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Discussion Indie darlings that didn't click with you

Enpsty

Enpsty

Bob-omb
Although the vast majority of the indie games I've tried justified their reputation I do have some examples of indie gems that didn't do much to me.

Right off the bat Bastion and Transistor.
Bastion looks cool and the narrator gimmick is interesting, but the gameplay is a bit too shallow. The game is so short that the action system barely matters since by the time you've tried all the weapons the game is already over.
Transistor I definitely didn't like. This time I found the narration plain annoying and the game is barely three hours long making it's combat system once again pointless. Not a fan.

Another one is Iconoclasts. Great graphics, but way too much dialogue and story for a metroidvania. The game stops you every 5 minutes for a cutscene and it's not that the story is interesting at all.

I also found Death's Door bland. A basic isometric action game that falsely describes itself as a Zelda like (not really) and souls element (I sleep) with a basic roll and attack battle system that never gets interesting. Not bad, just bland.

I also suspect that Tunic, which I'm currently playing maybe in the list due to its beyond terrible combat, but it's too soon to tell.

What about you?
 
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i still think Hollow Knight is gonna click with me one day. there's usually a point in metroidvanias when you reach that satisfying flow of regular upgrades and rewarded exploration and it becomes much more fun.

i've just had struggles with the initial parts of it, stuff like the map not showing where you are on top of it being fairly punishing. i respect the way it does things a lot, i just need some accessibility at times
 
Braid. It just didn't click with me at all, found it way too basic and pretentious.

Undertale. I liked it fine, but I never felt this elation everyone else seems to have gotten from it.
 
Enpsty said:
Although the vast majority of the indie games I've tried justified their reputation I do have some examples of indie gems that didn't do much to me.

Right off the bat Bastion and Transistor.
Bastion looks cool and the narrator gimmick is interesting, but the gameplay is a bit too shallow. The game is so short that the action system barely matters since by the time you try all the weapons the game is already over.
Transistor I definitely didn't like. This time I found the narration plain annoying and the game is barely three hours long making it's combat system once again pointless. Not a fan.

Another one is Iconoclasts. Great graphics, but way too much dialogue and story for a metroidvania. The game stops you every 5 minutes for a cutscene and it's not that the story is interesting at all.

I also found Death's Door bland. A basic isometric action game that falsely describes itself as a Zelda like (not really) and souls element (I sleep) with a basic roll and attack battle system that never gets interesting. Not bad, just bland.

I also suspect that Tunic, which I'm currently playing maybe in the list due to its beyond terrible combat, but it's too soon to tell.

What about you?
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Transistor's last boss was cool, that's it. The main reason I haven't tried Hades is that I didn't like Transistor.

Finished Tunic just yesterday (thanks to gamepass), I was kinda disappointed by it.

Bzzzt! and Super Meat Boy showed up on Steam because of my playtime in Celeste and neither clicked. Bzzt! isn't bad, it just isn't very interesting, very simple platforming. Super Meat Boy, on the other hand, felt awkward to control as he moves either too slow when walking or too fast when running (mostly a problem while mid air).

The one other indie darling I really disliked (off the top of my head) was Hollow Knight. The bosses are fun to fight, but I quickly realised I didn't like Metroidvanias, also the game is very dark and most areas looked very samey to me.
 
Just bought Tunic during the sale. Played a bit, was intrigued, but I think a bug on my savegame caused me to lose some bombs I had spent all my money on and then I was out of money and out of the item I needed to progress, and I was done. Maybe it'll get an upgrade on Switch 2 and I'll try again.

Celeste didn't click with me at all despite me adoring platformers. I think it's because it feels too much like a Kaizo game to me - you have to execute perfectly or you die, and that takes out too much of the player expression to me. Also they had a puzzle level early on (the Hotel) which kinda was a buzzkill.

Among Us. Bought it to play it with friends and hated every second. It's only fun because you're playing with friends, otherwise it's a chore.
Revolsin said:
i still think Hollow Knight is gonna click with me one day. there's usually a point in metroidvanias when you reach that satisfying flow of regular upgrades and rewarded exploration and it becomes much more fun.

i've just had struggles with the initial parts of it, stuff like the map not showing where you are on top of it being fairly punishing. i respect the way it does things a lot, i just need some accessibility at times
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Had this too until I listened to more of the soundtrack! Then I pushed through and man, it gets so great after a certain point. But the beginning is absolutely slow - you only hit a regular cadence of upgrades 1/4 of the way in and then it starts to sing. Pogoing a lot does help though in the beginning.
 
