The 2024 Player 2 Game Awards - Best Indie
It’s that time of year folks, time for the P2 crew to put together the definitive GOTY list. As always we can never agree on anything so it is just easier to let everyone have their own choice.
Now it is time for the Indies to shine.
Jess Zammit - Lorelei and the Laser Eyes
I have never felt as stupid, or as clever, as I did playing Lorelei and the Laser Eyes. This minimalist, noir-leaning mystery gives you everything you need to solve its many puzzles in the form of an in-game manual, but if you didn’t know that, you’d swear it was throwing you into the middle of the wilderness and leaving you to die. None of what it asks you to do makes sense until it does, and once your brain locks into the weird style of puzzle-solving that the game requires, you start to feel like you just might be a god – and then it knocks you back down a peg, and you’re right back to stupid. I had a notebook, photographs, incoherent ramblings – if I’d had the space, I would have set up a full murder board in order to tackle parts of Lorelei and the Laser Eyes.
The developers of this game are geniuses, and I would love to be inside their brains for even a second. The narrative is weird, sure, and I came away from it with just as many questions as I had answers, but I love that. I also sort of think maybe this is a horror game, but I was too caught up in trying to solve puzzles to take time out to be afraid of it? It’s hard to say. But with the way this game consumed my waking thoughts, causing me to obsess for hours upon end until I finally saw it through to its dramatic conclusion, it’s impossible for it not to be my Best Indie Game of the Year.
Rob Caporetto - UFO 50
UFO 50’s core concept: that you’re exploring the games catalogue from a “lost” 1980’s game system isn’t all that special. At least on paper.
Once you start exploring though, you can’t help but be impressed with what has gone into it. The 50 games on offer aren’t Warioware-esque micrograms, but complete games onto themselves covering a range of genres from simple action games to a full dungeon crawler RPG.
It’s not only an incredible tribute to the past, but manages to make it approachable for those who weren’t there by giving you the experience of exploring a games collection with nothing but a series of games – a bit of a lost art in this modern day and age.
Stephen del Prado - Balatro
It’s no secret around these parts that I’m fairly fond of board and card games. That predilection, combined with my addictive personality traits, means Balatro has been the indie title that I’ve enjoyed the most. Roguelike deckbuilding utilising mechanics from some of the most popular traditional cardgames has turned the Balatro’s creator into a millionaire and probably has a whole heap of designers and developers kicking themselves that they didn’t think of it first. Available on every platform known to man and capable of running on a potato, Balatro has been my indie highlight of 2024 and will surely see me going back time and again thanks to great post-launch support and being digitised cardboard crack
Shaun Nicholls - Tales of Kenzera: Zau
While there were some aspects that I felt held the game back, Tales of Kenzera: Zau provided an engaging narrative that explored themes of loss and grief. Complemented by excellent voice acting and gorgeous backgrounds, the game draws you in and tugs at the heartstrings as you journey through the different stages of grief with Zau. It doesn’t bring anything new to the genre, but for a studio’s first outing, it is a stunning accomplishment. It is a huge shame that, as of now, the entire games team at Surgent Studios is on hiatus due to a lack of funding, robbing us of any future Tales of Kenzera yet to be told.
Tim Henderson - 1000xResist
Back at the beginning of… 1999, I think, I started to watch Neon Genesis Evangelion on SBS after persistent raving from Hyper magazine finally got under my skin. I didn’t get it at first, but then I couldn’t get it out of my head during the week, and I ended up watching obsessively. And I mean obsessively. To date, I consider it a goddamn masterpiece, but it took studying film at university some years later before I really began to comprehend why.
A shit-tonne of media has cribbed from Evangelion since the mid-90s to various degrees of success, but none have ever truly smashed it. This is probably because the cribbing is surface-level story and character and design stuff; there has been a lack of understanding that Evangelion is communicating something very real, and that it is how well it communicates this is a huge part of what really made it special.
1000xResist crips from Evangelion. It cribs from Evangelion and absolutely smashes it. It cribs imagery and communicative editing and framing techniques and uses them for its own deeply personal story. This is a game with something to say. A game that is mechanically simple while being profoundly difficult to describe. A game that knows what it’s trying to communicate, and does so masterfully at a level that no other game this year could dare dream of. If there is one game that I wish more people had played this year, it is absolutely 1000xResist.
Jason Hawkins - Satisfactory
I’ve been playing this game on-and-off for years, but I sure as hell was going to come back for its full release. There is a feeling of satisfaction that passes over you when you see a factory you’ve designed and built working at full efficiency. Sure, it only puts out a few items per minute, but the amount of work that goes into making it happen, and knowing it’s all part of something much, much bigger as a grand network; it’s a damned good feeling. Satisfactory is up there with the best factory games, titans of industry.
Paul James - The Plucky Squire
It doesn’t come much better than this. We’ve seen many a title attempt to strike the fine balance of executing on both 2D and 3D action and platforming and few, regardless of the team’s size, or the scope of their budget, have been able to execute it. That’s part of what makes The Plucky Squire so impressive. It nails the gameplay, gameplay that has many diverse elements to it, it has a gorgeous endearing art-style, regardless of how many dimensions you’re in, and it’s got a wonderful sense of personality. If you’ve not yet played The Plucky Squire, this is your call to arms.
Matt Hewson - Balatro
Not only is Balatro one of the most addictive experiences on any platform, it is perhaps the best example of a simple idea perfected that I have ever come across. Take a game that 99% of people have at least a passing familiarity with in Poker, make it a solo experience and add a reason to keep playing in rogue-like elements. When you look at it broken down like that, it is amazing that this is the first time we have seen it.
Balatro is design perfection, addictive as all hell and a game that can literally be played by anyone, anywhere, anytime thanks to it being available on PC, Console and Mobile. If you haven’t tried Balatro yet, you are missing out, if you have played Balatro well… you probably are playing it and not reading this.
