazing video as always. It's such a hard question, one that I don't know if I can even give an answer to. In contrast to the many lifeless triple-As, so many indie games just utterly ooze personality, creativity, fantasticalness, and love. So many contenders come to mind: Celeste; my favourite of all time, a game I love so dearly. Precise, concise controls, and every single level was something new and amazing. Hades; the art, the gameplay, the dialogue, everything about it is so refined, so much so that when I first played it I did so for 24 hours straight. Hollow Knight; arguably the single greatest modern metroidvania. Spearheaded the indie metroidvania boom. What Remains of Edith Finch; this game left me speechless. There's many more but it'll take so long to comment on all of them; Undertale, A Hat in Time, Furi, Dead Cells, Ori 2, Jazzpunk, Inscryption. But those are just out of the ones I've played, there are SO many that I am yet to play; Outer Wilds, Bloodstained, CrossCode, Chained Echoes, Omori, Disco Elysium just to name a few. Two of the best are even getting sequels, in Hades 2 and Silksong. Indie games are incredibly beautiful, they are so diverse yet so amazing. So many people can have so many different valid answers to this question. Compared to the double/triple-A library, such a high percentage of indie games can be argued to be the best. So I don't know when or if ever I'll be able to definitively answer, "What is the best indie game?". But personally, for right this second, it's Celeste. (couldn't even type that without second guessing myself).

When combined with other foods, lemons are probably my favorite fruit, but on its own, I'd have to say kiwis.

"VA-11 Hall-A: Cyberpunk Bartender Action" "Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark" "To The Moon" "Star Traders: Frontiers" Hopfully will add to your backlog

Thank you for this video, and for everyone adding recommendations! I'll add a few of my own unique ones: go play Enter the Gungeon, Bug Fables, Ultrakill, and Rain World. Heads up for RW: Each character plays in a different year/time, so stuff changes. Great games, one and all.

I have played CrossCode a few years ago and I really enjoyed my time with it, that game is such a gem. Pretty much the same thing goes for Celeste, Hades and especially Outer Wilds (although I too haven‘t played the DLC), but the quality of these games is certainly no secret. Since you seem to have very good tastes (in my eyes), when it comes to indies, I‘m just going to trust you and try out Chained Echoes. I‘m generally not the biggest JRPG fan in the world, mainly due to their slow nature and often quite boring and repetitive gameplay, but after watching your video on the game, I‘m really excited for it. Thank you for the recommendation!

Hell yeah! I've been following the indie scene for few years now and I absolutely vouch for Outer Wilds. By far my favorite game of all time, it's truly an amazing experience that everyone should check out. Awesome video :)

My rec is for a game coming in about a week after i post this on april 26th. Cassette beasts. A monster taming rpg with heavy 80s aesthetics and where you scan monsters to become them in battle and also has fusion mechanics. Played the demo and loved it and heavily looking forward to the full release.

The video game medium is one with limitless expression. Sadly in recent years, they have (at least to me) became very same-y. That's why indie games shine so brightly. They're made by video game fans for video game fans, fueled by passion and love for the craft. They can take risks and put new spins on, well, everything. Some of my favorites are Hollow Knight for having beautiful atmosphere and music, fun abilities with a ton of ways to build a charm loadout, and a wonderful balance of good combat and exploration that I feel hasn't been matched by anything else I've encountered. Inscryption for having spot-on ominous atmosphere and suspense and mystery, and a fun, innovative card game that meshes perfectly with the rouge-lite genre. Stardew Valley for being exactly what you'd expect. A mellow-but-rewarding break from the stresses and tension of daily life. A blank-slate farm to build, a cozy town to explore, and colorful people to get to know. One I discovered literally yesterday, that is still only available in demo form (I guess, honestly, still too early to say whether or not it's recency-bias on my part). Slay the Princess. Has a Stanly-Parable sort of narrator and plays around with meta-story concepts, tons of branching paths stemming from almost every choice you can make. It has a way of inspiring endless thought about what everything means and what anything even IS. Can't wait for the full game to come out. Also, apples.