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Bonejack said:
Balatro.

Not a card game fan.
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that's an interesting one. i don't much play card games or even knew the basic rules of poker before i dived in. it's more for the optimizing number RPG guy imo. when you start getting proper joker combos that shit is addictive to a terrifying degree
 
I love Hollow Knight, but the souls elements stop it from being a perfect game. I genuinely believe that adding souls elements in a non souls-like game will only make your game worse.
 
Happens all the time; indie darlings tend to be prone to oversaturated genres and/or trend-chasing, which causes rapid burnout of a genre.

The most notable examples for me is Hades, which is a game I really like in terms of visuals, writing, themes (love myths and history), voice acting, music... except the gameplay which is so bog standard roguelite affair that it bores me out of my mind and the game has that early access grind stink to it where they gradually open up the game at a pace that's just way too sluggish and then drop a bunch of "just run the game a hundred times" walls in front of the player.

Related examples of game genres with this issue (just going to talk about broad genres here in that mentioning any of these kinda causes my eyes to glaze over): cozy games, metroidvanias, roguelites, mascot horror, walking sims, puzzle games and finally earthboundlikes. Boomer shooters are rapidly entering this category too.

All of those have a few starring "really good" games and then a thousand knockoffs that get considered indie darlings that you're not allowed to criticize for being samey because "it's just a small team, don't punch down".
 
Enpsty said:
Although the vast majority of the indie games I've tried justified their reputation I do have some examples of indie gems that didn't do much to me.

Right off the bat Bastion and Transistor.
Bastion looks cool and the narrator gimmick is interesting, but the gameplay is a bit too shallow. The game is so short that the action system barely matters since by the time you try all the weapons the game is already over.
Transistor I definitely didn't like. This time I found the narration plain annoying and the game is barely three hours long making it's combat system once again pointless. Not a fan.

Another one is Iconoclasts. Great graphics, but way too much dialogue and story for a metroidvania. The game stops you every 5 minutes for a cutscene and it's not that the story is interesting at all.

I also found Death's Door bland. A basic isometric action game that falsely describes itself as a Zelda like (not really) and souls element (I sleep) with a basic roll and attack battle system that never gets interesting. Not bad, just bland.

I also suspect that Tunic, which I'm currently playing maybe in the list due to its beyond terrible combat, but it's too soon to tell.

What about you?
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Haven't played Iconoclasts but agree on Bastion, Transistor and Death's Door (bland would also be the word that I used to describe the last one).
I hope I feel different about Tunic. Still looking forward to that one.


Otherwise I got annoyed with Undertale trying to be clever and meta every 2 minutes and interrupting the flow with a phone call from certain characters etc.
Also I am just not into the artstyle.

Animal Well was the last one. It is a fine game and a good Metroidvania until the first credits. Afterwards it got tedious and repetitive.
Searching every inch of the map for hidden treasure chests was not really fun for me.
And all the endgame meta-puzzles went way over my head and sounded tedious as well.
 
I feel I should like Supergiant Games'... games a lot more than I actually do. I beat Bastion but I never fully clicked with its combat and structure. With Hades, the same again, I never felt comfortable with the combat, and I always get cheapshots from enemies.
 
Wargroove is this for me.

It felt like those videos that have a song but something about it is off? But in game form. Campaign felt weirdly stiff and puzzley compared to AW, and some mechanics felt at times like they were there for the sake of not being AW.

Which was sad because the rest of the package was honestly amazing.
 
Hollow Knight. Too hard.
Cuphead. Well, yeah..

Dead Cells and Deaths Door. I dont like roguelikes apparently (not sure if roguelike or -lite or what the difference is).

Tried all theee on multiple occasions and I have now given up.
 
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Tangerine_Cookie said:
Wargroove is this for me.

It felt like those videos that have a song but something about it is off? But in game form. Campaign felt weirdly stiff and puzzley compared to AW, and some mechanics felt at times like they were there for the sake of not being AW.

Which was sad because the rest of the package was honestly amazing.
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Wargroove I think is the only game I bought, played for 30min-1 hour and then just uninstalled without any desire to ever play it again. I was really in the mood for a tactical rpg when it came out but it just didn't click at all for me.
 
