With 2023 now in the rearview mirror, I decided to sit down and think back on the various indie games I played throughout the year. As always, it’s a mix: from breakout hits to niche interests to the downright weird. These are all titles for which I didn’t do a full review, but which made enough of an impression that I thought it would be worth it to share some brief thoughts. Without further ado, let’s get to it.
Shogun Showdown
Shogun Showdown sees you battle your way through a series of tactical encounters en route to the titular showdown–if you can survive that long. It’s in the spirit of a roguelike deckbuilder, but instead of cards you acquire tiles and you’re limited by cooldowns rather than draws. The action economy is split between moving along a linear grid, preparing a queue of up to three tiles, and executing all tiles in the queue. It’s a tight, satisfying system that maintains a constant tension between trying to hold on until you can set up for a big turn versus dealing with the most immediate problem now at the risk of your tiles being on cooldown when you need them later.
As you progress, you unlock new tiles, artifacts, and characters with variant mechanics, as well as increased difficulty modifiers. There’s nothing that fundamentally changes how you play though, and Shogun Showdown doesn’t have the replayability of games like Slay the Spire or Into the Breach–at least not yet. It’s still in early access, and given how well-designed and polished the current content is, I’m excited to see what the devs add. Even if they left Shogun Showdown as is, there’s nothing wrong with a focused game that knows what it wants to do and does it well.
SANABI
I’m probably being unfair to SANABI when I say I found it disappointing. It’s not a bad game. It just could have been so much better. The excellent pixel art, sci-fi thriller narrative, and fast-paced action are exciting at first. Unfortunately, unimaginative and repetitive level design take the shine off what could be interesting mechanics. And oh god the cutscenes! Every time I felt like I was getting into a groove, SANABI pulled me away from the action for yet another cutscene. Plus, the more you watch the more you have to accept the writing is kind of bad. People are comparing this to Katana ZERO? More like “we have Katana ZERO at home”.
Cobalt Core
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but Cobalt Core is an intriguing roguelike with rock-solid fundamentals that just doesn’t have enough depth or variety to keep me coming back. This time you lead an amnesiac space station crew on desperate voyage to contain an unstable anomaly. The gameplay combines the classic roguelike deckbuilder formula with linear grid movement that allows you maneuver different sections of your ship–which have different offensive and defensive capabilities–into position against your enemy. An interesting wrinkle is that, while some cards move your ship when played, you can also store a pool of movement points for future turns, leading to interesting decisions about when to go on the offensive versus when to prepare for evasive maneuvers.
Cobalt Core has a great foundation for what it wants to do, but even with the different ships and characters, there’s just not enough variety in how runs unfold. The best games in this genre–think Slay the Spire–have a few cards, artifacts, events, and enemies with the potential to hugely change your run. This is what Cobalt Core is missing, and why I don’t see myself going back after finishing the main story. Speaking of, while the story is fairly barebones, it does give Cobalt Core a surprisingly comfy vibe. The characters don’t take themselves that seriously and treat each other with kindness and encouragement.
Lethal Company
There’s almost no chance you haven’t heard of Lethal Company. The clips are everywhere. And the appeal really is watching your friends die in simultaneously horrifying and hilarious ways more than the game itself. The gameplay loop–land on the planet, try to get in and out with as much scrap as you can before monsters kill you, sell it all and start over again–is simplistic, there are like three different maps, and counterplay is more about knowing the hazards than mechanics. Still, it’s a fun time with the right group, even if you’ll ultimately be jettisoned out the airlock for failing to meet quota. Depending on who you ask, it’s either a metaphor for the unsustainability of capitalism or slapdash game design that future updates should improve upon.
Dungeon Drafters
Dungeon Drafters had a rough, buggy launch, but things have since been smoothed out, and it’s a great concept. You build a deck TCG-style and then venture into dungeons to test said deck in grid tactics combat. Each turn you have three actions you can spend moving, playing cards, or performing a basic attack (to preserve your cards). You can see what enemies have planned, so it’s all about stretching your resources as far as possible, or else pulling off an epic combo that clears the room in one go.
I had a lot of fun playing Dungeon Drafters, but it’s not very balanced. You can do bonkers stuff that completely trivializes some of the game’s central mechanical constraints, and not to be outdone, Dungeon Drafters hits back with a handful of bullshit enemies who obsolete otherwise interesting and viable strategies or have attacks that are impossible to prepare for unless you’ve seen them before. The devs have an ambitious roadmap to rebalance a number of the game’s mechanics, so it will be interesting to see where that goes.
I Did Not Buy This Ticket
I played and even reviewed a number of visual novels in 2023, but I Did Not Buy This Ticket is something quite different. You play as Candalaria, a professional mourner who travels to funerals of people she doesn’t know, crying on cue to maintain the illusion that the departed will be dearly missed. If this sounds weird, that’s because it is. And it gets weirder when Candalaria finds a ticket for a mysterious bus that she can’t seem to avoid riding no matter what she does.
I Did Not Buy This Ticket is interesting because it’s the rare visual novel that exists foremost in the realm of imagery and metaphor. It’s a story where “what” happens is often less important than “why”. The surrealist collage-style art and Candalaria’s strange journey refract her interiority in a way that would be difficult to do with direct narrative. The writing crafts an evocative atmosphere with enough emotional energy to drive the story forward without ever spoiling the wonderful sense of being unable to look at things directly. People might find the “psychological horror” label misleading if they go in expecting a Doki Doki Literature Club rather than the more contemplative angle I Did Not Buy This Ticket takes, but sometimes the scariest thing is how you can’t escape from yourself.
Dredge
Before Dave the Diver was everywhere and everything, Dredge was the fish-centric indie darling on everyone’s radar. It starts out simply enough. You set out on the water each morning, reel in some fish, and head back in the evening to sell your catch. It quickly becomes apparent though that Dredge’s humble archipelago houses more than simple fishing villages. Maybe it would be wisest to keep your head down and stick to fishing. Or maybe curiosity gets the best of you and you start asking questions, even if you’d be better off not.
Despite the undertone of cosmic horror, I found Dredge a low key experience. The fishing mechanics are simple and the story is more about atmosphere and vibes than plot and characters. You can take things at whatever pace you like, and penalties for failure are minimal. I didn’t quite make it to the end of Dredge, but admittedly I’m usually not one for mini-games, collecting things, or inventory management–all central features of Dredge’s gameplay. Still, by the time I put Dredge down I couldn’t help but feel that gameplay loop had exhausted its appeal and the sense of discovery had worn off. I did want to see how the story ended, but not enough to actually do the work of getting there.
That’s a Wrap
I love indie games because they can have such interesting ideas and energy, and 2023 did not disappoint. Want to share your thoughts on these games? Tell me about your 2023 indies experience? Chime in in the comments or find me on X at @FairPlayWes.
Fair Plays by Wes 