That thumbnail almost made me pop a vein the mark of a high quality thumbnail right there also considering you enjoyed outer wilds so much, perhaps rain world would be one you'd enjoy as well?

Gonna have to check out Chained Echoes but if we’re talking send ups to older games, I’d call The Messenger one of the best indies I’ve ever played. A beautiful love letter to Ninja Gaiden with a good sense of humor and killer music

Raspberries are my favorite fruit. Also, great recommendations. I don't have a lot of time to play games and therefore have to be very selective when playing games (like, I still haven't played Hades or Disco Elysium), but I think our tastes align so I'll have these games on my mind. Last thing, I got CrossCode on Early Access and loved it, I basically went "What's a game sort of like Secret of Mana" before the remakes came out. Maybe the best discovery I ever made.

I love a few things in gaming: Indies, retro Metroidvania's, & Dating/Social Sims. 2022 alone has a multitude of genre-defining great titles: Neon White is a masterpiece. It expertly paces itself between the dopamine rush it grants from completing a level with better and better times, to easing up and exploring each level looking for the collectible hidden within, before finally letting you cool off by chatting with the cast of goofy and fun characters. It is a thoroughly enjoyable experience that caused me to range from having a small smile creep into my focused expression to a big goofy smile with genuine laughter at the dialogue and characters. This barely won out for my 2022 GotY -------------------- Potionomics executed every idea it had to perfection. The moment to moment gameplay in making high quality potions versus bartering their value up is addictively good. The character interactions and overall writing is high quality, makes you feel like you are talking to complete and fun people, all while backed by a progressive underpinning which I cannot get enough of. The visuals are the absolute best use of cg-animation I have ever and may ever see with characters being unbelievably expressive in what is a clear labour of love. With the music having entered some of my playlists for reading and relaxing in my down time. I fully recommend this title to people who are even ambivalent towards the genres present in this title. --------------------------------- Hush Hush is a warm and bright game. Warm in the dialogue that is always flirty and full of banter. Bright in that it is not afraid to be a dating simulator. This is a game for people who like to go on dates with cute girls, it doesn't need to obscure this through parody like other titles. The game also isn't just a "regular bouquet in a bowl" as it goes on it gets more serious in subject matter and treats its characters as real people with their own problems and emotional needs. The core of the gameplay requires you to connect through pathos/empathy and it thoroughly tests your social skills. I don't know if I will ever praise a Social Simulator as highly as this title again in my life, it is just so exceptionally written/performed/drawn and I hope other games follow suit as the medium develops. --------------------------------------- Anyone interested in Social Simulators or just enjoys conversing with interesting people should give these 3 a shot. ---------------------------- *Upcoming Indie Shoutout:* Chants of Senaar is a game where you must learn to decipher a foreign language depicted in hieroglyphics and solve puzzles along the way. I played its demo during the latest Steam Next Fest and was thoroughly sold on its gameplay and premise. I would love to mention a boatload more but this comment is already longer than my last homework assignment.

You should give Tunic a try, it's similar to Outer Wilds in you have to go in blind but there comes a point where you need to flip that stay blind conception on its head if you get really stuck in the late game you can ask for help but if you how to read the clues right you can do it yourself.

Rain world for me the game is quite good. It can feel brutal at times but that kind of adds to it since your supposed to be low on the food chain. But as you play you unlock stronger characters and learn how to move better and with how complex the movement can be it changes the game completely. lot to learn feels like a world to explore and there is quite a bit of hidden lore for replay ability.

Thanks for the recommendations! I actually found out I already had chained echoes installed I just hadn’t played it yet so thanks for letting me know! Some good indie games are Celeste, Hollow-knight, firewatch, ddlc(Doki Doki), Undertale and Omori.

