Seven Stellar Indies To Grab During the ID@Xbox Sale
It is the holiday season, which means there’s soon to be a seemingly endless amount of deals to sift through. While I’m sure there are plenty of games that folks already have their eyes on, there’s always a bunch of smaller games that inevitably fly under the radar. I’m here to correct that for you.
To that end, Xbox is currently hosting a sale on titles published through the ID@Xbox brand, which benefits independent developers and publishers trying to get their own games out there. One such publisher is Annapurna Interactive, which accidentally wound up taking up most of this list. Whoops! Anyways, here’s just a few of the best games available on that sale, which concludes on November 14.
Cocoon
The last few years have brought with them a veritable bounty of wonderful puzzle games, and few of them are as good as Cocoon. An entirely wordless game, Cocoon—developed by a team that previously worked on games such as Inside—follows a bug-like protagonist’s odyssey through several different worlds within worlds, divining how to interact with distinctly alien structures and technologies to commune with while perhaps overthrowing some hostile force. Cocoon is currently $12.49 and is well worth that price of admission.
Ashen
Ashen is one of the best indie attempts at a Souls game. It is restrained and quiet. It is elegant and magical. It is all these things and simultaneously thoughtful and somber. But more than any of that, it is about home. It accomplishes so much while remaining a visual feast with striking minimalist graphics art direction. You can play the game solo or cooperatively, and I really do encourage you to grab a partner and dive into Ashen, which will run you about $10 right now.
Outer Wilds
The best people in your life believe that Outer Wilds is the best game of 2019. How can they be wrong? This space-faring adventure posits a simple but intriguing mystery: What waits for us at the center of the universe? The game fully delivers on that promise (and then some), but the best part of the game is the journey it’ll take you on. The solar system of Outer Wilds is teeming with mysteries and as you bounce from planet to planet in search of answers, you’ll learn of what a rich tapestry you belong to—even as the whole system implodes in a supernova every 22 minutes. It is simply one of the most heartfelt stories I’ve ever experienced, wrapped up in one of the most astounding puzzle games I’ve ever played too. I’d hate to give too much away about Outer Wilds, so instead you should just pick it up while it’s discounted to $15 and thank me later.
Thirsty Suitors
A lot of the reason for my love of Thirsty Suitors is that, as the title suggests, I too was down bad for the main character, Jala, the brown (specifically South Asian) alternative skater girl of my dreams. She is hilarious, hot, and most importantly, a colossal failure just like me. She too struggles with her place in two different worlds, that of her family and their cultural upbringing and the drastically different world that she was raised in outside of her home. She’s one of the most relatable protagonists I’ve encountered. And the way that she does psychic turn-based battles against her exes and overbearing family is aspirational. If you’re looking for a short RPG with a lot of fun banter, generational trauma, and some of the best style around, it’s hard to go wrong with Thirsty Suitor, which is available for $18 right now.
What Remains of Edith Finch
What Remains of Edith Finch is, effectively, a short story anthology in video game form. As the titular character, you return to the immense home of the Finch family, who has supposedly been cursed, and explore what remains of them around the house. Along the way, Edith literally trips and falls headfirst into the distinctly styled tragedies of her family members, which are all rendered as unique vignettes with their own mechanics. It’s a game so good you’ll tear through it in a single evening, but the night that you spend with What Remains of Edith Finch will stick with you for years after you’re done with it. You can have your own fateful night with What Remains of Edith Finch by picking it up for $5 while it’s on sale.
Golf Club Nostalgia
Demagog Studio is a small team making narrative games about the collapse of the world as we know it. Golf Club Nostalgia, despite the name, is exactly one of those titles and is in fact the team’s first effort. In it, you play golf among the remains of the world following an ecological collapse. In the time since, Earth has been abandoned by the rich, who’ve fled to Mars, and you only come back to Earth to play one final game of golf and discover what the hell happened.The premise sounds pretty far-fetched, but the more that our way of life is eroded by greed, the more realistic a vision of our future it appears to be. You can bear witness to the existential horror of Golf Club Nostalgia for yourself for just $2.
Sayonara Wild Hearts
Here’s the greatest endorsement I can give Sayonara Wild Hearts, a rhythm action game from 2019: I do not skip any of the tracks that emerge on my shuffle all these years later. At times, I even live with a song or two as if I’m listening to them for the first time, enthralled by the propulsive set pieces of the game they’re wrapped in. “Parallel Universes” is just one of my favorite songs in any game ever, but it’s surrounded by bangers like “Begin Again” and “Night Drift.” I can’t even begin to write about what “A Place I Don’t Know” means to me without welling up.
Sayonara Wild Hearts is like an interactive pop album. If that doesn’t sell you on the game in which you ride motorcycles, cars, flying swords, and even a dragon through neon-soaked fantasy environments, well then hopefully this sentence did. You can pick up Sayonara Wild Hearts for just $7.79 and you won’t regret it.
There’s a lot of different experiences to choose from here. If I had to narrow it down to make it easier for you all, Outer Wilds is one of my all-time favorite games. It features a stirring narrative, a wonderful central mystery, a score that’ll bring you to tears, and best of all, a horror-themed expansion that came out a few years later, in case you’re still in the mood for some scares. Outer Wilds has got it all.
