Forum Overview :: Article Submissions

by Mischief Shai-hulud 02/04/2008, 9:05am PST

As per request, I have compiled the whole list into a single article. I've also fixed the bad links, cleaned up a few glaring types, and added links to images (or youtube videos) to break up the list every 10 games.

I also replaced Star Fury with Flatspace after I found out that the direct DL version of Star Fury only gives you 2 installs.

I suggest using This Image for the frontpage link.

Here's a list of 100 indie games that I've enjoyed. This list includes freeware games, shareware games, japanese indie import games, mods, and works in progress (WIP). It does not include browser games. I've tried to spread different genres more evenly around in the list so take the order as more of a general idea of how they rank than an absolute win/lose situation. This is not an exhaustive list and I encourage anyone with games that I forgot to post them in the forum.

For old Dos games, I suggest using Dos Box. Some of these games come in .rar or .lzh format and if you can't open them, try the freeware 7-Zip. Some of these games are japanese and need to be downloaded through a website called Vector. Here's a handy-dandy graphical guide to navigating that site.

#100 Cosmic Invaders Direct Link (Freeware)

Tower Defense meets Space Invaders. The combination works suprisingly well.

#99 Typestriker XE (Freeware)

An odd attempt to mix Shmups with a typing tutor. Flawed, but still fun. The game was originally shareware so you need to enter this key to unlock the full version features.

#98 Red Ace Squadron Pro (Shareware)

WWI "lite" flight sim with multiplayer capabilities. Designed to be played with the mouse and keyboard. Fun in small doses.

#97 Harpooned (Freeware)

Shmup with a social conscience that wisely uses satire instead of preaching.

#96 Progress Quest (Freeware)

Fuck MMORPGs. This is all you need.

#95 Space Hulk SP (Freeware)

A computerized version of the Board Game. It mixes Warhammer 40K with "Aliens". Single Player only. Be sure to also download the graphics patches. Turn-based strategy with lots of tension between turns.

#94 Star Monkey (Shareware)

Old Raiden-alike with a gradius-style upgrade bar that has actual strategy to the upgrade paths. Only 3 levels, but they're huge levels. The sound effects are excellent.

#93 Juno Nemesis Remix (Shareware)

Low-Key Tempest-alike with smooth mouse controls.

#92 Ancient Domains of Mystery (Freeware)

Roguelike with an overworld, quests, and multiple randomly-generated dungeons. I like it better than Nethack because it's thematically consistent.

#91 Dink Smallwood (Freeware)

Zelda-clone with great irreverent sense of humor, though I was younger and less jaded when I last played it.

Caption: Ancient Domains of Mystery

#90 Death Worm: 2-player Co-Op version (Freeware)

Be advised, however, that there are two more, repeat, two more motherhumpers.

#89 Banana Nababa Direct Link (Freeware)

Castlevania-esque game formerly called "Boss Arena." Your childhood was WASTED, weakling!

#88 Black Shades (Freeware)

Psychic Bodyguard FPS. It has really primitive polygonal graphics, but also has ragdolls, bullet time, and occasional zombie city levels. Turning on debug mode gives you force powers. Whitney Houston soundtrack not included.

#87 Grid Wars 2 Direct Link (Freeware)

Fuck Microsoft! Fuck XBLA! Oi! Oi! Oi!

#86 TUMIKI Fighters (Freeware)

Abstract horizontal shooter by Kenta Cho. Capture the wrecks of downed enemies which stick to your ship adding firepower and providing a "meat" shield. This is getting ported to the Wii under the title "Blast Works."

#85 Notrium (Freeware)

Sci Fi Robinson Crusoe game using the crimsonlands engine. Gather and combine materials to create tools and weapons. Seek food and shelter to survive in the semirandomly created planet crawling with hostile aliens. Unfortunately, the game really lost something when they added the hermit's cabin that you crash land in at the start of the game.

#84 Titanion (Freeware)

Kenta Cho's abstract take on "Galaga." The twist is YOUR ship has the capture beam. Except for "Modern" mode where you have a "provocation beam." You shoot it at the pink galaga enemies to make them fire more bullets at you. The bullets will explode in a huge multiplier chain reaction if they're touching the galaga when you destroy it.

