Edit: Since Reddit is killing third party apps, I decided to make my own . Please follow it if you've enjoyed these posts over the last couple years!

I play a ton of obscure indie games, and a bunch of my favorites are currently on sale. I don't think these games get the attention they deserve and they're all worth your time, so take a look if any of them catch your interest!

and its two sequels, Hexcells Plus and Hexcells Infinite, are three of the best logic puzzle games out there. Really clean aesthetic and sound design, good ramp up of difficulty, mechanics that build on each other in interesting ways. You can get all 3 for $2.69-- if you've ever enjoyed a Sudoku or Picross puzzle, these get a high recommendation from me.

is the best logic puzzle game that exists, period. I just passed 100 hours played in it, and it's on sale for <$1. An absolute steal. Two reasons I recommend you play it after Hexcells though: the presentation is not as nice, and the difficulty ramps up way faster. But there are as many puzzles in this game as the whole Hexcells trilogy, and there are many unique puzzle shapes.

is the most fun I've had with a rhythm game in a long time. It's closing in on leaving early access, but it's still fully polished and playable in its current state. It's fast, has a great soundtrack (no shade on the normal anime soundtrack most rhythm games usually have, but this started as mostly licensed Monstercat tracks, which should give you an idea of what the soundtrack is like), and has a bunch of different controllers you can use. I went all in and bought a touch sensitive DJ wheel to use with it, and it's the most satisfying rhythm game peripheral I've ever used (and I've used a lot of rhythm game peripherals).

is a horror VN currently in early access with 2/7 chapters released (next chapter is scheduled for early next year). It's well written, has a cast of diverse characters with strong, unique personalities, has a striking art style, and has some of the best role playing opportunities I've ever seen in a video game. You get many choices for each dialogue option, and each one affects your relationships with the characters in complicated ways that have lasting effects on how they treat you. The is really something special.

is an incredible indie soulslike metroidvania game. Its aesthetic is astounding (where else can you play as a black hole fighting rock monsters in a cave made of nerve tissue), the combat is fast and satisfying (Bloodborne-style parries, no shields allowed), and it does some really surprising and unique things with its narrative. I played this right before Metroid: Dread released and loved it so much more.

is a 3D first person metroidvania puzzle game. Really well designed puzzles that reward you for thinking outside the box, and the abilities you unlock feel completely game breaking.

is a traditional roguelike with a compelling core concept: a spellbook with hundereds of spells and dozens of skills with no level limits. Take whatever abilities you want and craft the best build you can. Huge build variety, rewards deep thought about its systems and synergies, and allows for a huge degree of expressive play.

is the hardest puzzle game I've ever played. These are spatial puzzles (Sokoban.... ish) built around an intentionally clunky and nuanced movement system. Every time the game introduces a new mechanic there's a huge "Wait, I can do that??" moment, which is always a great feeling.

is a short, narrative-driven puzzle game. Neither the puzzles nor the story are revolutionary or supremely well done, but the combination of the two was much more compelling than either one individually. The puzzles ramped up pretty fast in interesting ways, and the story had enough mystery and twists to pull me along enough that I finished the whole game in one two-hour sitting.

is probably my evolution on the roguelike dungeon crawler "deck builder"-- instead of fully randomized runs, there are predetermined chapters that only have slightly randomized enemy loadouts. You also don't "build a deck" per se; instead, your character has four pieces of equipment that determine the cards in their deck, and beating any chapter boss unlocks a new piece of equipment for that character. There are four characters and three stories (each with about a dozen levels iirc), so there are a huge number of gear pieces that allow for a really astounding level of character customization and build experimentation.

And here are two games I love but that apparently just never go on sale:

is the best Zachlike (open-ended engineering puzzle game) I've probably ever played that was not made by Zachtronics. From a collection of pretty simple parts (there are only 8 components) they create a huge variety of puzzles, from assembling big complicated shapes (the final assembly puzzle is a huge fractal) to programming puzzles that react to random inputs. Cannot recommend this highly enough if you're a fan of any Zachtronics games.

is a 2D metroidvania built entirely around the idea that the events playing out on screen are your character looking into the future. This results in three core mechanics:

• You can hold down a button and rewind time, Braid-style

• You see silhouettes that telegraph enemy attacks a second before they happen

• Every time you save at a save point you can create a new node on the timeline, and you can freely travel to any timeline node

All of these mechanics are used together to make for really fun combat, platforming, and puzzle challenges. It is very hard though, especially the bosses.

isn't on sale... because it's free! As one of the top reviews says, it's essentially a combination of the mechanics from Undertale's Undyne fight with the aesthetics and feel of Super Hexagon. High production value, powerful soundtrack, and a simple and fast gameplay loop make this game worth a go.

Those are my recommendations! Anyone else have some obscure indie games they'd recommend people check out during the sale?

Edit: Since Reddit is killing third party apps, I decided to make my own . Please follow it if you've enjoyed these posts over the last couple years!

I play a ton of obscure indie games, and a bunch of my favorites are currently on sale. I don't think these games get the attention they deserve and they're all worth your time, so take a look if any of them catch your interest!

Everything from my is still on sale and I still highly recommend everything on it, especially the two early access games ( and ) that have received more content in the last 6 months.

And here are some of the great games I've played in the last 6 months that are on sale:

• is an incredible iteration on the original Supraland. Better puzzles, better world design, cool new powers, much improved combat/puzzle balance.

• is a great retro styled Metroidvania. Control a party of heroes each with different strengths, weaknesses, and traversal abilities through a huge tower full of secrets. Feels kind of like a cool iteration on a roguelike, since every time you die you respawn at the base of the tower and you make progress by unlocking fast travel points.

• is an astounding indie sidescrolling boss rush roguelike shmup. An absolutely staggering amount of content from dozens of bosses, four distinct and individually compelling gameplay modes, and a really singular aesthetic and writing style. It's still in early access and gets updates every two weeks, the last couple of updates have really fleshed out the story mode with more random events.

