Itch.io: 10 games to try absolutely

Itch.io

The production of independent titles is truly immense, so much so that many do not realize how much larger it is than what usually appears in the digital stores of the most popular consoles or on Steam. The reference point for indie developers looking for a place to present their work has been the itch.io site for years, where dozens of titles are published a day. Defining which are the best among those offered by the platform is an impossible task, while it is certainly more feasible to list ten itch.io games that must absolutely be tried, just to enjoy a bit of true creative anarchy.

Night of the Consumers

Night of the Consumers, are consumers zombies worse than the zombies themselves? Night of the Consumers is a Romerian nightmare translated into a contemporary key. The zombies are back and now they take the form of consumers who ceaselessly enter the shop where the protagonist is employed as a salesman (he is on his first day at work), with absurd requests and ready to complain fiercely in case they do not find what they are looking for. they seek. The gameplay is that of a first-person action, but the tension is that of a real horror. Basically we are faced with a reversal of the shopping mall metaphor, with reality scarier than fiction.

Players have to run along the store's full aisles to restock it while avoiding consumers more hardcore or satisfying them as fast as possible when you get "caught". Failing means getting a head wash and getting fired. Considering that the developer, a single individual who signs himself with the name GERMFOOD, works just as a salesman, this is almost an autobiographical title. Night of the Consumers is a short, intense and meaningful experience, not without flaws but definitely valid in its essence.

Night of the Consumers on itch.io

Briley Witch Chronicles

Briley Witch Chronicles is a deep role-playing game full of things to do Briley Witch Chronicles is a Japanese-style RPG made by Sarah Jane Avory that has two key features: it's well done and it's only available for Commodore 64, although an Amiga version is in development. Basically you can buy it and then play it directly on the old Commodore home computer, after having flashed it on a cartridge, or you can play it on the TheC64, Mini or Maxi they are. Of course it is also usable through emulation.

The game tells the story of a certain Briley Forester and how her life is turned upside down when she is dragged into another world, where she discovers she is a witch. All this translates into a narrative role-playing game seen from above, full of dialogues with the many characters that populate the game world, turn-based combat and many things to discover. Had it been released in the 80s we would talk about it as an absolute masterpiece in the history of video games, but it must be said that even today it looks like her.

Briley Witch Chronicles on itch.io

Eat the Rich (Black Friday Simulator)

Eat the Rich naked us in front of the sales Eat the Rich (Black Friday Simulator ) by Evan Greenwood and Luc Wolthers is a metaphor of modern times, almost a reversal of the point of view of Night of the Consumers (which we talked about in another paragraph), but which comes to similar conclusions. The goal is to lead a group of consumers to a store, not coincidentally called Bezos, on Black Friday, to try and buy all the products on offer. The gameplay is completely physics-based and sees the mass of consumers, completely naked, smashing shelves and walls to get their discounted goods.

Level after level, more and more consumers are guided who, in the face of apparent savings, increase the collective debt and never manage to be satisfied. In the final levels you control a veritable crowd, whose destructiveness reaches levels of unimaginable spectacularity, in a progression that stops making sense to reveal its monstrous and pathological nature.

Eat the Rich (Black Friday Simulator)

31 Unmarked Games

31 cassettes to try, 31 covers to draw 31 Unmarked Games by drogen is a title played completely on the thread of memories. The player has received in the mail some tapes without labels, thirty-one to be exact, and has to run them in an old computer to find out what they contain. In some there are complete games, in others prototypes, in still others unfinished games, to arrive at the ruined cassettes, to which time and neglect have evidently imposed their toll.

After viewing the contents of a cassette, it is possible to design the cover, so as to give it an identity, as was done in the past for cassettes copied at home. In the end you get a strange collection that can only arouse a certain nostalgia in those who lived the 80s and lived a similar experience in more or less recent times. Nostalgic, but in the right way.

31 Unmarked Games on itch.io

We Become What We Behold

We Become What We Behold is a disturbing allegory of our times We Become What We Behold by Nicky Case! is a completely free conceptual game in which the goal is really simple: photograph interesting situations to be published on social networks to generate engagement. The starting point is Marshall McLuhan's theory that "the medium is the message" and that the tools we use inevitably shape the way we think and act. It lasts five minutes and soon becomes a mirror of the system in which social media radicalize people and social groups, generating misunderstandings and violence.