Celeste
Binding of Isaac
Undertale

All of them have a distinctive fun art style and it’s not like I think they are bad at what they do, they are just games I thought I’d love but didn’t. There’s probably a stack more that I rave about but others didn’t like, and the raw nature of Break-out hits mean that you are gonna get more people bouncing off them while they are the games people want to talk about. And that’s OK, it’s why any popular game generates discussion from the sheer number of players while most indie games are lucky to get a thread with 30 posts on it.

Having said that, I think that’s also down to indies being way more focused on the vision of a very small number of people, and way less likely to have those elements sanded down by a ‘design by committee’ element. And I really value that in indies, it’s why I constantly try new ones. I loved many of those mentioned above too.
 
Spelunky, I know you have to push through, but that first hour for me was just painful.

Death's Door. Bland, boring and lifeless. Maybe that was the intention.
 
Dead Cells is a big one for me. Despite liking both metroidvanias and some roguelites, I couldn't really get into it for some reason. I couldn't really put my finger on why, there was just something about the gameplay loop that didn't work for me. Funnily, I really like Nuclear Blaze, the lead designer's first game he made after leaving the studio.
 
Dead cells, I think this game lacks rich elements when viewed as a rouge.
The rest is Hollow Knight, because not reading the strategy will have a significant impact on completing the game.
If there's anything else, it's Hades. I just don't think it is as outstanding as the media praises. I'm willing to give it 8, while the media claims it's 9.
 
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Undertale
A Hat in Time
Disco Elysium

I think maybe I expected all of them to be different games than they are? I know for Disco Elysium in particular I thought it was going to be an action game instead of a point and click.

Also, a special shout out goes to Minecraft. I know it's not really an indie game anymore, but I just can't understand the appeal of it. My son plays it all the time and I am put off by just about everything in the game. To each their own, I suppose.
 
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Death's Door, Owlboy, Transistor, Hyper Light Drifter, CrossCode...

I didn't dislike any of these, but I didn't like them as much as nearly everyone else. They're decent games, and that's it.
 
Hollow Knight for me as well. But not because it was a bad game. I had some serious genre fatigue, there were like billions of metroidvanias, coming one after another. HK just didn't feel special for me, especially next to the ones with excellent platforming integrated in, like Guacamelee or Ori. But I still appreciate the devs picked the hand-drawn artstyle over a pixelated one.
 
Hollow knight. I'm just over souls mechanics as a whole, and the idea of retrying a boss 4 times is no longer appealing
 
palemire said:
Hollow Knight 🤷

and if Ori counts as indie, that too.

(fwiw I'm a huge metroidvania fan, so it's not about the genre)
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I liked both well enough to play through them, but then soured pretty hard on them in hindsight, especially Ori. Without the novelty of a first playthrough to drive me forward, I suddenly found I couldn't stand Ori's level design, physics, or especially the checkpoint system. Those escape sequences are so trial and error, I had no idea how lucky I had gotten with the tree on my first playthrough...

Hollow Knight I wouldn't even say I actually dislike so much as I just feel like I hate it compared to everyone else putting it as the pinnacle of the genre. It was fine. It didn't have the extreme precision to justify its difficulty or the content to back up its size. Countless secrets that just had vendor trash or something. I also didn't like the stuff like the map and corpse runs that just felt like it was there to be annoying, but once I got past that initial unfriendliness I did actually enjoy it until it kind of overstayed its welcome.

I'd also add Axiom Verge, which I don't know if I'd quite call a "darling" but it's not the least famous game in this thread. It was really cool, but the enemies are so incredibly dangerous and health so hard to recover that exploring anywhere was impossibly tedious with every room a battle that must be won perfectly, and I couldn't finish it.

manfromthedam said:
Celeste didn't click with me at all despite me adoring platformers. I think it's because it feels too much like a Kaizo game to me - you have to execute perfectly or you die, and that takes out too much of the player expression to me. Also they had a puzzle level early on (the Hotel) which kinda was a buzzkill.
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Despite it feeling like this when you're first learning it, there's actually a ton of room for player expression in Celeste even in the hardest levels, more than in the vast majority of platformers. Was really surprised when I looked up a video of the Hotel C-Side after beating it and saw that they did every room completely differently from how I did it. The game teaches you some of the advanced techniques you can use, but only in levels unlocked after reaching the ending, which is probably also a factor in it seeming so restricted at first.

Anyway, my answer is Undertale. Music was good but not unusually so for the genre or anything. Best part of the game was visiting Undyne's house.

