Ridiculous Fishing had a rough journey to iOS, interrupted by a gruelling intellectual property dispute over an imitation of the game Vlambeer originally made, and which was the basis for their mobile-based sequel. Best indie mobile game - Ridiculous Fishing - A Tale of Redemption (iOS/Android) However, there is something wrong with stalking and harassment, and any community that provided a bed for this needs to take a look at itself. To clarify, with thanks for various inputs, there is nothing wrong whatsoever with being a virgin. Since women can get sex whenever they want, and what else is there to be depressed about than not being able to get sex? It was all very peculiar. **This is not me being dismissive - the harassment came in large part from a community site for adult male virgins, who were apparently angered by the suggestion that a woman could possibly understand depression. *Which is as much a tribute to the quality of Hollywood's accountants as the power of the games industry - but that is a story for another time. Honorable mentions: Candy Box and its sequel, Candy Box 2, are both interesting contributions to the genre. Its hard to say much about A Dark Room, because so much of the game is about revelation - discovering why your world is as dark and constrained as it is, what has become of the world outside the room - and then the village, and then the forest - and what you become in the process of advancing towards the story's conclusion. Beginning in a dark room with an extinct fire, the action expands through warming up a hypothermic builder, setting traps for whatever animals survived (what they might have survived is not clear), building a community, crafting, trading and exploring. Best Candy Box-style game - A Dark Room (Browser-based, free)Ĭandy Box, released in spring 2013, effectively defined its own genre: a mixture of the compulsive Candy Clicker-style game, with a larger plot and quest narrative emerging through time, portrayed through ASCII art and primitive arcade elements.Ĭandy Box might reasonably expect to win this genre, but Doublespeak Games' A Dark Roomtook an intriguing experiment and turned it into a remarkable piece of storytelling. Those looking for something a little lighter may enjoy Alone in the Parkby Cheap Drunk Games - a sly parody of the heroic adventure in which a gamer is tempted into a national park filled with embarrassingly useless NPCs, all gagging to assign quests. A beating, squishy, misshapen and partially exposed heart. Although your horse and its various categories are absurd and disquieting, there's an organic heart to the game. Honorable mentions: Another Twine game, Horse Master: The Game of Horse Masteryby Tom McHenry dismantles the "princess management" model of gaming, while also staying true to indie Twine games' oft-seen interest in transhumanism and body horror. Anyone looking to perform a simple mitzvah this holiday season might want to think about voting for it. Where much of the "zinester" tendency in indie gaming has been heavily autobiographical - with games such as Dys4ia, Mainichi and Conversations with my Motherdrawing directly on their creator's lived experience - Depression Quest's project is more general - although all four are worth playing, and all four ultimately have the same impact: to increase the total quantity of empathy in the world.ĭepression Quest is a free game, and will be a free game if greenlit on Steam, without in-app purchases. But it manages to do something many games fail at, or do not even attempt - to make an imaginary situation feel as if it has real stakes. Best indie adventure game - Depression Quest (Browser-based, free or PWYW)ĭepression Quest, which recently made the news for saddening reasons when co-creator Zoe Quinn's decision to return it to Steam Greenlight triggered a harassment campaign by a group of furious virgins**, remains a sharp and affecting examination of depression in the form of a multiple-choice game - the more depressed the player becomes in the game, the fewer options they are able to take to try to improve their situation.ĭepression Quest is not a long game, or a complex one, mechanically or structurally. As we grow we love things, in my experience, not for their polished surfaces but for their interesting textures.