The game screen is simply formed by a kind of square on which small men with round and square heads move. We start by photographing a simple man with a hat, then a couple made up of men with different heads and we get to shoot a scene of violence due to madness, connoting it in a discriminatory and racist way, so as to create a strong contrast between the men of type different, who previously coexisted peacefully. The ending you can find out for yourself. You don't need to install anything, since We Become What We Behold can be played directly via browser.

We Become What We Behold on itch.io

Butterfly Soup

Butterfly Soup is an excellent story Itch.io is full of visual novels that tell the most intimate world of their authors and their authors, who on the platform feel completely free from commercial constraints or from having to satisfy an audience in search of easy eroticism. This is the case of Brianna Lei's Butterfly Soup, which narrates the experience of some gay Asian girls joining a baseball team. Despite the short duration (it ends in about 3-4 hours), she is able to tell her story with great skill and sensitivity, made up of integration difficulties, problems related to the sexuality of the protagonists and their inner world. Considering that Butterfly Soup is completely free, it is definitely worth the time it lasts. If desired, it is also possible to play it from a browser or on mobile systems.

Butterfly Soup at itch.io

Sonic 3D in 2D

Sonic 3D in 2D is the Sonic you never knew existed and you want to play Sotaknuck's 2D Sonic 3D is one of the best things about Sonic to be found on the indie scene. It is basically the 2D translation of Sonic 3D Blast, of which it incorporates a good part of the plot and the style of the levels, but giving the whole gameplay reminiscent of the most classic of the series. Incidentally, the model towards which the author has looked is that of the chapters for Mega Drive. If we want we are faced with an operation similar to Sonic Mania, but in this case without any endorsement from Sega and without money to spend to play. If you are expecting a minor title you are wrong, because Sonic 3D in 2D has a reasonable length and many extras: it is divided into fifteen acts for a total of eight zones. There are also fifteen bosses to fight and three playable characters that can be selected from the start: Sonic, Tails and Knuckles. In short, it is one of those independent games made beautifully under the pressure of pure passion.

Sonic 3D in 2D on itch.io

Democratic Socialism Simulator

What if Bernie Did Sanders win the US election? Democratic Socialism Simulator by Molleindustria assumes a very particular scenario and puts you in the shoes of the first socialist president of the United States of America. Despite the electoral victory, will we be able to implement the reforms that are needed to redistribute wealth and to combat climate change? Will we be able to carry out our program or will we be stopped by the fury of the voters and all those forces of the ruling class who would lose their status quo if we succeed in doing what we set out to do? The game, of extreme simplicity in terms of mechanics, is centered on hundreds of decisions to be made, based on real political proposals. Each match is procedurally generated and can lead to different endings. In Democratic Socialism Simulator there is room for all ideologies, but above all for the understanding of how power acts to curb change. Molleindustria realized this by foreshadowing what would happen if Bernie Sanders wins the American elections. Impossible for that to happen, but the hypothesis is fascinating in itself.

Democratic Socialism Simulator on itch.io

Metavaxx

Metavaxx mixes two seemingly polar opposites Metavaxx is Minesweeper fused with a twin stick shooter. The player has to train a vaccine by injecting it into some biological samples, where the goal is either to fight and destroy all infected cells, or to isolate them by eliminating only healthy cells. You win when only one or the other cell type remains on the map. But how to distinguish them? With a Minesweeper system, of course: the destroyed cells indicate with a number how many infected cells they were connected to. By observing the connections between the different cells it becomes possible to infer which are the healthy ones and which are the infected ones, and then decide how to proceed. All this translates into a frenetic and fun shooter, where you must also learn to reason so as not to completely empty the infected sample, making the progression of the vaccine null.

Metavaxx on itch.io

Strawberry Cubes

In Strawberry Cubes the art of glitch reaches its peak Strawberry Cubes by loren schmidt is pure glitch art. It is a video game gutted and with the bowels exposed, in which it is possible to see the very nature of the medium. In its chaos it appears to be deliberate and meditated, but within a delusional vision continually regurgitated on the player. At first glance it looks like a platformer. More precisely an old 2D platformer with fixed screens for 8-bit systems, but as soon as you start moving you realize that you are facing a different experience, in which you cannot assume that the right path is not is just the wrong one, so much so that it is not even clear where to go and, above all, why one should worry about having a different goal than navigating this continuous display of data, which makes every attempt at understanding artificial. Strawberry Cubes is a pure meta-game, which really starts talking to us when we understand that the only way to win is to go adrift, giving up any desire to get out unscathed.

Strawberry Cubes on itch.io

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