Indie Hive’s Top Indie Games of 2019

Any day spent with you is my favourite day. So today is my new favourite day. – A.A. Milne

It’s been a fantastic year (8 months) of gaming and writing for us busy bees at Indie Hive so we thought we’d look back and share some of our top picks from 2019!

Still There

Still There pegs itself as ‘a sci-fi adventure into space station management, mysterious radio messages, motherfucking AIs, sociopathic people in charge, and finding one’s true self in a galaxy way too far, far away‘, a description that reflects the overall tone of the experience it provides.

Dicey Dungeons

Dicey Dungeons is a game best described as a dice-based, turn-based, rogue-like RPG by Terry Cavanagh (designer), Marlowe Dobbe (artist) and Chipzel (musician), and Terry’s third commercial game after the indie classics Super Hexagon and VVVVVV. In the game, you get to play as six different contestants who get turned into die in Dicey Dungeons, hosted by the tyrannical Lady Luck. The game started out as an idea for a seven-day game jam before evolving into a commercial game, and it is very different from Terry’s previous commercial games, both graphically, in gameplay and content.

Brukel

Brukel is a short, first-person, exploration game focusing on the memories of Bie Verlinden, the 92-year-old grandmother of the game’s developer. She grew up in Geel, Belgium, during WWII, residing in a farmhouse named Brukel. Whilst, in reality, the building has been renovated and changed, the game recreates the environment based entirely on Bie’s subjective memories to create a poignant, historical experience.

Pocket City

Pocket City is perhaps the only mobile city building game David knows of that provides an actual premium experience. For a one-time payment of £2.99, you will get, in my opinion, the best city building experience on mobile, playable offline and with no microtransactions. You can also try it before buying by playing the limited free version on Android.

The Sojourn

The Sojourn is a brand new, beautiful, 3D puzzle game from Shifting Tides (published by Iceberg Interactive). It describes itself as ‘a tale of light, darkness, and the nature of reality’. It begins with the player following a light that will serve as a guide through the mysterious sojourn in a mystical land full of challenges. Only by overcoming a series of increasingly demanding obstacles can the nature of reality be revealed!

Serious Scramblers

Serious Scramblers is a vertically scrolling platformer where your character cannot jump. Made by developer Chin Yong Kian and inspired by an old mobile game called Rapid Rolls, the game does everything it can to get you stressed, and most importantly, scrambling.

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