It’s been a month since our first round of Indie Selects was announced, and we’re back again with another great set of games that we think you’ll love. As a reminder (or as an introduction if you’re new to this program), Indie Selects are selected from recently released Xbox games that the ID@Xbox team considers to be indie games and that are not available with Game Pass. The entire team votes and the six voting winners are our Indie Selects for the month.
The selection for March 2024 ranges from the return of an old favorite to a brilliant reinterpretation of a very old card game to an intense horror experience. Here is the list (in no particular order):
Balatro
It’s just video poker, right? You’d be forgiven for thinking that at first glance, but you’d be completely wrong. It takes the rather simple poker framework and reinvents it as a deep, immersive and completely addictive roguelike. You start with a base deck and play hands to beat a target number of chips each round. What’s fun, however, is unlocking bonus and special cards that make your decisions much more complex and interesting. Raising the “three of a kind” and playing with a spades bonus can make it more valuable than even a royal flush. And you can unlock new jokers and other cards after each run to create new options for the next run. And…suddenly it’s 3:00 a.m. and you’re still playing.
Tomb Raider I – III Remastered with Lara Croft
The first Tomb Raider was released in 1996 and took the gaming world by storm. It’s an absolute classic from start to finish. A love letter to the series’ origins, this remaster of the first three games includes all three original adventures, including expansions and secret levels, improved graphics and the ability to play with classic or modern controls. The classic “tank” controls might seem a little unsettling and strange to anyone under 35, but playing this way certainly took us back to our youth and the thrill of grave-robbing with Lara.
Like many games from the ’90s, they’re not considered particularly easy by modern standards, but finding your way through platform-based puzzles and finding the best solutions is incredibly rewarding. Does a remastered compilation of games that were undeniably “Triple A” at the time count as “indie”? Great question. Who knows exactly. We decided it counts because the developer behind the remaster, Aspyr, generally fits the bill. But instead of getting bogged down in this thought experiment, consider playing the games. You can thank me later.
The Outlast Trials
The original Survive and its sequel, Survive 2were terrifying first-person adventure survival games in which, with no way to defend yourself, you survived by hiding, sliding, crawling, crouching, and running through levels while always staying one step ahead of whoever was trying , a moment to kill.
The Outlast Trials Takes that formula and adds four-player co-op and completely over-the-top villains hunting you and your friends in a series of incredible death games. After each run, you can level up your character through various class-based skill trees before you and your friends dive back into the next terrifying experience. It can be as hilariously funny as it is terrifying, while the gameplay loop of surviving, solving puzzles and finding escape is incredibly compelling. The game can be played alone, but it’s much more fun if you find a few friends to try the experience with you.
Round
Landfall has created the wonderfully crazy Absolutely accurate combat simulatorAnd Stickfight, the game. With RoundThey probably created the world’s first 1v1 roguelike fighting game. At the start of the game, each player uses their noodle arms to select a card with a power-up. You can choose from half a dozen of around 65 copies in total. Powerups let you shoot straighter, make bullets explode on impact, have your bullets push enemies back, or give you all sorts of other little advantages.
Things get interesting when the loser gets to choose a new card with a new ability at the end of each round. And because skills stack, you can create an overwhelmingly powerful custom build at the end of each five-round game (assuming you lose a lot, of course). This mechanic transforms an otherwise simple, level-based fighting game into a challenging roguelike game where each player can play off their strengths against the other player’s weaknesses. The game is never the same from one round to the next.
Slave Zero X
Slave zero, a cult-favorite 1999 game for Windows and Dreamcast, puts players in the role of a giant, rampaging robot in a third-person shooter. A quarter of a century later, Ziggurat brings us a prequel to this game in a stylish 2.5D world. But unlike the original, Slave Zero X plays as a brawler, coupled with the precise game mechanics of a fighting game.
It’s the kind of game where you have to throw your controller through a window, but in the next stage you have to climb through the window to get it back because you just can’t stop playing. Both the art and music are fantastic and do a lot to serve the rich cyberpunk world. Hard? Yes. Somewhat unfair? Perhaps. Rewarding, addictive and captivating? Absolutely.
Choice of Life: Middle Ages 2
Finally we have something completely different this month. Choice of Life: Middle Ages 2 is a medieval adventure experience where you play your cards to make your decisions. Every decision you make leads to seemingly endless twists and turns. Apparently there are over a thousand different events in the game and over 99 ways to complete them. However, to find them all you would have to go through many different playthroughs.
It’s a relaxing, casual experience that encourages you to play around with your choices to see where your kingdom will end up. By the end of the first playthrough (which can be very short, as death is constantly around the corner), you’ll almost certainly feel the desire to jump in and see where else fate and your choices will take you.
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