It felt like it was trying to do way too many things at once. It's barely an RPG, a pretty bad bullet hell game that uses the generous health bar as a crutch for the fact that it has a tiny playing field where bullets can spawn from anywhere, and it isn't afraid to go for gotchas either. Most of the overworld puzzles are unfun.

I guess aside from the iffy gameplay, what left me lukewarm overall was its unwillingness to take itself seriously. The True Lab is a great example. The way it ends creates this weird disconnect because now I have no idea how fucked up I'm actually supposed to think this is. It seems pretty fucked up? But we're not engaging with it seriously anymore, so oh well. It's fine to do horror and comedy together, but, you actually have to do both, not pretend you're doing one and then start doing the other at the last second. The writing was full of cop-outs and shortcuts, and in the normal course of playing the game you'll also barely be able to follow what's going on by the end.

Basically, this is zoomer Super Paper Mario, and its enormous popularity will always somewhat baffle me I think.
 
Deaths Door - It's like you asked an AI to design a top down Souls style game.

Chicory - The painting mechanics are tedious and slow and it doesn't bring enought to the table to compensate for it. I couldn't get past the first 3 hours for how boring I found it.

Omori - Mother and Undertale but with a weaker and less interesting fighting system and a much worse story debelopment. It totally lacks the balance between a fun and a serious tone and at the end it tries to be so constantly dark that it lacks the impact of the most dramatic moments of Mother and Undertale, which hit like a gut punch because of simple contrast with the lighter feeling of the whole adventure. When you ask the player to stab themselves to death from minute one and then repeat it like 5 times more, maybe you are overdoing it.
 
Hollow Knight... Played it more than once to give it more chances but it wasn't that enjoyable at all. I see why people like it, but it isn't my vibe.

Balatro too. Nothing wrong with this one in particular, i'm just not the biggest fan of card games haha
 
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Night in the Woods is the first one that comes to mind. Didn't care for its almost non-existent gameplay, and the story never clicked with me.

Someone mentioned Iconoclasts, but I'm not even sure if it's an indie darling at all. Haven't heard people talk about it since release day, where hype got to me and I purchased it. A metroidvania with the amount of cutscenes to rival MGS is a weird choice. Never felt like the game allowed me to play it.
 
Hollow knight works for me because It's the first game horizontally 2d game I've played that feels like it's truly open, not just a linear game with added backtracking. Going out of the first visit of the city of tears, you can go to deepnest, cyrstal peaks, royal waterways into kingdoms edge or ancient basin... You actually have choice of what interests you the most.

In terms of core mechanics its pretty by the numbers, but I don't think even super metroid comes close to the freedom offered.

Echoing others, Minecraft i like a lot more conceptually then I do in practice, it's to hard to find Places of Interest and any benefit from exploring can be done 100x more efficiently with farms, optimizing the fun out of the game.

Hades 2 was also a big let down. I enjoy roguelikes from time to time, but Hades only really feels like it has superficial variety. Same 4 biomes, same 4 bosses with pattern variations, most boons don't fundamentally change the way you play the game. I got multiple runs up to hades but lost motivation because I was just going through the motions.

Also Sonic Mania (if that counts). The game looks phenomenal, but repeatedly switching between gotta go fast and precision platformer makes it impossible to achieve any type of flow. That's probably just sonic not being for me than a statement on the quality of the game tho.
 
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Vookatos said:
Someone mentioned Iconoclasts, but I'm not even sure if it's an indie darling at all. Haven't heard people talk about it since release day, where hype got to me and I purchased it. A metroidvania with the amount of cutscenes to rival MGS is a weird choice. Never felt like the game allowed me to play it.
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So, so true...
I legit don't understand why the devs thought that the metroidvania genre was suitable for such a story heavy game. I don't get it.
 
linkwashere said:
Chicory - The painting mechanics are tedious and slow and it doesn't bring enought to the table to compensate for it. I couldn't get past the first 3 hours for how boring I found it.
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Chicory is another one for me as well. It's good, but I really don't see what reviewers saw in it. The game has a 90 on Metacritic, which is more than what Tunic, Obra Dinn, and Outer Wilds got. That's crazy to me.
 
Doki Doki Literature Club, and Celeste.

Love the idea of both, but don't like the execution of either.
 
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Enpsty said:
Another one is Iconoclasts. Great graphics, but way too much dialogue and story for a metroidvania. The game stops you every 5 minutes for a cutscene and it's not that the story is interesting at all.

I also suspect that Tunic, which I'm currently playing maybe in the list due to its beyond terrible combat, but it's too soon to tell.
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I was coming in to say Iconoclasts as well, story just didn't click with and like you say, as there is so much of it I found it to be a drag.