#83 Audiosurf Direct Link (WIP)

A game that turns your songs into Klax with abstract racing game aesthetics that move to the beat. The really cool thing is that the speed of the gameplay rises and lowers in time with the intensity (volume?) of the song.

#82 Spheres of Chaos (Freeware)

There are games that say their visuals are "trippy." There are games that describe themselves as "blah blah blah... on crack!" And then there's Spheres of Chaos. Put on your headphones, turn off the lights, and let this Asteroids-alike turn your brain into an omlet.

#81 One Must Fall: 2097 DOS Game (Freeware)

Giant-Robot-Themed PC Fighting Game from the Street Fighter 2/Mortal Kombat 1 era. Your choice of Pilot decides your speed and strength, and your choice of robot determines your moves. It also includes a huge create-a-pilot/Customize-Robot tournament career mode. Note that the "Speed" bar in the "Gameplay" menu will make the game run at a normal speed on your PC.

Caption: Spheres of Chaos

#80 Nemesis Scroll Down (Freeware)

A remake of Gradius with updated graphics and sound. The Orchestral rendition of the classic 8-bit music is fantastic.

#79 Space Tripper (Shareware)

Arcade game with nice graphics that controls like Defender. The twist is that the game plays from an overhead perspective and in later levels your hovercraft can fall off the board. No annoying astronauts in need of defending.

#78 Darkside (Shareware)

An Asteroids-alike with really good graphics where you're skimming along the roughly spherical surface of a large inhabited asteroid, clearing away smaller asteroids and an increasingly huge and nasty array of alien attackers. Don't bother with Mission mode, Arcade mode is where it's at.

#77 Engage to Jabberwock (Freeware)

A mixture of Legend of Zelda with bullet hell shmups. Explore the depths of the dungeon fighting villainous pumpkins, battlemechs, and chicks in crotchless lingerie riding tanks.

#76 Gunroar (Freeware)

An abstract vertical shmup by Kenta Cho based on sea battles. You control a boat that can move and aim independently with a variety of different control options. Moving to the top of the screen and zooming ahead increases the multiplier and the difficulty on the fly.

#75 War on Folvos (Shareware)

Turn-based tactical strategy game with great music. Its plot about a powerful space empire taking over an otherwise worthless desert planet to secure energy resources, only to find itself mired in battle against a guerrilla insurgency just might be a subtle allegory.

#74 Plasma Pong (Freeware)

Beautiful game in which paddles battle by squirting fluid at the ball. The main site was shut down by Atari for infringing on their copyright and losing the company millions in pong-related sales. Luckily it's still available at the link above. My german is a little rusty, but I'm pretty sure "Zum Download" is the button to press.

#73 Star Wars: Battle of Yavin (Freeware)

Fly as Luke Skywalker along with 30 X-Wings and Y-Wings assaulting the Death Star. Simplified flight controls can be controlled with WASD and the mouse. The game is at its best when it breaks canon and adds battles against the Death Star's Star Destroyer escort. The graphics update linked to on the same page is highly recommended (Damn near necessary for the trench run), but you need to install the game to the default Program Files location for it to work.

#72 Crimsonland (Shareware)

Robotron-esqe survival game. Killing enemies gives you experience points you can spend on perks that give you new powers. There is also an earlier Freeware Version still available.

#71 Hakaiman (Freeware)

Metal Gear-alike with neck snapping and a copious amount of grenades in place of all the yak yak. If the game won't run, change the name of the executable to something in english.

Caption: Plasma Pong

#70 Zelda Classic (Freeware)

A clone of the original NES Legend of Zelda with a full host of dungeon editing tools that has lead to a huge database of quests, many with improved graphics and new items.

#69 Chalk (Freeware)

An experimental shmup where the player fights against enemies and obstacles by drawing chalk lines over the screen in various ways. I suggest using WASD for movement to free the mouse for drawing.

#68 UFO: Alien Invasion (WIP)

Open source clone of X:Com. A new version just came out.

