Latest news with #indieGames
The Verge
7 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Verge
Playdate's second season is off to a great (and very weird) start
A lot of games have been released for the Playdate since it launched in 2022, as a quick browse of or the Catalog shop will attest. But still, there's something unique about the handheld's seasonal format, which just kicked off its second iteration. When it first launched, the Playdate came with 24 games from notable indie developers that were steadily released on a weekly cadence, making a perfect introduction to the little yellow device and its crank. Now, a few years later, we finally have season 2, and it's off to a solid start — and it even includes a bizarre mystery. The new season runs for the next six weeks and totals a dozen games, two of which will drop each week. The entire collection will run you $39. To start, we have a pair of very different games. Fulcrum Defender, from FTL: Faster Than Light developer Subset Games, is sort of like a modern take on Asteroids. You control a little ship in the middle and fire guns at little squares flying toward you. The twist is that you use the crank to rotate the ship around and aim your shots. There's also something of a roguelike element, where you steadily unlock random upgrades like new weapons or a larger spread for your bullets. The goal is to last for 10 straight minutes. It's a pretty challenging game — so far, I've only really had success on easy mode — but it's also surprisingly chill, eliciting that sort of zen state that the best shooters and puzzle games can create. This is helped by its lo-fi soundtrack that pretty much demands you play with headphones on. It's an absorbing game. On the other end of the spectrum is Dig Dig Dino!, developed by Dom2D and Fáyer, who brag that the game 'is perfect to play while watching TV! No time pressure, no quick reflexes needed!' It's a puzzle game where you travel to different dig sites to uncover dinosaur bones, artifacts, and trash. You only have a limited amount of moves per dig, but you can upgrade your capacity over time — while also getting new tools to smash rocks or dig deeper — letting you dig both more and for longer. It's sort of like a really cute take on Minesweeper, one clearly designed for short play sessions. It's not exactly difficult, but there's still something satisfying about uncovering a large dinosaur bone when you're just about to run out of moves. These two games do a good job of showing the breadth of games possible on the Playdate; one is meant for quick bursts, the other for longer, more focused sessions. But the launch week package is rounded out by something a whole lot weirder. It's called Blippo Plus and, well, it's a series of TV channels you can flip between using the crank. Some are nothing but static, while others have giant FMV videos of strange TV shows or commercials. One show, called Tantric Computing, is nothing but closeup shots of someone using a computer mouse. Another, Werf's Tavern, is some kind of musical talk show. There's also a messaging tool and some kind of fax service. What's most interesting about Blippo Plus, though, isn't just that it's odd. It's also a mystery that seems like it will evolve over the course of the season. Playdate maker Panic says that 'Playdate season 2 owners should tune in weekly and make sure they are connected to WiFi when season 2 updates at 10 AM PT on Thursdays.' There are lots of other promising games planned for season 2, including the point-and-click adventure Shadowgate PD and whatever the heck Long Puppy and Tiny Turnip are. But an FMV mystery that unfolds over the course of weeks is something that's pretty unique to this format — and further evidence that the Playdate exists in its own parallel universe.
The Verge
3 days ago
- Business
- The Verge
The Nintendo Switch was an indie game haven, until it was overrun with slop
The first several months after Nintendo released the Switch in 2017 have been described as a 'gold rush' for independent game developers. The Switch's eShop wasn't exactly barren, but early on there was a lot of room for new releases. To put it into perspective, Nintendo announced in 2018 that around 1,000 games were added to the platform in its first year or so. The number of games released each year just adds to the number of games available on the eShop; in 2024, GameDiscoverCo reported that 50 games were added per week, leading to more than 2,300 new games in 2024 by November. What started as a gold rush for indie developers slowly spoiled, and eventually the eShop became overrun with slop. This pushed some developers to the margins, while platform degradation soured the experience as a whole. Coming out of the so-called indiepocalypse, the period after the indie golden age from 2008 to 2015 — think Fez, Braid, and Super Meat Boy — developers were reeling from the massive influx of competition and a decline in discoverability. The eShop, for some time, was a reprieve to that. Nintendo itself seemed poised to support that period of growth; days ahead of the Switch's launch date, the company announced that it had already locked in more than 60 'quality indie games' for 2017. PC Gamer reported in October 2017 that 'almost every indie release on Switch' had sold better on Switch than on other platforms. Enter the Gungeon sold more than 75,000 copies in just two weeks, developer Dodge Roll Games said, while Team Meat posted in January 2018 that Super Meat Boy 's first day on Switch had 'shockingly close' numbers to its Xbox 360 debut. SteamWorld Dig 2, one of the titles Nintendo was boasting about, sold between five to 10 times more copies on Switch than it did on Steam, per a PC Gamer report. Rodrigue Duperron of Spiritfarer developer Thunder Lotus says that the studio 'missed the gold rush' when it published Jotun on the Switch in April 2018, but was still 'quite pleased' with its performance. (It was published on Wii U in 2016.) 