| The_Liquid_Laser said: The main problem with the indie scene is accessibility. Most indie games do not have a physical version available. However, what is worse is that there are really not great ways to find the good indie games. There are too many, and it can take a while for the cream to rise to the top. My favorite era for gaming was actually the late 80's (because I live in the US). Not only was innovation at an all time high in this era, but we had a magazine called Nintendo Power. This did a pretty good job of steering people toward the great games and away from the turds. Indie games don't really have an equivalent of Nintendo Power today. Most reviewers focus on big budget games and Metacritic scores of indie games often don't get enough reviews. There are indie review sites out there, but I certainly haven't found one that is comprehensive and well organized. Nintendo Indy Directs aren't really that great either. When I look back and these Directs and compare them to the Indie games that people really enjoy, there isn't a large overlap. |
Nintendo Power also focused on the big titles or preselected smaller titles.
My tip: use the SteamDB-search, even for Xbox-, PlayStation- and Switch-games... since almost all "commercial" indie games are also on Steam.
(itch.io has also a lot of free indie games that aren't on Steam, some of them very nice, but most of them only very short experiences.)
Now over 70,000 Steam games, almost 40,000 DLCs and some other stuff are listed, sorted by SteamDB-rating:
Now let's filter away for the content you are searching for. The most important filters if you are searching for new games are tags, type, SteamDB rating and release year.
But other filters can also help to find the games you want (f.e. if you want/need support of your native language, if you are on a budget or if you want a specific feature like "full controller support" or if you want to exclude VR games):
For example, I'm a huge fan of point&click adventures (my favorite niche genre) and I want a new good one of 2020 or newer.
So I set the type "game" (which excludes DLCs and other additional content like soundtracks), choose the tags "adventure" and "point & click" and the release years "2020", "2021" and "2022", SteamDB rating should be 70 or better:
This gives me 517 results with many games I already have or are alreeady on my wishlist.
To filter out these games, just check the boxes (the number of search results don't get adjusted by that)
Now I have the search results (of games I don't already have or wishlisted) neatly sorted by SteamDB rating. By placing the mouse cursor over the row of a game, an info box opens on the left. Especially the animated GIF is very helpful to check if you like the style of the game:
Of course you can bookmark your search settings for your next search or to send the URL to a friend: https://steamdb.info/instantsearch/?refinementList%5Btags%5D%5B0%5D=Point%20%26%20Click&refinementList%5Btags%5D%5B1%5D=Adventure&refinementList%5BappType%5D%5B0%5D=Game&refinementList%5BreleaseYear%5D%5B0%5D=2022&refinementList%5BreleaseYear%5D%5B1%5D=2021&refinementList%5BreleaseYear%5D%5B2%5D=2020&range%5BuserScore%5D=70%3A
Now you can select the games you are interested in (I prefer the middle mouse button to open them in new browser tabs).
On these pages there are A LOT of additional informations for the selected games, with the button "Store" you get to the Steam Store page and can check individual reeviews of the game:
On the Steam page of the selected game you have several options to filter reeviews for the most helpful one's:
The combination of the SteamDB-search and review filters is a mighty tool to find the games you want, much better for indie gamees than Nintendo Power ever was.
