Top 5 Indie Games

While big developers and loaded publishers provide fodder for the growing industry, at the other end of the spectrum lies the lifeblood of the gaming industry that fuels the creative passion to innovate – independent developers who work without time constrains or pressure from publishers. The big development houses have tried to emulate the creative genius of these small developers time and again, but none of them have manage to capture their free-spirited urge to create something unique, as against simply turning a profit. As a tribute to these game developers, I present the top five indie games…

Dwarf Fortress
While games like Spore fake randomly generated universes, Dwarf Fortress is a game that actually presents a randomly generated world to you every time you play! Developer Bay 12 has made it such that every time you start a game up, Dwarf Fortress initiates an elaborate process of creating a world from scratch. First, the topography is created through randomized calculations, followed by random NPCs populating the realm (with a different, random back-story for each of them), creating a world that’s truly one big unique adventure. In this world, you start your own settlement, which eventually grows into a stronghold that brims with activity – including everything from petty squabbles between foreigners and locals to simple trade.

More from News & Analysis

What is the US HIRE Bill and why is India’s $250-billion IT sector worried? Is the internet dead? What's this theory that OpenAI's Sam Altman says might be true?

The only factor that may deter you from playing this game is that it lacks an elaborate GUI and is completely ASCII-based. But if you’re willing to spend time to read through the instructions and figure out how to play and don’t mind the primitive graphics, you’ll be rewarded with a unique experience that’s richer than anything you’ve had so far. Download the game here.
__PAGEBREAK__

flOw
flOw was designed and developed by Jenova Chen and Nicholas Clark, as part of a university project that explored the possibilities of empowering players to adjust the difficulty level at their own pace. You gain control of a microcellular organism in an undersea environment and grow as you play by absorbing other creatures (by eating them), and slowly develop different parts depending on the type of creature you eat. Eating tiny red or blue cells allows you to move to different depths; the deeper you go the more complex creatures you encounter, many of which are hostile. That’s to say, the deeper you go (which you have to do in order to progress), the more challenges you encounter, allowing you to shift the game’s difficulty either way, depending on whether you’re ready for a larger challenge or not.

The game’s simple and intuitive structure and amicable art style made it famous overnight. If you wish to give it a shot, you can download it from the developer’s blog or play it online. The game’s completely flash-based, so it should run on even the weakest system.
__PAGEBREAK__

Counter-Strike
Few of you would argue that while Counter-Strike was an independent project, it isn’t a game in itself and is just a mod. To be quite honest, the game’s what we call a ‘total conversion mod’ that strips down an entire game to its bare engine, and replaces all artistic assets with its own. The only thing making it short of being a whole game, is the fact that it’s based on an engine that’s not leased by the developer.

Now that that technicality’s out of the way, let’s continue. CS was created by Minh Le and Jess Cliffe, based completely around the Half-Life engine. I’m sure most of you are familiar with the franchise, but let me lay it down for those that aren’t. CS is a tactical first person shooter that sees two sides take on each other – Terrorists and Counter-Terrorists. The main draw of the game was its highly precise gun physics, which made mastering each weapon a challenge in itself. The tactical value such a learning curve was similar to that of a highly competitive shooter that would later be as a cyber sport in almost every gaming competition out there.

The franchise grew so immensely popular that it was bought over by Valve, and since then multiple versions of the game have spawned. You can download CS off Valve’s digital download service: Steam.
__PAGEBREAK__

Natural Selection
Developed by Charlie Cleveland, Natural Selection was a total conversion mod for Half-Life (just like CS) that played out in an alien-vs-marine setting. It was among the first to seamlessly integrate real-time strategy elements in an online shooter so successfully. Each side had a slightly different class hierarchy – the Marines had a commander to watch over them, while the Kharaa had none. Instead, the Kharaa worked on an evolutionary sort of way where each player could evolve into a different type of alien. The Gorge was the builder for the Kharaa, and unlike the Marine’s hierarchal structure, they could have any number of builders.

The maps in the game generally involved territorial wars where each side would fight for resource nodes, and eventually amass enough power to destroy the other’s base. NS was a complete success with people who owned Half-Life, so when the Source engine was announced, Unknown Worlds Entertainment (founded by Charlie Cleveland) announced that it would release NS2 using that engine.
__PAGEBREAK__

Darwinia
Darwinia is what happens when a unique concept translates into completely unique gameplay. The game was developed by Introversion Software, and is based in a universe that’s housed inside a network of computers from the 1980s. Its retro art style works in unison with its unique, yet old-school inspired gameplay that transcends the genre constraints set by the industry.

The game requires you to help the Darwinians fight a computer virus armed with just a Task Manager and other such programs. The amount of depth in this simple-looking game is astounding, since you have to execute different programs in order to control your units or reprogram bits of the destroyed virus. If you wish to give the game a shot, head over to the Introversion website.