If you are into metroidvanias, Phoenotopia awakening is my favorite indie game alongside crosscode. It is very similar to Zelda 2 in terms of exploration and abilities, but the charm, the story, and the characters are just so good, I really want it to be well known because I havent seen that much people talking about it

If you like Mystery games, Return of the Obra Dinn is pretty good. You have to figure out how each crew member of a ship died or survived to complete the story. I have some qualms with the guesswork you need to do, but overall it's pretty good. Unheard is another mystery game that is very unique. A murder mystery type game where the gameplay is centered around audio. Good story twist at the end as well. A tactics like game I've been enjoying recently is Wartales. It's in the latest stages of its development but is supposed to release this year. It's a Play-Your-Way kind of game with lots of ways to customize your units, and party as a whole.

I watched the Outer Wilds chunk of the video with my hands on my pause button just in case. I'm (I think?) like... 70ish percent of the way through the game, and everyone I've talked to has insisted that this game NEEDS to be finished blind. Strongly agree on all of the other games in the list too. I just finished Chained Echoes last night. I didn't expect to like the game as much as I did, but I was HOOKED.

One that i'll always recommend is Library of Ruina. The combat is super original, deep and manages to progressively add depth into its already complex system without overbearing the player, and the amount of crazy stuff you can pull off with certain page and power-up combinations is amazing, sometimes down-right broken, which is part of its charm. My favourite is equipping a bunch of cards with dices with little variation (like, they roll something like 1-2) to a character that raises the minimal dice roll value on a floor that has a power-up that gives you more dice power every time you roll the minimum value, it's not uncommon to end up with like +12 power on your next turn. The presentation is superb, everything from how every floor or the library itself looks, the character designs, the visual novel UI, the pages, all look so great. Furthermore, the music is amazing, every floor has pretty original music that fits the patron librarian and gets progressively more intense as the tension builds up and the boss themes are also incredible. The story is a great continuation of what was established in Lobotomy Corp (i don't blame anyone for watching a story summary instead of playing it, after all, it's pretty much a SCP colony sim) and far from keeping the ending as we thought (as in, not very satisfying), it builds upon it and develops the previous characters even more with room, keeping those at the end of their arcs relevant all the while making room for great new ones. It also gives more and more information about the City, of which we didn't know that much in Lobotomy Corporation outside of like a few other districts and the ordeals. Also, the floor realizations are imo the peak of the game. A perfect blend of combat and character development.

hey there just found out about your channel and loved it! i already turned the notifications on (which is rare for me) thank you for the video =) oh and my favorite fruit is banana

The moment i saw iconoclaste and kamiko I WAS HOOKED

A couple indie games I recommend, specifically RPG games are Yuppie Psycho, a survival horror game set in an office building, and Fear & Hunger1/2, an incredibly difficult sort of survival horror game that takes place in a dungeon or eastern europe. Both of them are very good, although one is definitely way harder than the other, but both deserve some more time in the spotlight!

This is exactly me with the Trails series, albeit not indie, but message holds true.

My favorite and most impactful Indie games I ever played are The Beginner's Guide (walk-sim), Sayonara Wild Hearts (my most replayed game ever) and Hi-Fi Rush (idk if this counts as indie but its my favorite action game)

All 3 games you mentioned are amazing, but Hades takes the cake for me. As someone who likes to exhaust the dialogue of every character in the games I play, Hades was brilliant to me. The fact that you could play dozen, and dozens, and dozens of runs and no character repeats dialogue is just astounding.

Apple. Rainworld is like being dropped naked into a jungle and being told to survive. It's got lots of depth in its mechanics that are satisfying to learn and master. The only thing is, it will only tell you the basics of movement and combat. The rest is up to you to learn and explore. You are given only one goal but many players will arrive there in many different ways since it's nonlinear. The world is merciless and gigantic (bigger than hollow knight's). All creatures will move freely across screens with their own motives and goals, almost like the game is simulating a terrarium. That's really what it aims to do, simulate an ecosystem. It's a punishing, but rewarding experience, and I would recommend it a whole lot. Also it recently got a dlc that doubled its size.

