Courtesy : http://www.wowwindows8.com Miss Kiti Cat is popular journalist and my gossip friend. Today Morning, I got a call from her. Here some chit-chat, nay interview, with my so called journalist friend. Kiti: Hey Uj, How are you? Me: I am good. How are you? Kiti: I am good too… So what’s plan for 31st December? Me: Yet not decided… What’s about you? Kiti: Uff… I have lots of work… You know,…
"Best-of" lists are odd beasts. On the one hand, they are necessarily reductive and can't possibly honor all of those who deserve distinction. But on the other hand, lists are fun to make, interesting to read, and can be genuinely valuable as sources of good recommendations.
There were far more than 10 great indie games released in 2012. I have not played every game released in 2012, of course. Some games that I expect to be great are still sitting on my hard drive waiting for me to find the time to play them (such as The Sea Will Claim Everything).
So here are 10 11 12 13 14 oh hell, make it 15 of the most awesome games of 2012, games that impressed me with their innovation, originality, aesthetics, and craft. They are all important, innovative, boundary-pushing games. I don't feel like assigning arbitrary ranks, so they are presented here in alphabetical order:
Collapse, Collide: A Short Experimental Adventure
Collapse, Collide is an inspirational Rorschach test in the form of a tower-climbing platformer. It's a dreamy, pixely game that requires precision, timing, and mastery of its controls. It is also a metaphor for striving toward your goals, chasing your dreams, overcoming life's obstacles--all of that inspirational stuff that would seem so much less authentic outside of the context of a videogame. It's a very personal game for designer Ivan Zanotti, and its oblique narrative is easy to apply to the struggles in one's own life. The most important game mechanics in Collapse, Collide are holding on and jumping off--especially after letting go, or after stepping off a ledge into space. It's important to understand that you can jump while falling. And in the game.
Collapse, Collide is free.
Frog Fractions
Frog Fractions is another game that has already received tons of acclaim, but I couldn't resist giving it some more love. I know that there are still people out there who have yet to really give this game a chance. In fact, the first time I played Frog Fractions, I didn't play for long and I wondered what all the fuss was about. But the next time I played it, I kept upgrading my frog, and then I (SPOILER ALERT)... went down (END SPOILER). Frog Fractions subverts your expectations at every turn and manages to parody virtually every genre of computer game. If you have not played this one yet, please do, and stick with it. There is so much more to do here than it first appears.
Frog Fractions is free.
Home
Benjamin Rivers' Home is a narrative triumph and a truly unsettling experience. I love how the game forces you to participate in crafting the story. It's a completely subjective horror game, which is quite an accomplishment. You are actually telling two stories at once: the present story and the past story. Actions you take in the present affect the story that you are trying to piece together. How do you remember it? Home is vastly replayable, and I have yet to tire of the different horror stories I create with each playthrough. Benjamin Rivers, (let's) tell me another scary story!
Home is $2.99 (and frequently on sale).
Howling Dogs
Yes, Howling Dogs has made it onto a few best-of 2012 lists, but it should be on ALL of them. Porpentine shows us what Twine is capable of. In fact, Porpentine shows us what a piece of interactive fiction is capable of, regardless of what tool was used to create it. Howling Dogs is emotional and thought-provoking, and it stays with you long after you've experienced it directly. Hell, Howling Dogs shows us what heights videogames are capable of.
Here is an analysis of Howling Dogs by Emily Short.
Howling Dogs is free.
Icarus
Foster Wattles, who created one of my favorite games of 2011 (The Woods), is a true artist. His games have a singular vision and he is more concerned with getting that vision across than with making concessions to standard ideas of gameplay. Icarus, made in collaboration with Ben Clarke, Natalie Stowell, and Keaton Johnson, gives us literal and metaphorical glimpses into a world beyond the veil of reality--or perhaps it is the world that was, or the world that is yet to be. You can see more of it the longer you stay in the air. Icarus is a game of exploration with no real ending. But you can spend a long time flapping around, exploring the world beyond the world, one glimpse at a time. Collect the macguffins and deliver them back to Daedalus (?) only to be unceremoniously tossed back down into the world. The flight mechanic is not quite like anything I've seen, and it feels "authentic". The controls can seem clumsy at first, just as a human trying to use artificial wings would be.
