For some reason I got a little crabby yesterday that people were only recommending indie games on Steam yesterday, which is kinda silly, but it did lead to me doing a recommendation thread on Bluesky of games on sale on Itch that I enjoy. It’s a flawed thread because I didn’t recommend any ttrpgs but I’m going to list the recommendations here as well because they’re good and worth a look. Some aren’t even on Steam and others give you a Steam key. It’s not that I hate Steam, even if I do have issues with it, I just get frustrated by people not being curious about what else it outside of it.

First I want to recommend Indiepocalypse, a monthly anthology zine featuring many experimental indie games every month! I’ve mentioned it on a blog a billion times but I’m going to keep doing it because I think they’re doing amazing work curating indie games that I would never find otherwise.

Liberation is a space sim inspired by early classic like Elite and shows like Blake’s 7, and has a great sense of humor. It’s very easy to pick up and play too, which is often the issue I bump into with a lot of modern open world space sims.

Minerva’s Labyrinth is a first-person turn based dungeon crawler with nice pixel art and great combat system. Again, I’ve mentioned this one a few times before (probably a pattern you’ll see in this post quite a bit) but I’ll keep doing it until it somehow becomes a smash hit that pulls in millions of dollars for the dev.

Inspector Waffles is a point-and-click adventure where you play as a cat detective investigating a murder. I really like the way this game uses clues to question folks at crime scenes. The Game Boy Color prequel is also on Itch. I don’t know if you get the rom if you buy that one on Steam but you do on Itch. I also recently learned that one got ported to the Playdate.

Manglepaw is a first person adventure game with art inspired by early 90’s 3D art. I love the game looks. It’s also available in Indiepocalypse #26

Cyclopean: The Great Abyss is a rpg inspired by early crpg classics like Ultima, with an overworld map when you explore the world and first-person dungeon crawling when you enter a dungeon. The dev has made a few rpgs at this point and they’re all on sale right now. Islands of the Caliph is another one I enjoyed.

Snoik! is just a very good Snake-like game for the Playdate, with a neat mechanic where you can weave in and out of the snake by switching layers. Itch has a lot of great games for the Playdate for sale.

If you like VVVVVV or Super Hexagon, consider checking out Terry’s Other Games, a compilation of various smaller games Terry Cavanagh has made. Comes with a Steam key

CorgiSpace is a very nice collection of 13 PICO-8 games by Adam Saltsman and published by Finji, each offering a unique mechanic. The Itch version also gives you the .p8 files to run in whatever you use for PICO-8 files.

Melon Head is an incredibly weird point-and-click adventure game featuring stellar EGA-inspired artwork. I love it

Hylics is another weird one. It’s a rpg and it’s doing kind of a stop motion aesthetic thing for the art that I really like. It got a sequel and that’s on sale as well.

VIDEOVERSE is a visual novel inspired by early internet forums and the Miiverse stuff on the Wii U. Comes with a Steam key. I’ve found that it’s been a very good introductory VN for a few folks.

The Crimson Diamond is a point-and-click adventure inspired by the Sierra classic The Colonel’s Bequest. I love that it uses a text parser and the artwork is fantastic.

Cosmic Void has made many great adventure games but I will recommend Devil’s Hideout, a very creepy first person adventure.

Spirit Swap combines visual novels with match 3 puzzle games. I think it brings some great innovations to the match 3 genre and I love the art and soundtrack in this game as well

I can’t recommend the Midnight Scenes series enough. It’s an anthology series of horror point and click adventures and each one can be played in a single sitting.

Super Video Golf is a solid golf game with tons of features and an early 90s 3D aesthetic I really enjoy. I hate real life golf for many reasons but like a good video game about golf. Comes with a Steam key.

There is not a game in recent memory that does the Super Mario Bros 3 style platformer better than Kitsune Tails.

Rainbow Laser Disco Dungeon is a kinda sorta Berzerk like, at least in how you move from room to room, twin stick shooter combined with a rhythm game. Comes with a Steam key too!

co-open is a very nice first person adventure game about a child’s first time going grocery shopping alone.

Again, some of these are repeats from the recent Itch recommendation thread but they’re worth another shoutout.