Do you ever just sit and wonder why there are so many good games? And how developers have poured so many hours into these passion projects for the world to enjoy, so much so that you feel guilty of not playing them to the fullest. Of course nobody has the time for that, however it would be great to live in a world unbounded by time.

Rabi-Ribi, from Taiwanese indie devs CreSpirit, is a one-of-a-kind genre-blending of metroidvania, bullet hell platforming, and non-linear boss rushing, packaged together in a cutesy presentation that belies just how hardcore the game is, both in its difficulty scaling mechanics and in its exploit-friendly level design. There are some areas where other games trounce it for sure (the story is largely fluff, and clearly was treated just as a generic framing for boss encounters) but mechanically it scratches an itch that even seven years after release still endears me.

Bug Fables is is my favorite RPG and I cannot recommend it enough. It takes inspiration from the first two Paper Mario games, and has an absolutely incredible story.

Play some indies and they're all ok, but then I played Chained Echos and was blown away, and I also played Hades and quite honestly for the first time got lost in the world and spent countless hours playing, and falling in love more and more every step of the way

Journey I would say took me on an introspective journey and contemplation of things. I also fell in love with its soundtrack.

Im gonna reccomend a few games here so here we go. Anuchard while personally I found a bit easy and the gameplay good but not great I mainly reccomend it for the story, i wont say anything because i know im bad for spoiling stuff but id say give it a look.(side note the only reason i found anuchard was because the main character makes an appearence in crosscode as one of the backer character, they're the one wielding the giant bell in that one library in rhombus square) Demon turf is a fun 3d platformer, id say its pretty on par with other games like it like a hat in time, it overall has a good difficulty balance with the main challenge coming from the optional stuff like collectibles or time trials, its story is fun but not anything too special, id recommend it if you like 3d platformers. Floppy Knights is a fun mix of deckbuilder amd turnbased strategy games, it definately starts out a bit easy but it gets really hard towards the end, the characters are fun and the story is serviceable but i mainly played for the gameplay. Stories the Path of Destinies and Omensight are 2 games by the same developers with the same overall premise, you play through the same day multiple times and learn more and more about whats going on with the end goal of getting a good ending. Overall id say Omensight is the better of the 2, you go through the day following one of 4 characters where you get information, you can then give that informatipn to a different character and it will affect how the day plays out with the end goal to figure out how the godless priestess was murdered. Overall i like the premise and gameplay but the main downside to this kind of storytelling is youll go through the same levels several times, sure the story is different and you might take a few paths differently but it can get a bit old. Oneshot is my favorite meta game, it makes use of the files and other stuff on your desktop to make some really cool puzzles. I also love how you interact with the main character niko, niko talks directly to you since you are the god of this world, wont say anything else of the story though as thats what the game mostly is, sure it has a few puzzles bit the gameplay mostly consists of walking around talking to people and combining items, its simple but nothing special. If you want a good story amd dont care too much about gameplay i reccomend it. What lies in the multiverse is a puzzle game where you hop between universes to traverse the levels, has a cool story and quite a few great characters like everett, an old guy who just likes messing with you by doing stuff like seemingly teleport around. Overall the puzzles arent too difficult and the story takes a bit to get going but its a fun time. Eastward is an action game with good combat and puzzles but i mostly played for the story and characters, I wont say much else as its been awhile and i dont want to do the game a disservice by getting details wrong. It also has an entirely optional game inside of it akin to the original final fantasy games which is pretty cool. Overall id reccomend these games for story: Oneshot and What Lies in the Multiverse These games for gameplay: Demon Turf and Floppy knights And these games for a good mix of story and gameplay: Anuchard, Omensight and Eastward If i remember any other games i'll comment on this comment.