• is a super crunchy spin on the roguelike deckbuilder. All of the combat is handled through drawing cards from a standard 52 card deck and using them to activate items. I'm constantly astounded at both the depth of the gameplay decisions (there's both a great roguelike deckbuilder-esque build crafting and combat system and a really complex and difficult resource management game here, and they're both really tightly intertwined). I have about 20 hours in it and have never even ventured past the first of 5 bosses, I've just had a blast playing with all of the different characters (there are tons!

And since I've played a ton of puzzle games recently, here's a puzzle game lightning round. I highly recommend all of these:

• is Hexcells but with a practically infinite amount of easy but huge puzzles.

• is the latest from the guy who made Jelly no Puzzle

• is the coziest puzzle game, nay the coziest game I have ever played. Recently received a really excellent update that adds hints to every puzzle that don't trivialize the puzzles themselves.

• has all the looks of a super difficult top-down Sokoban like, but you don't actually push any blocks around?? Really novel mechanics

• Absolutely joyous showcase of Sokoban-based recursion

• is a more accessible spin on Stephen's Sausage Roll

• is Sokoban, but you're sticky jelly

• is The Witness, but tiny

• is Picross, but also Minesweeper.

And that's it from me! Any other under-the-radar indies people would recommend checking out?

This is going to make the fundamentals of Gamestop incredible. I would buy every, single, game, ever, on their platform if I could resell it when I was done.

One thing that must be done is some of the cut of the used game sale MUST go to the developer. If GameStop hoards all the second hand sale, I will be immensely disappointed and that would be the old GameStop coming out. This is something our industry HATED GameStop for originally when hard copy sales were the primary form of sales.

The digital games marketplace has been a boon to developers because they can't be resold. If you want to decimate the indie games industry, don't give them a cut of second hand sales. Yes. You can argue that good games will always do well, but indie games are extremely risky. I knew someone who spent 4 years on a game only for it to sell well enough for her to make poverty wages when amortized. It was a good game, too. Just niche. Now imagine if resales ate into her profits and GameStop got all of them. That would be essentially hiring slave labor for GameStop to turn a buck. It's not right.

I'm sure RC has thought of this, but as a game dev who hated the old GameStop, I feel like I need to say this, just in case.

Buy. Hodl. Vote. I'm soooo jacked on today's price movement. Looking forward to tomorrow, Apes!

Edit: the game is called Calico. Go nuts.

Edit2: I see a lot of used car anti-gme sentiment. Houses and cars are not the same as video games. Cars are an actual asset. Do you let the government amortize expenses on your video games? Stop comparing the two.

Art is all going this way. I didn't see any of you complain when art NFTs came out and gave the art owners 10% of all resales of their art. Video games are art too. As is music. All this will go this way. Get on board or go full boomer.

Edit3: We as devs are opting into this system. If we don't get a cut, we don't have to sell our game on there. Some devs may do it anyway, but I can't think of any good reason someone would sell their game on a platform that cannibalizes its own sales.

I play a bunch of indie games, obscure and otherwise, and every 6 months or so I like to do a big recommendation post that coincides with a Steam sale. And let me tell you, this has been a banger 6 months for indie games. Let us begin!

Obscure (<100 reviews)

• is a delightful little Celeste-like. Tight controls, good level design, and a compelling and unique mechanical gimmick all make for a great platforming experience. The movement feels real good!

• is an absolutely brutal block pushing puzzle game. The puzzles are all fantastic, but they get real hard real fast. Cannot recommend enough if you're looking for a challenge.

• (NSFW) is a furry romance VN with some of if not the best writing I've read in a video game all year. I absolutely love the cast of characters here-- they're all funny, wholesome, well realized, and have great relationships both romantically with the MC (who is a fantastic character in her own right, not just a cipher for the player) and among themselves. The stories here all have strong, well executed themes about trust, love, acceptance, and relationships in general. Yes, there is a lot of sex (all of which is focused on a very particular set of fetishes), but the game lets you turn on per-scene content warnings and even skip all of the sex scenes entirely-- and this game would still be one of my favorites from this year without them.

• is a great Zachlike about mixing colors of light. Has a really unique collection of devices and rules that makes this a very compelling twist on the pretty standard collection of comparch-ish devices it tasks you with making.

• is a perfect followup to . Polimines had a great idea, but was a bit short and ended before the puzzles really got to stretch their wings. Polimines 2 picks up right where the first ends-- its puzzles are bigger, more difficult, and there's twice as many of them. Plus, they're all packed with top tier deductions. It's still a little rough quality of life wise, but in terms of puzzle quality it can go toe to toe with .

• was the most delightful surprise I've had all year. It's more or less an extremely good hour long Ace Attorney case (or more accurately an hour long -like). You play as a non-binary wizard out on parole as a police consultant (magic is a crime). You collect evidence, talk to people, and point out contradictions as you gradually unravel what's going on. Best of all, just about every single deduction that happens has to do with the rules of the magic system as the game has laid them out to you but everything is still consistent and logical-- it's a pretty staggering feat of writing imo. Plus all of the writing is hilarious (and there's so much of it for such a tiny game), and all of the characters get a nontrivial amount of character development over the game's short runtime. If you play one game from this list, make it this one. (There's a demo! It's a short prequel case, so I'd recommend everyone play it regardless of whether you plan to play the whole game)

Kind of Obscure (<1,000 reviews)

• is a metroidvania smushed up with those old Flash motorcycle games. It's got an impeccable aesthetic, brutal combat, and a satisfying core gameplay loop all joined together with a great story.

• is a Minesweeper Roguelike with all of the mechanical innovations necessary to make that genre mashup work. The cast of characters all feel dramatically different to play as, needing entirely different strategies and deductions to be successful. Plus, the difficulty levels are all well considered adjustments for each character instead of generic modifiers!

