Our Resolution Is to Play More Indie Games: Indie Selects for January
The post Our Resolution Is to Play More Indie Games: Indie Selects for January appeared first on Xbox Wire.
New year, new you. New you, new games to play. In November, we announced that we will celebrate the one-year anniversary of this program with a 2024 Anniversary Collection. Each year, we’ll add 6 indie titles, not available on Xbox Game Pass, that we believe are absolute must-haves to this collection. Every year we’ll add 6 more, never removing the titles from previous years, slowly growing our shrine to indie greatness. Think of it as our yearly “Indie Hall of Fame” in the Xbox Store. We have another big surprise next week, so stay tuned.
But before all that, we have a new list of titles to kick off your 2025, just before the party begins next week.
Sometimes, amazing indie titles that launch in December don’t get the visibility they deserve. This month, we rectify that with a crazy good list of long-awaited remasters, strange puzzles, stranger puppets, and watery adventures, both chaotic and relaxing. Here’s what we’ve got for you this month (in no particular order):
Raft
“Craft a floating base out of trash to survive,” they said. “Who needs friends? Go it alone,” they said. “What’s the worst that can happen?” they said. Turns out, sharks can happen.
Next time, I’m definitely gathering some people up for aquatic survival game, Raft. The first hours of this game were stressful for me. My tools broke several times, I was always dehydrated, and I didn’t seem to grasp steering. The game gave me direction, but I felt like it was always leading to my death. In some ways, I felt like maybe this game wasn’t for me.
And then, I started to unlock blueprints. Then I started to improve my tools, the water became drinkable, my raft got bigger. I can do this, I’m going to live! Hours passed. I suddenly was able to steer and stop my now-giant raft. I was getting way more confident exploring reefs and following the debris. Suddenly, I’m seeing a humongous outpost and I’m finding puzzles to solve, and now I’m going on quests. Oh, and I fought a bear! I didn’t win, but I fought it. It became extremely satisfying to progress – even empowering. I haven’t tried this with other people yet, but I am very excited to share this game with my friends. I’m still working on my raft and making it more functional, but I no longer feel like Tom Hanks waiting in the middle of the ocean for someone to save me, which is a good start.
Raft
Axolot Games
throws you and your friends into an epic oceanic adventure! Alone or together, players battle to survive a perilous voyage across a vast sea! Gather debris, scavenge reefs and build your own floating home, but be wary of the man-eating sharks! Legacy of Kain Soul Reaver 1&2 Remastered
There are countless tales online about the development of this series and how it was left unfinished, but today fans can rejoice in this remastered compilation of Soul Reaver 1 & 2, the crown jewels of the epic series. The Legacy of Kain is infamous for its unyielding twists and turns, shaping the lore of Nosgoth and its tale of Humans, vampires, corruption, and prophecy. In the real world, these games had a dramatic impact in the early 2000s game industry in a couple of ways. Besides the incredibly deep lore and delightful puzzle solving, the environment-shifting gameplay mechanic they introduced was entirely new ground at this point. Though it’s not so unusual to find these days, the idea of going back and forth between two versions of an environment to proceed forward had just started to be explored in adventure games.
Remastering older video games has now become its own discipline, or even genre. The limitations, the legalities, the lost knowledge, can present a myriad of unsolvable problems to both developer and publisher. However, the past 5-10 years have seen some truly inspired work to preserve, reimagine, and sometimes rebuild from scratch the work of previous decades. This is one of those remasters. The models and environments are meticulously updated to bring this title up-to-date by several generations. That includes a modern version of the in-game controls, updated camera controls, and even a map (which would have been nice 20 years ago). There’s also behind-the-scenes footage, never-before-seen cutscenes, a lore map, and even cut levels that were removed from the games, which is an impressive inclusion.
Some of the best and most famous art pieces, literature, and music in human history are unfinished. Sometimes the negative space or the dead air feels purposeful, haunting, as if it were calling out to you asking what you would put here. Maybe it’s for someone else to finish, or maybe it was never meant to be finished at all. Whatever the case maybe, Soul Reaver was a masterpiece of its time and deserved the careful restoration it received. As someone who’s beaten these games multiple times, I can’t wait to have more conversations with even more people experiencing it for the very first time.