I also want to give sort of an Honorable Mention to Foster Wattles' art game Kids_. It's just so, so beautiful. But I find it almost impossible to describe, and it's nearly impenetrable, so it's going to take some more playthroughs before I'm able to write about it meaningfully.
Icarus is free.
I Get This Call Every Day
I Get This Call Every Day is a slice-of-life story and a classic tale of workplace frustration. Other artistic mediums like literature and film have embraced such subject matter, and now so does the medium of videogames. I hope and predict that in the near future, we will look back and see David S. Gallant's small game as the beginning of an entire genre of audio/graphical, autobiographical, narrative games. I wrote a longer review of I Get This Call Every Day here.
Interestingly, and perhaps unexpectedly, I Get This Call Every Day has caused some controversy in comment threads and on reddit. I love a game that can do that (and without being violent, too)!
I Get This Call Every Day is Pay-What-You-Want (with a $2 minimum).
Imscared: A Pixelated Nightmare
Imscared: A Pixelated Nightmare is the scariest videogame I played in 2012 (and possibly since the original release of Silent Hill). Fear and terror are very subjective emotions, of course, so different experiences will be scarier for different people. But Ivan Zanotti has packed his game with so many different kinds of scares that I'm pretty sure you'll enjoy it if you like horror games at all. Atmosphere, "boo scares", psychological terror, glimpses of something unsettling in the background, running for your life--this game's got it all. But perhaps the best thing about Imscared is the thing I can't talk about without spoiling some of it. So I'll just say that the game was far from over the first time I thought it was.
Imscared is free.
Lone Survivor
Lone Survivor is a game about, well, surviving. But not just about surviving nightmare plague scenarios, but also more realistic trials like painful memories and loss. It's a melancholy game, and the surreal story is chilling. Lone Survivor uses lighting as an element of horror better than any other game I've seen--including 3D, AAA titles.
Lone Survivor may be responsible for spearheading the wave of 2D, sprite-based horror games that we've seen lately. Even early media from before its release were inspiring. Jasper Byrne is a developer with a very clear vision for each of his games, and Lone Survivor feels like it is beamed to our monitors straight from his brain. The art, the music, the atmosphere, the story--all of it is just so perfectly employed in service of the story, the gameplay, and the vision. Lone Survivor redefines what 2D sprites can do and what horror games can do.
Lone Survivor is $10.
There is a free demo playable online.
McPixel
Comedy is good for you, and McPixel is the funniest game of the year. Or maybe ever, if you enjoy absurd, silly, and frequently juvenile humor. McPixel is funny without trying to be topical. McPixel is great at keeping you engaged; scenes come at you so fast that you don't know what hit you until you've played them a couple of times. McPixel is also a great puzzle game. Though the solutions may seem ridiculous (which they are), they stick to a wacky internal logic. A game that started as a parody of a parody of MacGyver has been developed into a pocket universe where the rules of causality are twisted, where every conceivable time period and geographical location coexist, and where bombs are everywhere. Only McPixel can save the day. Pointing and clicking has never been this much sheer damn fun.
McPixel is $4.99.
Microscopia
Microscopia is a game that I keep coming back to. Microscopia is a masterpiece of minimalist design. There has never been a puzzle game quite like this before. But calling it a puzzler doesn't seem right--it is really sui generis. The gameplay is a revelation. How could something so simple become so complicated? Designer azurenimbus has the answer. All you need to start playing Microscopia are the arrow keys and a single instruction: "Know thyself". Soon enough, you'll be wondering just who you are, and how you tell yourself apart from everybody else. Oh, how great are the metaphorical implications!
Microscopia is free.
