Today marks the grand beginning of an ongoing new feature for HippoChippies: The Indie Hour! I have an incredibly large backlog of independent free games I’ve picked up through hours of scouring the web. I want to find the best indie games that you can play for free and give them the attention they deserve. I have tons of these games hiding in folders on my desktop, and I’ve barely touched any of them.

The goal of this new segment is to set aside one hour and get some impressions on as many of them as I can. I feel like it’s better t play some of these games for five minutes, rather than let them sit on my computer and never touch any of them at all. Wish me luck, and hopefully I’ll find a few surprises deep down in here. And honestly I’m just curious to figure out what an “Empyreal Nocturne” could possibly be.

Alright, first up The White Chamber.

Oh god anime emo mega man just stepped out of a coffin.

WHY IS HE A GIRL OH GOD.

Hmm, it’s a point and click adventure game.

This computer is asking strange questions. “Do you know where you are?” Seems kind of interesting so far.

Neat atmosphere, spooky dark space station. I’ll try to come back to this later.

6 minutes in.

Halloween House

I have pressed literally every button on my keyboard and nothing worked. I can move up and down on the main menu, but have no ability to actually select any of the options. 10 out of 10. 8 minutes in.

Well I found a readme. CTRL is what selects menu options. Even thought I totally hit that. Halloween House time!

Poor Michael is stuck at home babysitting his sister on Halloween, and his parents didn’t get him any candy. What kind of family is this.

Alright, this game made me laugh out loud. I like it already. Jam sandwiches are the food of lies.

I’m pretty sure Jason lives in this kid’s attic.

Lots of horror movie references. I like it! Moving on now, I’ll have to come back to this too. Very pleased with these games so far! 14 minutes in.

Starting “Fiend“.

Looks creepy. I’m being sent to “a little town in the woods”. I bet that’ll go well. I’m being sent by my “compnay”. -Spell check is hard-

Who doesn’t love tank controls? Answer: everyone.

I have no idea how to progress, or why this bird keep repeating the same horrible chirping sound every two seconds. Help.

I’m frozen on a text box and I surrender. Next please. 19 minutes in.

Now “Empyreal Nocturne“. ??????????

I am a flying blue arrow controlling smaller flying blue “birds”? I am supposed to fight a large segmented flying red object by using my small blue things to shoot it, or sacrifice them to speed up to it.

I’m not reeeaallly sure this is for me.

Moving on now. 22 minutes in.

Judith

Well it has pretty main menu screen music.

Ooooh Terry Cavanagh! I know that fool!

Jeff is meeting Emily in what seems to be a hedge maze.

“We’re both married, but not to each other.”

Well now I’m sneaking around with a married woman.

Exploring a house, it really seems like a maze. Kind of confusing trying to figure out where I’m supposed to be headed.

I…I have to finish this game now. I can’t ruin what’s happening, but you have to play this.

The end. That was an incredible game. The story is presented in such a way that there’s no way you can quit halfway through. It only took about 15 minutes too! Now I have to wrap my mind around what exactly happened. Excellent. 40 minutes in.

One Night

I’m being told about a mysterious building and then spooky music plays. I heard a dude yell. Trapped in a dark room now. Got out. Creepy noises are creepy. Even spookier music! Finding a bunch of weapons. I feel like something’s about to go down.

Using items to get through doors and other passages. Solved a puzzle for a key! Yay!

Intense music. Scary things happening. Now a music box is playing.

Only 10 minutes of the Indie Hour to go! This seems like a really cool game, the music is especially good. Seems like it would be able to maintain a pretty unnerving atmosphere for a while. 50 minutes in.

Seiklus

Well it’s stuck at the title screen with no way to do anything. The opening title theme is pretty neat though. Aaaaaand I listened to the entire thing waiting for it to do something, now it started the song over. That was a spectacular failure. I will have to try that again sometime. Tried it three times and it never actually let me play the game.

Okay, I finally got it to work. Just had to exit everything and restart a couple times. I am a tiny person running around vines while collecting green fireballs. I can handle this probably. Now i went inside a tree and opened a treasure chest. A bird flew out of it. What is this game. Now I’m stuck trying to climb some thorny vines to get into a cave. I think I’m done for now. 55 minutes in.

And for the final game…

Toribash

I am controlling a humanesque 3D model by choosing what joints he is supposed to move. I’m supposed to fight another weird looking model by performing complex maneuvers by manipulating individual body parts. This seems insanely complicated. Wow, I can’t even imagine trying to learn all of these controls. Seriously, my brain cannot comprehend this. I’m sure this game is fun for somebody. 60 minutes in.

Time’s up!!! I think that was a pretty successful beginning of the Indie Hour; I played all kinds of stuff and it was all very interesting. Some of it definitely isn’t for me, but that’s fine; I’m really glad I got to experience as wide a variety of games as I did. Judith was definitely my favorite of these indies, I absolutely recommend that everyone give it a try. One Night seems like it will be really great too. All of these games are 100% free, and I’ve linked to all of their downloads in this post!

-Zach

Image Source: studiotrophis.com indiegames.com gameclassicfication.com digipen.edu distractionware.com moddb.com autofish.net toribash.com