JUEGOS RANCHEROS’ FISTFUL OF INDIES: AUGUST 2014

Every month, as part of the regular monthly meetings of the Austin, TX independent game community JUEGOS RANCHEROS, we do a very casual & chatty rundown of the ten or so games from the previous month for the audience, to give people — especially those outside the indie community itself — a look at what they may have missed. The featured games are both local and global, and both indie and, on occasion, a bit-bigger-budget — what binds them together is simply that they’re all amazing.

In keeping with the tongue-in-tobacco-packed-cheek tone, we call these run-downs A Fistful of Indies, which are presented here on Venus Patrol for your reference, in addition to their home on the JUEGOS RANCHEROS site.

Mountain

Developer: David OReilly | Platform: Windows/Mac/Linux/iPhone/iPad | Get it: App Store / PC

“…you are born at the beginning, spend quite a long time in the middle alone and mostly just idling, listening to music and occasionally having brief moments of clarity where you delight in the profound beauty of simply existing, and then at the end you die. Maybe I’m totally projecting here, but it’s difficult to think of a simpler and truer statement than that.

Get this for your PC or Mac especially, and just let it sit with you on your desktop as you go about your day…”

80 Days

Developer: Inkle Studios | Platform: iPhone/iPad | Get it: Here

“…based on Jules Verne’s novel, it’s a super charming piece of interactive fiction wrapped in very pretty point & click adventure clothes, with some light economy and trading mechanics, and really pleasant written bits of color at every stop that flesh out the world…”

Lovely Planet

Developer: Quick Tequila | Platform: Windows/Mac/Linux | Get it: Here

“…a first person platforming shooter that hacks off all the macho nonsense those words might conjure at the knees, it’s into a speedrunner’s dream game about moving through levels of this low-poly Katamari-ish rainbow world, with a fantastic soundtrack by the guy behind the electro-pop band Bo-en, who’s worked with some of the Arcane Kids folks. This one’s super nice and joyful…”

Ghost Wheel? Bundle

Developer: Various | Platform: Windows/Mac/Linux | Get it: Here

“…a free bundle of games put together by a lot of the same friendly folks who submitted a bunch of our Space Cowboy games. They’re all ghost stories, in a sense, but taken to really odd & interesting ends…”

Super Game Jam

Developer: Bram Ruiter & Daniel Oliveira Carneiro | Platform: Windows/Mac/Linux | Get it: Here

“…a fantastic ongoing documentary series featuring a ton of our friends and regulars from Fantastic Arcade, each episode documents the creation of a short game by a two-person team of developers and artists, and you also get the eventual game along with the episode…”
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Harmony Summer Hardpack Tape 11-in-1

Developer: thecatamites | Platform: Web | Get it: Here

“…a mixtape of games from the creator of games like Murder Dog each based on a single song, my favorite of the bunch is the one I’ve pictured here, Tarantella Sicilienne, which is a super short and super perfect little short story of an Eastern European farming family. If nothing else, try that one — they’re all free and playable on the web.”

Metrico

Developer: Digital Dreams | Platform: PlayStation Vita | Play it: Here

“…loosely themed around the idea of infographics, at its core it’s a series of very mechanical platforming puzzles, all wrapped in this really beautiful low-poly aesthetic and with a crazy good soundtrack by a Dutch synth musician called Palmbomen…”

You Are The Wormhole

Developer: Aleks Sennwald | Platform: Web | Play it: Here

“…the gist is that you play as this wormhole here who mostly exists in a quiet lonely corner of the universe, but once every few million years is visited by a star ship that just sort of happens to pass by.

All you can really do is try to keep the chat nice and light & not offend anybody, and then as soon as they came, they’re off again, leaving you alone for several million years more. It has so much personality for such a tiny game, and Aleks is one of the best illustrators I know — everything here is done up in this beautiful hand-drawn style…”

Horse Master

Developer: Tom McHenry | Platform: Web | Play it: Here

“…it’s really hard to do this game justice without lessening the impact on you, so I’ll basically say that it’s a game about a guy who buys a horse larva, specially grown in a chemical vat exactly to his specifications, who brings it home and raises it in his bathtub over the next few weeks… it’s the perfect mix of nightmarish and funny….”

Hohokum

Developer: Honeyslug & Richard Hogg | Platform: PS4/PS3/PlayStation Vita | Get it: Here

“…a game purely about movement, color and sound, it’s absolutely one of the best games of the year. Every bit of this is as joyful and beautiful as anything I’ve ever played — I can’t recommend this enough…”