Gaming can be an expensive hobby. With consoles costing up to $500 and gaming computers upwards of $1000, it can seem like a serious investment just to play current generation games. With new games coming out at $60 each and not dropping in price even a year after release, it can be hard for people who want to play games on the cheap. There are more fun and low-cost gaming options out there than most people realize, however.
A common misconception is that a game made for cheap, with a small development team, is automatically a bad game. With $60 games, the general impression seems to be that, even though they’re expensive, “it’s worth it.” This exemplifies the classic idea that money equals quality, which we know isn’t always true. Consider the recent Tony Hawk Pro Skater 5, a game which received few positive reviews and is still selling at the full price of $60. To escape this trap of exceedingly overvalued mainstream releases, many of us turn to “indie” games: games that are created to fit niche interests, typically for a fraction of the price.
Many indie games are developed by small teams, sometimes with just a single developer. They are often created as a result of a student project or a hobby, and many of them are available for free. I’m not talking about browser or mobile games, either. Those certainly can be entertaining, but what I’m getting at is the treasure trove of truly great indie games that go unnoticed.
Steam has over 6,000 published games tagged as “indie,” and that doesn’t even include what’s available on Steam Greenlight. There’s such a variety that it’s hard to define exactly what the word means. Considering Star Citizen has reached over $65 million in funding and is still labeled as indie, there’s hardly a fitting definition for the word. It seems that regardless of funding or development team size, so long as the publisher name is new, it’s synonymous with indie.
The variety of indie games is really quite amazing. Want a multiplayer game where you control RC cars playing soccer? Try Rocket League. How about a simulation game where you develop indie games? Check out Game Dev Tycoon. While some published games can be less than stellar, there are many true gems available for $10 that are worth so much more than most $60 retail games. I consider Undertale to be one of these games.
Undertale has done incredibly well in Steam reviews, reaching an “overwhelmingly positive” status. Many consider it to be one of the best games they played this year. Despite being released last month, the publicity of the game has only been increasing, with more and more people buying the game. For only $10, this little Earthbound-inspired game is well worth it for any RPG fan. It has an appeal to it that fits between the niche of internet and video game humor and it does this perfectly. It’s a genuinely enjoyable experience.
I think indie games go unnoticed because they get buried under the massive amount of already available mainstream gaming content. It’s much easier to simply buy what’s new even if it comes at a high expense to your pocketbook. There’s no easy way to sort through these games. But I’d argue that some of the most creative games are only available through indie companies.