The “games” themselves – minutes-long miniatures based around themes of isolation and anxiety - are not particularly demanding. The Stanley Parable garnered a mass of plaudits last year, and members of its creative team have delivered not one but two more deconstructions of the genre in 2015.ĭavey Wreden’s The Beginner’s Guide takes the pretext of a retrospective of the Source games of a fictitious developer to delve into a deeper examination of insecurity and the creative process. Runners-up: The Beginner’s Guide - Everything Unlimited Ltd (Windows/OS X/Linux)ĭr Langeskov, The Tiger and the Terribly Cursed Emerald: A Whirlwind Heist - CrowsCrowsCrows (Windows/OS X) Rapture is quiet, compelling and at times heartbreaking, and pushes the idea of what a first-person console game can be a little further. Jessica Curry’s score builds on the ambition and complexity of her previous work to present one of the outstanding game soundtracks of the year, and arguably the decade. Rarely have posters advertising a pantomime in the village hall seemed so heroic.įor an indie game - thanks in part to the support of SCE Santa Monica - Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture excels both graphically and in its sound design. Often, the scientists whose memories are at the heart of the story take a back seat to a priest seeking to comfort the elderly, or a holiday camp administrator fighting to preserve some normality for the children in her care.
However, the uncovering of the plot - which riffs on the classic and uncanny tradition of British science fiction, where the apocalypse is quiet and inexorable - often takes second place to the everyday lives of the villagers. The title itself is, of course, a giant spoiler, but what it means, how it happened and what it has to do with the player unfold across town halls, holiday camps and the Great British Countryside™. As they explore, ghostly, illuminated memories of the recent past help to piece together what happened. Where Dear Esther’s canvas was the flinty desolation of the northern Scottish islands, Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture begins with the player dropped into the well-kept but inexplicably deserted Shropshire town of Yaughton. Sony's concerted rush at the indie space, Everybody’s Gone to the Raptureis a contemplative walk-em-up from the team who defined the modern genre with Dear Esther. And, as one would expect, it is absolutely beautiful.
#Best indie games on steam 2015 Pc#
Winner: Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture - The Chinese Room (PS4)Ī long time in the making, and originally conceived as a PC game before The Golden Daikatana for Best First Person Unshooter Its arrival, and success, is proof that there is a market for intelligent, emotional adventure stories outside the media tie-ins Telltale has made their own. Or, as Chloe would say, hella mortal peril.ĭespite being published by Square Enix, Life is Strange has a real indie sensibility to it, from the lengthy discussions of photography and teen angst to the Syd Matters soundtrack, and retains some artisanally rough edges. Max is as likely to use her powers to save a classmate from social embarrassment as to rescue Chloe from mortal peril.
#Best indie games on steam 2015 free#
This left them free to focus on developing emotionally resonant situations as Max and Chloe rediscover their friendship, search for a missing girl and try to puzzle out the meaning of her apocalyptic dreams.Īrcadia Bay and the Blackwell Academy are crammed with opportunities to learn more about the characters and their world, from emails to matchbooks. However, Dontnod scaled down the peril by explicitly building the power to rewind time and try again into the game world's narrative.
And instead of a combat-trained operative, the action centres around Maxine “Max” Caulfield, a student who discovers she has the ability to turn back time when her childhood friend Chloe is shot in front of her.ĭontnod has clearly taken notes from Telltale’s award-winning, big-selling approach to updating the point-and-click adventure to the age of fully explorable 3D environment. Instead of Neo-Paris, the settings is the Pacific Northwestern town of Arcadia Bay. Life Is Strange, their contribution to the burgeoning episodic adventure genre, is a very different beast. Before this year, Dontnod were best known for the action-adventure title Remember Me, which despite a novel setting involving mnemonic burglary in a futuristic Paris offered relatively familiar third-person combat and platforming.