This time I want to talk about some of my favorite indie games out there. Those are not underdog games, and each of them gets lots of praise from critics and players upon its release. Today, we will talk about such outstanding indie masterpieces as Don’t Starve and Valiant Hearts: The Great War. If you’re really into casual and indie games, you have probably heard those titles before. However, if you’re mostly skeptical about this segment, I guess those games are the ones that will be able to change your mind just like they changed mine some years ago.
Don’t Starve (2013)
Don’t Starve is a third-person perspective survival horror game developed by Canadian indie developer Klei Entertainment. The game features open-world mechanics – the player should take advantage of the resources provided on the terrain to survive numerous threats. The design of characters and locations is heavily inspired by Tim Burton’s movies and Victorian-era Steampunk style. Even though the game features stylized hand-drawn graphics, it turns out to be pretty grim, frightening and offers a one-of-a-kind highly-empathic gaming experience.
At the beginning of the game, the player finds their character lying on some mysterious field with no supplies or other additional means to survive. At the same time, the main character is very vulnerable to several gameplay factors. To keep your protagonist strong and healthy, you should collect and cook food, cure the damage, sleep, keep the protagonist away from factors that drive them insane (yeah, it’s that complex), and keep a fireplace during the night time to protect the main character from the predators and monsters that hide in the darkness of the forest.
To survive, you will have to build a camp with a laboratory, means for cooking and preservation of food, chests for storing stuff and resources, mini-farms for generating food, etc. The world of Don’t Starve is inhabited by many creatures that can become your prey, your associate (not too frequent), or your mortal enemy (actually most creatures). The game features an RPG-type mechanic that suggests developing your character’s parallel growth of the threats that the protagonist will have to face. For instance, after some time spent in the game, you will have to face wintertime. In this part, the resources will be incredibly scarce, your farms won’t produce food, the nights will be long, and the protagonist will constantly starve from hunger and low temperature.
At this point, you may be interested in whether the game has an end. Well, in fact, it has something that looks like a story mode. At a certain point of the game, after you manage to survive winter, your character will be able to get access to the underground level of the map. After that, all the resources and tools that you managed to craft will vanish. You will have to apply all the survival skills that you managed to learn to pass through the underground labyrinth and find the game’s primary antagonist in the end. It is not clear what are the actual relationships between those characters or how the protagonist was trapped in this spooky world. In this regard, Don’t Starve is a kind of David Lynch game that “does not like” to give any direct and sane answers.
Valiant Hearts: The Great War (2014)
This game will take the players straight to the battlefields of the First World War, where they will witness many stories of people involved in this terrific global conflict. Not by chance, I am making an emphasis on the horrors of wars because of Valiant Hearts: The Great War is a very humanistic, historically-accurate, and story-driven game that provides players with many peculiar facts as they accomplish story missions.
Valiant Hearts: The Great War is a 2D puzzle game where you can control your character from the second-person perspective, just like in early games like Mario Brothers. It features a great cartoon-like style – all the decorations, terrains, and elements were created by 2D artists. However, despite its light and humorous style, it does not fail to tell the stories of friendship, love, and honor with passion and honesty.
Valiant Hearts: The Great War features only a story mode and a single campaign, which is not too long – it takes about 4 to 6 hours to finish it. However, all the levels are filled with secrets and bonuses, so if you’re one of those persistent players, it may take more than 10 hours to get a 100% score. Even though it is just a 2D puzzle, some of the quests may require turning on your thinking cap, so don’t expect it to be a simple challenge.
