Chroma Lab
This is an absolutely amazing VR experience. Turn on any inspiring music on your PC and lose yourself in a tactile swirl of undulating particles that you twist and flip and explode like a wizard in a ball pit. Everyone who has tried this has been absolutely captivated and enchanted by it. From animators to professional drummers to IT guys, it makes everyone discover a real joy of playing again.
I bought a 1080ti to future proof my PC for VR, and yet i havent experienced a game that takes advantage of it in a real way till this. 1.5X SS and 1 MILLION BALLS to play with! It is a stunning thing to see and control.
– Real player with 28.5 hrs in game
Read More: Best Indie Physics Games.
After two hours playing with Croma Lab (I’ve bought two hours ago) I can say only one thing: this is the best experience I’ve played (and I’ve tested a lot!). You can spend hours and hours in it if you like particles & physics, or your’re an artist or you want a trip without risks (I think I don’t need drugs, food or sex anymore ! ).
Only could be better if you could share your presets with others (browse online) , or change particles with custom models; perhaps make the UI has a haptic response, multiuser sharing same space (impossible I suppose because the big data you generate) ; some lights you can put in space (visible on the sphere particles)….
– Real player with 14.5 hrs in game
Nauticrawl
(Currently nominated for both US and European IndieCade, and has a Steam rating of 98% with 66 reviews.)
Imagine a world so dangerous that just being outside will kill you almost instantly, yet the elite still have all they want or need. But you, and some others want escape so badly, you’ll risk anything.
You find yourself seated at the totally unknown controls of an unfamiliar crawler-type craft. And the tasks to accomplish your escape? Entirely a mystery, just like the craft itself. So you start pushing buttons and grabbing levers…..and you die. Repeatedly. But just maybe, with a great deal of luck and some amount of logic, (and the rare contact from outside) you eventually manage to start the most critical equipment for an unknown destination with only the vaguest purpose. Beyond, of course, avoiding running out of power while surrounded by death. And causing the cover to lift on the last button you will ever push….. At which point your replacement takes your place in the next such craft, perhaps with a little more information (but likely not. And what I’ve just described all happens within the first minute of Nauticrawl.)
– Real player with 21.4 hrs in game
Read More: Best Indie Puzzle Games.
Nauticrawl is an excellent, but short, puzzle adventure game. It manages to be clever with its design without becoming frustratingly incomprehensible, which is a feat I can only imagine took some time to balance. I have wanted to build a game like this myself for decades, where you are left with a machine with no instruction and lots of inputs, and have to experiment to figure out how to use it. This idea first came to me in the 90’s when I played Out of This World on the SNES (known as Another World in other regions) where a scene requires the player to quickly figure out how to work an alien tank to escape his captors.
– Real player with 10.7 hrs in game
EarthX
Updated review time!
So a shit ton changed after my review. The game is now better than ever! Now you can get hours of gameplay out of this! Its amazing!
Every update brings something new to the table, like colonies, starlink, Mars and more! The dev is always wanting to improve the game and fix bugs and thats amazing. This game does not have a lot of bugs, honestly its rare to run into one.
People usually bash Unity games because they are made by Devs who dont know what they are doing. But this is a prime example that Unity games can be amazing if they are in the right hands!
– Real player with 50.0 hrs in game
Read More: Best Indie Space Games.
I really want to like this game, but the core loop of building the reliability up on rockets for them to still feel like a 1 in 10 chance to explode when at 99% reliability isn’t fun. I wish the game had a prototyping stage where you sink time and money to get a slow increase in reliability so that when a rocket blows up, it feels like either I’m at fault for shorting on development time or the result of various factors interacting in unforeseen ways.
Another thing that feels extremely lacking in this game is the contracts system. Right now it’s just fiddle with the slider to underbid by the lowest amount possible, which just means you have to have the screen open the entire time, waiting for the ai to make its bids. If the developer really wants to keep the slider they should implement a reputation system or something of the sort. That way at the beginning you’re being forced to bid much lower than the other established launch providers and there’s more risk in pushing a rocket out of development early. Then, as you progress along in the game, and build your reputation, you’d be able to gain contracts while bidding slightly higher than the ai due to your established name and low frequency of sudden unplanned disassembly in mid flight.
– Real player with 33.6 hrs in game
Earthtongue
This review is an analysis of how the ecology functions and entertains you. It will point out quirks that you will learn as you play for hours on end. It covers the base game-world, but the resources that you manipulate in the game has patterns and limitations, and will appear in any game module.
