We are past the middle of the year now. It has been almost five months since I last wrote here. During that time, we almost moved, I started my garden again, I got laid off, then two hours later got a new job. These are all good things. Sometimes, I would think about the last few posts I wrote. They come off as mostly rants, and while the things I said were true, it doesn’t stop them from continuing to happen. I also didn’t stop playing video games during this time.
Like many capitalist endeavours, the video games industry follows the money even after it starts to hurt. Then company gets shut down, people get laid off, and all of that. The bottom line is, these things won’t really stop, and instead of me being angry about it, I could instead decide to find developers that make games that aren’t the things I dislike and talk about them.
So to summarize my last few posts (they won’t be available after this)…
The games industry kinda sucks. Store-fronts are a mess. It’s tough to find a quality game through PSN or Steam now because of how they have allowed low-quality games on there. Unity and Unreal make it easy to make terrible games. The big companies are constantly putting all the stuff “gamers like” into their games, whilst also trying to appeal to the masses. This has led to games that hold your hand the entire time while they beg you to pay for microtransactions. Almost every new game has some kind of spyware / tracking in it. Games marketed as “relaxing” are often just dopamine buttons. People buy games just because “the developers worked REAALLLYY hard guys!”.
BUT. There are still some cool games out there. Some more recent, some a few years old. I wanted to give them a little space here.
- Animal Well - What a fantastic game. It’s full of so many secrets. I love secrets in games; it might be one of my favorite things about video games.
- Into the Breach - Got into this one recently and beat it quite a few times. Easy to learn, hard to master. You can make some really dumb mistakes rather quickly here…but it’s a lot of fun.
- Roadwarden - What a great little story. I love the different paths you can take and the art style. It will blind you for a bit, but it’s worth it.
- Leaf’s Odyssey - I just started playing this one, and I love it. Great puzzles, and you get to play as a ferret. The game is also only 3.6MB on Linux…insane. Has a level editor, too.
- Dwarf Fortress - I got into this some last year and really enjoyed my time with it. The new graphics and soundtrack really give the game a better feel.
- Overgrowth - Another game that I played last year. This is an older one but still great. Fun jumping / throwing physics with decent combat.
- Signalis - Completed this recently and liked it. If you enjoy Resident Evil games, I suggest giving it a try.
- Kitsune Tails - Just started this today. It’s essentially Super Mario Bros. 3 on PC but more Japanese themed. And it has a level editor.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, many of these games use their own engines.