• is an adorable puzzle game about herding rabbits into traps that has probably the most shocking meta-puzzle reveal I've ever seen in one of these games (note: I received this game for free)

• . Oh, Small Saga. What an absolute joy it is to play an indie JRPG where the writing is just good (unlike I could name). The combat is all too easy, but the story, characters, art, music, and animation are all perfect.

Not Very Obscure (>1,000 reviews)

• is my favorite roguelike deckbuilder in a long time. Has huge vibes all the way down-- extremely polished visuals, mountains of incredible character writing and banter, and a core combat system that is an absolute blast to engage with run after run (even if it's not very deep). I would die for Books and no one can stop me

• solves the very particular problem of me wanting to play Motherload again but Motherload not actually being a very good game. Making it a roguelike solves so many problems! If you have recommendations for games that scratch this very specific mining-related itch, please let me know

• I cannot believe that is the first 3D platformer I've ever played with metroidvania-style progression for your movement abilities-- I can only imagine that this isn't more common because it's extremely difficult to nail the feel of the movement, which this game absolutely does. Plus the world design is great-- obviously very Dark Souls inspired with areas that are all visually distinct but that still double back and wind around each other in satisfying ways.

• From the team behind comes , which asks the bold question: What if was a horror visual novel where you're repeatedly stabbed to death by a hot lady(?) in a princess dress? And it was all narrated by himself, Jonathan Sims? The answer: it's incredible. The narrative here is so responsive to the actions you take that it feels like magic, and limiting the number of loops you can do through the story really incentivizes you to push the limits and do replays to see what you missed. Plus it kind of goes without saying, but Abby Howard's art absolutely slaps.

• is my favorite incremental game I played this year. Is it good? No. Incremental games never are. It will massage your brain in all the right ways for a few hours, though.

Bookshelf

I have found my ability to sit down and play a game that is more or less a book has really suffered the last few months, so I have a pretty sizable number of games I'd love to dig more into but just haven't had the attention span for. I'm sticking them all here because what little I've played of them has been very promising, but I haven't given them the time necessary for a full endorsement:

• has the most endearing collection of characters I maybe have ever seen, and I'm a sucker for exploring the absolutely devastating psychological impact of being stuck in a time loop.

• has one of the best premises for a story I've ever heard. You play as an Anchoress (you know, a nun that's been bricked up into a sealed room for life? Like in ?) let out of her room to help solve a murder mystery because she's the only one with a solid alibi.

• has you playing as the crew of a ship in a very hopeful post-apocalypse. I am so here for this game's exploration of non-capitalist societies and nontraditional families

Not on Steam

All of these games are free! You have no excuses not to play them, especially since they’re all short (Roottrees is the longest at ~4 hours) and absolutely delightful

• is an incredible detective game that mashes up -style people classification with a -styled search engine. Absolutely loved this game, it has some of the best puzzles I've ever seen in this genre.

• isn't even a video game, but it's still one of my favorite puzzle experiences I've had this year. It takes you on a delightful little journey, and figuring out the final puzzle was one of the most joyous moments I've ever had playing a game

• is an absolutely lovely room escape game. While it seems the market has been moving towards full 3D room escape games, I will always prefer the old fixed camera angle style. Especially when it comes with cute characters and a simple but effective story 👀 (full disclosure, the creator of this game is a close personal friend of mine)

My Game of the Year

Is .

Void Stranger is a hard game to recommend. It demands quite a bit of its players as you loop through its levels multiple times, slowly picking at the edges of its mysteries and story-- and let me tell you, there is so much more to those mysteries than it initially seems. Digging into this game with the help of the System Erasure Discord server is one of my favorite experiences in gaming ever, full stop. The big moments at the very end of the story are jaw-dropping. If you're willing to do what this game demands of you, there is truly nothing else like it out there.

And that's it from me! If you like this post, please consider checking out my posts from previous sales:

And subscribe to my ! Most of the games I featured here were recommended there first, and I have a huge back catalog of recommendations as well.

Thank you!!

Edit: Since Reddit is killing third party apps, I decided to make my own . Please follow it if you've enjoyed these posts over the last couple years!

I play a ton of indie games, and a bunch of my favorites I’ve played since the Summer Sale are currently on sale. I don’t think these games get the attention they deserve and they’re all worth your time, so take a look if any of them catch your interest!

Early Access Updates

These are games I’ve recommended in the past, which have received updates since I last discussed them. Looks like only Scarlet Hollow is discounted right now, but they're all great!

• is one of the best narrative games I’ve ever played, and it’s releasing its fourth chapter on the 29th. I love its mechanical approach to narrative gaming– it feels more like a tabletop RPG than a visual novel in a lot of ways. Cannot recommend it highly enough.

• is my favorite shmup I’ve ever played. Tons of content for every skill level, a charming and singular aesthetic, great music, and it receives near-constant content updates. In the last few months, the developer completely redesigned one of the central mechanics of the game (charge shots) and greatly improved it.

• has left early access! I really like its spin on roguelike deckbuilding; instead of building a deck you collect and upgrade equipment and use a standard deck of 52 playing cards to activate them during battles. I’m not usually a fan of crunchy resource management in games, but something about its specific balancing act and how all of the many different classes intersect with it really clicks with me.

On Steam and On Sale

• is a bite-sized spooky little fishing game with surprisingly compelling mechanics. I was shocked by how engaging I found the fishing and I thought that the horror elements, while slight, were a nice capper on the experience.

• is one of the most unique puzzle platformers I’ve ever played, thanks to the fact that most of its puzzles rely on and actively embrace the jankiness inherent in its mechanics. I was blown away by how good it is at getting you to engage with mechanics that seem like bugs but actually result in fantastic puzzles. And it’s free!