#67 G-Type (Freeware)

Fan-made combination of Gradius and R-Type. Note that the difficulty level affects the powerup dynamics.

#66 The Chzo Mythos (Freeware)

A series of short horror adventure games by the author of Zero Punctuation. 5 Days a Stranger, 7 Days a Skeptic, Trilby's Notes, and 6 Days a Sacrifice. It starts out merely decent in the first 2 games, but really takes off in part 3. The ending is brilliant.

#65 Fren-Ze (Shareware)

Dirt Cheap abstract shooter with really pretty vector graphics. The odd thing about it is while it does pour gobs of bullets onscreen, I would define it as more of a memory shmup than a manic shmup, especially with how regularly the bullet swarms move.

#64 Necrotic Drift (Freeware?)

Totally sweet text adventure game that mixes caltropsian comic stylings with a setting that rewards the player for having a nerdy childhood surrounded by exotic dice.

#63 Hurrican (Freeware)

Snazzy update of the Turrican action platformers from a variety of systems.

#62 Torus Trooper Pure (Freeware)

The original Torus Trooper by Kenta Cho was a tube racer/shooter with an incredible sense of speed that was unfortunately way too easy. Luckily, Kenta Cho releases the source to all his games and a fan created this fork. Speed is now tied to the number of enemies you destroy, the game is WAY more challenging, and it's even faster!

#61 Titans of Steel (Shareware) Discontinued :(

A pc version of the board game battletech that happily breaks canon in the name of fun, adding things like napalm missiles, cold light lasers, and anti-energy-weapon shields to create a more balanced and interesting game. The initiative system tracks moving and shooting independently, but after you get used to it the system avoids a million initiative-based headaches from other games. Unfortunately the superior Shareware version has just recently been discontinued, but the earlier Freeware Version is still available.

Caption: Hurrican

#60 Starships Unlimited (Shareware)

Space 4X that mixes a little Master of Orion, a little Heroes of Might and Magic, and a little Starfleet Command while de-emphasizing the boring parts of 4X games. Make sure you set the options so that by default you handle combat.

#59 Oasis (Shareware)

An interesting mix of minesweeper and early-ages civilization. Use clues to uncover valuable hidden resources, then use these resources to build your technology and population in preperation for defending against an attack by barbarian hordes.

#58 Flatspace II (Shareware)

A 2D asteroids-esque "Elite" alike that randomly creates a galaxy every new game. The really interesting thing is that ship traffic is not randomly generated when you enter a secor. Every single ship in the galaxy is independently tracked and carrying out its own individual jobs at all times.

#57 DOOM RL (Freeware)

Ha! Someone made a Roguelike out of Doom! That's right up there with Progress Quest as one of the great joke games...

...except it's actually really good. All the tactical nuance of nethack combat, along with artifacts and hidden areas and character perks, none of the annoying hunger levels and other headaches. And development is still ongoing.

#56 Slay (Shareware)

Deceptively simple hex-based strategy game. The trick is that disconnected territories don't share their economies and untis without sufficient supply automatically die. So if you rampage too far out with your superpowered unit and get cut off from your main supply store, your expensive unit is lost.

#55 Neon Wars (Shareware)

While you're trapped in an arena continually filling with deadly abstract vector shapes, each of which has a distinct pattern of movement, this is not really a clone of geometry wars. Shooting and aiming are handled automatically, the player's job is to control the ship's movement (which maps directly to mouse movements). You dodge enemies and collect tiny powerup stars that are destroyed if you let an enemy touch them. It's a game of dodging that almost has more to do with bullet hell shmups than robotron. But do yourself a favor and turn off the ugly background tiles.

#54 Critical Mass (Shareware)

Turn-based tactical combat game where you control the wing commander of a squad of starfighters and engage in pitched missile dogfights over a huge variety of randomly generated missions.

#53 Lugaru (Shareware)

Kung fu rabbits with ragdolls. The stealth kill with a knife is called "tracheotomy."

#52 Battleship Chess (Shareware)

Like the title says, a WWI-era mix of Chess and the boardgame "Battleship." At the title screen hit F3 and type (in caps) "ADMIRAL" unless you want to spend 20 hours trying to unlock the game to full functionality.

