According to SteamSpy, Steam offers over 19 thousand indie titles for you to download. However, merely 2-3% of them are worth attention. IndieGames.Download prepared a must-have list to save your time.
Undertale
This one-person creation is one of the most praised indie titles of the last decade. It’s developer, composer, and writer Toby Fox drew inspiration for Undertale from retro role-playing series like Mario & Luigi and Mother as well as from a classic Japanese bullet hell shooter Touhou Project. He flavored the mix with Mr.Bean-like humor and an extraordinary sense of beauty and human psychology.
It’s not a traditional franchise with 1-3 endings. You can reach many exoduses by taking different decisions in dialogues and fights. In bullet hell combat, you have to control a red heart character that represents the character’s soul. You can either protect yourself, attack, or try to become friends with underground monsters. It’s the most unpredictable RPG in history. You can replay it a dozen times in a row, and it will behave the new way each time.
Terraria
Some call Terraria a 2D clone of Minecraft. Well, technically it’s a true statement, but its overhyped competitor was released almost 6 months later in November 2011. No more arguments are needed here.
Terraria is a 2D survival action-adventure with procedurally generated open world. It means that the entire world is created by an algorithm that generates random terrains. You can explore it in any direction, but beware of monsters that can come from anywhere anytime.
The best decision is to build your place so that it could be protected during deadly nights and level up during the day to become experienced enough for night feats. IndieGames.Download recommends Terraria as a wonderful endless sandbox journey that’s available for mobile devices, portable and stationary consoles, and computers.
Cuphead
Seeing a gameplay trailer of Cuphead, your first impression may be that it’s an awkward scene from a 1930’s American cartoon. The lead artist, Chad Moldenhauer, hand-drawn all backgrounds and characters using watercolors and Photoshop. The challenge of making arts interactive and balanced appeared to be so tough that the Moldenhauers remortgaged their house to finish it. The result exceeded all expectations, with over 3 million copies sold.
It’s a story about two brave guys, Cuphead and Mugman who have cups instead of their heads. They lose a game of craps in the Devil’s Casino and owe Devil their souls. You have to help them defeat 30 bosses in a hardcore platform action shooter to bring back all contracts of runaway debtors and achieve freedom again.
The Bottom Line
Of course, the world of Indie doesn’t end with these 3 titles. Explore it via platforms you have and feel the power of artistic minds from all over the world. You can find many more popular titles with comprehensive reviews on IndieGames.Download as well.
Guest article written by: Victoria Clark. Victoria is a journalism graduate and an avid fan of indie gaming. She creates content for IndieGames.Download drawing on her own full walkthroughs, reactions of the gaming society from multiple platforms and other professional critics.