IndieGamesPlus

Thumps & Blows brings goofy stick figures together to fight each other using towels, monkeys, sunscreen, and other odd weapons. I’ve been around the internet for quite some time, so I’ve played the old school flash-era stick man games. With that in mind, I was pretty excited to see a fighting game like this at Big Conference. This game clearly takes inspirating from that time, but instead of a quick arcade game or massive open world RPG, it’s an action-filled fighting game with stick men.

Gnaughty Gnomes is a party game where cards let the player improve their character or make game-altering changes in their favor. I’ve played card games. I’ve played local multiplayer games. That said, there is just something so unique and fun feeling about this title. In this game, you and up to three of your friends are battling it out in a variety of different levels as you try to be the last one standing.

Overbit uses files, cursors, and the internet to attack you in surprise minigames as it explores an world based on 2000s-era computers. The game is a captivating, almost rage-inducing title where you need to discover the world living inside your computer before it falls apart. After downloading a mysterious virtual machine, you will meet a bunch of quirky creatures that live within the files. Some of these creatures are corrupted and others are just trying to survive instead of being destroyed.

Spiny & Chilly is an interesting and wacky platforming exploration game where you are a penguin and hedgehog duo looking for ice. I’ve played a lot of platformers in my time, but something about this silly game really caught my attention. You play as a penguin with a hedgehog on your head. The goal of the pair is to wander through the game’s world while collecting stolen ice blocks (because some other penguins have stolen all the world’s ice for…reasons).

Cook for Love captures life as a new chef as you try to master a bunch of different dishes when opening your own restaurant. There is nothing I love more than a casual cooking game to play on a Saturday morning as I listen to the birds outside my window. So, when Cooking for Love came out on Xbox, I was pretty excited to try it out! This cooking game is all about Clement, a young Frenchman who was left to run a small restaurant and learn how to cook himself.

Zombie Rollerz: The Last Ship is a survival game where you face off against hordes of zombies by arming and customizing a massive tank. You will need to roll over and shoot different zombies in hopes you can last. You are in a big map full of different pockets of zombies. You must manage your ship, upgrade it with fallen gears, and survive for the set time. You could travel around avoiding all of the zombies during this time, but when the clock runs out, you’ll often be faced by a boss.

Thrifty Business is a game about running a store packed with used items, learning about the locals, and managing events in your community. As you run your thrift shop, management itself is quite laid back. You can purchase boxes based on vibes as you’ll only be told about the first few items in there. Then, you can unpack the items into your shop. from there, you’ll be purchasing tables, shelves, clothing racks, and the like to display all of your items.

Pawsta is a cozy claymation cooking game where a mouse named Rigatoni is trying to help their grandmother in her restaurant. The gameplay itself is simple, cute, and just very fun. You can see what your customer wants via icons that appear. You can then go around the kitchen preparing the dish. Once you have grabbed the pasta dough out of the fridge, you need to roll it out, cut it, and then cook it. Then it needs to go to the pasta sauce station, the topping station, and to be served.

Beast Breaker is a turn-based RPG that’s got an interesting story woven through some physics-based, pinball-like levels. As someone who very much doesn’t enjoy action games, I found that the way that you attack and destroy enemies in this game – as if you are a pinball bouncing around to break things – feels so unique and fun. In this title, you play as a little mouse who lives at your grandmother’s house. It’s a humble beginning, but you are soon drawn to help others.

Cleaning Up! is a humorous game about tidying various filthy areas by using physics-based tools to clear away trash. Now, as much as I do not like cleaning in real life, I will always clean in a video game! There is just something more fun and more satisfying about seeing something go from messy to clean when it’s done in pixels on your screen. This is one of those games where you find yourself in massively dirty places and have to clear away the garbage using tools that you have.