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Recently, out of boredom, I was browsing the interwebs and came across some homemade games by a guy named Jason Rohrer.  I immediately fell in love with a lot of his games and I set out on finding all the interesting under-appreciated indie games I could come across.  What follows is the result of that search.  Without further ado I will just jump right in.

Games of Jason Rohrer

Jason Rohrer is one of the few people out there trying to expand the boundaries of games into the realm of art.

Passage

Passage is probably his most famous game, it is only five minutes long but it takes a couple of play-throughs to ‘get it’. I really can’t say much more about it because it is meant to go into with fresh eyes.
I will say that I personally did not get it when I first played through it, but that may have been do to the fact that I did not know that you could move up and down as well as left and right.

Between

Between is a two player only game.  There is no way to play this game by yourself, it literally is not possible.  You can either play with a stranger across the internet or with a friend, but I would highly recommend playing this game with a friend.  For the best experience make sure they cannot see your screen.  You may even want to play it in separate rooms from one another.  This is another game that is best played when you don’t know the mechanics of it going in; in fact, it is really the point of the game to collaboratively figure out what to do with the other player.

Gravitation

Gravitation is my favorite of his art games, it features nice pixel art and some dynamic music and screen effects based on the mood of the player character.  I still haven’t beat it yet but it is definitely interesting and is much easier to ‘get’ than passage.  The viewable area of the screen shrinks and expands depending on whether the character is sad or happy respectively.  After getting him in a happy enough mood, you can jump very very high.  If he becomes sad you can hardly jump at all.  It is definitely meant to be an art game, but it is much more enjoyable in the traditional sense that is associated with games than other art games.

Transcend

This game is very cool if you read the instructions on Rohrer’s site, if you don’t, it is very confusing.  It is a shooter in which you have to collect these items in able to damage the enemies; however, through playing the game, you generate a unique musical sculpture each time you play.

Cultivation

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This is the only one of the games in this article that I have not played, so instead of me telling you about it I will just give you a quote from the creator himself: “Cultivation is quite different from most other games. It is a social simulation, and the primary form of conflict is over land and plant resources—there is no shooting, but there are plenty of angry looks. It is also an evolution simulation. Within the world of Cultivation, you can explore a virtually infinite spectrum of different plant and gardener varieties.”

Primrose

Primrose is the game that I am most addicted to from Rohrer’s collection.  It is not one of his art games, but it is an extremely addictive yet simple to understand puzzle game.  There is even a built in online leaderboard in which you can watch the highest scorer’s replays.  Did I mention that it is addictive?

Sleep is Death

I am so unbelievably pumped for this game.  It is another two player only game, but this time you must play with a friend, no stranger play here (sounds dirty tee hee).  In this game one player controls the pivotal central character in a setup similar to an old adventure game.  The other player controls everything else.  They control the room, the objects, and the events.  Each player has thirty seconds to complete their turn.  For the first player, he/she can type something in a speech bubble to say something, or type something in an arrow to denote actions.  The other player has thirty seconds to react to everything the first one just did using the game’s built in editor.  Throughout playing the game the players together will collaberatively tell a story.  So cool.  The game does come with a bunch of premade items, but each time you play the items created for the story get saved permanently to your library.  The game is currently only available for pre-order, and I suggest you get over there and do it because you get it on 4/09/10, a full week earlier than it is supposed to release.

Games Sketchbook

Those are all his ‘big’ games.  The following are from a series he did on the Escapist that are about exactly what the title of the game is.  Click the links to go to the escapist article that explains the concept and motivation behind the game and contains the link for the download.

Perfectionism

Idealism

Police Brutality

Immortality

Regret

Games of Rod Humble

Rod Humble is another game maker who has created a couple of notable art games.

The Marriage

This game is very simple and is supposed to represent the feeling of a marriage as experienced by the designer.

Stars Over Half Moon Bay

I still don’t get this game, but you may fare better.  I think the point of the game is to make constellations, but I haven’t quite figured out how to do that exactly.

Games of Cactus

Cactus is quite well-known in the indie game scene for creating astonishingly creative games and game concepts in just as equally impressive amounts of time.

Cactus Arcade

There are far too many Cactus games for me to cover here so I will just mention the Cactus Arcade — a collection of a lot of his games that have descriptions and are launched right from the arcade.  All of the games a very unique (some may say weird) and all of them are fun for different reasons.  One only needs to visit his website to see just how uniquely creative he is.

Random Other Games

Since the rest of these games are all by different people I am just going to list them under the same banner.

Canabalt

This is another one of those highly addicting games.  The goal is to make it as far as you can with out dying from one of the many obstacles in your path.  What makes this game so cool is the music and art style.  In the background you can see towering robotic invaders blasting the city and giant alien ships flying by at high speeds.  There are sometimes items in the foreground that scroll by and the birds and glass make for really neat touches.  Try it once and I am sure you will love it.

Monaco

Monaco is a very promising, still in-development game that recently won the grand prize at IGF.  The premise is that you and up to three other players are thieves trying to successfully steal an item in each of the levels.  Each player chooses a specific class that gives them specific skills.  For example, a lock-picker or a hacker that can deactivate alarms.  The art style is tile based and you can only see what you have a direct line of site to.  This makes for very interesting visuals as well as gameplay.  I have not played it myself, but everyone who has seems to love it.  No word yet on what platforms it is coming out on but the creator did say that nuts will be punched if it is not on at least one console and that pc release is very likely.

Love

This is a not-so-massively multiplayer online game developed entirely by one person.  You and 200 other people work together to build up cities and structures to fight the A.I. controlled denizens of Love’s world.  You do need to buy a thirty day game voucher from the website in order to play it but it looks so unique you may want to pay it to just try it at least once.  They do not auto-renew, you just buy another voucher when your thirty days is up if you would like to keep playing.

Knytt

Knytt is a simple but charming platformer.  You play as the title character who is taken away by a UFO in the beginning of the game.  While flying through space, the UFO collides with an asteroid and crash lands on a planet.  As Knytt, you mus navigate the new world and collect the missing pieces of the UFO to escape.  Along the way, you will see the native inhabitants and local flora and fauna.  The controls are simple: move and jump; however, it is strangely great.  I suggest you give it a shot and download it.

Fish Face

Fish face, despite the dark color pallete, is actually quite upbeat and charming.  You play as a fish…..with a face, a fish face that completes crazy jumps.  I know it sounds weird but it is actually quite fun.