#51 Phantasmagoria of Flower View (Import)

2-player splitscreen Bullet hell shmup by Shanghai Alice. Actions you perform on your side create bullet patterns on your opponent's side. Victory is a matter of endurance.

Caption: Oasis

#50 Global Defense Network (Shareware)

A shooting gallery game where the recharge rate of your weapon and the appearance of targets are tied to the beat, forcing you to get in the rhythm of the song to get a High Score. It's one of the best non-"Simon" music games since Rez... sometimes. Unfortunately it only gets things right with about 2/3rds of the songs.

#49 Jets 'N Guns Gold (Shareware)

Horizontal shmup where killing enemies earns you money to spend on weapons and upgrades for your ship. Graphics are fantastic, the music is totally sweet, the setting is brutal and hilarious, about the only place the game lacks... is gameplay. But hell, if there's ever a game where style wins over substance it's this one.

#48 Battleships Forever (WIP)

Takes the concept of modular vector-drawn bosses from Warning Forever and turns it into a real-time tactical combat game.

#47 N (Freeware)

Play a Ninja dodging nimbly through platform mazes and avoiding deadly robots in your quest for gold and escape. Kinda like a physics-based Lode Runner. It's getting ported to the DS, PSP, and XBLA.

#46 Break Quest (Shareware)

The best arkanoid clone on the net. The sheer variety of levels keeps things from getting boring, and the "increase gravity" button avoids a million end-game-near-miss headaches.

#45 Parsec 47 (Freeware)

A never-ending abstract vertical shmup by Kenta Cho. Take your pick of a charge-shot or tracking laser ship and fight waves upon endless waves of randomly generated enemies, bosses, and bullet patterns.

#44 Mutant Storm (Shareware)

Just a really well-made Robotron-alike. It has good graphics, a large assortment of enemies, and lots and lots of replay value.

#43 Hamsterball (Shareware)

A well-made Marble Madness-alike with none of its progenitor's quarter-snatching bullshit. This game is reason enough to get a trackball mouse.

#42 Shoot the Bullet No Demo (Import)

A bullet Hell game where instead of shooting back at bosses, the object is to take pictures of them with as many bullets in the shot as possible. This is NOT a game for people new to Bullet Hell.

#41 Noitu Love (Freeware)

It's like Mega Man, but with more of an emphasis on ass-kicking.

Captions: Jets'N'Guns Gold

#40 Every Extend (Freeware)

"One day suddenly,you receive 12 UCHU- guided bombs. What do you do?" Puzzle shmup where you position and detonate yourself to create the lergest chain explosions you can. This was later ported to the PSP and XBox.

#39 The Embodiment of Scarlet Devil Direct Link (Import)

The first Shanghai Alice Bullet Hell Shmup released on the PC. While it's the weakest of the bunch in terms of graphics and music, it's got it where it counts: SHITLOADS OF BULLETS COMING RIGHT FOR YOU!

#38 Katakijin (WIP)

Promising WIP that takes the Ninja Gaiden Black combat system and recreates it in a 2D platformer.

#37 Sonic Ironstorm: Fatal Attack (Freeware)

Awesome and intense Bullet Hell shmup with Darius-Style branching missions and a graphic style reminiscent of Raiden. The twist is, the whole game takes only 3 minutes to play, so there's no dead time and no bosses that overstay their welcome.

#36 fRaBs Dos Game (Freeware)

Abuse was an atmospheric and frantic run and gun platformer where you moved with the keyboard and aimed your weapons with the mouse. The Free Abuse Project was a fan-made expansion that starts you out at a hub level filled with teleporters that connect to fan-made levels and chunks of the original levels. Do NOT turn on the background music.

#35 End Effector (Freeware)

Near-professional quality horizontal shmup.

#34 Determinance (Shareware)

Fantastic multiplayer sword combat game that maps sword movements to mouse movements ala. "Die by the Sword." You also fly like superman. This would have scored much higher on the list, but the servers are nearly deserted and the bots are pretty dumb.