'I don't believe it's a coincidence that monthly releases to the eShop still numbered in 'mere' dozens in early 2018,' he says. Thunder Lotus expected its next game, Sundered, to sell better, but Duperron said the team was 'mildly disappointed' — and pointed to the massive increase of games released monthly. 'It didn't feel at the time that shovelware or bargain basement titles were yet flooding the platform, but this was more of a low simmer which would come to a boil over the next few years,' he says. 2020's Spiritfarer saw increased success outside of the 'indie boom' for several reasons, one of which was that Nintendo included it in its featured section. 'More visibility led to more sales, led to being included in the Best Sellers section,' Duperron says. Abhi Swaminathan, founder of Venba developer Visai Games, echoes this sentiment. The game, which was released in 2023, was featured in two Nintendo Indie Directs, which he partly attributes to success on the platform. (Sales remain 'almost neck-to-neck with Steam sales,' he says.) Over the eight years since the Switch launched, the platform became crowded. It began looking a lot more like Steam, which is blasted daily with new games. The Switch, clearly, is not immune from the low-effort games that muck up the market. In recent years, they've gotten a name: eShop slop. As IGN put it in February, slop games are distinct from the otherwise 'unremarkable games' that get released every day. They're rarely what they're advertised as, are based on popular or trending concepts, and are rife with technical issues. It's not really that the eShop has started to rust, just that it wasn't 'particularly sophisticated from a discovery point of view to start with,' GameDiscoverCo author and industry analyst Simon Carless tells The Verge. 'I don't know if any store is free from the eventual onslaught of 'slop games.'' Among Us studio Innersloth CEO Forest Willard tells The Verge that the process of getting games onto the eShop is more specific and time-consuming than with other platforms, like Steam. 'Many games on the eShop are ones that have gamed the system and streamlined their processes to churn out content (slop), while developers who go through the process with care and intent aren't necessarily rewarded by the algorithm,' he says. But it's not an easy fix — nor is it a problem unique to Nintendo. 'I don't know if any store is free from the eventual onslaught of 'slop games' unless they're highly curated or gatekeep-y, which would present its own problems,' Innersloth communications director Victoria Tran adds. Nintendo has made tweaks to its system over the years, but its biggest one happened recently, likely in anticipation of the Switch 2. Nintendo updated how it ranks games in its top-sellers category, changing the ranking from number of sales to highest sales. Carless said this is a shift from three-day revenue to 14-day downloads, a way of pushing out highly discounted games that sell a lot. (Nintendo declined to comment.) James Barnard of Let's Build a Zoo developer Springloaded says this system 'could help to reduce certain titles climbing the charts solely through continued deep discounts.' But he warns that it's not a total fix. 'The new system still isn't perfect, as it seems that the charts instead favor games with higher price points,' he says. 'This means we would potentially need to sell three times as many copies as a AAA game to feature as highly in the listings.' Game developers The Verge spoke to agree that there are improvements Nintendo can make to help indies shine on its new eShop. Duperron suggests user reviews, while Barnard and Willard would both like to see better performance overall — load times, curation, and search functionality can be an issue. 'It's fine to know exactly what you want to play, but there's no 'You might like' that would get me from Hollow Knight (easily found on the best seller lists) to Unsighted or Iconoclasts (incredible and similar games, but not evergreen sellers),' Willard says. Nintendo is trying something like this with its 'Game finds for you' feature so that players don't have to 'search every nook and cranny' of the eShop, Switch 2 producer Kouichi Kawamoto said in an Ask the Developer interview from April. In that interview, Nintendo senior director Takuhiro Dohta addressed performance on the eShop, too, stating that it will run more smoothly even with a huge amount of games. He added that the act of finding a game to play is an important part of the Nintendo Switch 2 experience. Nintendo is clearly thinking about the problems of the past, and has implemented some fixes to support the eShop on its new hardware. The key detail, however, will be how it continues to tweak the platform — developers and analysts hope Nintendo won't simply set the shop then forget it. 'Nintendo has made some much-needed changes to both Switch and Switch 2 eShop ahead of launching the Switch 2, but we'd like to see iterations more often than 'once per platform cycle,'' Carless said.