I liked Tunic but I didn't get the hype about it. I also used the accessibility options as I found it annoying getting my butt handed to me especially against the later bosses. It was fine but nothing special (great soundtrack tho)
 
This is what happens to me and what I figure also happens to most of y'all:

Boot up new game, can't find the mental energy to understand it very early on, almost unconsciously drop it in favor of either my current competitive thing or a game I've already beaten twice.
 
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Baba is You, maybe I'm too dumb but it becomes too hard too quickly. I was just frustrated the whole time looking at the screen not having any clue what to do.

Revolsin said:
i still think Hollow Knight is gonna click with me one day. there's usually a point in metroidvanias when you reach that satisfying flow of regular upgrades and rewarded exploration and it becomes much more fun.

i've just had struggles with the initial parts of it, stuff like the map not showing where you are on top of it being fairly punishing. i respect the way it does things a lot, i just need some accessibility at times
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From the start, you can buy a badge that will point your location on the map.

Tangerine_Cookie said:
Wargroove is this for me.

It felt like those videos that have a song but something about it is off? But in game form. Campaign felt weirdly stiff and puzzley compared to AW, and some mechanics felt at times like they were there for the sake of not being AW.

Which was sad because the rest of the package was honestly amazing.
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I don't think Wargroove even counts as an indie darling, everyone always talks about how it's AW but with bad map design, which I agree. I wanted to like it so much, but the maps simply aren't fun to play.
 
A thread for me... When I get the time I'll post a list. As it stands a lot games mentioned that either fall in that category for me, or are great in my book.
 
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Celeste. Maybe I just bought too much into the hype, but I thought it was good... and only good. I liked how close the story and gameplay were tied together, and I liked the music and art. The level design was cool, and as much as I appreciate the accessibility features and being able to tweak the difficulty to your hearts' content, I think I'm just not a fan of the precision platforming Celeste requires. The tweaks feel more like band-aid fixes and trivialize the game. I would've liked something in between the ultra-precise platforming of the game with none of the buffs turned on, and the trivialization that having that extra dash or infinite stamina would give you.

That being said, I like that the game doesn't really waste your time when you do die and the room for player expression is enormous, but I didn't think it was this mind blowing experience that I thought it would be.
 
Enpsty said:
I also suspect that Tunic, which I'm currently playing maybe in the list due to its beyond terrible combat, but it's too soon to tell.

What about you?
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Tunic should have done much more with the amazing concept of the manual pages. They are mostly relevant for two critical things, which honestly are great "aham!" moments but other than that, most things you can figure them by yourself like enemy patterns, item uses, invencibility frames or even some lore. They are easier to understand while playing than to try and decode the text in the manual.

It's a game with a great idea that I wish they went much farther with it. It would be cool the game was so disruptive in how you play it that you in fact needed those manual pages to progress. But it's not the case and with little experience on the genre, Tunic si not much different than other top down adventure games.

The biggest offender here is they even copied the souls mechanics when you die. It's a perfect exemple of a mechanic that doesn't need to be in the game but it is, and it's so common nowadays that you don't need any manual page with coded text to understand what's about.
 
palemire said:
Hollow Knight 🤷

and if Ori counts as indie, that too.

(fwiw I'm a huge metroidvania fan, so it's not about the genre)
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I enjoyed Ori, but I just can't get into Hollow Knight. Even visually, the game and art style is just very ugly looking to me.
 
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Tunic and Chicory spring to mind. I still think I need to give a proper try to the both of them, since I fell off (in part) due to work and generally life getting in the way... but if I really like a game, I don't fall off as hard.
 
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Yet another vote for Hollow Knight. I think I got tricked into thinking it’s a MetroidVania with souls elements when it’s really just 2D Dark Souls. I’ve tried multiple times to get into it and just can’t get past how it handles death. I never want to explore anywhere because the game is very hard and if I die I lose all my stuff and have to backtrack there to get it back. One of the Hollow Knight super fans please explain how this is good game design for a MetroidVania outside of “Dark Souls does it” because I just don’t get it. Why would you want to de-incentivize exploration???
 
linkwashere said:
Tunic should have done much more with the amazing concept of the manual pages. They are mostly relevant for two critical things, which honestly are great "aham!" moments but other than that, most things you can figure them by yourself like enemy patterns, item uses, invencibility frames or even some lore. They are easier to understand while playing than to try and decode the text in the manual.

