Indie RPGs: Styles and genres
Inside the world of the video games made exclusively for PC, there are games made by independent developers, that is to say, programmers who don’t belong to famous develop houses as Nintendo, Sony or Konami. Inside this world, (called Indie games), with many genres, there are three that are the most popular:
- Horror games, where to the lack of graphical advanced engines that could provide us with monstrous creatures with many details as in the famous franchises like Silent Hill, Indie games use several elements: macabre stories, haunting music and, specially, events that happen unexpectedly, generating a scare in the players (commonly called "Jumpscares"). Games of this style that are very famous are Mad Father, The Witch House or Corpse Party.
- Games of puzzles or riddles, where in order to complete the story, the player must solve a series of puzzles. There are different styles, from memorizing directions or details, using the logic or clues, or simply look and find lost objects; many of these games enter the category of horror for generating more tension in the players at par of making them hurry in solving the puzzles. Games of this style that are well known are Ningyo Heart, Fran Bow or The Crocked Man.
- Finally, there are the games of "visual novel" type, where to advance, players must take a series of decisions, which can be good or bad depending on the result and the destiny that will provide to the character. Most games in this category are stories of drama or romance where dialogues are the stars and take the leading role. Games already dedicated of this style are Mogeko Castle, Katawa Shoujo or Mix Ore.
3.5. Note apart from the "visual novel" type games, is a kind of sub-category of this genre called "Joke Novels", where things like absurd comedy, random themes and a lot of irony and parody predominate. Examples of this is Hatoful Boyfriend.
(Yes, this exist. We're not kidding to say that you can find about everything inside this kind of games)
This will possibly be the last blog that deals with Indie RPG in a general, maybe in another time I would make reviews of known games within the genre, but I would like to talk about other topics. You will see it soon.