Legacy of Kain Soul Reaver 1&2 Remastered
Aspyr
Naiad
Let’s be real: who doesn’t want to gently reunite little lost ducklings with their mothers? Or help passing fishies swim into new waters? If that’s on your wavelength (it’s definitely on mine), then Naiad is here to deliver what’s basically a haven for very chill, sometimes incredibly mysterious, puzzling that’ll have you drifting along streams, creeks, and rivers. In this minimalist, colorful exploration adventure, you play as a lovely little mermaid-like creature who nudges around the waters, helping, nurturing, and stumbling into new scenarios.
Each new body of water includes what’s pretty much a dialogue-free toybox in which you can complete a bunch of very opaque objectives that give little instruction – or simply complete a main task to slip into the next chapter. It’s a mostly serene, subdued journey that lets you choose how deep you want to dive into the mysteries of each of these water-laden toyboxes. Created by a solo dev, Naiad scoots along like a quiet daydream but harbors just enough complexity to satisfy the more curious.
NAIAD
HiWarp
Great God Grove
Everything about this unique puzzle game is so charming to me. The character designs, their personalities, the world building, and the hilarious dialogue kept me entertained as I played through this tale of a mail-carrier for the gods in a world on the brink. Great God Grove’s core mechanics revolve around players leveraging pieces of dialogue to interact with other characters and solve puzzles, but in a way I’ve never seen before – you literally just suck the words straight from dialog boxes with your Megapon vacuum tool and release them in places that make sense.
I also cannot stress how silly this game is! Right off the bat, you meet a captain who seems to know much about the Grove, while simultaneously losing his mind every second. So far, each character I’ve interacted with has done or said something that felt reminiscent of a cartoon I’d watch – whether it was a character eating a missing beach ball or a muscular woman threatening a man who’s too scared to profess his love for her. It’s fun, it’s weird and it’s awesome!
Great God Grove
Fellow Traveller
Fly Corp
For as relaxing and cozy as this game’s aesthetic is, I didn’t realize how difficult, challenging, and chaotic running my own airport network would be. This complex management sim’s true challenge wasn’t opening airports, adding new routes, or upgrading planes. It was managing the money to complete objectives and dealing with random events that truly tested my strategic skills. Fans of management simulation games will feel right at home with the challenging but rewarding nature of this unexpected gem.
Out of the multiple modes, I found the most fun in “Discover The World,” where you’re tasked with unlocking a new territory every 6 minutes, or your run is ended. This forced me to quickly understand the game’s flow – which routes are most cost-effective, when to upgrade and add planes and airports, and whether to accept high-risk, high-reward events. Honestly, this was a nice break from my usual action-oriented titles and has made me curious about what else this genre offers. Whether you’re a casual gamer or a fan of strategy games, Fly Corp is an engaging experience worth exploring!
Fly Corp
Klabater
The Thing: Remastered
Fear and trust. That’s what The Thing is all about, and I love it! If you haven’t come across this game before, it’s a third-person survival horror set as a sequel to the classic 1982 movie of the same name – which was pretty innovative in itself at release, given that most movie tie-in games were more like adaptations than story continuations.
I thoroughly enjoyed taking a step back through time for a moment while playing. Nightdive Studios did an excellent job remastering the title – the camera orientation, the voice acting, and most, if not all, of the mechanics feel exactly how games felt 24 years ago but with a modern sheen.
I couldn’t help but notice how much this reminded me of Gears of War as I was playing it. The grotesque creatures, the character relationship building, the tone, and atmosphere are all very similar in a way. Maybe that’s why I appreciated playing it so much, but I won’t let that take away from how good this game is on its own.
The Thing: Remastered
Nightdive Studios
Those are our picks for January, but we’re far from done. Stay tuned next week for our big Indie Selects Anniversary Celebration!
The post Our Resolution Is to Play More Indie Games: Indie Selects for January appeared first on Xbox Wire.
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