I've just finished playing chained echoes and the void I always feel after dedicating a week or two of my life to a game that I was so engrossed with felt just as strong as after I finished Cross code (I haven't played the DLC yet) these games are so amazing and I wish they would go mainstream just so that these devs get the recognition they deserve. Also I like Durian. :D

My recommendation is INSIDE. I can't say much about the game but it's short and bat shit crazy. great atmosphere and element of mystery. The art style is awesome as well.

indies I can recommend, One step from Eden, this thing is the literal reason the megaman battlenetwork series got revived, the second one is Kenshi, the first open world Indie that existed, you are not the chosen one, have several different starts (from a trader with a pack animal and no coins trying to sell luxury items to a rather infamous cirminal who found a legendary sword in a battlefiel to a pair of slaves whi have to escape, or someone who woke up naked and afraid in the middle of the desert while missing some limbs) the third one is streets of rogue, it's a roguelike that feels like the more classic ones, the city is still a dungeon after all but has this je ne sais quois of you being a thief, or engineer or a random factory worker in a city instead of your typical fantasy characters, and then there's flamebreak someone somewhere once decided to combine league of legends with a roguelike and got this thing that sounds like an abomination on paper and made me lsoe hours of my life

Indies are on the rise and there's a few reasons why this is happening and will continue to happen; - Triple AAAs have the expectation of high graphical fidelity, this qualitative expectation increases over time in line with advancements in hardware and software. Conversely the expectation for Indie games has completely plateaued - an indie can create a pixel art game now and be relatively certain it will still be accepted in 2050. If you could imagine GTA6 was made with pixel art, it just wouldn't fly. - Triple As also also necessitate the use of a team (in part due to the above), the use of a big team brings a high degree of risk ("too many cooks spoil the broth" could not be anymore of an apt expression - (except that you _need_ lots of them to make a AAA game)) when trying to create an artistic product with a clear vision. This risk can be mitigated with a director that is both highly skilled at managing people and designing games with a clear vision on how to proceed, a person with a high level of both of these skills is extraordinarily rare, and even with such a person at your helm, they still have to work with what you have at your disposal. - Some Triple As are funded by investors that don't know or care about games, they visit the studio and without directly saying it, demand that you make something fun, but fun doesn't work that way, fun can't be forced nor coerced, love and passion are the key ingredients to creating something fun and a big office block with hundreds of cubicles is often not the environment where love and passion flourish. Indies on the other hand, as well as having none of the above to contend with is the fact that the tools indies have access to continue to improve over time facilitating all manner of projects, the quality and scale of which were previously inaccessible to them. While Triple As do make use of Engines like Unity and Unreal, they don't really benefit from this anywhere near as much as indies do. Sadly I can see that in the not so distant future, as Triple As will begin posing as indies in order to curry favour from players - I've seen this being done on a few occasions and unfortunately it works. Next time you see something insisting it's an "indie title" have a look at their payroll if it's available.

Mango On the topic of games you can't talk about, I'd highly recommend TUNIC, a Zelda-esque game about a smol fox on a big adventure. I do love Hades a great deal, but I'd personally rank both Outer Wilds and Tunic, for this reason: Hades is an excellent game by virtue of polish and craftsmanship, whether in narrative structure or in the tight combat mechanics. Outer Wilds and Tunic, however, share this element of discoverability, unknown unknowns around every corner that a player gets to piece together for themselves, with limited in game guidance. I find the latter quality to be rarer in games, and harder to replicate.

For the past decade I've been playing a lot more indies than some triple a games that launch from what I've noticed. Some personal favorites I'd suggest for anyone reading to check out is Katana Zero, Prodigal, Neon White, Grindstone, Dave the Diver, Demon Turf, and Cloudbuilt.

