Luke Beeman

void stranger no contest

well... does the dwarf fortress steam release count? some contest

Backpack hero!!!

Void Stranger

in no particular order:

• A Space for the Unbound
• Gravity Circuit
• Bomb Rush Cyberfunk
• Enjoy the Diner

Void Stranger, In Stars and Time, and a bonus shout-out to the demo for Rabbit & Steel

Looking up Tchia's publishing situation, I feel pretty comfortable calling it indie, but if that's still too far along the continuum, I would say You Can, Fan Man!

Mice Tea (cutesy 18+ transformation themed visual novel), the Dreamcore demo (probably my favorite backroomsy game that I’ve played so far), several suika clones (the ‘originals’ are fine), Chants of Sennaar (adventure puzzle game that centers around learning and translating languages), Cobalt Core (deck building spaceship combat with cute characters), Anemoiapolis (another backrooms game, very chill and mallcore, I like the vibe on this one), El Paso Elsewhere (max payne but you’re fighting vampires and zombies), vividlope (try to visit every space on a grid wrapped around various 3D shapes, this is super old school arcade type action, very cute), Pawperty Damage (it’s a furry macro stompy game; not the deepest game out there but it is still Big Fun if you’re into that), Interior Worlds (explore liminal spaces with a ps1 aesthetic; a chill exploration game with some cute easter eggs), Bomb Rush Cyberfunk (i unfortunately got kind of stuck early on, i wanna revisit this one some more when i have time, but it definitely feels solid)

Dredge, god I'm surprised by how much that game took me in.

corru.observer and Bomb Rush Cyberfunk, easy

Void stranger and lapin (great platformer)

I don't play many games anymore but Pizza Tower reminded me I actually like games, which was nice

• South Scrimshaw: Part One
• Amarantus
• Final Profit

my favorite this year was far and away Void Stranger, no question. One of my favorite games of all time now. I'm gonna be thinking about this one for a long time.

Some others I really enjoyed in ~the order I played em:

• Pizza Tower
• Pâquerette Down the Bunburrows
• Last Train Outta Wormtown
• Moonring
• Polimines 2
• Bombe

Chants of Sennaar and Can of Wormholes are the big ones for me.

Bomb Rush Cyberfunk if we want to count that as indie. Smaller titles include: CODE Bunny, South Scrimshaw Part One, Super Lesbian Animal RPG, Vernal Edge

there were so many good games this year and i still have a backlog i haven't played but here's 5 that i really liked

A Space for the Unbound
Pseudoregalia
Rusted Moss
In Stars and Time
Lunacid

Chants of Senaar is the big one I played through to completion, but I jammed a bit of Backpack Hero and enjoyed that as well. I haven't gotten to really dive into it yet, but Book of Hours looks cool and I really enjoyed Cultist Simulator

Void Stranger and Slay the Princess

1. Void Stranger (secret-heavy sokoban where the rabbit hole goes so much deeper than you could possibly imagine)
2. Rhythm Doctor Act 5 (one-button rhythm game’s brand-new and surprisingly affecting baseball arc, with a boss level that pushes the game’s presentation to new heights)
3. corru.observer¹ (genre-bending episodic browser game where you explore the contents of an alien computer)
4. Mice Tea (really sweet 18+ transformation-focused visual novel)
5. Teslagrad 2 (Metroidvania sequel with a more open map perfect for flinging yourself around at top speed)
6. Cocoon (world-nesting puzzle game with fantastically alien art direction and sound design)
7. Don’t Take It Personally, I Just Don’t Like You (lo-fi dating sim with routes ranging from really sweet to textbook emotional abuse, and which plays with its presentation and interface in interesting ways)
8. Three Lillies and Their Ghost Stories (yuri horror visual novel anthology about gays and ghosts)
9. Wildfrost (roguelike deckbuilder with a tactical focus on positioning and turn order)
10. Chants of Sennaar (language-deciphering puzzle/adventure game set in a sci-fi Tower of Babel)

Also, here’s my favorite pre-2023 indies I played for the first time this year:

1. Signalis (surreal and incredibly stylish survival horror)
2. Bee (quietly devastating piece of interactive fiction about a home-schooled girl in a conservative Christian community training for the national spelling bee)
3. Stephen’s Sausage Roll (brilliantly minimalist sokoban game that largely relies on teasing out the hidden complexities of its mechanics rather than introducing brand-new elements)
4. Psycholonials (sharply written and absolutely buck-wild visual novel from Homestuck creator Andrew Hussie about a leftist clown-based social media movement/cult bringing America to its knees)
5. Photopia (short and puzzle-free parser-based interactive fiction with some really powerful moments of comprehension and epiphany; I won’t spoil the premise because figuring that out is part of the experience)
6. Betrayal at Club Low (brilliantly off-kilter dice-rolling RPG about infiltrating a nightclub)
7. Violet (really funny one-room text adventure where an imaginary version of your girlfriend narrates and commentates on your increasingly absurd solutions for eliminating distractions so you can finally stop procrastinating on writing your thesis)
8. The Case of the Golden Idol (Obra Dinn-style logical deduction murder mystery game where you piece together sequences of events from freeze-frame dioramas)
9. Horse Master (grotesque and absurd Twine game about raising a “horse” for competition)
10. Sylvie Lime (playfully antagonistic exploration platformer with unusual movement)

1. Technically this released last year, but it’s had a bunch of cool updates throughout 2023

If you're interested, I'm running a little GOTY survey for cohost users. It's not just indie games though.

Check out the post here.

Absolutely Void Stranger. Misericorde easy runner up.

There are lots!

Spirited Thief has been a lot of fun so far: a turn-based stealth heist game with phases. You initially explore with a ghost that has her own mechanics and skills, then go in with a thief or team of thieves with their own abilities/vulnerabilities to steal anything not nailed down. Finally, you have to escape again past whatever mess you made on the way in. Fun story and interesting design ideas. If anyone tries it out, I'm sure the devs would appreciate a review: it seems to have fallen off the radar.

Final Profit has been extremely funny already and I'm not very far into the game: if it ever comes out again on the switch I'd buy it there too. It's about the Queen of the Fae deciding to infiltrate a threat to her world: the Bureau of Business. So it's a shop RPG with interesting mechanics for how that part of the game works, and great writing.

Small Saga has been a beautiful RPG about rodents fighting back against their oppressors, and the soundtrack is absolutely glorious.

I'll add more later if I remember them.

Misericorde and the Banished Vault. Very different gameplay but both with immaculate vibes.

Some personal standouts:

• Psuedoregalia
• Wildfrost
• The Void Rains Upon Her Heart (not 100% this actually released this year, but it's a real gem regardless)

I loved Saltsea Chronicles

lunacid and south scrimshaw! i have not played the full release of picayune dreams yet but the demo was extremely good

The Coffin of Andy and Leyley. It caught a lot of controversy online but, setting that discourse aside, it legitimately helped me a lot by playing it (and I haven't had much time for videogames this year anyhow...)

i didn't play much this year, but one of the best gotta be pseudoregalia! fantastic movement and a whole vibe. really excited about many teams approaching platforming more as a fun thing to do in itself

i also really loved dredge, really cool item management + push your luck mechanics paired with a simple but effective presentation carrying out its atmosphere (i think this game is gorgeous looking)

(i haven't played this yet but im gonna mention tevi as well)

Walthros: Renewal
Mortal Meal
Gravity Circuit
Mediterranea Inferno

Nothing else really came close to what I got out of these this year

i mostly played older games this year, my favorites of which were gun.smoke, ghosts n goblins resurrection, gunvein and sisters royale.

my favorite 2023 release was universe, the gradius fangame! jaimers described it as "gradius without any of the things that people usually dislike about gradius", which sums it up well.

The ones that stick out in my memory are Venba, Dordogne, and Gravity Circuit! I also watched a bit of Chants of Sennaar gameplay and deeply enjoyed that; I've held off on watching more because I want to play it myself now.