The PlayStation 1 and 2 were wonders to me partly because of their innovations on several fronts. Graphics, gameplay, and a seemingly bottomless library to find gems with. Since the turn of the century, it’s been made more and more clear for gaming enthusiasts that the platform for the best possible user experience is on PC. Sony went on to make exclusive games that are everything, graphically impressive, amazing gameplay, good writing (depending on who you ask), and generally impressive on every possible dimension you can measure a game on.

But at the same time, it feels like something gets left behind. Maybe I don’t need a 30-minute or more cutscene that immerses me in the setting. Maybe I value fun gameplay more than watching somebody’s detailed face texture make a scowl. Maybe I don’t need a progression system that makes me grind for hours on end, heck F2P games make me do that, plenty. 

And for this reason, I think indie games play a huge role in filling those gaps. If anything, Balatro’s success proves that. Other titles deserve a shout-out as well, Dave the Diver, Pacific Drive, Choo-Choo Charles, and the list goes on. All of the names I’ve dropped are games that recently came out, and all of them are available not only on PC but also on PlayStation 5.

That’s right, it’s not just God of War, Hell Divers 2, or The Last of Us. You can actually find quite the library on PlayStation if you’re willing to go through their store, especially the digital one. Though I must admit finding a bargain isn’t quite as common as browsing through Steam, everything does come with its pros and cons. Anyway, I’m here today to quickly tell you about the three indie games I’ve been asked to check out on the PlayStation 5 if I enjoyed them, and if I think they’re worth it. So let’s get to it.

 

Dread Out (Remastered Collection)

 

 

What we have here is a Horror Game where you play as a student named Linda who ended up somewhere she clearly doesn’t belong. Wander about trying to figure out how to find the exit, or at least try to survive the unnatural beings that are toying with you.

If you’ve played something like Fatal Frame, this is going to feel pretty at home for you, as it takes some influence over that for gameplay. Naturally, getting the ghost in the right frame at the right distance is the most effective way to combat them. They also combine some extra uses for Linda’s smartphone, activating candle switches, or cleaning off some spiritual corruption from some items. Something I wish was much better conveyed to me was the first puzzle, which reveals a secret passage through a wall if you’re viewing it through Linda’s magic smartphone. Perhaps going through the game’s manual could have saved me about 30 minutes of trial-and-error. But I think it’s okay to expect these mechanics to be taught to you as you play the game, specifically at the beginning.

 

 

Dread Out’s port feels like a very direct one, as texture packs and model detail leave much to be desired. I’d like to note that this game came out on PC roughly 10 years ago, so I can forgive some graphical jank, but really would have liked there to be some improvements even on conveying rules on how the game is to be played.

White you’ll find that it’s possible to finish the game within three or four hours, figuring out what to do is the main issue. Not exactly my kind of game, but I can see how this can be appealing if you’ve enjoyed titles like Outlast or Amnesia: The Dark Descent. There are some genuine sparks of creativity here that I do believe deserve praise, but learning what the game is trying to get you to do can be a test of patience. Makes it terrible to pair with the constant anxiety the game is quite good at making you feel.

 

 

Paired with the DLC, Dread Out: Keepers of the Dark, is for sale on the PS Store for 29.99 USD. I find the price a bit steep for what it offers, as Keepers of the Dark is closer to a set of mini-games with intertwined objectives. This is something I would recommend to get on a sale.

 

 

Soul Stalker

 

 

Vampire Suvivors-type games, where you take on an endless horde of enemies and you take on incremental upgrades as you progress through tougher enemies, is exactly the type of game I would get unreasonably hooked on.

Soul Stalker is a 2D shooter where you are basically coming up with whatever build you can to mow down as many enemies as you can, and that’s all I really need to explain to you. The true appeal of Soul Stalker is the variety of things that you can make, figuring out what weapons work best with which characters and trying to break the game with the upgrades you can get away with.

 

 

At the start of the game, you can pick the character, starting weapon, and trinket you start the game with. Each of them influences how your game will play out. For example, the Ninja will be able to add a passive chance to inflict bleed status to enemies with any weapon he wields. Another character can add two additional shots to any projectile weapon you wield but at the cost of accuracy. And for the trinket that can modify your stats or trigger special effects, I always default to the Alchemy trinket since it allows me to upgrade twice at every weapon or campfire node, doubling the speed as I progress my arsenal. At one point, I was able to create a build that causes enemies to bleed, freeze, and be hit twice by melee attacks, where a certain weapon has a decent chance to heal HP when I’m hitting a bleeding enemy. So anything that came close enough would be stun-locked and be giving me HP instead of attacking me. This literally allowed me to AFK from the game and become essentially immortal.