Since you seem to be big on obscure indie RPGs, allow me to suggest another one to you: TROUBLESHOOTER: Abandoned Children. You have your action RPG with CrossCode, and your turn-based JRPG with Chained Echoes. So with Troubleshooter, you get your tactical RPG, otherwise referred to as “anime XCOM” by a lot of reviews. The premise of the game is that you’re playing as a “Troubleshooter”, which is sort of a volunteer, mercenary-for-hire type of police, living within the city-district of Valhalla. Criminal activity has exploded to overwhelming numbers, so ordinary citizens have taken up arms and work alongside the police to help cull the various gangs and other threats that plague Valhalla. You begin playing as Albus, who’s recently completed his training to become a Troubleshooter, and you set off into the city to establish a new Troubleshooter company. Along the way you meet various other characters that eventually join your company and tag along on your team to tackle missions. The main draw of the game that I see everyone praise is the deep character customization. It’s quite a complex game with loads of different stats, equipment, upgrades, character classes, and much more. The game does a fairly good job at slowly unraveling all of its mechanics to where it’s not _too_ much to take in all at once, at least in my opinion. It’s one of those games where you’ll be dozens of hours into the story and they’ll still be introducing new systems to you. (There’s apparently an entire pet system that comes with a certain character joining your company, which I haven’t even seen yet myself.) There are some restrictions - each Troubleshooter can only equip certain types of gear, and classes aren’t universal to everybody - but there’s still tons of space for creativity and coming up with your own ideas. The big one is the Masteries systems. A Mastery is an upgrade that provides (usually) passive buffs to a character, like extra health, or extra damage under a specific condition, or a buff to a particular class skill - things of that nature. There are over *800* unique Masteries in the game, all acquired through killing different enemy types or by using the crafting station to research and produce new upgrades by sacrificing duplicates. Every character has a Mastery Board with five categories of Masteries - Basic, Attack, Defence, Support, and Ability (related to class skills) - and a sixth called Mastery Sets, which are hidden upgrades that grant an all-around buff for equipping a specific combination of regular Masteries, and you can have multiple Mastery Sets on a single character. This gives you pretty much complete control over fine-turning every aspect of a character’s playstyle. You can make them good at fighting up close or at range, give them boosts when near allies or lone wolf flankers, be good as soaking up damage, landing critical hits constantly, applying debuffs, or whatever else you want that will synergize with your other teammates. And to boot, you can eventually unlock more Mastery Board presets, which means you can set up multiple load outs for different scenarios and team compositions. You could literally spend hours just customizing your characters’ Mastery Boards, which I have. I am suggesting this game as an on-going recommendation, if you want to call it that. I haven’t finished TROUBLESHOOTER myself, in fact I am nowhere _near_ the end. Much like with CrossCode, this title has a *ludicrous* amount of content. I’ve played almost 40 hours of TROUBLESHOOTER: Abandoned Children thus far, and I’m at about the end of Chapter 2 of what I think might be 10 chapters for the story, and I’ve only got 4 of the 12 Troubleshooters on the team. Half of the reviews that I’ve seen of this game are sitting in the 150-200 range, and that’s for people that’ve basically completed the main story. Some people, who’ve gone on to try and gather all of the Masteries I imagine, are in the 300-400 hour range. And quite often you will see reviews that say things like, “One of the best games I’ve ever played.”, and stuff like that. So if you decide to play it, be prepared for a very long, _very big_ game. The developers also show a high level of passion and dedication for the project, as well. The game was in Early Access for a few years, and finally released into 1.0 back in 2020, and they’re still updating the game on like a weekly or bi-weekly basis to this day. They’ve released a free DLC, some character outfit sets for all the Troubleshooters, and they’re working on another expansion that’s being released in segments. They also claim, on the game’s store page, that this is apparently the first game in what they’re looking to make into a series, which is just... that’s some next-level ambition, in my eyes. To everyone who reads this, please do check the game out. Just like what people say about CrossCode and I think Chained Echoes too, TROUBLESHOOTER: Abandoned Children is one of those indie titles that deserves way, _way_ more recognition that it has. I’ve seen virtually nobody talk about it; even CrossCode has received more attention than it, at this point. And on a completely unrelated note: strawberry. So... yeah.

