INSOMNIA

Introducing the "Indie" Scene

The counterfeiters must not be allowed free reign.

Jean Baudrillard, The Conspiracy of Art

 

Life is Tumblr: Election Edition.

 

The frames per second are lower than the number of white blood cells in a cancer patient.

 

Gender-role politics injected into Arthurian lore from developers who could use a geography lesson, never mind a political one. Hooray for "indie gaming"!

 

Like a mix of Dead Cells and Rogue Legacy but ten times worse.

 

Recettear for hipsters instead of weebs.

 

Do yourself a favor and don't waste the time you have on this earth on this game, cause you don't eventually unlock the ability to rewind some of it back.

 

A "roguelike" game based on grinding! Behold the miracles of the "indie" scene!

 

Good news is, it'll take him another seven years to make another turd, so we won't have to deal with his crap again anytime soon.

 

Two roads diverged in a yellow map. I took one of them and died.

 

Believe it or not, this is not a very good game, "The Dark Souls of run 'n guns" sounds just about right: i.e. run 'n gun for hipsters.

 

Typical Greenlight trash. Enemies just shuffle towards you and levels are mom's spaghetti after Eminem threw them up!

 

Walking simulators graduate to actual graphics.

 

I got this game for free. I want my free back.

 

Story wraps up around the two-hour mark, right out of refund range. Classy.

 

Can't wait for part two to come out in another ten years!

 

Thank you, but I already have a job.

 

Finished it in three hours. The only mystery to solve is where the "six hours minimum if rushing" the developers promised went.

 

Over 500 puzzles? More like one puzzle 500 times.

 

Anime Princess Celestia-Samus and a lame balloon-fairy sidekick save the Great Japanese Deku Tree and his forest.

 

Expensive Payday 2 DLC. Play the first one if you must play either of them at all.

 

Utterly unintelligible chaos that's worth experiencing to realize the sheer ignorance and tastelessness that the entire "indie" scene is wallowing in.

 

It achieves perfectly what it has set out to achieve. Too bad what it has set out to achieve is stupid.

 

Worst game I played all year.

 

Were the setting and story "grounded", compared to the typical game, as has been abundantly claimed? Sure they were. Only becoming ungrounded for a while is precisely the reason we play games in the first place.

 

Hotline Miami is the Super Meat Boy of overhead action games, with the same quicksave checkpoint pacing, except not as offensive aesthetically.

 

A "throwback" to the autysmal checklist- and achievement-obsessed days of "yesteryear". So retro!

 

It's a game that isn't a game that's trying to be more than a game. And fails. Also Phil Fish made it.

 

Survival Horror gets the "indie" treatment. (I.e. survival is automatic and there's no horror.)

 

Let's get the allegations of "innovation" and "originality" out of the way first.

 

The "indie" scene continues its uncontested dominance of the walking-around-bland-environments simulator genre.

 

"Indie" newcomer Hitbox Team takes inspiration from speedrunners to deliver a platformer, not merely subverted by autism, but specifically built for it.

 

Repetitive, boring, and hideous. A rubbish Flash game wrapped in edgy novelty.

 

Bastion would be perfectly adorable as one of those free-to-play browser games that bored housewives and 8-year-old children seem to be so fond of these days.

 

Ah, Limbo. It has been called this year's Braid; a masterpiece; perfect, even. Let's have a look-see, shall we?

 

Super Meat Boy is a game made entirely for our "modern" generation, the generation which has only played old games on emulators using savestates, infinite continues, and hq4x filters.

 

What the bums are basically doing, then, is taking and clumsily remaking old-style games, all the while grafting on to them all the worst deficiencies of modern ones...

 

In short: Canabalt is Russian roulette, remade into a Flash game.

 

Machinarium is at first glance promising.

 

Flower makes for an excellent case-study of the diabolically cunning tactics of the "indie" bums...

 

Wherein contemporary subhumanity discovers, with some amazement, that computers can also be used for other things besides playing games.

 

And that's how Meat Boy plays: whatever is not retardedly easy is basically a crap shoot, which you try, fail, repeat and rinse until you've "made" it, at which point the game autosaves and you are on to the next asinine little "challenge".

 

Let's start out by exploding a myth about this game: Spelunky is in no way, shape or form a "roguelike".

 

... is what happens when moderately talented developers imbibe the artfag movement.

 

And so we finally arrive at Braid: the most critically and commercially successful "indie" game ever...

 

If Knytt stinks because of lack of substance, then Knytt Stories freaking reeks because of the enormous amount of bullshit it contains.

 

Here's a game that's basically just one long walk across a landscape that looks like it was made with MS Paint.

 

Some people call it a masterpiece. I wonder if these people would say the same after playing Mary Kate and Ashley: Winner's Circle for the Game Boy Color.

 

The Darlings of "Independent" Game Development: Exhibit #2.

 

Seiklus is apparently the game where it all began; the first "indie" game.

Insomnia Presents

An ongoing study into the Archaeology of a Lie

 

Smash the Scammers

 

Pending Reviews

Transistor (2014)
Luftrausers (2014)
Nidhogg (2014)
Kentucky Route Zero (2013)
Skullgirls (2012)
Terraria (2011)
Iji (2008)
Aquaria (2007)
Everyday Shooter (2007)
Darwinia (2005)
Alien Hominid (2004)

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Background Reading

The Myth of Independence
On the Genealogy of "Art Games": A Polemic
Videogame Art