• is a great murder mystery detective game. It’s less wide open than something like Obra Dinn or Outer Wilds, but I really enjoyed the format of collecting clues as individual words and then slotting them in the correct places on the case summary to figure out what happened.

• is essentially a sidescrolling bullet hell shmup by way of Crypt of the Necrodancer. It’s a great gimmick! Really fun and unique mechanics with a high skill ceiling and great level and boss design.

• is a super solid roguelike dice-builder with a huge variety of classes, levels, and mechanics.

• is an incredibly good Witness-like. Great puzzles, great secrets, no text, highly recommend.

• is a tiny RPG Maker game with a very cool battle system– every combat is 1v1, and all of your attacks have cooldown, attack, and defense values. There’s a surprising depth to the mechanics here; I found it super compelling

• I know how this one looks okay but trust me, this is one of the most inventive puzzle games ever made.

On Steam and Not On Sale

Turns out a few of the games I wrote about ahead of time are not discounted. Oops! I do still highly recommend them all, though.

• is just so cozy and satisfying!

• is a worthy entry in the long line of incredibly good minesweeper logic puzzle games after Hexcells and Tametsi. It has legitimately the best procedural generation of logic puzzles I have ever seen, and the variants all result in interesting and challenging puzzles.

• Did you know that the guy behind Baba Is You is also behind one of the best metroidvanias ever made? I sure didn’t! Great 2D metroid-like with an incredible grappling hook and an absolutely staggering number of secrets. Did you like Tunic? If you did, you must check this one out.

• is a top down twin stick bullet hell/puzzle game. It’s got charming art, extremely funny writing, tight and challenging gameplay with great accessibility options, and secrets!

Not on Steam

• is a free NSFW gay furry psychological horror/romance visual novel. And it’s so good. This is the first visual novel I’ve ever played where I actually finished all of the routes– it took me maybe 30 hours total. The horror is really affecting and varied, the writing is incredible, the story is deeply engrossing, and the cast of characters is very wide and extremely well developed. I can’t believe how well this game just absolutely nails the dynamic of a group of friends that were only really friends out of convenience, have drifted apart, and are trying to reunite with each other. Also, I recommend the routes in this order: Leo, Carl, Jenna, TJ, Flynn.

• is another great roguelike dice-builder. This one is more restrained than Circadian Dice in its mechanics, but it gives you more potential to really break the game open with busted synergies. I think its collection of items that manipulate the relative positions of your dice faces are super interesting and innovative, and it’s a ton of fun to figure out how to abuse them.

• . If you buy any game on this list, please make it this one. Tux and Fanny is a point and click adventure game where you play as titular friends Tux and Fanny, a cat, and a flea. You get to solve puzzles, play minigames, collect achievements, talk to your friends, read books, listen to music, do guided meditations, look at the clouds, collect bugs, flowers, and birds, and so much more. It’s nonsensical, whimsical, cozy, disarming, and disorienting all at once. It’s stuck with me like no other game ever has; I still think about it almost every day, even though I played it almost a year ago. Please give it a try!

Previous Recommendation Posts

All of the recommendations from my previous posts still apply. If nothing here is quite what you're looking for, maybe take a look through these as well. Tons of great recommendations in the comments on these, too!

And that's it from me! If you have any games you'd like to recommend, please leave a comment! I'm always looking for more indie games to try. Thanks for reading!

Content Warning for suicide, incredibly blatant transphobia, use of the T-slur, and probably the twentieth explanation on TERFs you’ve seen on the internet since 2018. Also please do not engage any parties talked about over the course of this document. Obviously this is a given, but I’m specifically requesting it in this case because many of them are simply trying to move past the drama, while others still are still active in the drama itself.

TL;DR

Video game popular in the LGBTQ community loses essentially all trans fans after dev’s girlfriend makes long anti-trans tweet thread, dev puts the game on sale while referencing anti-trans suicide statistics, and gets outed herself as anti-trans.

Yes, you read the title correctly: a transphobic sale. Technically it’s not the only reason, but it sure as hell is the catalyst for all the reasons that came after it. Before I begin to discuss the infamous HEARTBEAT Steam sale, there’s a couple things I need to explain for those of you who aren’t sad pathetic weirdos who spend their days surrounded by niche indie games and Twitter drama like I am.

Context for the Context: What the hell is an Indie RPG and why do people care?

Yes I know how stupid and pointless this section sounds but trust me, there’s some stuff in the context that benefits from this part. So what is an Indie RPG? To put it in the simplest terms, it’s a video game made by either a single person or a small team of developers that generally involve unique and experimental art styles, gameplay systems, and intimately personal theming, with the director or lead writer laying their vision bare for the world to see and judge. Indie RPGs are rarely made from the ground up in the form of custom engines, instead usually taking advantage of consumer-grade like Game Maker or the suite of RPG Maker engines (the former acting as an easy to grasp game design tool that has been used for a variety of famous and well-regarded titles like Hotline Miami and Hyper Light Drifter and the latter acting as a much more specialized tool that is highly customizable and can be used to do pretty much everything imaginable, from unique battle systems to massive puzzles, making it easy for consumers and professionals alike to make the game they want).

