My Favorite Indie Games on Itch.io
Sometimes, simple is the best way to go…
TETRISLAND
Other than this game involving the fitting together of different shapes, that seems to be where any familiarity with Tetris ends.
Each level you are given a new “island” which acts as a container to organize your different shapes within.
Unlike in Tetris, you cannot rotate any of the shapes.
The first ten levels are easy to breeze through, since your islands are mostly empty.
However, as you progress, more trees start to pop up which act as barriers to your shapes.
If you get stuck, you have two options: you can use some of your in-game earnings to shuffle your pieces (a must) or you can use the much more expensive option of removing one of the trees in order to place one of your shapes.
Playing this actually reminds me more of a game called Puzzle Express, which was published by GameHouse many years ago.
I loved Puzzle Express too and this game brought on a lot of nostalgia from the hours I spent playing that so long ago.
TINY SETTLERS
Yes, it is *dead* simple ⸺ and that is definitely its charm!
With three settings for difficulty, you are given a plot of land that is divided up into squares, with a few invariably taken up by rocks.
Your task is to strategically fill your land with houses, water wells, crops, roads, huts and bonfires.
If you think that sounds too easy, you will not be disappointed.
Crops must exist in close proximity to water, houses must be built along roads and various other rules make this much harder than you might initially figure.
Good luck trying to use all the squares of your land! ;-)
SIX SIDED STREETS
There are three different types of tile patterns for the hexagons in this game, which include: grass, wind turbines and paved street.
At the start of the game, only one hexagon is already placed in the middle of the board. It is a large building on top of a street tile.
In order to increase your score and build out your board, you want to connect other street tiles with the beginning piece. Doing this will result in houses appearing on top of the street, so long as they connect with other hexagons of the same pattern.
In similar fashion, placing the wind turbines near grass tiles seems to transform the grass into trees, which increases your overall score.
Building and connecting the houses on your board so that they touch the little “docks” at the outermost edges in several places also seems to add points to your score.
Let me just say that scoring well in this game seems to be an impossible task, at least for me…I don’t seem able to get anything better than a grade C so far.
MUSHROOMER
The graphics are pretty and so wandering around the environment is a good experience.
Basically, you are a girl who is put in the woods near your house in search of different types of mushrooms.
You need a certain number of each one on your list each day and you need to make it back home before it gets totally dark each night, because if you sleep outside, the squirrels steal all your mushrooms in the night!
You have a total of nine days to collect all the mushrooms you need, otherwise it is game over.
When you have finished collecting your daily list of mushrooms, it will refresh with a new list. Just be sure you don’t get stuck too far away from home when night falls, or whatever progress you made will be undone the next morning.
These types of games are really nice when I need to de-stress and just want game art that is nice to look at while completing simple actions that don’t require much thought or energy.
PIECES OF CAKE
I grew up in the nineties and my first gaming console was the Super Nintendo when I was about seven or eight years old.
I started out playing Tetris and Donkey Kong on one of those kids, so don’t roll your eyes too hard at me for being a nostalgic sap when it comes to 8 bit pixel art LOL.
That having been revealed, it will come as no surprise that I’m a *complete* sucker for the aesthetics and design of this game!
Another concept that at first may seem overly simple, but you will be surprised at how long you can keep it going and how crazy you might be able to score for a single cake.
For each level, you need to make a cake that contains the right number of whichever ingredient you are instructed to include.
You place the ingredient cards in the oven together, but the placement is crucially important.
You will notice that many or most of the cards also have little knobs on one or two of their edges, either red, green, dark brown, yellow or white.
Each card/ingredient also has a color of its own, also one of the aforementioned.
Placing two of the same ingredients next to or above/below each other causes them to combine and become one, the number in the lower right hand corner of each card will combine and increase as well.
The idea is to try your best to place them next to different ingredients which correspond to the colored knobs on the square’s edges. This will cause them to switch places with the other ingredient and your score will increase, depending on the combination you make.
This is super addicting and fun, give it a try!
COFFEE MAKER
This is a keyboard only game and it starts out easy, but after a while, things speed up and you only get three mistakes before it’s GAME OVER!
Your right, left, up and down arrows are how you add ingredients to your coffee drinks.
You have Expresso (sic), Hot Water, Hot Milk, Sugar, Chantilly, Cacao, Cream and Whiskey.
Adding different amounts of these ingredients will produce a number or different types of drinks.
For example, 1x expresso + 2x hot water will create a “Long Coffee.”
So you would press the up arrow once, then the right arrow twice to successfully make the drink.
