5 Indie Games To Keep You From Going Crazy This Fall Semester
All work and no play…
Well another summer has officially come and gone, and it is back to school for many of us. Goodbye music festivals, pool side parties, and bikinis. Hello homework, deadlines, and finals. Sure the first few weeks are a breeze, but once the constant barrage of projects and tests kick in, school can have you curled up in a ball, crying and wishing you were back at Coachella.
Lucky for us though, video games are a thing, and can keep you from going crazy during a stressful semester. Sure, we are all excited for the “Call of Booty’s” and the “Ass-ass-ins Creeds,” but school and or work doesn’t always afford the time to sink in hundreds of hours into a single game, and at $60 a pop, most of us don’t have the dinero to get more than a few games per year. So what is a broke, stressed out college student to play? Indie games, that’s what!
Like a good stress puppy, indie games can have the instant effect of putting a smile on your face and helping you forget the fact that school is making you its bitch.
Plus, most of these games are less than half the price of the major releases coming out this fall. With that in mind, here are five indie titles to play while cranking out ‘dem grades’ this fall.
Pokémon Uranium
Let’s be honest, we all caught a bad case of Pokémon fever this past summer. Pokémon Go re-ignited our passion for those cute little monsters, and now we can’t wait for Pokémon Sun and Moon to come out. Wait. What’s that? They don’t come out till November? Fuck.
Not to worry though, there is an amazing Pokémon game out in the wild that you have to play now, titled “Pokémon Uranium.” This game is not an officially licensed game from Nintendo or GameFreak. Instead, it is a passion project from two guys that spent over nine years bringing the game to life.
This new adventure takes place in a new region called Tandor, and you play as a boy, whose father goes M.I.A. after his mother disappears in a nuclear reactor meltdown. This incident causes radiation to seep in to the region, creating a whole new nuclear type of Pokémon. This game has over 150 new species of Pokémon, including all new starters — hint: choose the fire raptor — mixed in with some old favorites. You set out to become a Pokémon trainer while stopping a threat that seemingly wants to turn your world into a Fallout game.
Best of all, this game is totally free. There is a catch though. The creators of the game pulled the download link before the Nintendo police came knocking down their doors, so you will have to search the internet like it is a legendary Pokémon to find a download link. I can’t post one here because the Nintendo police will be knocking down my door, but best believe, this is one of the best Pokémon games I have played in a long time and is well worth the search.
Totally Accurate Battle Simulator
Fact: History classes are amazing when they are not boring. Hearing about the conquest of some ancient civilization is boring. Seeing it happen is another thing entirely. No, I’m not talking about some terrible Hollywood re-enactment where white people are portraying Samurais, or Native Americans — looking at you Cruise and Mortensen. What if you could take that battle you learned about in class, and recreate it using digital versions of those sticky stretchy guys you used to get from 25 cent vending machines?
Now, you’re starting to get an idea of what “Totally Accurate Battle Simulator” is all about. Created by LandFall Games, this is a real time strategy game where you and an opponent set up two opposing forces with different classes on a battlefield. Then you just let them go at it and watch the hilarity that ensues. The graphics and physics are ‘wonky,’ and that’s the point. You’re seeing what these great battles in history looked like, if your eight-year-old self recreated them with 90’s novelty toys or the toys you get from the 99 cent store.
This game is still in development, but you can play it now if you pre-order their new game, ClusterTruck. Or you can wait until the open alpha goes live November 15.
ROCKETSROCKETSROCKETS
If you ever need a pick me up after a hard day in class, but lost your dealers number — don’t do drugs kids — then this is the answer to your EDC prayers. “ROCKETSROCKETSROCKETS” is what happens when Tron and Missile Command make sweet, sweet electronic love to each other over a bombastic synth-laden soundtrack.
The premise is simple, each player or AI pilots a rocket that shoots an endless stream of rockets at other players who also have an endless stream of rockets. Blow up the other players and you win. The game is simple to pick up and play, but hard to master. Too stressed out to deal with the fast paced insanity from the vs. mode? This game has a mode where you don’t blow each other up, and instead opt to use the neon propelling from your rockets to create beautiful works of art.
The beauty of this game lies in its visuals and soundtracks. Your eyes are treated to a light show every time you play a match, with rockets leaving neon streaks across the screen while the camera zooms in and out as players fly past each other. The soundtrack is also amazing. Ben Lam created a soundtrack for this game that makes you feel like someone slipped you some M83 and you’ve begun to hallucinate beautiful neon streaks and explosions. If you love any of the influences mentioned in this article, this is a game not to be missed. It is available now on the PS4 and Steam.
Rocket League
I know judging by my last pick that it looks like I am obsessed with rockets. I’m not. Well, maybe a little. And I know, I know, this game came out last year, and we all played the bejesus out of it. But a disc version with a ton of downloadable content was just released for console, and they have continued to add new and interesting add-ons to the game. So what better time to revisit Psyonix’s incredible indie game, than now?
For the uninitiated, “Rocket League” is a title that allows players to pilot a rocket-powered vehicle in a 4 v 4 soccer match with cars. It sounds ridiculous, and it is. It is unbelievably fun. Imagine Twisted Metal with a ball and two goals, and you have a pretty good handle on what this game is.
Recently, they added a new basketball mode that swaps out the goals for hoops, but is equally addicting as the soccer mode. This October, Psyonix is also dropping a new free update titled Aquadome. In this update, Rocket League is going underwater in a whole new map that has sharks and fish swimming by as you try to score on your friends while new electro tracks play in the background. Gamers can also purchase two new vehicles that look right at home in the new map. If you missed out on this game the first time around, or just haven’t played in a while, now is a great time to pick it up. Rocket League is available on the PS4, Xbox One, and PC.
The Bunker
Do you ever get that moment where you finally have some free time, but can’t figure out if you want to play a game or watch TV? Well, that is where this game comes in.
“The Bunker” is a point and click psychological thriller game that has players take control of the main character by choosing which actions he takes, and watches them play out in movie-like scenes. You play as John, the last surviving member of a bunker that was used to survive a nuclear fallout in England. The only thing that keeps him relatively sane is his routine that his mother gave him before she passed. Everything was going fine until alarms start going off that forced him to venture out into isolated and forgotten parts of the bunker in order to figure out what is going on.
This game has an excellently written narrative that does an amazing job of exploring the themes of what isolation and survival will do to a human being when trapped in a bunker. Rarely are you comfortable in this game, and the choices you make affect the direction of the narrative all the way up to its ending. If you are in the mood for something heady, look no further than this mind-fuck of a game. Just be aware that it plays closer to a foreign film than your usual game, but is intense and entertaining all the same. The Bunker is available now on the Xbox One, PS4, PC.
