New Year, same game backlog. Only, what if we made it even worse? Forget finally returning to The Witcher 3 or Persona 5, there are weird indie games to play. They're cheap. They're short. They'll probably run on your Steam Deck (and maybe even your Windows 7 PC).
They just might surprise you with ambition and depth well beyond what you'd expect, and you can feel cultured, "in the know," and above all productive as you check passion projects and outsider art off the little gaming backlog to-do list you keep on your phone. I've gathered eight of my favorite weirdo deep cuts of the past year, plus two from the end of 2023—they were technically in the running for this year's Game Awards, so they still count!
I loved Picayune Dreams' demo, but I only just got around to digging into the full release. It's the only "this game is like Vampire Survivors, but" -type game to really steal my heart like the original. Picayune Dreams is a "bullet heaven" game with more active, challenging combat than poncle's breakout, and even when you've reached the walking nuke threshold, the game has some gnarly bosses with thumb-cramping attack patterns to weave through.
I completed a run and saw its story through to the end after about six hours, but even after that it's a game I had trouble putting down. After reaching the ending, secrets, unlockables, and a global online leaderboard beckon to keep you coming back. Fantastic art, a pulsing breakcore soundtrack, and a surreal, unsettling, Evangelion-esque story seal the deal.
Psychopomp is a psychedelic, disturbing, occasionally outright scary descent into what is either madness, or the true subterranean world that wears our own like a mask. Solve puzzles and converse with/hammer smash the strange denizens of this other world in a game that thrives on its winning soundtrack and breathtaking dreamscapes. Originally out in January as a free game, the version you want to play is the $9 "Gold" re-release from October—it's twice as long and has updated graphics to boot.
I was excited for Felvidek for some time, but I was still surprised to find it has ended up as one of my favorite games of this year. It's early modern times in the Slovak highlands, and in addition to the general strife of the day, something vile and supernatural stirs under the land. Protagonist Pavol is a washed-up, cuckholded, and disgraced man-at-arms who must investigate with the help of straight-laced priest Matej.
Felvidek's desaturated, sepia-toned visuals don't really look like anything else out there, but its later monster designs—as well as its bangin' prog rock soundtrack—remind me of Mason Lindroth's Hylics. Similar to Hylics, Felvidek offers a stripped-to-the-studs retro take on turn-based JRPG combat, with minimal complications, no grinding, but some surprisingly challenging fights. I love this game.
If Skald: Against the Black Priory is good enough to win praise from Larian head honcho Swen Vincke, surely you could stand to give it a shot. Something I've really enjoyed about it is how Skald expertly evokes late '80s, early '90s DOS RPG pixel art, music, and vibes without being slavishly devoted to the more outdated mechanics of the time. This is a hardcore CRPG to be sure, but it feels transparent, fair, and balanced in a distinctly modern (or at least late '90s) way. I also have to second senior editor Robin Valentine's praise of Skald's surprisingly, deliciously sinister world building and horror elements.
Dread Delusion is a little weird for me as a "2024 game" since I've been playing it in early access since '22, but this low-fi, Morrowind-inspired RPG got its full 1.0 release earlier this year. Combat isn't my favorite aspect of Dread Delusion, but that's not why we're here. The game's real draws are exploration, atmosphere, and immersion in a truly strange, imaginative sci-fi/fantasy world.
The Oneiric Isles feature a collection of deeply flawed societies clinging to asteroids above a red star. My favorite one of those cultures is the nation of human flesh-eating undead who have finally managed to peacefully co-exist with their neighbors thanks to the invention of lab-grown "human" meat, teeing up what might be, at least for my money, an all-timer RPG quest.
At $25, Anger foot is the most expensive game on this list, but it's still less than half the price of a triple-A game, and it's a fantastic arcade FPS. "Hotline Miami in first person" is the easiest topline pitch, but I also found it plays a lot like 2022's fantastic Neon White. Its time trial shooter gameplay really got me into a flow state of John Wickian murder, and even as a guy with little patience for "funny" games, Anger Foot's writing had me smiling most of the time and even having a few genuine guffaws.
Judero is a wonderful action-adventure game made out of old GI Joes and claymation. The titular Judero is a wise and kind druid out to right the wrongs of the world with his mighty walking stick and ability to possess creatures great and small. Judero has the feeling of a fable or fairy tale, filtered through the folk psychedelia of '70s UK pop culture. One thing that's really stuck with me are the surreal, anachronistic conversations you can have with NPC townspeople, who hold forth on everything from lost love, to gender, to climate change, to anthropology. If that sounds too dry, it's also a very funny game, I promise.
Looking for a bad time? Try Mouthwashing, baby. It's like if Scavenger's Reign traded its breathtaking scenes of natural beauty for stifling claustrophobia, or if Alien's tension and body horror were entirely manmade. After a collision with an asteroid, deep space delivery ship Tulpar is marooned and its captain left maimed, unable to communicate, and in constant, horrible pain. A nonlinear narrative explores how things got this bad, and just how horrific the aftermath will become as rescue fails to materialize. I finished Mouthwashing in just three hours, but I'm still thinking about it months later.
Straftat has proven a teamwide favorite on PCG, a bat signal for every old school FPS-liker on the crew. It's 1v1 only, a pairing of the CoD Gulag (one of that series' truly great innovations) with old school PC FPS map design and movement. Straftat is a mighty engine of "one more game," the antidote for live service blues and battle pass blahs. It also has a fantastic sense of humor, priming you for moments of ragollizing slapstick.
The chronology is all outta whack here, but I just had to include this one, while I also could not in good conscience lead with a mod for a game from 1999—it's for Thief Gold, not 1998's Dark Project, please don't email me. But we've made it all the way to the end of the list, so we can have a little treat. The Black Parade bills itself as an unofficial expansion pack, but it's really more of an unofficial Thief sequel: 10 massive missions that take advantage of the intervening years' progress not to push graphics tech, but deliver some of the most jaw-dropping immersive sim maps I've seen. I missed The Black Parade in the churn of last year's holiday chaos, but it's as great a time as any to dive back into The City.