The genre really rose to prominence in the mid-2000s with the first fan translations of games like Yume Nikki and OFF, rising and falling in popularity over the years for various reasons as interest in certain games came and went. Notable booms in the community came in the early 2010s when gaming YouTubers started to dabble in Japanese RPG Maker horror games, and the most important one to this story is the 2015 boom following the release of Undertale, an immensely successful indie Game Maker RPG that grabbed its audience with it’s quirky characters and humor, a fantastic soundtrack, and simple yet effective morality system where the player can choose whether or not to spare every single enemy in the game, from the tutorial enemy to the final boss. The Undertale community has had its own fair share of drama that (say it with me long-time -goers) could be covered in it’s own write-up. The reason I brought up Undertale is for two reasons:

1. Undertale was a wake-up call for would-be indie devs. Undertale is possibly one of the most recognizable games from the past decade, and about 90% of it was made by a single dude whose experience with game development was a couple of rom hacks for Earthbound on the SNES, composing music for a couple things not many people remember, and being a prominent composer in the Homestuck community. If he could make a game this popular, why couldn’t you! The years following Homestuck have been absolutely littered with games directly inspired by Undertale, from fanworks to complete new games, which in turn inspired their own wave of developers, etc. The Indie RPG community, which for nearly half a decade relied on the same dozen games for its sustenance, was now cycling through a new darling seemingly monthly since Undertale

2. The indie RPG scene, which has always attracted teenagers and college students of a given era, like the late 2000s Tumblrites to artists to amateur YouTubers, was now attracting a new audience: LGBTQ pre-teens and teens. Undertale was a remarkably progressive games in the eyes of this audience, with the main character never being specifically gendered (most characters just refer to them by the name the player gave them instead of via pronouns), there being a canonical lesbian romantic relationship between two major plot-crucial NPCs, and the lack of any other real canonical or implied romance meant that the fanbase was filled with people shipping every character with every other character, most of which happened to be male (which again, has led to its own drama but this post is already way too long and this section is bordering on off-topic filler so that’ll be for another time). This meant that a lot of the Undertale fanbase that was being told about this cool subset of games they’d never played or heard of happened to be LGBTQ, and incredibly vocally LGBTQ.

And now we enter the source of today’s drama:

The Context: HEARTBEAT

HEARTBEAT, generally stylized in all caps, released a demo that caught the eyes of the then-booming 2017 Indie RPG community. It contained pretty much everything that the community loved at the time: Cute character design, pretty good music, and seemingly overflowing charm. What particularly interested people was its similarity to the Pokemon series, something HEARTBEAT wore on its sleeve like a badge of honor. It advertised that in the full version you’d be able to capture a plethora of unique and fun creatures (this, funnily enough, would be one of the things leading to its eventual downfall, something I will discuss soon).

A brief aside before I get to the launch of the game and the drama itself: those who primarily play AAA titles or larger budget studio RPGs may not fully understand is why something with HEARTBEAT’s visuals would be so appealing, but once again I must stress that something the Indie RPG community has ALWAYS loved is charm and personal value. These sorts of games are generally fundamentally based on the beliefs and interests of the creator, from their taste in games influencing the gameplay, to personal issues and emotions influencing the themes and story, and general writing/programming skill that is obviously absurdly easy to see at a glance. In the case of HEARTBEAT, what immediately drew everybody’s attention was the artwork and character design. The game takes heavy inspiration from the third generation of Pokemon (Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald) but combines it with absurdly saturated colors and character design typical of mid-2010s cartoons: generally light, cute, and fluffy. Especially compared to most other Indie RPGs which supplement lack of professional training or budget with , , something in-between, or , HEARTBEAT is . Honestly, the game could’ve been completely unplayable and it would STILL be a cult gem in the community for its art style alone.

Anyways the game released in mid-2018 and it was honestly pretty good! I got it on launch with a group of friends and we had a good time going through it until we all dropped it at one point or another for various reasons, most of which being other games we were more interested in coming out. Most reviewers agreed that the game itself was visually incredible, had amazing music, that the gameplay systems were all insanely deep and fun to mess around with, and that the only real complaints were things typical to most indie RPGs like weird pacing, some grinding, and a few mechanics that seem purposefully obtuse. The game follows Eve Staccato, a young “conjurer” that has the ability to summon and control “Mogwai”, the game’s monster equivalent, as she goes on a journey to maintain the delicate balance between Solum (the game’s human equivalent) and Mogwai. Nothing mind blowing, but HEARTBEAT was definitely not advertising itself on its story. I’d go in depth as to what it played like but I feel like the game itself isn't incredibly important to the story itself.

The game immediately built up a cult fanbase, attracting a large amount of LGBTQ fans who appreciated a lot of the game’s coding with its characters and lore. HEARTBEAT is a very undeniably “gay” game. The developer, Shepple, is herself a lesbian and intentionally added a lot of references to her sexuality and gay culture as a whole into the game, such as Eve swooning over the female musician Patch that escalates into a mutual crush by the end of the game, the percentage of conjurers amongst Solums being roughly 4% (roughly equivalent to the proportion of LGBTQ citizens in the United States at the time of the game’s release), to conjurers being chosen due to their “similarities” to Mogwai, who typically reproduce with members of the same “phase” (essentially the biological sex equivalent of the HEARTBEAT universe), the game is completely and undeniably caked in gay coding.

Note my use of “gay” to describe the game and not LGBTQ. That’s because there’s one key letter here that is actively left out of the party, but that will be discussed in the next section.

Something that definitely helped the games sales was the Pokemon National Dex controversy, covered on this sub prior. After this drama spiked and persisted, many Pokemon fans were desperate for something to scratch their monster collecting RPG itch, and one game that just so happened to be relatively recent, indie (people really wanted to stick it to studio RPGs after what Game Freak pulled so this was important), and very gay! It didn’t necessarily become a household name after this, but it without a doubt got a spike in attention and recognition that it probably wouldn’t have gotten otherwise. Now that the fanbase has ballooned and people love the game, now all Shepple would have to do is make sure nothing happens to tank the game’s reputation and it would run its course as a well regarded indie RPG that would be looked back on fondly by the community

The Drama: Spilling the T

The main key player here that I have not mentioned yet is Nikotine (referred to from here on out as Niko). Nikotine is Shepple’s girlfriend, and just so happens to be a prominent fan artist in the community, and (to my knowledge) is responsible for some of the game’s official art since (please correct me if I’m wrong). She is not a developer of the game, and this must be stressed.

