DIYgamer

Top 5 Incredible Indie Game Cliches

March 10, 2010 | Geoff Gibson

Being a writer for a popular indie games blog means that we, here at DIY HQ, play a lot of indie games. I’m talking about 3-4/day at the minimum. If not to report directly on news regarding said games, then just to stay within the confines of the indie gaming world. It keeps us fresh, y’know?

Anyway, in doing our daily ritual of writing, discussing, and playing indie games we’ve come to notice a few patterns. Like everything in life, the more you do something the more you can assume. These patterns/assumptions then become constants, and, as such, these are the things you’ve come to expect in your job. Indie games are no different. Over the past few months we’ve noticed a few hard line indie game cliches. Things that never cease to end and at least, at the very least, occur once a week.

Here is our top 5 indie game cliches:

5. Puzzles

`I really enjoy a good puzzle game every now and then. It gives the ol’ brain a work out, especially during those months where I’m just not as mentally active due to too many holidays (December). That said, however, just like my body can get tired from physical exercise, my brain can also get tired from playing too many puzzle games.

Unfortuantely, working in the indie games journalism industry means that I’m going to be playing a lot of puzzle games.

Puzzle games have become almost the bread and butter of the indie game industry. Even if the game isn’t a fully-fledged puzzle game it, at the very least, has some sort of semblance of puzzles inside it.

Guilty Parties: Braid, Toki Tori, World of Goo, Max and the Magic Marker, Bob Came in Pieces, Machinarium, Magnetis, Quantz, Bad Rats: the Rats’ Revenge, Chains, Crayon Physics Deluxe, Cogs, Spectraball.

4. Zombies

This may seem like a mainstream video game cliche as of late, but I assure you, for every one mainstream title that features zombies there are at least 5-10 indie games that feature the exact same thing.

Zombies, for the past few years, have been an almost required feature of the indie gaming world. For good reason too, what with being beloved by gamers the world over, it makes sense for a small time indie developer to take on an already popular subject.

Of course, I’m not complaining about the abundance of zombie games. Zombies are awesome, and I love killing them. They are the perfect enemy — numerous, scary, and gooey when exploded. Still though, when there are so many zombie games coming out every month, its begins to wear you out.

This week, for instance, we’ve already written about two completely separate — as in had nothing to do with each other — zombified iPhone game… The week’s not even half over!

Guilty Parties: I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MBIES 1N IT!!!1, Tweet Defense, Zombie Driver, Nation Red, Zombie Shooter 1/2, Zombie Bowl-o-Rama, Ghosts n’ Zombies, Zombieville USA, Zombie Puncher, Yet Another Zombie Defense, Zombie Armageddon, Zombie Mania, Zombie Wranglers, Zombies 2.0 … The list goes on and on and on.

3. Platformers

When I was younger, during my SNES/Genesis days actually, I loved platformers. I didn’t care how good it was, what it was about, or even if it was Mario or Sonic. I loved platformers. Still do, to an extent. That said, with the modern growth of indie game development, it would seem that many developers are turning to the tried and true genre of decades past… the platformer.

Of all the games I play for this writing gig, I’d say that over half of them are platformers. More to the point, I’d say that most of those are 2d side-scrolling platformers. Which would have been awesome… 16 years ago.

Of course, each developer attempts to put their own spin on it, make it unique in some way — adding puzzles, time, physics, etc. — but when it all boils down to it, what you’re really left with is a platformer and, believe me, once you’ve played about 500 or so of them… they all look the same.

Guilty Parties: Braid, Max and the Magic Marker, JUMP!, Run Away, PiXEL!, The Impossible Game, ZP2K9 Pik’s Revenge, Canabalt, Runman: Race Around the World, Aztaka, Emberwind, Rocketbirds, Trine, Herman.

2. Terrible, God-Awful Xbox Live Indie Games Cover Art

This ones a bit more specific than the last few, but it has to be said… the majority of the Xbox Live Indie Games cover art is terrible. I mean, they’re just the worst thing anybody could have created. I don’t want to go hurting anyone’s feelings or anything, but why the hell does it continually look like these developers spent 5 minutes on actually presenting their game to the public?

Look, if you are going to spend all that time developing the game itself, then at least give us, the gamers, a reason to want to open the game up and explore it a little bit. Granted, there are some very good XBLIG covers out there, but the vast majority of them look worse than my 5 year old niece’s doodles… seriously.

Some of them… my god… they’re just so unbelievable in so many ways. One of them, for example, just straight-up uses drawn text from Paint… From. Windows. Paint. …

Guilty Parties: A Kitchen Sink War, Paint Boll [sic], Barf and Beer, Alderman, Amazing Wizard, Block Fight!!, Dokee the Dog and the Musical Rain, Epiphany in Spaaace!, Garrett the Slug, Happy Face!, LOL Runner, Memorania, omg cats game@#$, RPAINTS, Relic Raider, Snake Maze, World Molder, Velocity (Thanks to the guys at NeoGaf for digging up some of the worst)

They say your not supposed to judge a book by it’s cover, but I’m also guessing they haven’t seen some of these XBLIG games. No way I’m wasting my time.

1. Artsy-Fartsy games

You know the games I’m talking about. They are extremely beautiful, often times having an art style so profound that it, literally, is the epitome of the game. Unfortunately, where these games shine in their art, they usually falter in their gameplay… you know, the most important part of any game.

Of course, that’s not to say all artsy-fartsy indie games are bad, some can be pretty fun actually. But when a game’s own art work outshines anything else the game has done then I’d say it’s become a serious problem.

Over the past couple years we’ve seen an explosion in this, rather unique, genre of games.  Games ranging from being simply about graphics, to other artsy-fartsy games that are expanding to a more story-based artsy type quality. Regardless of what just makes these games “artsy-fartsy”, however, as soon as you’ve played one you know it and it’s at that point that you either wave the game off in disgust for not being more “fun”, or you join the litany of pretentious indie gamers in your devout belief that said artsy game is the best, most profound game ever.

Guilty Parties: Flow, Flower, Braid, Osmos, Eufloria, Fatale, Windosill, The Path, Passage Clover.

Honorable Mention: Tower Defense Games

Unfortunately, we did not have enough room for it, but I also feel like the Tower Defense games are on the verge of becoming another typical indie cliche. It may take another year or so, but if recent games in the past 6 months are anything to go by, this craze will not be slowing down anytime soon.

And that’s it! There are our top 5 cliches. Of course, you may ave noticed something differently. In which case, share it with us in the comments, or, even better, head on over to our new forums to discuss it in much more detail! If you register at our forums you could win an Xbox 360! … Fancy!

One last thing: don’t take this list seriously. It’s all in good fun. We may joke around about how much we are tired of this or that, but, in all honesty, the indie games market is far more diverse than the mainstream market. Despite having an abundance of platformers or puzzle games, for example, we do recognize that each game is different in its own way and that these devs are innovating their games in damn near every way possible.