Cranky Indie Review Roundup. Hits-Only Edition!

I’ve been focusing lately on playing all the hit indie games I’ve been missing. It’s always fun to do a few quick reviews and clear the decks before the next wave comes out. It’s also a nice break from getting our newest game ready for our next Kickstarter (hopefully next month, yay!).

By the way, the current Steam Next Fest is almost over. About 4400 games, hunting for the handful that feel competent and fresh. (I wishlisted Trees Hate Me.)

(Also, all my games are in the Steam Summer Sale now. Just mentioning it.)

As for the games below? All of them have made meeelions of dollars. So if I get a little snarky? The developers will live.

1. Ball X Pit

First I tried Ball x Pit. (Pronounced ‘balkspit’)

It’s Vampire Survivors if all the enemies came straight down instead of all directions. That was enough for me to burn 20 hours getting to the credits. I think I have enough dopamine receptors for one of these games every two years.

My favorite innovation is that you can unlock characters that play the game for you. You have to beat the final level with 8 different characters to win, and I was able to clear a bunch of this while off making dinner.

Rating: Vampire Survivors Got Really Repetitive But I still Want Vampire Survivors Sometimes / 10.

2. Slay the Spire 2

I don’t have time for this nonsense! I already played Slay the Spire a bunch, and these “Each run takes 1.5 hours” games just can’t fit in my schedule. So I watched a bit of it on Twitch. It seems fine.

(To be fair, adding co-op play was awesome.)

Rating: Slay the Spire / 10.

3. Cloverpit

Elevator pitch: “Balatro, but slot machines.” Honestly, how could it fail?

It’s different from Balatro in all the ways you would expect from the switch to slot machines. Fewer build options. More luck-based. It also has that grainy, grimdark horror feel of Inscription and Shotgun Roulette, but it’s fine.

I played it a few hours, enough to unlock all 4 drawers. (Kind of the main goal in the early game.)

But then I wasn’t sure how to progress to actually win. So I Googled it. It turns out, to win, you have to do this very long and strange set of actions to escape. I wasn’t sure how I could have figured it out, and, once I knew what to do, it didn’t actually sound fun.

So I quit, but I definitely enjoyed the game for a while.

Very late last night, I opened my bedroom window and quietly whispered to the stars, “Balatro, but Blackjack.” The next morning, I found 10 million venture capital dollars on my doorstep. Non-sequential unmarked bills, wrapped in butcher paper. And they say the Indie Dream is dead.

Rating: Five Pretty Amusing Hours / 10.

4. The King Is Watching

So you spend your time balancing between building your economy and spending your economy on defenders. Every so often, enemies attack you, so you better have made enough defenders. And, get this, at the end of each wave, you select one of three different upgrades!

So yeah, I’ve played this a hundred times already. But hey, I love steakhouses. When I eat at a good one, it doesn’t mean I never want a steak again!

This game was fresh enough to keep me for 12 hours, enough time to win 2 full campaigns and start getting a little tired of the core gameplay loop.

But when I was done with it, it still offered so much more! 11 other characters to play. 4 worlds to conquer. 10 different difficulty levels. A MASSIVE meta-progression tree. And DLC on top of that! Hundreds of hours of stuff! Way more than the core gameplay can support, honestly, but some people really do have lots of free time to fill.

I’ll play another game like this in February of 2028.

Rating: “You have finished this review! Now please choose from one of three randomly selected ways to power up the next review.” / 10

5. The Witness

I absolutely love puzzle games, and I think Jonathan Blow’s The Witness is a classic of the genre.

I could never write about it for one simple reason: My favorite thing about it is an absolutely jaw-dropping reveal halfway through the game, one of the coolest twists I’ve ever seen in a game. And I think criticism really can’t worry about spoilers to be good criticism. You really need to discuss everything to properly take apart a game. But I also couldn’t stand spoiling the surprise. So I just didn’t say anything.

But Blow’s next game, Order of the Sinking Star, comes out soon. So I wanted to get all this off my chest.

(Order of the Sinking Star is a sure day one purchase for me, but I’m dreading how every single review and comment on the game must comment on how “divisive” or “blowhard” Jonathan Blow is. He is an uncompromising creator who routinely works his ass off and risks everything to bring his exact vision to the world, and he’s made two unquestionable classics while doing it. The guy is the diametrical opposite of formulaic, corporate game dev and the living embodiment of the Indie Dream.)

Rating: My favorite puzzle game ever / 10.

That was fun! And, while I was writing it, 200 indie games game out, 20 of were legit good and 3 of which will make a lot of money. I can’t even keep up with playing the hits anymore.

So, sure, I can grump about the state of indie games, but they’re still where the real action is. I mean, have you seen how the AAA guys are doing? Yikes!

Spiderweb Software has been creating turn-based, indie, old-school fantasy role-playing games since 1994. They are low-budget, but they’re full of good stories and fun. And they’re all cheap on Steam right now!

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