This game IS timed and you must be quick on your feet!
CURIOUS FISHING
First off, I’ve spent a fair amount of time trying to complete all of the thirty levels included in this puzzler.
At the time of writing this, I believe I’ve managed to complete seventeen of them.
I will say that certain levels sprinkled throughout seem to be *much* more challenging than some others, but not necessarily in any kind of progression.
Part of the problem I am having is that I don’t fully understand the rules of the game, because I almost never read game instructions and always skip tutorials when the option is available.
I know that’s dumb, but it is how I seem to do things.
I understand how to successfully collect the goldfish, stingray(?), crab, and green fish…but alas, the pink octopus has so far eluded my understanding.
Just go give it a try, and consider learning the rules before trying to play. You won’t be disappointed.
KITSU
It is a charming puzzle game with an interesting match 3 element.
In each level, you will find green shrub-like pieces, yellow crate boxes, and gray stone boulder pieces in various numbers and configurations.
These groupings of pieces block your pathway to collecting the red hearts needed to activate the portal which takes you to the next level.
In order to remove the pieces, you have the ability to make a copy of them, but *only* when you are directly in front of, behind, or next to a piece of the same type.
And the pieces will only disappear when a line of three is formed, either horizontally or vertically.
The level of challenge involved overall was basically perfect and my only real complaint about the game was that it was over sooner than I wanted it to be!
GROW GOLF
That being said, this one was pretty damn fun and gets *very* challenging after you get warmed up.
The controls take a little while to master, but once you figure out the formula for placing the cursor and distance to drag the mouse, you can become pretty consistent with your accuracy.
That being said, the game significantly ups the stakes right about at the point where you feel you’ve got it down by suddenly starting to turn parts of your golf course into *water*
Which…yeah, makes things *a lot* harder!
Each time you successfully hit the ball into the hole, more of the land disappears and is replaced by more water.
All I can say is GOOD LUCK!
GOOD IMPRESSION
In fact, it was this short little game that managed to spark my interest in browsing more of the content available on the site.
I come back to it every so often to try and top my current high score (I have managed to put all items in the appropriate places, *BUT* I always end up with a single can of soda on the floor to the right of the couch that I *cannot* for the life of me figure out what to do with it!)
Anyhow, the game is very short and simple: your house is in a disastrous state and your mother just called and wants to stop by.
The catch?
You have only *three minutes* until she arrives.
Panic mode engaged!
Quickly wash all the dirty dishes scattered about the room, clean the stains off the floor, get all the trash lying about into a garbage can, put leftovers in the fridge, hide your dirty magazines, get dirty laundry into the right receptacles and put your clean ones away, QUICKLY!
DOODLE ISLAND
Types of buildings include houses, barns, churches, woodcutter huts, mines, etc.
Nature elements include volcanoes, lakes, mountains, crops, trees, etc.
Through a process of experimentation and trial and error, I’ve managed to discover which types of structures to place in close proximity to others in order to maximize points.
Some are more obvious and make more sense to me than others, but one example that is pretty straightforward is that placing woodcutter huts near trees results in high points.
Similarly, placing mines near mountains does the same. As does placing crops near farms/barns.
If these types of games are usually your kinda thing, this one is worth giving a try.
SORT THE COURT
You play the king or queen of a small but growing kingdom.
The goal of the game is to increase the population, while maintaining a high level of happiness among your people.
Each YES or NO will affect these numbers, so consider the possible implications for each question.
An entertaining variety of different characters from your own as well as neighboring kingdoms will visit your court and make requests of you, sometimes coming to you with a business proposition, sometimes asking for blatant hand-outs and other times asking you to support their various industries or political causes.
The large number of different characters (of which not all are human, by the way) and the well-written dialogue that is often humorous make this fun to the very end.
I don’t want to spoil the fun for you, but I will simply end this by enthusiastically sharing that I am “excited to eat this!”
MY PIXEL PLAYGROUND
As we’ve established by now, I’m naturally drawn to games which use 8bit or 16bit pixel art.
My Pixel Playground is a fun little game in which you can design your own little park.
The sandbox mode lets you just play around with all the available assets in the game, whereas the campaign mode has specific tasks to complete and other assets are unlocked upon success.
There are a few different categories of assets you can choose to add to your park, such as landscaping items and playground equipment.
Landscaping includes assets like trees, stepping stones, flowers, shrubs, garbage cans, park benches, etc.
Playground equipment includes items such as slides, swing sets, and much more.
If you’re looking for something fun to tinker around and build something cute and creative, give this a try!