SONY’S GOOD WITH INDIES, BUT NOT PERFECT. HERE’S TEN INDIE RELEASES FROM RECENT YEARS WE WANT TO SEE ON PSN.
MINECRAFT
IT’S OBVIOUS, BUT obvious for a very good reason: Minecraft is excellent. If you haven’t played it, we’re just going to go ahead and tell you to pick it up, be it on PC or Xbox or whatever. It’s nearenough a life-changing experience. Build anything you want, or just dig, or just shear sheep, or just run away from creepers, or just... whatever you want, really. It’s simple and absolutely fantastic, and why it isn’t on PSN is something we don’t know for sure. We do know for sure that this hurts us.
JAMESTOWN
It’s one of those days when only the blurb from the game’s website will do the thing any justice: “Jamestown is a neo-classical top-down shooter for up to four players set on 17th-century British
Colonial Mars.” Why in the name of everything the almighty Thor stands for would you not want to play that on your Vita while riding the train to Bognor Regis? It would make your life so much better than it currently is, you wouldn’t even mind that you’re going to Bognor Regis. Which is called Bognor Regis.
SLENDER
One day, many months ago, Play was doing its thing of being the best magazine around when suddenly we discovered this indie gem. This utterly terrifying indie gem. Play proceeded to spread Slender around the office, forcing people to play it, laughing as they jumped, howling with delight as they screamed and – in one particular instance – being unable to stop the mirthful tears as the member of Play’s digital team literally ran away from his desk rather than put up with the terror for one more second. Bliss.
FTL
If ever there was a game more suited to the Vita, it’s FTL. It’s basically every sci-finerd’s sex dream:
you’re the captain of a ship making a mad dash across the galaxy to deliver much-needed intel on the enemy rebel force. Along the way you will die, again and again, as you make what turn out to be terrible choices about what to do with scraps, hiring crew, exploration... And you’ll start again from scratch. And you’ll die. And you’ll repeat this process – and you’ll enjoy it every step of the way.
TORCHLIGHT 2
On the upper tier of indie games you get releases like Torchlight 2 – receiving much in the way of
column inches in many popular mags and websites even though it wasn’t a triple-A major league release. Why? Because the first game – also an indie release – was utterly brilliant. That’s about it.
It was unexpectedly fantastic (and cheap), sold by the ton and as a result saw its sequel become even more popular than the first. Still, though, we see no console version. SAD PANDA FACE.
FROG FRACTIONS
A game that has the capacity to get people in trouble, merely because the description of the game is so utterly ludicrous-sounding it would sound like they’re taking the piss. But they wouldn’t be. It’s real. Frog Fractions is utterly ludicrous and to try and explain it is to do the game a massive disservice. If you’re turned off by intentionally ‘random’ experiences, then we apologise for you being totally devoid of any joy in your life. Oh, also you won’t get on with Frog Fractions.
THE BINDING OF ISAAC
A lazy comparison would be to say Isaac is like an old-school Zelda game, except an old-school Zelda game where you control a naked, crying baby trying to escape his mother who is trying to kill him (to prove her faith, naturally). The Binding Of Isaac encapsulates everything that sets indie development apart from the mainstream: it would never, not in a million years, be released as it was if it was backed by the likes of EA or Activision. And for that we only end up loving it more.
SUPER MEAT BOY
So putting two games with the input of one man on this list – Edmund McMillen – is a bit of a naughty on our part, but they’re both so excellent it’s impossible to ignore. Super Meat Boy is nearenough confirmed to never be coming to PSN, and that hurts us. It’s the Dark Souls of the platforming genre: a game that kills you hundreds of times but that you’ll start again on hundreds of times (and one more). It’s fantastic.
MARK OF THE NINJA
Damn those exclusivity agreements that we never get to see but assume are lucrative and fancy, we
want you to not exist. If you didn’t exist we would be able to have games like the absolutely fantastic
Mark Of The Ninja on PSN. Imagine sneaking and slashing and generally being a badass – but on Vita instead of the stupid, smelly 360. Man, that would be excellent. Instead we get a big fat pile of nothing and it makes us very sad
HOTLINE MIAMI
At least with this one we can almost say we might well be getting it, as Dennaton revealed a while ago it was having talks with Sony about porting the game to PSN. There’s been radio silence since then, mind you, and Dennaton has refused to clarify what’s going on. Still, none of this stops Hotline Miami from being an incredible experience mixing psychedelic Eighties lunacy with fast-paced, twitchy, strategic ultraviolence. There’s good, then there’s Hotline Miami good.
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