Indie Recommendations!!
The Pathless, and Sakuna of Rice and Ruin
It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these because this year has been extremely slow in general let alone the gaming industry and its constant delays. While we wait for Cyberpunk or having the new consoles actually be in stock, I have some cool games that will bide your time and keep you occupied.
Recently the new consoles released and with that came a slew of new games with them. Most of them being meh at best but I did see one that caught my eye. The Pathless. This game looks pretty simple, you move by shooting floating charms in the environment and you don’t even have to aim at them the game does that for you. The game might look simple but there is a lot to it. You play as the hunter and your mission is to stop the evil Godslayer from corrupting the Gods and becoming a God himself. You go from area to area doing puzzles to unlock these charms to give to shrines to honor these corrupted gods and turn them good again. Each area ends with a three-part fight scene that is extremely fun to play as well as fun to watch as they are brightly colored and bombastic with things going on all over the screen. The game isn’t extremely difficult or anything, but the gameplay isn’t fully about the combat as much as it is about the story and the pure awe of the landscape with its vibrant colors and simplistic yet beautiful artwork. There’s plenty of land to explore and lots of things to collect that help you traverse this HUGE open world. It’s a neat little game that isn’t too big or difficult to grasp. It’s just an overall enjoyable time with cool landscapes and fun traversing mechanic. It won’t take more than about 10 hours to complete but it is well worth the ride. I highly recommend it to anyone looking for something fun to play that you don’t need to invest large amounts of time into. It’s currently on PS4, PS5 and PC. It’s on Apple arcade, which is just weird but hey, Apple finally gets something.
The next game that I have been playing is a little more involved. It’s called Sakuna of Rice and Ruin. It’s a game where you play as Sakuna the daughter of the Goddess of Bountiful Harvests and the God of War. You have had a fall from grace and Sakuna has been banished to the Isle of Demons where you must prove your worth by clearing the land of Demons and learning some humility along the way. The game has a very interesting mechanic as both of your parent’s powers relate to some forms of gameplay. You have to collect food every night by slaying demons in a 2D side scrolling platforming mode, where you fight off waves of demons in increasingly difficult platforming levels as you slowly explore the land. As you progress farther into the area the demons become more difficult to defeat which brings you to the second gameplay mechanic where the game becomes a VERY in depth farming simulator where you plant rice and must tend the field, apply fertilizer and clean the field of weeds. As you do more farming you gain more abilities to help you farm more efficiently. Which is rather important because the quality of the rice you farm is directly involved with your power level and how you grow stronger. Want to hit harder? Grow hearty rice, want to get faster, grow more skinny rice. You gain new abilities and new passives every day depending on the ingredients of the food you used in the previous day’s meals. The game makes you constantly try new combinations of food to better get more powerful passive buffs to your abilities when you are out hunting. It is a simple game loop, gather food to get stronger to gather better food, but it is an addicting one, nonetheless. The story is fun and uplifting. The voice acting is well done, and the art and music of the game really draws you in and keeps you coming back to play more and more. This game is a little more involved than the previous game and you can find yourself spending hours just trying to find the best combinations of food to get the best buffs for the next fight or boss battle. The food mechanic and how to get the best rice has a lot to it and after many hours of playing I still haven’t found the perfect way to grow rice, but I am getting close. Either way it is a fun game, and it isn’t as easy as the previous game I talked about. On multiple occasions I found myself getting stomped by higher level demons until I fully realized how important the farming mechanic was. This game is currently out for Nintendo Switch and PS4 and I highly recommend this to people that like challenging fight mechanics or people that like farming games as well.
Anyway, those are my two recommendations and I hope you guys check them out if you get the time! Lemme know what you think of the games if you have already played them and have a good day guys! Thanks for taking the time to read.