It's a game with a great idea that I wish they went much farther with it. It would be cool the game was so disruptive in how you play it that you in fact needed those manual pages to progress. But it's not the case and with little experience on the genre, Tunic si not much different than other top down adventure games.

The biggest offender here is they even copied the souls mechanics when you die. It's a perfect exemple of a mechanic that doesn't need to be in the game but it is, and it's so common nowadays that you don't need any manual page with coded text to understand what's about.
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I'm 5 hours in and honestly I don't understand why they included all these useless souls mechanics. Like there's absolute no reason for corpse runs in the game.
 
Enpsty said:
I'm 5 hours in and honestly I don't understand why they included all these useless souls mechanics. Like there's absolute no reason for corpse runs in the game.
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Yeah I agree. Also I don't think the fighthing mechanics are developed enough to deserve such difficulty with some of the bosses.

Tunic would be amazing if it was fully built around the manual pages and the need to decipher them to interact with the world and progress through it. However, it wants to be many different things all at once and doesn't go deep enough in any of them. I don't think this is a game that needed to have such a big focus on combat.
 
Hollow Knight. I know people say it takes a little bit to get going for some but I just cannot be arsed. I'll try it eventually after they show silksong and people start building up hype probably.
 
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Leo said:
Baba is You, maybe I'm too dumb but it becomes too hard too quickly. I was just frustrated the whole time looking at the screen not having any clue what to do.
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It definitely does, and it sucks. That game would have been a thousand times bigger if it just had a gentler curve. I would never list it in a thread like this because I respect it too much, but I think the dev just screwed up - that game would be on installed on every school computer in the world as a programming teaching aid if it was just more sensitively designed.
Leo said:
From the start, you can buy a badge that will point your location on the map.
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Something that should never have been tied to a badge. Petty design decision that immediately soured me on the game. So yeah, joining the chorus of Hollow Knight haters.
 
Also chiming in on Hollow Knight. It's a game I fully respect.

But when I had saved up a lot of currency for something and the first miniboss whipped my ass twice and I lost it all, it was like "Oh no, this mechanic again..."

Feels like even Elden Ring bothered me less with this than HK.
 
DittoM said:
One of the Hollow Knight super fans please explain how this is good game design for a MetroidVania outside of “Dark Souls does it” because I just don’t get it. Why would you want to de-incentivize exploration???
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From a game design perspective, the idea of a corpse run exists to make you spend your resources before tackling a major fight. You know something difficult is coming up, so you should spend your resources beforehand, that kinda thing. That way, the corpse won't hold anything of value even if you die.

I don't think HKs implementation of this idea is particularly good (you kinda need an immediate way to spend resources to make it work, an easy way for a player to backtrack between arena to safe zone and a good way to telegraph "this is a boss arena", almost none of which HK really does) but that's why a corpse run/death punishment mechanic exists.

beaglor said:
Something that should never have been tied to a badge. Petty design decision that immediately soured me on the game. So yeah, joining the chorus of Hollow Knight haters
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Is this really such a big deal? I'm not trying to be smarmy, but map reading is genuinely a really fun skill to master and HKs maps make that quite entertaining. You can usually figure out where you are on the map by looking at how the exits in the current room are laid out and your overall memory of the general area. Changing it from a minimap with a constant acknowledgement of where you are to a more traditional map was a really fun change and it changed my way of playing the game from staring at the minimap all the time to actually exploring the environment.
 
I think Owlboy reviewed quite well and has a fair number of fans, but for me it was just a huge slog. Very pretty, but in terms of gameplay there was nothing.
 
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I am the weird one who thinks most indies are overrated. For me most indies either lack in the gameplay department or in the visual department (artstyle not graphics). For example, maybe Stardew Valley is a really fun game but it is not for me because I think the pixel graphics look off. Something about the proportions of the all the objects and models does not look good to me. An example for gameplay would be Shovel Knight. I like the look of it but I think the gameplay is just boring. Also many indies are too dialogue heavy for my liking. I liked to play Hades but I didn't care a bit for the story, for example. Just skipped the whole bla bla.
 
I guess the closest answer for me is basically everything from Supermassive Games that I've played i.e. Bastion, Transistor and Hades. The art, music and writing of their games are consistently good to great, but their mechanics aren't meaty enough for my tastes. For example, most roguelikes I've played, I still take out for a few runs every now and then, but Hades I was done with after I finished the story.
 
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