She is also an outspoken, self-identifying TERF.

I was really hoping to go my entire internet tenure without explaining what a TERF is to people but here we go. For the uninitiated: a TERF (short for Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist), is used to describe a person (generally a cis woman) in the modern feminist movement that hold an active disdain for transgendered people, specifically trans women. The reason for this varies from individual to individual, but common talking points ranges from the typical anti-trans rhetoric of “trans people are mentally ill/pedophiles/perverts” to the more common and more direct “trans women (persons born with male/non-female genitalia who use female pronouns) are not real women, and are just men actively attempting to devalue the female experience”, and that “trans men (persons born with female/non-male genitalia who use male pronouns) are traitors to the feminist cause, and are choosing to side with chauvinist men instead”. So yeah a good few members of the LGBTQ community, ESPECIALLY the “T” portion, hate TERFs with a burning passion.

Hence why it shocked people a little bit when in September of 2019, Niko posted . (yes this tweet is still up after 2 years for reasons that will very very soon become apparent. In case it gets taken down/her account gets suspended, . Tweets from here on out will be screenshots, but I just wanted to show that this was 100% a real tweet thread). Maybe this is out of context? Maybe somehow all of this is just one grand misunderstanding and she didn’t mean to call trans women all just straight men lying to get lesbians to sleep with them, right? Nope. In fact, following people getting understandably confused and angry at her, At this point a lot of fans are telling themselves that it’s one bad egg. She didn’t even do the art for the game itself after all, there’s still no reason to completely disown the game! I’m 100% sure that Shepple is rational enough and will talk to her about it. Having made a game with such a wide-spread LGBTQ fanbase with a large amount of trans members I’m sure that the tweets will end up deleted, distance will be made and everything will be fi--

The Drama Act 2: oh no Shepple is a TERF too

Also known as: “How the hell do you make a Steam Sale transphobic?”

(I’d also like to stress that this section is going to contain suicide statistics, blatant transphobia, and will be linking a tweet using the t-slur)

Well within a couple days of Niko posting the Twitter thread, HEARTBEAT went on sale. Honestly it wasn’t too uncommon for HEARTBEAT to pop up on sale, but some people immediately assumed that it was just Shepple trying to go on damage control and try to get the sales up despite the ongoing controversy.

So welcome to Context Part 2: The Revenge of the Context because I’m guessing that most outside of the more active parts of the LGBTQ community won’t know why these raised red flags for some people, in fact it probably just looks like a weird-as-hell discount. Well, let me explain why one of these is probably based on a transphobic statistic and the other is DEFINITELY based on a transphobic statistic

, 35% of American transgender high school students report attempting suicide at least once throughout their time at high school. Now maybe this 35% statistic isn’t what this sale is referencing. 35% is a weird discount percentage but is still a nice round number. Steam sales can commonly contain X5% discounts for various reasons. I’d be willing to say this was just a poorly thought out accident if it weren’t for the other discount

roughly 41% of transgender Americans have attempted suicide at some point in their lives. This statistic, along with the previous 35% statistic, are commonly used by people with anti-trans views in an attempt to delegitimize transgender people as entirely mentally ill or otherwise “faking it”.

Given the fact that Shepple acts as the head of Chumbosoft, the team that made HEARTBEAT, she would most likely be the only person able to set these sales, meaning that Shepple either set this sale of her own free will to spite the people critiquing her girlfriend, set this sale of her own free will to spite people critiquing her girlfriend who shared her beliefs, or set this sale of her own free will somehow completely oblivious of the numbers 35 and 41’s significance to the trans community and just decided to have a really weird sale right after her girlfriend was outed as a TERF.

So yeah, people weren’t happy to say the least. In , people immediately realized something was up and called her out for it. (This is the tweet with the slur btw. Stay classy Niko.)

So yeah, at this point a lot of people in the fanbase, especially their trans fans, are pretty disillusioned with the game at this point. Some have tried refunding, others are spreading the word of transphobia, and the game’s reputation is now permanently tanked due to an artist’s transphobia, and the developer refusing to let it be by doubling down on her statements. Well, at least it’s over now, right?

The Drama Act 3: Sowing Discord in the Community

Have I mentioned HEARTBEAT has a Discord? Because it does. And this is where things go from a story of “Devs turn out to be transphobic” and turns into “Dev possibly manufactures a TERF echo chamber to validate TERF beliefs”.

To begin with, a Twitter user reached out to Shepple following Niko’s tweet, inquiring about her and Shepple’s more-than-potential anti-trans beliefs. The full chat can be found , but I’ll warn people that it’s… kinda upsetting and also incredibly enlightening on what Shepple’s beliefs really are and where they came from. I’ll add an additional CW for rape, as that’s brought up a couple times during the discussion.

Around this time, close friends of Shepple’s started to come forward to discuss various private conversations. Most of them shared their disappointment in Shepple, saying that they thought she was better than that, with one showing Shepple’s active interest and consumption of content that echoes common TERF ideologies.

One user from the Discord, a friend of Shepple’s, also said in that there was a secret channel consisting mainly of her inner circle, that commonly focused on making fun of trans people. While there are no screenshots of this to my knowledge (and anybody able to share screenshots of this would definitely be appreciated), other users from the Discord corroborated this, or at the very least said that it was in line with some of the things that happened on the Discord. Allegedly (cannot find screenshots of this but again, some would be greatly appreciated), following the controversy the Discord underwent a small transformation, cracking down on discussion of gender identity of any type, going so far as to kick or ban users who insisted on discussing it in any form.

The Aftermath: How to accidentally ruin your game’s credibility in the LGBTQ community

So from late 2019 to present, HEARTBEAT has been left with a strong negative tie to it. While many people still choose to purchase it out of spite towards trans people or “The SJWs”, a good amount of the LGBTQ community has sort of blacklisted it. It was (an act on Steam in which users mass-review the game in an attempt to sway the score), and to this day the drama surfaces once every few months when a Twitter or Tumblr user decides it’s been enough time and they want people to be reminded of the devs transphobia.