#33 rRootage (Freeware)

Abstract Bullet Hell game by Kenta Cho. It has 4 different play styles, each with different bullet patterns, (Panic Bombing Normal mode, Bullet Scratching Psyviar mode, Color Changing Ikaruga mode, and Shield Charging Giga-Wing mode), and 10 levels of difficulty (in A, B, and C patterns plus random combintations of the 3) ranging from child's play to lunatic. If you ever wanted to get into Bullet Hell but felt you needed a game to ease yourself into it, this is it.

#32 Future Pinball (Freeware)

Beautiful engine for the creation of Pinball tables. Besides Fussbett's Caltrops Pinball table, 3 Angels, Dead Hunters, and Road Girls Revisited come highly recommended.

#31 Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden (Freeware)

Zseni said, "Bro and I played it through. The term "life-changing" was bandied about, not inappropriately."

Caption: Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden

#30 Clean Asia Scroll Down (Freeware)

Totally fucking weird and intentionally so. Telling you anything about this shmup would ruin half the experience, but I will tell you that Ship #1 is the real player's choice.

#29 Echoes (Freeware)

Geometry Wars meets Asteroids. It even has achievements (called zoots) and an unlockable minigame.

#28 Zombie Smashers X2 (Shareware)

A great remake of River City Ransom with a punk theme, gratuitous gore, and 2-player co-op. This is probably the only videogame I've ever played that takes the time to explain the difference between working class ska skinheads and nazi skinheads. If you're trying the demo, choose Hiro, he starts with the kung-fu tatoo (tatoos add new moves) and the game doesn't really open up until you have the kung fu tatoo.

#27 Seizure Dome (Freeware)

Robotron meets sumo wrestling with awesome results.

#26 Cho Ren Sha 68K (Freeware)

Ain't nothin' here but a damn well made shmup.

#25 Land of Legends (Shareware)

A really tiny but well made fantasy version of Advance Wars. This is probably the only fantasy strategy game I've played where zombies are not only useful, they're actually really fun to use.

#24 Kamui (Import)

Similar to Raystorm, but you also have the option of mixing your lightning shots with your main shots to create a massive bullet-destroying beam. The graphics are done in low-res 2D, but what this game pulls off with those scaling sprites is downright amazing.

#23 Knytt Stories (Freeware)

"Within a Deep Forest" was maddeningly difficult. "Knytt" was too easy. Knytt Stories is juuuust right. It's a nonviolent mix of Metroid and Ico designed to be played in relatively short episodes. Makes good use of contextually enhanced creepiness. It includes a level editor and a big fan community hurriedly creating new episodes.

#22 Perfect Cherry Blossom (Import)

Quite possibly the absolute hardest of the Shanghai Alice Bullet Hell shmups, even on easy mode. Where the other Touhou games all have a super hard unlockable extra level, PCB has an extra extra level called phantasm. It also has some of the most memorable songs in the series.

#21 The Ur-Quan Masters (Freeware)

An Open-Source remake of Star Control 2 mixing the best parts of the PC and 3DO versions, complete with voice acting and remixed background music.

Caption: Echoes

#20 Gish (Shareware)

Cartoony physics-based platformer where you play a 12-pound ball of tar using your properties to fling yourself across levels. Your quest is to save your busty human girlfriend, the implications of which are disturbing.

#19 Warning Forever (Freeware)

A shmup that consists of neverending boss fights. Each new boss adapts to your playing style. Concentrate on attacking from the front, expect armor plating in the front of the next boss. Get picked off by a beam cannon? Expect the next boss to be bristling with them.

#18 Chromatron (Freeware)

Puzzle game by a former caltrops alum. It's like the Incredible Machine, but only using light puzzles and running with the concept to amazing extremes. It used to be only the first episode was freeware, now all 4 episodes are.

#17 Twin Seeds DX (Freeware)

Shmup in the style of the Shanghai Alice games. It's really not fair to call it a clone because its emphasis on bullet scratching takes the gameplay in a direction the Touhou games never went.

#16 Cave Story (Freeware)

Possibly the most beloved indie game of all time. It's a fantastic metroid-alike with a weird but interesting plot.