Sought
Sought was the only game released by the brilliant development studio Twofold Secret in 2012, and it kind of slipped in under a lot of peoples' radars. That makes sense for such an understated game. There is a very clear idea at its core, but everything else about Sought is ethereal. The visual palette is a lovely, hazy monochrome. Enemies fade into and out of corporeality. Sought is a maze game, and the maze is randomly generated each time you play. But what is it that you are really seeking in this ghostly forest labyrinth, on this dark and dangerous night? Sought is the story of a hunter, but is hunting his goal? Sought is the story of a lost girl, but does she want to be found? You can get six different endings, depending on what choices you make--decided through the actions you take--during the game. Both characters are controlled by you, but even this is transitory and your control periodically shifts between them regardless of what you happen to be doing at the time (which does, however, prove to be an invaluable aid to navigating the maze). Weapons in Sought are weak and only useful as a defense. And musical tones have great power. Sought is a beautiful reverie that treads the line between recurring dream and nightmare. In fact, it can be both in one brief playthrough.
Sought is Pay-What-You-Want.
Super Hexagon
I've already written about why I love Super Hexagon even though it kicks my ass. Playing it is like visiting another dimension. Zoning into the game, which is necessary for success, is like a DMT-inspired tryst with the archetypal geometry of the Super-Consciousness. Anyone can instantly understand how to play Super Hexagon, but there are few who will master it. Every detail of Super Hexagon is nuanced and polished to a diamond sheen. And it has the most kick-ass soundtrack of the year.
Super Hexagon is $2.99.
Traitor
Traitor is the thinking person's top-down space shooter. It has cool features like an open-galaxy map, ship upgrades, and a reputation system (that serves to unlock new areas). Yes, it's fun to play, but the best thing about Traitor is the story, and the fact that the story is not only central to the gameplay, but is actually affected by the gameplay. This is the first SHMUP I've played where your actions in the shooting portions of the game really do change the game's narrative. The choices are beyond mere branching paths; early in the game you will have to make a moral choice that will determine how you experience the game. And you don't just choose <Y> or <N>, you actually play out your decision using the mechanics of the game. Jonas Kyratzes considers his game "casual", perhaps because it is the most arcade-like of his games so far, but Traitor is revolutionary in the way it handles story, and in the serious, political themes of that story.
Also, I love the graphics: the ornate, labyrinthine patterns on the tiles and sprites. It made picking a screenshot difficult, but I went with the huge asteroid.
Traitor is free.
VESPER.5
Today I made my 106th move in Michael Brough's VESPER.5. I've taken 106 steps, and I've been playing for 106 days. And I have seen some awesome sights. I have not finished the game, but I have been playing it long enough for it to have become ingrained into my life. It's a habit I choose to keep--a ritual. Being limited to one move a day makes each action seem infinitely important. I could have been further along than where I am now, but at one point I realized I had missed something and I decided to backtrack. That was painful, but worth the effort.
By allowing you only one move a day, VESPER.5 ensconces itself as a ritual in your life (the game was originally developed for a Super Friendship Club Pageant with the theme "ritual"). Your choice of when to perform that ritual becomes an intrinsic part of the game. How you approach VESPER.5 and what value you place upon it is entirely defined by you. It's a very focused game of limited resources, where the only resource available is time/motion/existence and that one vital resource is only available once a day. Do you move quickly, to avoid overthinking? Do you linger over your choice? Or is it one of those days where you've already chosen to commit to a certain course, and you need do little thinking at all? I don't know what revelations await me at the end of VESPER.5, but I will always remember this journey.
VESPER.5 is free.
Will You Ever Return, Parts 1 & 2
Will You Ever Return, Parts 1 & 2 are really 2 pieces of the same puzzle, so I will treat them as one work (at the beginning of Part 1, you are killed and fall down to Hell; in Part 2, you pick up the story of the guy who did the killing and who also quickly ends up in Hell). Jack King-Spooner's hallucinatory adventure game is a revelation. It creates a world and a mood unlike anything ever experienced in videogames. Will You Ever Return takes you on a journey through a Hell informed by Bosch, Dante, pop culture, and outsider art. The game's locations are created with dioramas and collages; the characters are claymation and found objects. The music is haunting and bombastic at the same time. The dialogue is strange, as if translated from an ancient language and localized to fit modern times. There are puzzles to solve, but they mainly serve as an excuse to explore the dreamscape of Hell and talk to its bizarre denizens. Will You Ever Return feels like a game created decades ago in an alternate universe where computer games were only ever regarded as works of art.
