Tons of awesome games come out every month, but in the shadow of high-profile AAA titles, even the best ones can slip under our radars. Whether you’re a fan of fast-paced cyberpunk shooters, abstract glitch art, clever real-time strategy, or meditative, story-driven adventures, there’s plenty to love in this month’s roundup.
For more, check out our list on the most-anticipated 2017 indie games, a love letter to the glory of weird, free web games, or dive into last month's must-play games roundup.
Seed is a very short, but very atmospheric horror game inspired by The Blair Witch Project. The grainy textures almost make it look like real footage put through a filter, giving everything an uncanny feel. It also puts sound to good use, which is always a plus for these compact horror experiences.
Play if you like: Slender: The Arrival
Available:itch.io (FREE)
The Tomatoes Are OK feels partly like a warped old Boards of Canada music video or a forgotten corner of LSD: Dream Emulator. It’s like an assault on the senses in the best possible way – an abrasive and noisy VHS glitch that you can walk around in. This one’s by Dan Sanderson, whose small horror game Pacific made it into our game roundup back in June.
Play if you like: Abstract video art, LSD: Dream Emulator
Available:itch.io (FREE)
Where the Goats Are is one of the most tranquil and meditative games about the apocalypse that you’ll play in a while. Most games centered on the end of the world present it as this huge, grand, and even epic affair, but this short one-hour experience from Memory of God chooses to hone in on how our final days play out for one small, quiet corner of the planet. You control Tikvah, a lone shepherd whose daily routine involves tending to her goats, making cheese, and the occasional visit from an outsider. It’s hard to explain more without spoilers. You can pay what you want for it on itch.io.
Play if you like: Journey
Available:itch.io (FREE)
The Lost Bear stands out in a sea of clunky virtual reality games because it seems to abandon everything that VR thinks it needs to be. Rather than embracing first-person, The Lost Bear is a 2D side-scroller set within a 3D world. You control and watch the action play out on a grassy stage in the middle of a dark, shifting forest, like a woodsy puppet show. It’s a neat concept and plays with perspective in interesting ways. If VR has any future as an art, it will be partly thanks to games willing to push against the early boundaries already being set for it.
Play if you like: Ori and the Blind Forest, Limbo
Available:PlayStation Store ($12.99)
NeuroVoider actually game out on PC and consoles last year, but its fast-paced twin-stick shooting is perfect for the Nintendo Switch, which it launched on earlier this month. If you like mechs, procedural chaos, and lots of neon, NeuroVoider’s cyberpunk-styled 2D action is for you.
Play if you like: Brigador, Nuclear Throne, Enter the Gungeon
Available:Nintendo eShop ($13.99), Steam ($13.99), PlayStation Store ($13.99), Microsoft Store ($13.99)
Tooth and Tail doesn’t just excel at making the difficult to approach real-time strategy genre fun and accessible for newcomers – it also looks stylish as hell at the same time. Themed after the Russian Revolution, you take control of a commanding unit, managing farms and building up armies of various woodland animals to send into battle. Everything about Tooth and Tail is simplified, from resource management to unit control, without sacrificing the fun of the long-game that defines the RTS. It’s streamlined, but not dumbed down, which – combined with gorgeous pixel art and animations and some awesome sound design – makes for an arcade-like strategy game experience like no other this year.
Play if you like: Age of Empires, Cannon Brawl
Available:Steam ($19.99), PlayStation Store ($19.99)
Trackless combines first-person puzzling with text-based adventuring in really interesting ways, letting you interact with your environment using a device that processes written input. The thick outlines and cardboard cut-out art makes it feel like you’re inside a living storybook, and a very imaginative and surreal one at that.
Play if you like: Old-school text adventures, Myst
Available:Steam ($9.99)
Occasionally stilted voice acting aside, The First Tree is a tranquil and personal journey through a magical, shifting landscape, and it’s all through the point of view of an adorable fox. It’s a little rough around the edges and the controls aren’t always great, but it’s simple enough to play that its flaws don’t distract from its heart. Narrated memories provide a soundtrack to your adventure through the wilderness as you uncover symbols and images that run parallel to the speaker’s story.
Play if you like: Journey, Dear Esther
Available:Steam ($7.99)
Any game that boots up with a simulation of your computer being destroyed by a virus is going to be a trip, but Dujanah’s weird charms don’t end there. The self-described “clay-punk adventure” is a magical realist revenge tale set in a fictionalized Islamic country, complete with oil drilling mechs, glitchy neon-lit arcade games, and underground post-punk clubs. It’s a visually stunning, claymated world with an original soundtrack like no other. Developer Jack King-Spooner’s games really need to be experienced, since words can rarely do justice to the visual and audial poetry he creates, and Dujanah contains some of his strongest work to date.
Play if you like: Hylics
Available:itch.io, Steam ($8.99)
Like its predecessor A Normal Lost Phone from early this year, Another Lost Phone: Laura’s Story is all about learning about a person through one of the most personal belongings someone can have in modern society: a smartphone. You stumble on a missing girl’s phone and must rifle through its contents – apps, texts, photos, and social media – to find out the truth about her disappearance.
Play if you like: Emily Is Away
Available:Steam ($2.99), App Store, Google Play
So Let Us Melt is a VR game developed by The Chinese Room, the team behind Dear Esther and Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture. Described as a “science fiction fairy tale,” So Let Us Melt is about a robotic custodian who, alongside one thousand others, must build a new world for millions of cryogenically frozen humans. With music from Jessica Curry, whose scores helped define and elevate the beauty of The Chinese Room’s past work, So Let Us Melt is sure to be a delicately crafted VR adventure.
Play if you like: Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture
Available: $6.99
Lightfield is a colorful sci-fi racing game that combines elements of flight and parkour to create a fast-paced, abstract platforming experience playable in online multiplayer, splitscreen co-op, and solo. The floating, fragmented neon architecture that makes up each course is a dazzling sight, and the actual gameplay feels like the sleek wall-running of Mirror’s Edge merged with the stylish, high-speed cyberpunk driving of Distance.
Play if you like: Distance, Wipeout
Available: PlayStation Store, Microsoft Store
Ruiner is a dark, gritty action shooter from Devolver, set in a gloomy metropolis called Rengkok in 2091. It’s garnered comparisons to Hotline Miami for its fast-paced, top-down violence, but despite the similarities, it’s something entirely different. Its bleaker setting and more varied combat, which combines graceful dashes and slashes with high-tech gadgets, augmentations, and old-fashioned firepower, looks as brutal as it does stylish. An electronic score with music from Susumu Hirasawa, who has composed soundtracks for anime like Berserk and Paprika, is also a huge plus.
Play if you like: Hotline Miami, Tokyo 42
Available:Steam ($19.99), PlayStation Store, Microsoft Store ($19.99), GOG.com ($19.99)
Chloi Rad is an Associate Editor for IGN. Follow her on Twitter at @_chloi.
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