The best indie game with a strange central mechanic

Indie games may not have the production values ​​of their big-budget brethren, but they make up for it with a freewheeling creativity in their mechanics that makes them stand out from the crowd like no other.

Whether you're using a sledgehammer as your only form of movement, or reviewing and proofreading papers, there are plenty of indie games with some really weird central mechanics.

6 overcome

Sisyphus had never experienced anything so difficult

As a designer of legendarily frustrating and entertaining games, QWOP When players must control the runner's individual limbs in lethal ways, it's no surprise that another of Foddy's great experiments in absurdist humor has a similarly bizarre central premise.

in overcomeGamers play as a naked dude inside a cauldron wielding a sledgehammer. Propelling yourself through some truly tough puzzles that will test the patience of the Dalai Lama because of how infuriating they are with the sledgehammer, players will have to make it to the end of the brutal challenge while listening to the philosophy of resilience. Oddly enough, it doesn't always work, but it's incredibly rewarding when you get to the finish line.

5 baba is you

change the rules

Puzzle games are one of the oldest types of games, predating video games by a long time, making them difficult to truly innovate. That means if indie creators want to stand out in the puzzle space, they're going to have to do some really weird things.

enter baba is you. in baba is youIn , players are faced with the assumption that the rule set of a puzzle is fixed and that instead they must construct their own rules through modular construction to solve the puzzle. It may sound wild and strange, but it's a creative way to reinvent the puzzle genre that requires genius-level solutions.

4 untitled goose game

horn hell

At the time of launch in 2019 untitled goose game It became an internet favorite for its strange and hilarious premise of a goose trying to cause as much chaos as possible. But there's more to it than just internet fodder.

The premise is strange, but setting up a game mechanic to just mess around is really weird and relatively unheard of in the world of video games where the mechanics are (usually) oriented towards violence. Pure play is a fun and strange way to reinterpret the boundaries of play, and a great gateway into the world of silly and weird indie games.

3 Exciting Literature Club

Visual novels you shouldn't read

Visual novel games aren't for everyone because they require a lot of reading, and sometimes the choices can be limited, so some may even debate whether they qualify as “games” or not. but, Exciting Literature Club It showed how powerful visual novel games can be and introduced them to a whole new audience.

While the actual mechanics of visual novels are nothing out of the ordinary in games, the way Team Salvato has used them certainly carefully sets expectations for how visual novel games work and the player's role, and then subverts those mechanics in some of the best and most effective games. That was what I was told to do. A dark twist that modern games offer.

2 pony island

Something rotten beneath the surface.

These days, Daniel Mullins has become a legend in the indie gaming community with amazing games that constantly subvert expectations and question the very nature of video games themselves. pony island It's definitely the game that put him on the map and made him a huge success. encryption.

pony island It starts out innocuously enough, like a strange arcade cabinet simulator, but it becomes clear that players will have to change the game's code to bypass obstacles and advance further, unraveling narrative twists that are so vicious and effectively unsettling that they actually ruin the player's device.

1 Please provide the documents

stamp of approval

There's nothing wrong with games providing an escape from reality, but there's a reason why they: Please give me the documents It has been cited as demonstrating the true power of play as a way of empathy and understanding, using truly strange and unprecedented mechanics to make players reflect on their actions.

in Please give me the documentsIn , players control border control agents tasked with evaluating the documents of would-be immigrants according to a thick set of parameterized rules. It's easy to think that verifying documents is too strange a mechanism to work. But it forces a progression of events that are not only mechanically appealing, but also place players in moral quandaries and demonstrate why mechanical innovations can result in great video game stories.