Many members of the HEARTBEAT team chose to distance themselves from the project, the most crushing of which was Sil, one of the game’s lead sprite artists, who . Another loss was the lead composer for the project Trass, who left Chumbosoft and tried to distance themselves from Shepple and Niko around the same time Sil did. If there is a formal tweet announcing this I have not been able to find it.

Friends of Shepple continued to distance themselves from her and many reviews were modified or removed following the controversy, possibly the most damaging of which came from the removal of YouTuber NitroRad’s video covering the game, as his videos were and are a hub for many casual fans of the genre to find new indie RPGs, and is where a good amount of early buzz for the game came from.

Conclusion: So where are our key players now?

Shortly following the initial drama, Shepple’s grandmother unfortunately passed away. She decided that she would take time away from social media while she took time to mourn. As of this post she has still not returned to Twitter after a year and a half.

Niko is still a proud and outspoken TERF, labelling herself in the bio as one and regularly posting tweets critical of or otherwise calling out the trans community. Her replies are typically filled with support from fans and friends, with the occasional reply calling her a TERF or a transphobe that ends up getting buried. She still regularly talks about the drama that happened and how her game was “cancelled by the so-called inclusive trans community”.

HEARTBEAT itself is still available for purchase on Steam and goes on sale occasionally, but many are quick to inform prospective buyers of the drama. There is in fact a HEARTBEAT 2 in development at the moment, and progress can usually be found over at Niko’s Twitter, if you’re willing to put up with her frequent… shall we say discussion of the trans community. Most friends of Shepple have since distanced themselves from them, and many trans members of the HEARTBEAT fanbase have posted their own recap of events over at blogs and such decrying Shepple for not choosing to immediately decry her girlfriend’s posts.

And that is the story of HEARTBEAT. I've tried my best to not inject my own personal beliefs into the story and tackle this as somebody looking back on a weird as hell heel turn of the dev from LGBT icon into widely accepted TERF. I really don't want people to track the people mentioned in this write-up down on Twitter and harass them on either side. It accomplishes absolutely nothing overall. If you want to get the game and see what it's like, I ultimately cannot stop you. I'm sure bringing this drama back into the light is gonna result in some wild stuff but eh, I'll take whatever comes my way

EDIT: Make sure to check your links to make sure they're right kiddos, also just a few word choice changes

I love Steam. It's so quick and easy to find a game you like and download it. You can add games to your wishlist and it will notify you when it's on sale. I've bought over 30 games at 80% off like this. Their holiday sales are great.

Yeah this sub has a hardon for the NFT Marketplace but let's be real here, as someone who loves immersive games there's nothing really there for me (yet...hopefully it improves with time.)

I want the company to do great and be competitive in the modern gaming world. It seems so obvious that GameStop should fill the void left by Steam's library and begin making deals with developers to sell the games unavailable on Steam. Or sell the same games at cheaper prices. Or faster download speeds. Or SOMETHING.

idk I'm too smooth brained to think of all the possibilities but I envision a platform like social media just for gamers. Maybe Zoom calls where everyone games together or something idk.

I want to see more from the company. And don't hit me with that RC tweet "ask not blah blah" I'm DRSed balls deep and promote GameStop incessantly. Part of doing something for your company is making suggestions for improvement, not pretending like everything is perfect even though it's not. There's a huge market for indie games that are overlooked on Steam and developers are undercut. GameStop could be a place for the lesser known developers to congregate and get the attention and support they deserve at better prices than the monopoly that Steam has.

I love the new flagship store in Italy. I've been saying GameStop needs to reinvent its brick and mortar concept for some time now. I was thinking more like gaming cafes in Korea but this seems good too. Like I said, I'm too smooth brained for specifics I just got general ideas.

As always, buy, hodl, DRS.

Steam posted their best of 2023 including top sellers, most-played, games, top new releases, more today

With the Winter Sale season in full swing, we are excited to share Steam's Best of 2023 lists. We quite enjoy putting these together to see how the year played out. So take a look and reminisce about all of the great games that made 2023 a year to remember.

At the bottom of each list, you'll find notes explaining how games make it onto these lists and the criteria for how each list is organized.

I play a bunch of indie games, obscure and otherwise, and every 6 months or so I like to do a big recommendation post to coincide with a Steam sale. Not all of these are on sale, not all of them are obscure, and I think a couple might not qualify as indie games? But I liked them all and would highly recommend them!

Early Access Update

• Since I last recommended it has left early access! Spin Rhythm is by far my favorite rhythm game of recent years-- great soundtrack, great innovative control scheme, great visual polish and accessibility options. Highly recommend playing with a DJ wheel if you get a chance, it's such a blast!

Obscure (<100 reviews)

• is a visual novel combined with a collection of interesting Chess and Shogi themed puzzles. The writing is disarmingly compelling-- I didn't quite finish it, but the big swings the story takes have been stuck in my brain ever since I played it. It's on my shortlist of games to revisit and complete.

• has big vibes. It's a completely novel take on the roguelike deckbuilder genre and despite its somewhat rough presentation is crammed absolutely full of cool ideas. Worth a go in its own right (there's a demo!), but I'm also looking forward to whatever this one's will be.

• Continuing the esteemed line of Minesweeper-type puzzle games (, , , ) is . Instead of just solving minesweeper puzzles, you program logical deductions to general minesweeper problems and have the game solve them for you. The UI is a little rough, but it's such a surprisingly compelling puzzle and a really unique take on this well-trod genre.

• is a very rigorous exploration of a simple set of block-pushing puzzle mechanics. Super chill experience and a sizable collection of high quality puzzles.