#15 Blue Wish: Resurrection (Freeware)

More like Blue Wish: Res-Erection! This is a bullet hell game in the style of the Cave brand shooters. Doesn't make for the pretty displays like a Shanghai Alice game, just keeps the pressure on fast and furious.

#14 Magi (Shareware)

A fun real-time strategy game of ritual wizard combat with some of the best music I have ever heard in a video game, indie or mainstream. Note that this is referring to version 1.3, which greatly sped up the pace and made the gaining of spells and stats more straightforward. If the version you tried had a white main menu, you tried the old version.

#13 Trilby: The Art of Theft (Freeware)

A 2D game of stealth by the author of Zero Punctuation. The graphics are pixelly and the controls are wonky but damn if this isn't the most fun I've had with a stealth game since "Thief."

#12 Mountain of Faith (Import)

The most recent of the Shanghai Alice games and the most beautiful by far. The gameplay is back to basics where collecting powerups gives you options which can be sacrificed for bombs. Also includes a flamethrower weapon (Black Witch #3).

#11 Sam & Max: Abe Lincoln Must Die! (Freeware)

Sam & Max live! In episode style! And they've released the most highly praised episode of season 1 for free! Note that the cockroach can be used on a person and can later repeat what they say.

Caption: Warning Forever

#10 Decker (Freeware)

Based on the computer hacking from the old Shadowrun game, Decker is just about the perfect roguelike. Randomly generated systems crawling with varied IC to deal with, multiple viable strategies for taking on the system, and leveling up not only increases abstract stat numbers, it increases the complexity of the game. Sure the graphics are ass, but Decker is a fantastic free experience with all the good points of roguelikes and none of the headaches.

#9 Armageddon Empires (Shareware)

A post-nuclear apocalypse game that's a cross between a 4X strategy title and Magic: The Gathering. Your random hand of cards determines the units you have available to build, strategic hexes on the map produce the resources necessary to build them. The random factor fits the ragtag mad-max theme and makes for a gameplay experience that's more akin to Bridge than Chess. The AI is excellent, not just because it plays well, but also because it noticeably reacts to your actions and plays in a very convincingly "human" manner. Just do yourself a favor and don't read the background story. It would be difficult to come up with a more disappointing nuclear apocalypse story even if you tried.

#8 The Desolate Room (Freeware)

The less I say about this game, the better. All I'll say is once the initial fetch quest is completed the game really picks up. I think you'll like what you see.

#7 Weird Worlds: Return to Infinite Space (Shareware)

A fantastic game that plays like a self-contained season of Star Trek and is designed to be finished in 20-minutes or less. Plot courses to unexplored planets, uncover treasures, install new components on your ship, recruit friendly aliens and mercenaries, fight tactical battles against hostiles in pausable real-time, all with a sense of humor about the game and all its inspirations. Classic.

#6 Immortal Defense (Shareware)

This is the best Tower Defense game of all time, but that's not really a fair description because it's akin to calling Half-Life the best Quake clone of all time. In terms of both gameplay and plot, Immortal Defense is head and shoulders above the bloated and simplistic tower defense subgenre. There's a huge assortment of towers to choose from without any "certain enemies are immune to tower type X" cop-outs to artificially increase variety, and there is much more to placement than maximizing the amount of path that lies within their firing ranges. I would rate this game's plot alongside "Planescape," and its themes of the foibles of immortality mixed with its minimal string soundtrack makes this the closest you'll probably ever get to a videogame adaptation of the movie "The Fountain."

#5 The Battle of Endor (Freeware)

Ever since I was a little kid, the one movie scene I most wanted to act out was the space battle at the end of Return of the Jedi. And here it is. You play a faceless X-Wing pilot at the Battle of Endor, specifically one who did not enter the Death Star so that it could "concentrate all firepower on that super star destroyer!" It recreates that moment when the TIE fighters swarm in and the guy says "There's... too many of them!" perfectly. The enemies are so numerous that a strategy of simply targeting and shooting down the nearest TIE won't cut it. You need to prioritize amidst the sea of fighters for tie's trailing wingmen and firing on cruisers, all while taking quick potshots at star destroyers that stray close to the fleet with your proton torpedos. Unlike its successor, Battle of Yavin, the action never lets up for dull turret-strafing levels or frustrating trench runs, it's just a nonstop dogfight against near-impossible odds.