Im gonna get on here to say that Monster Sanctuary was that game for me. It consumed me for the couple short weeks it took me to tear through it. An excellent mix of genres between, monster/card collectors, metroidvania, rpg, and strategy. I loved every bit of this game.

I bought one of those charity bundles that have like 100 games and so far I played Absolute Drift and Chronicon. Both very simple games but great at what they do, a short, relaxing (besides some tough missions) drifting simulator and a Diablo-like that introduced me back to that genre after years and had me sink 60 hours in. And from what I heard it works because it takes the things that worked and gets rid of those that didn't. They definitely didn't wow me as much as Celeste, Crosscode, Enter the Gungeon etc. did, but they were focused on those less common genres, and they did it right, so I'd say they were just as worthwile experiences in between all the legendary ones. For some others that are pretty popular but not mentioned, I've been playing Epic Battle Fantasy for maybe 10 years and recently played Freedom Planet and OMORI.

Hyper light drifter is my favorite indie game of all time but I've put in more hours on Hades than any other indie game.

I didn’t look at the thumbnail too closely, I just saw CrossCode and “Best Indie Game” and clicked because I rarely ever see anything about CrossCode. But seeing Outer Wilds was a very nice surprise :) I kinda like that game, if you couldn’t tell… I’m also in the middle of replaying Hades, despite the fact that I keep telling myself to go play Breath of the Wild before the sequel comes out. Hades is just so addictive. I’m not very good at it, but the gameplay, the music, the fun character interactions - it all just keeps pulling me back in. I haven’t even heard of Chained Echoes before. But based on your taste in games, it looks like I’ll have to check it out! Also my favorite fruit is probably grapefruit. Just thought you might want to know.

Chained Echoes was my GOTY last year. Combat, style, pacing, polish, score, etc so good. Can't wait for Silksong this year!

A short hike is amazing

the indie game that blew my expectations was MO:Astray, it's a simple platforming/puzzle game in which you are a slime that sticks up to surfaces. as the game progressed the level design got pushed so incredibly well to its limits I was shocked at just how good it was thought out. It also has great visuals and an okay story added to it. Would recommend

Mirabelles ! I love mirabelles ! I can't tell which indie would be the best, it is just that a handful of them happened to resurect my love for video games (like dark souls did some years before)

Chained Echoes… I’ve never heard of that game before, but it looks right up my best friend’s alley! He lives and breathes JRPGs, and this looks like an incredible one! I’ll definitely be pointing him towards the game!

When i played Hades it was a breath of fresh gaming air id never thought id breath yet here i am sitting pretty with the platinum on PS4 and loved it almost all the way through its just that good in fact it was so good it made me want to try the rougelike/rougelite genre as a whole and played Risk of Rain 2... I do enjoy it just not as much as Hades but part of that is probably because of the skill ceiling for RoR2 is so much higher than in Hades but I blame the fact that Hades is a rougelite and RoR2 is a rougelike, for further detail i would do research on the 2 terms if i were you... Assuming you don't know the difference but that is probably not the case as i watched your vid. The point was i hope you understand where i am coming from with these 2 similar genres and why i love Hades mire than RoR2

You should check out Scholar of the Arcane Arts if you want an action roguelike with a unique spell system! I'd love to watch you cover it.

Maaaan, I wish I was more hooked to Outer Wilds than my two attempts have led me to feel. I’m jealous of those that vibe with it so viscerally.

