This is my first year judging in the Independent Games Festival (IGF). Inspired by my good friend @moomanibe, I wanted to share some of the most interesting games I came across this year. No particular order, and I arbitrarily limited myself to 101.
Time Bandit

Maybe the biggest surprise for me this year. Time Bandit is a bold, bizarre game that's extremely confident in its ideas. It's a sokoban block pushing puzzle, but it's also Metal Gear Solid, but it's also Animal Crossing-style time management, but it's also Marx's Capital.
Time Bandit's clearly inspired by Animal Crossing, and the way players check in on their towns for short spurts several times a day, but it's doing something interesting and very new with it. The player's low-level warehouse worker is pushing blocks to navigate their way through their oppressive employer's warehouse to steal valuable time crystals, but every move takes real time - anywhere from 30 minutes to 24 hours. This isn't a game you binge, it's a game where you set yourself up for a move carefully and then check back in for you next move a few hours later.
The time management and the very limited supply of cash makes for a surprisingly realistic and effective depiction of the cycle of poverty. More than once I found myself making a bad move, losing my forklift, and being stuck with days out of work just because I made a simple mistake. This is a game that wields friction as a very effective thematic device. It's a tricky balance, and it could have come off as simply frustrating, but Time Bandit uses it extremely well.
Developed by @phoenixup, who's here on cohost - give them a follow!
itch, Steam (not released, demo available)
ghostpia

I've been following Chosuido's work for years, and I'm excited to see their latest work finally almost finished. They're a Japanese indie visual novel developer known for their intimate plots and eye-catching watercolour artstyle, and ghostpia is their biggest and most ambitious game yet.
Set in a world of "ghosts", people who live stagnant lives without ever changing for centuries, the main characters want out. But how do they escape a town with no entrance and no exit? Chosuido were writing this before COVID, but the scenes where Sayako sinks into depressive routines she's trapped in feel a bit too real. I had the chance to play the first few chapters for IGF which feature some complex and fascinating non-linear storytelling. I'm eager to see the rest of this story.
This time around they've augmented their painted backgrounds with glitch art and full animation; it's stunning and extremely unique.
Official website, Steam (comes out early 2023)
1000xRESIST

A fascinating post-apocalyptic time-travel adventure game about exploring space in multiple time periods at the same time. What could have been a pretty perfunctory mechanic ends up turning into a really effective way to explore the characters' relationships to the places they used to inhabit.
The stylized hyperreal dialogue sets the scene well; it reminds me quite a bit of Tamsyn Muir's Locked Tomb series. The version I played was still early, and that narrative wasn't fully developed yet, but it's extremely promising. This is a game I'm revisiting once it's complete.
Steam (comes out 2023)
RPG Time

If there were an award for "laughs per minute", RPG Time would get it. This is less an RPG and more a storybook for grownups themed after an RPG. Gamemaster Kenta, an excitable 10-year-old boy, has drawn up an original "RPG" on paper in his notebook and is excited to get you to play with him. He keeps drawing on the paper as you go, inventing new and coming up with new twists on the fly. It never gets stale; somehow it keeps coming up with new ideas right to the end.
Sylvie Lime

The latest game by @sylvie, who's been making these kinds of incredibly inventive platformers for years. Sylvie Lime is a metroidvania that asks: what if you became a lime?
@sylvie's games all feature a characteristic sense of play between the designer and the player. Her design philosophy plays with game mechanics usually tossed away as "weird" or "bad," recognizing that the confusion and surprise that comes out of something unexpected is fun and interesting. Even basic things like nudging up against a wall, or finding a checkpoint, work just a little different than you'd expect - and the fun comes out of being surprised by that, and then turning that surprise around to turn the "weird" behaviour to your advantage. You can feel the invisible sylvie over your shoulder, chatting back and forth with you about the mechanics as you play.
@sylvie is here on cohost. The game is available on itch, or as a part of Indiepocalypse #34.
Queer Man Peering Into A Rock Pool.jpg

The title alone is perfect, of course. What really sells this is the thoughtful mundanity of daily life in its very surreal world and its musings on rebuilding lost connections as the world forces people apart. Excellent artwork and a very well-defined sense of place that slowly evolves over the course of the game. This could have been a very depressing game, but it approaches its own subject matter with a fundamental belief in the ability of people to reconnect. I appreciated it.
Steam (out now)
Betrayal at Club Low

What if an itinerant pizzaiolo had nothing but his pies on hand to execute a secret mission?
I've heard of Cosmo D's games before, but this is my first time trying one. This is a dice-rolling narrative RPG a la Citizen Sleeper/Disco Elysium with a charmingly weird world it totally commits to. Your pizza-cooking secret agent has to infiltrate New York's Club Low to rescue an agent who's about to have a nasty run-in with a club boss. The weirdness of your stats - cooking, music, etc. - encourages you to really think about what everyone in the club is actually there for and how you can work things to your advantage. And of course you can make pizza - the dice are six-sided pizza, with ingredients for swappable sides. The idea of building your own dice is a great twist; I'm amazed I've never seen it before.
The visual aesthetic, which looks like it's kitbashed together out of asset store stuff, works incredibly well. It's funny, effective, and totally unique.
Steam (out now, demo available)
Astronaut: The Best

This is one of those games I'd played a demo of many years ago, then never heard from again. I was worried they'd never come back, so I was happy to see them show up in IGF this year.
This is a management sim about running the space program of a country governed by a council of gods, but it's also a game about just barely trying to hold on as everthing goes bad. Most management games are about managing risk, but they're not usually this funny about it. You almost hope things go wrong just to see what can happen next. Keeping you laughing as your plans go up smoke is a great way of making sure you're not too upset about your run going sideways. You can always try again next time.
Steam (coming 2023, demo available)
Doomsday Paradise

I played this with two other players, and I'm glad I did. This game is best with friends nearby.
Lots of genre-blending games in IGF this year, it seems like. This is a dating sim/life management/RPG/deckbuilder party game, played in short rounds of 30-45 minutes. Save the world or blow it off to go party, run quests to gather cards for your attacks or try to win favour with the character you want to date. This could have been a mess, but it's a ludicrous amount of fun. The demo was very fully-featured already; the full game looks very promising.
Steam (not released, demo available)
Roadwarden

It seems like digital gamebooks are back - I've seen quite a few lately.
There were a lot of strong narrative games in IGF this year. Roadwarden specifically impressed me with how understated it is, to its strength. This is a game that gently sets the scene without explicitly explaining most of the aspects of its game world. There's some smart worldbuilding here, keeping you at arms length sometimes and slowly letting you in at others.
Steam (out now, demo available)
Butterfly Soup 2

These girls are gay. Love that for them.
When writing a comedy, it's incredibly easy to lean too hard on the jokes and let the flow of your plot be controlled by setting up the quips you're trying to get in. Butterfly Soup and Butterfly Soup 2 manage to be games about a group of girls who are instead just incredibly funny people - it feels genuine and true to life even when a whole scene is just one joke after another. It also means their struggles and their gay angst lands much more effectively.
itch (out now, free)
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Actually 11. Too many good games this year. Couldn't help myself.
misty's the best and you should listen to her very good opinions