There's an incredible and highly recommended graphics mod linked to on the same page, but the mod doesn't work unless the game is installed to the default directory in program files. I also recommend you DON'T install the music files from the mod because they're the exact same songs as the default install, only they sound like they were recorded off a shitty VHS tape. Maybe they're recorded at a higher sample rate and the mod-maker had a "MAME dev" moment?

#4 Aquaria (Shareware)

A HUGE combination of Metroid and Ecco the Dolphin. Everything from the beautiful artwork to the music to the little details and side quests mark this game as a labor of love. Make sure to turn on Frame Buffer effects in the setup screen.

#3 Imperishable Night (Import)

Shanghai Alice makes the best Bullet Hell games and Imperishable Night is the best Shanhai Alice game. The transforming character pairs and their ikaruga-like effects on enemy satelites is interesting and fun. The bullet swarms look gorgeous against the dark blue night backgrounds. Both main characters from the series show up as bosses in the game and EVERY boss has a "final spell" bonus round you can play if you pick up the requisite number of time tokens. There are multiple final bosses you can pick between based on a branching path. There's an english translation patch. And finally, this game has the fairest difficulty curve of the bunch. I could totally expect a beginner to be able to handle IN on easy mode. Other games in the series may do certain things better, but for overall quality Imperishable Night is the best.

#2 Deadly Rooms of Death (Shareware)

The best puzzle series of all time. The concept is simple: it's a turn-based game where your character can move in 8 directions and rotate his really big sword in a grid-based room. The room is filled with nasty creatures that follow a basic AI script who try to kill you. Your job is to slay all the monsters to clear the room. The series starts with King Dugan's Dungeon, an older version of which is available as freeware (Direct Link), then Journey to Rooted Hold begins incorporating cinematic moments within the gameplay ala. Half-Life, and The City Beneath is almost a full-fledged RPG with all the puzzle elements intact. The whole hair-pulling series is highly recommended, but especially parts 2 and 3.

#1 The Freespace 2 Source Code Project (Mod)

There was a time when flightstick-controlled space combat sims, like the X-Wing and Wing Commander series, were as big a part of computer gaming as first person shooters are today. But while Lucasarts really screwed the pooch with the disappointing "X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter" and Origin gradually turned Wing Commander's emphasis away from space combat and more towards creating Z-grade sci fi movies starring the marginally talented Mark Hamill and some malevolent puppets, the genre still died with a bang thanks to dark-horse publisher Volition's Freespace 2. Freespace 2 was the greatest space sim of all time, and in my opinion the greatest video game of all time, but tanked in sales and ended up bringing down the whole genre with it.

Years later the Freespace 2 Source Code was released and several fans decided to do something with it. And wow what they did, and are still doing. I could go on for several paragraphs describing the incredible combat, giant scary capital ships, and top notch mission design of Freespace 2. I could go on for several more paragraphs describing the fantastic changes the SCP Project made to the visuals of this 1999 game, but thanks to the wonders of modern forum technology I can just show you instead. Note that this guy's using the realistic lighting tags, so that's why everything's so dark. Also this was done with the older media VPs, a new set just came out which looks even better:

Installing the SCP mod is a real doozy, fortunately someone's created a web-based installer for those who don't want to go through the process manually. Here's the current guide to installation. And if you're sorting among the many many free missions and campaigns available to play in Freespace 2 SCP, Derelict and the Freespace 1 Port come highly recommended.

Honorable Mentions

Here are some games that didn't make the list because I either hadn't heard of them before I finished the list or they're games I don't care for but other people love.

Cloudphobia (Freeware)

The most drop-dead gorgeous freeware shmup I have ever seen. Take your pick of arming yourself with a laser rifle (borning!) or a vibra-sword (Awesome!) Your desire for transforming mecha porn will be satisfied here.

The Battle for Wesnoth (Freeware)

A huge community-built turn based fantasy strategy game with emphasis on leveling-up units.

