The 18 Most Unusual Indie Games - Baba is You, Kentucky Route Zero and Papers, Please

We all sometimes get tired of large-scale titles that indulge the demands of average gamers, but do not always decide on different experiments. Perhaps the best cure for such video game apathy is made by indie developers – because they can often afford to ignore the usual foundations and truly push the boundaries of genres and industry itself. In this collection Cybersport.ru has collected the most unusual of the independent games of recent years – of course, those that do not have a high entry threshold.

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Baba is you

Baba is You is an unusual puzzle in which the player himself sets the rules. The main task of each stage is to deliver an object to a certain point. But here the objects themselves, as well as the format of passing levels, are constantly changing.

In addition to directly playing objects – stars, flags and walls – at the level are phrases of the format “X is Y”. They can (and should) be moved to change the rules of the game. For example, in the conditions of passage, it may be said: “The flag is a victory.” In this case, to complete the level the player will need to get to the flag. But it’s not that simple! Instead of chasing the flag, the player can break the mentioned phrase, instead make up “The wall is a victory” and go through the level just by hitting the nearest wall.

You can experiment not only with the conditions of victory. For example, you can break the phrase “A wall is a stop” and learn to walk through walls. Moreover, you can collect the statement “The wall is you” and start moving all the walls on the level at once. But what happens if you make “The Wall is Baba” or “Baba is a Victory”? ..

Papers, Please

Papers, Please is a game by American game designer Lucas Pope, which is primarily interesting because it cannot be attractively described. Border guard simulator? Game about passport verification? Agree – does not sound. But how fascinating, if you still give her a chance!

Each visitor to the fictional country of Arstock, whose guardian is the main character, has his own little story. One flees from repression, the other wants to reunite with his beloved, and the third goes to a dying relative – but, bad luck, did not have time to prepare all the documents. What will you do in such a situation? Close your eyes and let the poor guy say goodbye or stay true to the country code?

The situation is complicated by the fact that the protagonist is not a faceless pawn. He also has a family that needs to be taken care of, and therefore sometimes bribes are not only a crime, but also the only way to pay for drugs to relatives. Depending on who your hero remains faithful to – himself or his native country, the ending will change.

The stanley parable

At The Stanley Parable, office clerk Stanley woke up every day and went to do routine work, following implicitly orders from his superiors. Stanley was happy – until at one point the instructions suddenly stopped coming from above. Finding himself in such a mysterious situation for the first time, the main character took his eyes off the screen and suddenly discovered that he actually had free will.

The problem is that we do not learn all this from Stanley, but from the narrator – and soon we realize that he does not so much comment on the actions of the hero as … directs him. “Stanley turned left and opened the door,” the character says, and if Stanley listens to him, then very soon – in just ten minutes – he will see a happy ending and … will be back to the workplace. But what would happen if he chose another door? Caution, finding the answer to this question leads into a deep rabbit hole.

Kentucky Route Zero

In 2011, Kentucky Route Zero creator Jake Elliot opened a fundraiser for developing the game on Kickstarter. Then he thought that he would spend a little over a year on everything, but fate decreed a little differently: the final, fifth act of this story was released on Steam only in January 2023. But this did not bother her fans at all.

KRZ – a kind of ode to text quests from the nineties. Here, users also have to click on locations and listen to endless dialogs, but only this time – they also really do not understand what is going on in the game. The main character of KRZ is a merchant who must deliver the order to an address not indicated on any of the cards. On the way, the player will collect a real collection of puzzles, which will become more and more strange and mystical closer to the final, and in the end they will still remain unanswered. But this is wonderful, because Kentucky Route Zero is a game about dialogues and exploration of the world, as well as about the notorious atmosphere, which came out really theatrical here.

Return of the Obra Dinn

Return of the Obra Dinn is the second commercial game from Lucas Pope after Papers, Please. Unlike many developers who found their niche and began to develop in it, Pope quickly moved away from the customs officer simulator and released something completely different – a Lovecraftian detective with very unusual mechanics.

In Return of the Obra Dinn, the player will explore the Obra Dinn ship, returning to port without a single living soul on board. The protagonist at the same time has an unusual watch that allows him to interact with the bodies of the dead and see the circumstances of their death.

The player’s task is to figure out what happened on the ship and find out the fate of all 60 crew members: that is, find their corpses and identify the causes of death. In the first minutes, the game can scare off an abundance of information, but towards the end, all parts of this disparate puzzle will suddenly begin to take shape. And no other puzzle can give such a feeling of satisfaction.

Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy

In the first days after the release of Getting Over It with Bennett, Foddy became a real hit on YouTube, since it is almost impossible to go through it without breaking the keyboard, mouse or face in the process.

The game about a naked man in a pot who, with the help of a sledgehammer, climbs a huge mountain is a terrific example of how to do something beautiful around one maximally primitive mechanics … Beautiful in its awfulness. And she does not pretend for more.

Outer wilds

The creators of Outer Wilds frankly failed with naming – the game is still confused with the much louder The Outer Worlds from the Obsidian studio. And yet, the indie title on the development of a small solar system has won its place under the sun, and with it a couple of titles “Game of the Year”.

In Outer Wilds, the player is given a spaceship and sent to explore the planetary system without any clear task. But as soon as it comes to taste, everything suddenly ends – the sun explodes, and the world absorbs darkness … And after a moment the hero wakes up at the ship, prepared for his first flight. What caused the temporary loop and what led to the death of the sun? The player will look for answers to these questions in an open world that will die and be reborn every 22 minutes.

Crypt of the necrodancer

The description of Crypt of the NecroDancer on paper sounds as if this title does not exist and cannot exist in the universe of roguelike and rhythm games – not the genres that the average gamer could put together. Still, Crypt of the NecroDancer somehow came out.

This is a classic dungeon crawler with archetypal enemies and not too beautiful graphics – but with frighteningly peppy music, in the rhythm of which the main character will have to jump in the cells and wave his sword. And Crypt of the NecroDancer can lead the top games that can not be shown to patients with epilepsy.

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The 18 Most Unusual Indie Games – Baba is You, Kentucky Route Zero and Papers, Please