Dead Cells sure is something else man you should try it! It's a roguelike-metroidvania starring The Beheaded(or Bobby in the animated trailers) Although if I talk about it the worse it would sound like but when the game gets a current 5 year support,crossing over with not only the other indie games(Hollow Knight,Slay the Spire,Shovel Knight,...) but also Castelvania you know the game accomplished something spectacular. also if another "Everyone is here Vol.3" gets dropped in the future,I want to see Hat Kid's Umbrella or Peppino's Shotgun a weapon of choice for sure :)

As for somewhat hidden gems I can recommend oneshot, furi, hyper light drifter, signalis, tunic, minit

I tried Outer Wilds when it first dropped on Gamepass, but I just couldn't finish it. For some reason I found it a little bit disturbing, I can't really articulate why. Something about being trapped in a loop reliving the violent death of a solar system for eternity, maybe. Also, I died in the rising sand planet several times and the whole process of trying to find my way through was just wearing me down.

My personal favorite game is Celeste, even beating out all the nostalgia I have for pokemon and Super Mario Sunshine. I started playing it because the mechanics looked fun, and I finished it because of the story, which helped me out during one of the darkest points of my life. I keep coming back to it to this day because I enjoy spending time with it, and hope to one day beat all the secret stuff it has to offer.

Unsighted is a criminally overlooked indie game imo

Rain World. Take everything you said about Outer Wilds, and apply it to Rain World. To anyone who is tired of games and wants to experience something different, get the game, then take a note book and make entries for anything you find, give things your own names, find out what they do, how they react when you do certain things, and how they interact with other stuff. I only have some small advice (no spoilers). - Everything in this game has a use in the gameplay department, you won't receive upgrades or stat boosts, you have full access to everything you need to beat the game since the tutorial, if it's there, it has a purpose. If you ever get stuck, go back a couple sections and experiment with anything, yeah, ANYTHING that isn't part of the background that you may have overlooked or dismissed as worthless. - Think outside of the videogame logic, don't think of this as a stage, but a world of its own, enemies are not obstacles to kill for loot or points that have predetermined attack patterns, there isn't coins, floating platforms or spikes that someone put on the ground for some reason, everything has a purpose and tries to be coherent as a living and breathing ecosystem. - You're not a hero, or even particuarly strong. Your most useful asset is your brain, both inside and outside the game's universe, pick your battles carefully and avoid them until you get comfortable with your controls, they're simple, even if you don't like platformers, as the game doesn't ask much of you in that department, but they will seem clunky at first, there's a lot of small things you will learn that influence them, and once you catch up with them, you'll be flying across the game. That's all. Play Rain World, then play the dlc if you like it, it's even better. Don't get it beforehand though, buy it only after finishing the main game. Edit: An extra tip that has just occured to me, if an area is too hard, you can always try backtracking and going somewhere else, the game gives you a lot of paths you can go through.

Great vid, swoomfie!

I would love to recommend phoenotopia awakening, it's really amazing metroidvania with very cute story. I loved all aspects of the game and in my opinion it felt better than hollow knight

Funny how to most replayed part is the short Crosscode one at the beginning.

Darkwood - criminally underrated. I wish the Developers would make it Third Person as a remake in Unreal Engine 5

Haven’t played the other two but everything you said about Outer Wilds is spot on. I recommend it to people whenever I get the chance, hell I’ve gifted it to a few of my friends who I think would enjoy it the most. The one mistake I’ve made is that I’ve chased that “first experience” feeling too hard. I cannot relive the experience of Outer Wilds by directing watching my friends play the game, because then I end up providing hints to help progression which goes against what the game is. It’s a hard game to top. And a hard game to talk about, but the discussions it does generate makes it a true masterpiece (see the playlist on my channel for a collection of fantastic video essays and reviews on the game. SPOILERS abound of course) I lean away from anything isometric or 2D as a point of personal preference, but maybe Hades is worth breaking that rule. Edit: wrote this comment with the video paused talking about Hades. I seriously thought you were putting it above OW. Good fakeout

I've come to accept that I can't really recommend most of my favorite games, because they deliberately aren't for everyone. It is disheartening to see some of these developers struggle to find commercial success. Some of them at least have critical acclaim (Mobius Games). Others don't even have that (Radical Fish Games). I can only hope this changes for the better in the future for them, as they deserve so much more than they have.