You proceed through a map which is a set of nodes for you to play through, where you can pick up to two destinations, which will vary between rest points, enemy or boss nodes, and a set of shops where you can buy weapons or passives with. Pretty simple.

 

 

Enemies so far are just as simple, some of them will have different ways of attacking you, either at range or at high-speed lunges. The most annoying ones to note for me would be the ones that can turn invisible when they come in to attack you. The longer ascension mode takes you through 3 levels of increasing difficulty, where the only thing that remains the same are the bosses you fight in the end.

As for meta-progression, it’s generally achievement-based. You unlock characters and quest gates by doing specific actions, like finishing a level of difficulty, clearing a stage without moving, using a specific weapon, and more. You don’t really keep any stats or upgrades permanently, but you get to unlock new tools and characters for you to use.

While it serves a healthy amount of weapons, characters, and passives to play with. It was hard to come back to it after a long enough session, as it was hard to get attached to any characters or story since the Soul Stalker pretty much lacked anything like that. It also became difficult to decipher how certain stats translate, particularly “prosperity” and “force.” Still, it was something I didn’t mind playing while listening to the usual YouTube or live-streamer content that I would put on during my downtime.

Priced at 7.49 USD on the PS Store, it’s considerably cheaper than most offerings. I do think this is a good time-sink kind of game if you’re looking for one. It’s the kind of title you’ll eventually outgrow, but you’ll have squeezed out a good amount of entertainment by the time you do.

 

Snezhinka – Sentinel Girls 2

 

 

Anime girls, guns, robots. I mean, I don’t think you have to say much more to get me to try this. Hinyari9 is known only to have made this game and its predecessor, Marfusha.

If I were to compare this to any other anime or game I can think of, I’d have to say Gunslinger Girl (yes you may carbon-date me now). You play as Snezhinka, an anime girl, not to be confused with a village in Bulgaria. She is the little sister of the country’s hero, Marfusha. You decide to get recruited by a private military company (PMC) as a means to find and rescue your older sister from the war.

The gameplay is a tower defense where you destroy anything that’s moving to the left. And generally, those are automatons or machines that are trying to destroy whatever you’re protecting. At the end of the day, you get paid, you get horrendously taxed, and you can use whatever’s left to buy yourself some meager upgrades to make the next day more manageable. Hopefully, you can save up enough to afford a better gun,and some gadgets, and maybe even hire a partner to help you shoot down all the baddies.

 

 

I find it pretty amazing how they’ve managed to balance all of the available weapons alongside each other, and even apply a stat system that makes you think about the concept of diminishing returns. You can get better guns, but it’ll cost you, and they break quite quickly. Do you really want to get that +2 to your magazine capacity? If you can keep your money above 20 credits, a really strong partner might come up in the cards! It’s going to be tough to miss that chance! These are the thoughts that go through my head as I play through the 100-day campaign of Snezhinka. Which takes you roughly 20-30 minutes to breeze through.

 

 

So what made me play a game I can finish in half an hour for about half a day? The undertone, and dark humor that it offers through the oppressive governance of the country they serve, counter-balanced by the characters you encounter just trying to live as normal young girls, is something that made me keep coming back to see the little conversations they have in their downtime. It’s a lot of passive storytelling you can pick up if you’re just being observant of what’s shown in front of you. So much is said through the dorms they live in, the weapons they’re forced to use, and the little moments they try to carve some normalcy out of this desperate setting they’re forced to deal with. It makes me want to cheer them on and see if there’s any sort of good ending I can get for them, despite it being pretty obvious that the war they fight for will cost them everything.

 

 

That and I’m a total sucker for these fast-paced action games with roguelike mechanics. Also, their music is totally a banger, I’d listen to it on a drive. Snezhinka is a straightforward, simple, action game that asks if you want to shoot robots, and that sounds like a fine time to me.

The only problem I have with this is it’s being sold at 11.99 USD on the PS Store, where it’s about less than half that price if you buy it on Steam. But, whatever platform you may prefer to play on, I’d recommend playing this even just once.

 

While we don’t typically think about it, indie games are probably the best way for Sony to expand its library to keep up with offerings that other platforms have made. It would certainly be best if they could make these a little easier on the wallet. Hopefully, in time PlayStation recognizes that indie titles need to be treated a little differently to be more competitive on their console.