The Verge
3 days ago
- Business
- The Verge
Nintendo's new era: looking back at the Switch and ahead to the next generation
The Switch was a transformative product for Nintendo. Following the dire days of the Wii U, the company came out swinging with a tablet-console hybrid with defining games like Animal Crossing: New Horizons and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. The Switch went on to sell more than 150 million units, and Nintendo built on that success with expansions into feature films, theme parks, and other areas outside of gaming. Now, the company is trying to do it again with the Switch 2. Ahead of the new console's launch on June 5th, The Verge is looking back at the various ways that Nintendo has changed over the last eight years and how those changes might continue into its next generation. The Nintendo Switch's complicated legacy with indie games The first several months after Nintendo released the Switch in 2017 have been described as a 'gold rush' for independent game developers. The Switch's eShop wasn't exactly barren, but early on there was a lot of room for new releases. To put it into perspective, Nintendo announced in 2018 that around 1,000 games were added to the platform in its first year or so. The number of games released each year just adds to the number of games available on the eShop; in 2024, GameDiscoverCo reported that 50 games were added per week, leading to more than 2,300 new games in 2024 by November. What started as a gold rush for indie developers eventually flattened, pushing some developers to the margins, while platform degradation soured the experience as a whole. With the Switch, technology finally caught up to Nintendo The Nintendo Switch is on the cusp of becoming Nintendo's bestselling hardware ever. In retrospect, it's easy to see why: it's a device that seamlessly transitions from a home console to a handheld, erasing the distinction between the two. It's been so successful that Nintendo isn't changing all that much with the Switch 2. But both consoles are well-executed versions of ideas Nintendo has been working on since the failed Wii U — and maybe even earlier. Purely by sales numbers, the Wii U was a flop. The Switch has sold more than 150 million units in its eight-year lifetime. The Wii U, by comparison, sold 13.56 million units — less than a 10th of what the Switch did — making it Nintendo's worst-selling home console. Nintendo's bold new era is full of safe bets Nintendo is entering a new era. While most everyone associates the company with video games, for the last few years the brand behind Mario has been steadily expanding itself into something much larger. 'I think people view Nintendo as a gaming company, but we have always thought of ourselves as an entertainment company,' Nintendo's senior managing executive officer, Shinya Takahashi, told me in 2023. Design legend Shigeru Miyamoto echoed the same idea at the opening of Nintendo's first museum last year. 'What I wanted to express with this museum is that we are first and foremost an entertainment company,' he said.
The Verge
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Verge
Lost in Cult's new Editions publishing label is about art and games preservation
Just like its books, Editions games will look great on a shelf. Just like its books, Editions games will look great on a shelf. May 20, 2025, 7:58 PM UTC Editions is the name of a new game publishing label launched by Lost in Cult, the same company known for making gorgeous books about video games, like Outer Wilds: Design Works . The new label's aim is to preserve indie games, including some that haven't been released on physical media before, and to celebrate their artistic contributions to the medium by including plenty of extra goodies. Notably, Lost in Cult is working with DoesItPlay? to validate its titles before they're released. The group specializes in game preservation, ensuring that games can be run from the physical media they're stored on without the need for a download or an internet connection. The focus on elegantly preserving these titles is similar to what we've seen from Limited Run Games, while Editions' focus on indie games reminds me of the Criterion Collection's approach. Each game included in the Editions lineup will come with a fold-out poster, a sticker, a numbered authenticity card, a 40-page essay and developer interview, and gorgeous cover art, along with the game itself. The first three games to launch under the label include Immortality , The Excavation of Hob's Barrow , and Thank Goodness You're Here . Editions plans to announce a new game every month, starting in July. Each of the three games is available to preorder through the Lost in Cult site starting at £59.99, with the option to choose between Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 5 editions when applicable. PS5 owners can opt to buy the entire first run of Editions games at a discounted price, containing Immortality and Thank Goodness You're Here , and they'll get a third (as of yet, unannounced) Editions title when it launches in July. Lost in Cult is asking for patience with shipments, which may take up to six months. But if they're as good as the books, the wait will be worth it. See More:
The Verge
20-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Verge
Lost in Cult's new Editions publishing label focuses on art and indie games preservation
Editions is the name of a new game publishing label launched by Lost in Cult, the same company known for making gorgeous books about video games, like Outer Wilds: Design Works. The new label's aim is to preserve indie games, including some that haven't been released on physical media before, and to celebrate their artistic contributions to the medium by including plenty of extra goodies. Notably, Lost in Cult is working with DoesItPlay? to validate its titles before they're released. The group specializes in game preservation, ensuring that games can be run from the physical media they're stored on without the need for a download or an internet connection. The focus on elegantly preserving these titles is similar to what we've seen from Limited Run Games, while Editions' focus on indie games reminds me of the Criterion Collection's approach. Each game included in the Editions lineup will come with a fold-out poster, a sticker, a numbered authenticity card, a 40-page essay and developer interview, and gorgeous cover art, along with the game itself. The first three games to launch under the label include Immortality, The Excavation of Hob's Barrow, and Thank Goodness You're Here. Editions plans to announce a new game every month, starting in July. Each of the three games is available to preorder through the Lost in Cult site starting at £59.99, with the option to choose between Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 5 editions when applicable. PS5 owners can opt to buy the entire first run of Editions games at a discounted price, containing Immortality and Thank Goodness You're Here, and they'll get a third (as of yet, unannounced) Editions title when it launches in July. Lost in Cult is asking for patience with shipments, which may take up to six months. But if they're as good as the books, the wait will be worth it.