Starscape (Shareware)

A very pretty cross between Sinistar and the RTS portions of "Giants: Citizen Kabuto."

Toribash (Freeware but you pay for extras)

A turn-based fighting game where you adjust your guy's joints to pull off moves. Worth downloading just to see the built in replays of fighters tearing their own heads off and throwing them through the other guy's torso.

La Mulana (Freeware)

Gigantic Indiana Jones-styled metroid-alike with 8-bit productions values

Cortex Command (WIP)

Kind of like a cross between "Worms" and "Metal Slug."

Nikujin Direct Link (Freeware)

Brutally difficult platformer where you play a nude ninja. If the game doesn't run, change the name of the executable to something in english.

Outpost Kaloki (Shareware)

Space Station management game with a cartoony futurama-esque style. It was ported to XBLA.

Dwarf Fortress (WIP)

One part Dungeon Keeper, one part Nethack, ten parts insanity. It's amazing what a pair of mentally unbalanced shut-in brothers can accomplish.

Ether Vapor (Import)

Absolutely gorgeous shmup that's plays like Raystorm with a touch of Einhander. It just went on sale at Himeya Shop last week.

Caption: Toribash

The Top 5 Most Overrated Indie Games

Picking on Indie developers kind of makes me a cock, but these developers brought it on themselves by charging money for these games.

#5 Galactic Civilizations 2

You create your ships with the absolute most loving attention to detail. Maybe you even write little development histories in the box provided. You carefully reshape nacelles for maximum aesthetic values. You spend hours crafting the most fearsome looking battleships possible. Then you take your creation out into battle...

...and learn that combat success is revolves entirely around your boring economy! Ha ha!

This game is a total cock-tease. As Fabio sagely pointed out, "Why they chose to allow detailed, hands on control of boring stuff like taxes and revenue distribution but abstract and automate fun things like espionage and SHIP COMBAT I do not know. The game seems like one graphics pack away from being a full on business sim."

#4 Darwinia

Dull. That's the word for it. A slow-paced version of Syndicate with the soul-gathering and point-controlling mechanics of Sacrifice. Any sense of urgency quashed by the fact that you cannot lose, it's just a question of how long it takes to win. The visuals are all abstract and stylish and shit, but there are a zillion other abstract games that are more stylish without having inconsistent framerates that constantly choke up. Shit, the basic enemy is a flat line of triangles drawn directly on the ground. The most ironic part is that the stand-alone rocketship demo is more stylish and interesting than any of the full game levels.

#3 Virtual Villagers

Gametunnel has really shitty taste in games. Take their 2006 Sim game of the year, Virtual Villagers. An ugly and dull game about assigning tasks to your idiot volcano refugees, then waiting several hours of real time for the task to be completed, only to return and find them all dead because your researchers decided it would be more fun to try to push the impossible to push boulder instead of researching farming and thus left the village without food when the berry bush ran out. Fun! The puzzles in the game range from drool bib obvious: use a constructor on the blocked well to give access to fresh water, to Sierra-level insane: research religion to level 3 then dunk a pregnant woman in the lagoon to cause her to give birth to jesus, who proceeds to solve many of the island's problems through deus ex machina. Plus your villagers look like what you'd get if a superdeformed anime character fucked a muppet.

#2 Defcon

Defcon is no more "The World's first Genocide 'em up" than Introversion is "The last of the bedroom programmers." Cornutopia created a vector-based "War Games" years earlier. This excruciatingly slow and dull game could easily be a quickly forgettable flash game. All the oohing and ahing about the diplomacy model is bullshit, there are console-based First Person Shooters with more complex diplomacy. I am convinced that if steam never picked these guys up, no one would have even heard of this game, much less declared it art because they decided to add sad music. Why steam picks up and hypes the hell out of introversion's snore-fests while turning down awesome games like Determinance is beyond me.

#1 Snood

One of the most popular puzzle games in the world! It's the ugliest Bust-a-Move clone imaginable and it installs spybots onto your computer. Fuck snood.

Caption: Zzz... huh? Did I just hear a sample of a woman crying in the background music? This isn't a boring game anymore, it's art! ART!!! Damn, I've got some hella indie cred!