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distortedaura-blog · 8 years ago

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Indie... What's that?

Just for the record, I’m not a 90s kid.

Heck, I was just born a couple of years before the 90s went poof into the thin air. So much so that I could neither enjoy the old-house charm of 90s nor earned the distinction of being the new millennium baby..

The 90s went, but its trace still lingered, in the 8-bit super Mario games, in the Pokemon saga that still came on the original Cartoon Network (long before the disgusting Oggy took over), and of course, in the people for whom making a straight line was far more important on Tetris than on paper.

My first gaming rig was an 8-bit TV console that came with two extremely cute white controllers and an infrared blaster to play Duck Hunt. I was four, and fortunately or unfortunately, it became pretty clear that the only game in which I was any good at was, well – Duck Hunt.

And so, the boring vacation mornings became an embodiment of utter bliss. Gaming marathons, followed by a power cut- all progress lost- power comes back- same levels all over again.

In fact, I’ve played the first four levels of Mario so many times that I can literally play them blindfolded now.

Just kidding. A friend of mine bet me once, and I lost.

Enough about the old school. When computers started becoming a rage, I would go to my friends’ places or cyber cafes to try my hand at the original Call of Duty or as was the rage the : Project IGI. Though it hasn’t been refreshed as often, to this day I maintain that IGI is one of the best computer games ever made, as it almost had a cult following at its peak. Kids like me would also recognize one other game that simply blew everyone away – Roadrash. Nothing could match the thrill and adrenaline rush while speeding through the busy streets of one of the best illegal street racing games ever made. Think of it, those games were not from acclaimed publishers like Ubisoft or EA, but certain indie studios sprang up to give the gaming generation its daily dose of addiction. The advanced titles with jaw-dropping graphics and goose bump-inducing soundtracks still hit the top charts regularly, but even today, there’s nothing to match the utter simplicity of Indie Titles like FEZ or Super Meat Boy. Let’s face it, I suck at big games that involve a lot of running, ducking and shooting baddies up, and the simplistic, minimal graphics, simple gameplay mechanics and the puzzles that are liberally peppered throughout these indie titles does interest me more than the big bang shoot ‘em ups. However it’s not that I do not enjoy the occasional game of Halo once in a while, but the rest of my gaming time, you’ll find me grinding away to earn the perfect 3-Star in Angry Birds.

These indie games kind of like ignite the days of jumping away with an 8-bit Mario, or shooting with unlimited ammo (without a cheat code) in Contra. Also, the slightly weird backstories do incite interest. Take Braid, for example. One of the most popular features of Prince of Persia : Sands of Time was the time reversal mechanic. Braid took the primitive play style of a 2D-platformer, married it with a compelling story and an always on time reversal power, and boom! You had one of the most popular labels of the last decade in your hands.

Super Meat Boy is the story of a boy with no skin (just a lump of meat) and his quest to reunite with his girlfriend bandage girl and save her from the evil scientist Dr. Fetus. The game is characterized by its fine control and split-second timing as the player jumps through 300 hazardous levels. The game is all about the story and the vulnerability of meat boy, who is, to put it mildly, totally adorable.

Now the one thing I really like about indie games is that they are pretty straightforward and implement revolutionary concepts with a simple gameplay mechanic. Look at FEZ. A 2D boy in a 2D world gets the power to see the world in 3D, and then he has to solve 3D puzzles from a 2D point of view in order to save the universe. I mean c’mon, how cool is that!!!

Everyone might not like puzzles, because yes, most puzzles can be solved by a technique known as brute-forcing. A bunch of players try out hundreds of brute force combinations to solve a puzzle, often bypassing its logic. But what’s the fun in that? Solving a puzzle by its proper logic gives you an inexplicable happiness, the kind of feeling that comes from solving a sum you’ve been stuck on for days, that comes from yelling – “I’m on top of the world…” in the middle of a busy street. Okay, maybe not the last part. So for all the gamers and non-gamers out there, here’s an indie fan’s request :

“Get away from the mainstream games for a couple of days. Discard your Crysis, CoD, CoC or Subway Surfers for at least two days and try out the games that actually test your brain. Because you can always come back and crush all the covenants in Halo, or get that perfect score in Candy Crush Level- 29. But not every day can you help a 2D guy see the world in 3D.” Till next time, keep rolling, keep rocking, and keep having fun.

Peace.

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