• is a cute little spin on a metroidvania. You have access to all of your traversal items at the beginning of the game, but can only equip one at a time. As you solve puzzles with those you unlock the ability to equip two and access to harder puzzles and so on. Lots of secrets to find, lots of goodies to collect, and finishable in just a few hours. It also has an isometric 3D sequel in , which is much bigger and much weirder but still worth a go if you like the first one.

• is like if it had word puzzles instead of line puzzles and was set in the complex. It has some of my favorite word puzzles I've ever solved, and there are tons of great community-made maps out there if you like the base game.

• is a perfect little distillation of a small numbers JRPG. Many many pieces of gear that have tons of abilities and lots of interesting little synergies.

Kind of Obscure (<1,000 reviews)

• If you had asked me whether I wanted to play a 3D first person or -alike, I would've said that sounds like the worst idea imaginable. But despite that, I gave a go and I'm so glad I did. Both because it's got extremely satisfying and smooth movement and, unlike the aforementioned games, doesn't have an ounce of cruelty or condescension. Just ambient noises, a nice soundtrack, and good slightly spooky vibes. Plus it gives you a great suite of tools to help you succeed, including a Scout mode that lets you fly around your immediate area and scope stuff out. Highly recommend!

• is a great little indie Cuphead-like. I knew this game would be special when I finished the first boss without taking damage and was treated to a special perfect-run-only extra-hard final phase. Extremely generous game with great visuals and tight gameplay.

• is a sokoban-ish puzzle game where you gradually discover new rules and interactions with the very strange set of objects you are given to play with. Think or . No game has ever had as many jaw dropping mechanical epiphanies as this one does, cannot recommend it enough.

Not obscure in the slightest (>1,000 reviews)

• is one of the most peculiar games I've ever played. It's a side scroller action RPG stapled to a highly detailed rice farming simulation. Instead of leveling up your character via combat, your stats and abilities are directly tied to the quality of the rice you grow. The combat has multiple fun gimmicks (a very satisfying grappling hook, physics-based combat that encourages flinging enemies into each other) and the farming sim is bafflingly detailed. If you vibe with both halves of the game, there's nothing out there like it.

• is a highly polished TRPG roguelike deckbuilder. It got a bit of a reputation on launch of being unfairly difficult (a criticism I wholly disagree with) but the devs have been consistently putting out updates with more content, more difficulty options, and more quality of life features. I'm usually not a fan of tactics games, but this one strikes a perfect balance between simplicity (with a max of six units per side) and difficulty (the position of those six units is absolutely crucial and often not obvious). Plus the art, music, and graphic design are all absolutely top notch.

• has you learning, practicing, and executing card cheats in order to rob 18th-century noblemen blind (and maybe stage a revolution in the process?). It's basically a collection of tiny card-themed minigames wrapped in a historical political thriller, but boy does it do a good job of dialing up the tension when you need to get a card trick absolutely right or get killed (or worse). I'd probably call this one the most novel game on the whole list.

Basically Mainstream (>10,000 reviews)

• is, despite its appearance, far and away my favorite -like. I'm a huge fan of roguelites that give you tiny actionable goals that reward you with new gameplay tools (and, even better, more goals associated with them) and Brotato has those in spades: most achievements unlock new characters, each with their own game-changing gimmick and reward for finishing a run. And there are dozens of characters! It just left early access about a week ago and is crammed full of content.

• just left early access yesterday and is a really unique beast. It starts as meets but just keeps piling on more (and more aND MORE) mechanics, systems, and interactions. If you dig the core gameplay loop, this game has an astounding amount of content to dig into.

Previous Recommendation posts

All of my recommendations from previous sales still stand! Highly recommend checking them out, there are some real gems out there.

And that's it from me! If you have any games you'd like to recommend, please leave a comment! I'm always looking for more indie games to try.

Lastly, since Reddit is dying, I decided to make my own . Please follow it if you've enjoyed these posts over the last couple years!

Why? Because I can. That's why.

Do I need to buy that indie game that's 80% off? No, absolutely not. But how do I know if that deal is ever going to present itself again? (Anxiety intensifies) You're damn right. I don't know. That's why Valve has me by the balls and will profit out of Steam game sales, alone. Admit it you invertebrate weaklings, I am not alone in this matter. And that's okay.

I release my first commercial game on November of 2022. I spent 5 years working on it, on and off. During my free time I would work on the game. At the time, I was working contract jobs in the TV industry. I would also work on the game while travelling/backpacking between contract jobs thanks to a gaming laptop. The game is a weird surreal experience with puzzles, mini games, and multiple paths that alter the game. Think LSD: Dream Emulator meets The Stanley Parable.

On release, I had 1,061 wish list and made 72 sales in the first week. I mistakenly released the game during a winter steam sale (without putting the game on sale LOL). Wishlist and sales started to rise and I am currently sitting at 5,233 wishlists and 717 lifetime steam units with 82 returns (11.4%).

My take home at this moment is $3404.66 USD (not including the month of September where I had a really good month with 203 sales). Currently there are 57 reviews (Very Positive), and some YouTubers cover the game which helped boost wishlists and sales. Currently, I am making games solo, full-time with revenue streams from other places, including YouTube and freelance work. I am fortunate to not need the sales of my game to survive. I made talking more about this topic with images for the sales/wishlists etc for those who are interested.

Anyways just wanted to share my story. Keep developing, never give up!

My short bio:

I worked two years in a company on The Witcher Battle Arena as an AI developer.

Year ago I quit my job and became full indie. After ton of rice I released my first game on Steam today.

My Proof: Here's my Twitter

Here's my game:

Our Twitter:

Thank you all for IAmA! You were awesome! Time to get some sleep. You can leave questions here. I'll answer them once I'm up. Yarr!

Edit: I'm up again. Let's roll.

Edit: That's it for now. Thank you for great questions!