Working with the game ecology and finding the in and out of sustainable systems, i want to say the ecosystem is flawed, and the 2d nature of the game is part of the reason. The game life finds local maxima to survive and will burn out over time. Life in this game works like wild fire burning dry trees, leaving behind ash for the next generation to regrow. Maybe this fire analogy is an accuracy way to expect how life will NOT continue to thrive without considerable maintenance by the user to ‘fuel the fire’ of this system.
– Real player with 475.1 hrs in game
I feel funny reviewing this, since I bought it with leftover money from my Steam Wallet, but after some thought and looking at the truly nice levels that both come with the game and as fan addons I decided what the heck.
Like the game, my review will be to the point. This is an ecosystem puzzle game, and the best game your not playing yet. Yes, it has pixel graphics and not much apparent complexity. But if this digital simulation where quite as simple as it looks, I would have taken it back by now. Keeping every organism alive in any level long enough to get its journal entry is actually pretty tough. This takes tactical thinking and a degree of patience, the lucky thing being its not the kind of patience required to play a Sims game or an RPG with two much time spent going from A to B. I’d call it tactical patience, and a slight tolerance for things not going as planned. After all, if things get really hairy with that fly overpopulation, you can hit them with an asteriod.
– Real player with 72.1 hrs in game
Titans of Space PLUS
I really want to like that one, because it sure looks like the one thing I have been waiting for. And it is certainly a beautifully and well done information tour of our solar system.
The problem is: That’s all it is. Basically, what it is is a rail-ride through the solar system. Don’t get me wrong, this game certainly has the potential to become an awesome “feel like in a space ship” sim, and this is exactly why I am willing to give it the thumb up, and if you want to support someone who tries to create this, please, by all means, do so!
– Real player with 5.6 hrs in game
When I loaded this up I’d just bought a handful of games from Steam and one from Oculus' own store (Discover Space 2 - I would have bought that from within Steam but although it advertises it, you can’t actually buy it anymore). I’d only just played/experienced Discover Space 2 and had been utterly blown away by it. So upon loading up Titans I wasn’t initially impressed due to the graphics in comparison. I was thinking of a refund in the first few minutes. But upon hitting 5 mins or less into Titans I was suddenly drawn in and realised what the program was trying successfully to convey. This is an amazing piece of software especially if you are interested in astronomy. I will keep this now and return to it. The whole point of this game is to convey the sense of scale of our galaxy and in that it completely succeeds. I recommend this as an unforgettable educational experience.
– Real player with 2.4 hrs in game
CHANGE: A Homeless Survival Experience
There isn’t much to say about how I ran into CHANGE: A Homeless Survival Experience beyond noticing it while browsing the store, thinking it may make for a peculiar experience since the concept seemed promising as well as the fact I could run it, and finally buying it once I had the spare money for it.
While the game struck me as a side-scrolling visual novel of sorts at first, it doesn’t take long to find out about its management and rogue-like elements, which end up being the most notorious. The premise is simple: you’ll play as a homeless person and your goal is to escape that destiny, which you’ll do by obtaining a job and saving up some money to rent your own place.
– Real player with 51.8 hrs in game
I thought this was a pretty neat little game and with a good amount of time sinked into it I can say that it is for sure worth it for the experiences.
There are a few things that I want to make notice and bring attention to
Reputation:
It seems like an almost useless thing to have. It’s like it gives you maybe one good night event but nothing really important. The three homeless people walking the street won’t get mad at you for begging near you I think. And you can get perks at the park with high enough reputation but by that time I’m usually only missing one perk spot or I already have them all already. It’s cool to be considered more liked by other homeless, but it doesn’t seem to have any real benefits that help.
– Real player with 45.8 hrs in game
Emily is Away Too
Spoiler free review! Both for this game and the first!
Now to start off this review is that I got this game for like 2 dollars on the steam market, off sale right now it is 5 dollars. This may seem like a lot for a simple click and typing game yet that is not the case, here is how I view it. People will pay millions to own pieces of art, millions more to have custom pieces of art, and normal people will pay like 20 dollars to go into an art museum. This game is only 5 dollars and many, including myself, would consider this game a work of art. Not that it’s visually appealing to the eyes or anything, but that it tells a simple story, one of love, in a masterful style. So please before you read further into this review don’t let the price of the product in mention deter you from purchasing it, there are plenty of Triple A games at 60 dollars that tell little to no story and have mediocre gameplay at best.
– Real player with 11.7 hrs in game
I’ve bought this game a while ago, and just recently that I decided to give it a try. I really enjoyed Emily is Away , and this second title was very good. It’s not exactly a sequel, though, maybe more like an “extended version”? If I recall correctly, the first game had a few significant differences regarding the timeline of certain scenes. Also, you don’t have to play the first part to understand this one.
The plot is simple: you can choose a name and username and you get to chat with your friends through an old school looking instant messenger. You have your good friend Emily, and this time, a new friend shows up: Evelyn. Emily and Evelyn believe in different things, and it’s up to you to figure those differences. Depending on what you choose to say to them, you can remain as friends or even start dating. And there are bad endings too.
! (Like if you choose to lie to one of them about your personality) Emily’s personality is a bit better than in the first game, but she can still be annoying sometimes. Evelyn was more chill, and I happened to like her better.
– Real player with 9.0 hrs in game
Logic World
Looks like a good start.
The first thing I would mention, is that this game is about building logic circuits, using logic gates. If you don’t know what an AND gate is, you probably need to do a bit of reading /videos before playing.
My “hello world” (first project) suggestion for new players, is to build a half adder circuit. A half adder is one of the first multi-gate circuits you learn when learning digital electronics. If you understand how computers add, you understand quite a lot more than many people about how computers work.
– Real player with 276.9 hrs in game
LogicWorld is a boolean logic simulator in 3D with “game” marketing/usage controls.
So pack your backpack with some knowledge or a lot of curiosity.
And in time, we will also get built-in tutorials about boolean logic - looking forward to them.
It is also early access!
Means yes, there are a hell lot of bugs! But that is normal for most indie games.
And you can rely on the developers to fix the bugs within reasonable time.
The game has an awesome community (mostly on Discord). If you ignore some slang, it is very wholesome and helpful.
– Real player with 241.8 hrs in game
Equilinox
This is quite a wonderful game, if you want to sit down after a long day and watch something you create grow into a giant world, this is a good game for that. But it has a few issues. Long story short at the bottom!
The cons.
- I had spent hours making myself a world in my second save, and it was going pretty well. I log out for the day excited to play it tomorrow, but when I logged on the next day all the progress in my second save was gone, This has now happened three times. I’d make myself a world, then it would get deleted. (NOTE, this doesn’t happen to all players, you can contact the dev if you need help.)
– Real player with 32.6 hrs in game
Equilinox is a very easy relaxing game about creating your own environments and unlocking new things for those environments. You do this through adding plants to the world, each with certain characteristics (such as biome requirements, altitude preferences, and being near another species). There are 2 ways to unlock new plants. The first is through modifying your plants in a certain way (such as changes to size and color) and evolving them into another species. The second is through quests, completed by fulfilling certain requirements (such as having X amount of Y species). There are also animals you can place in the world, each also have their own characteristics. You unlock new animals in the same way you would plants. Animals in the world create diversity points (DP) that are used to place species into the world. Biomes are created & spread through specific plants. Creatures and plants that are not in their preferred biomes lose their health and will eventually die.
– Real player with 22.3 hrs in game
Silicon Zeroes
A very entertaining puzzle game, especially if you’re into logic puzzles. The game strikes a good balance between being a feast of recognition for those familiar with computer logic while at the same time properly explaining every concept to the player (without being condescending) and introducing everything at a pleasant pace. This allows you to always focus on the puzzle at hand, without feeling overwhelmed by the new tools you’ve just been handed.
There are multiple solutions to many of the puzzles and an option to try to achieve a perfect score if you’re so inclined. Scores are measured in the number of modules used and in later puzzles also in the time taken to generate the desired output. Sometimes there’s a fast solution with few modules, other times however you will need different solutions to achieve fewest modules and best performance separately.
– Real player with 77.9 hrs in game
Why buy this game?
Well, “game” is a bit of an odd word for Silicon Zeroes. If I were to describe it, I’d say it’s more a series of puzzles, tied together by a loose narrative. The puzzles are based on the workings of computer / electronic hardware. If you’re interested in computers from that perspective, of course the game will be of value to you.
The puzzles start out easy (“Here’s how to connect components!") but then quickly ramp up in difficulty. For me, this has really been a “Stare at the problem for a while, leave it alone for a day or two, come back and make some progress, leave it alone again for a day or two” sort of process. It’s a nice to have these little puzzles sitting in the back of your mind, something to ponder on the bus ride or on a coffee break. Then, when you finally solve the problem you get that “Ah ha!” moment that’s so tremendously enjoyable.
– Real player with 42.5 hrs in game