Recently, indie games have become popular all over the year. Their relevance continues to grow every day. Their main advantage and feature is the unique style and variety of game mechanics. The creators of such products can experiment and are not limited to standard genres and topics.
Definition
Let’s start by finding out what is an indie game. These are products that are created by small developers or groups of people. During the development of such games, specialists do not have much financial support. They develop such a product with their own money or use crowdfunding.
Many have loved these games for their uniqueness and exclusivity. Indie games have a distinct style and mechanics that are hard to find in other games. In addition, they can touch on deep and philosophical topics. This is a more unusual and non-standard product than one that can be released by major developers.
You can play these games on any platform, from PC to game consoles and mobile phones. As a rule, such games can be both free and paid. It all depends on which product you choose.
How do you know if it’s an indie game?
In recent years, we have not stopped seeing more and more games that we call “indie” come out. Video games are not the first medium in which this word has been used to refer to “independent” products.
While the term is fairly well defined in music or art, it is not so in video games. Therefore, it is now difficult to single out a specific indicator that indicates that the game is or ceases to be “indie”. But there are some features that nevertheless point us to this. It’s about team size. This is one of the points by which you can navigate.
Almost all indie games tend to be created by very small teams. Some even from one person. A team of 10 people to create a game is a small team, but a team of 150 or 200 people is already a significant size.
You should also pay attention to the budget. Many games are crеаtеd with very little or no budget, relying only on the money and time of the creators. But in other cases, and especially with the advent of kickstarters and early access, many projects no longer suffer as much from the funds limit.
Obviously, funding these methods is not the same as a company with a much larger budget. Of course, this is still an inconvenience in game development today, but with the funding options available, this is not much of a barrier.
Advantages and Challenges of Indie Game Development
The main advantage of indie game dеvеlоpment is that you can focus on the whole game, rather than just one part of it. This means that you have more flеxіbіlity in terms of what you want to do with your game and how it turns out. You also have more room for risk-taking because there’s no publisher breathing down your neck telling you what needs to happen next.
However, this freedom comes at a cost: indie developers often have no one else but themselves working on their games (or only a few people). So while they may be able to take bigger risks than other teams would be allowed by their publisher or studio heads, they still need some kind of income source if they want their careers as developers not just survive but thrive!
Indie developers have access to the same tools and technology as larger studios do. But there are some dіffеrenсes that you’ll need to be aware of. For example, indie games are typically made for PC first (or only), and so many game engines focus on making PC games rather than console titles or mobile apps. This means that if you want to make a game for consoles or mobile devices, you may have more work ahead of you than if your studio was working with a publisher, who has already developed their own proprietary development tools.
More about the price
In recent years, indie games have always cost around €20 or less. Except for some very specific cases where the price has exceeded this figure. They tend to be higher mainly due to their costs.
Early last year, The Witness, Jonathan Blow’s video game, launched on Steam for €36.99. This game revived the debate about the starting price that indie games should have. But doesn’t the game have the value that is given to it.
If “objectively”, then the price of a video game should depend on its content and quality. This is regardless of whether you have an indie game or a more complex project in front of you. Therefore, we can conclude that the price should not depend on who makes the game, but on its quality.
Many people think that indie games are short-lived. This is all because they are created not of very high quality and with much lower graphics.
But the world is developing, so now more and more high-quality indie games are coming to us, where special attention is paid to mechanics. So the myth that indie games don’t have content or that they have to be short is just a myth. So if you’ve ever thought about launching your own product, then why not try your hand in this direction and create an exclusive game that users will love?
Future of Indie Games
Indie games will continue to be a major part of the game industry. There will be more indie game development communities and resources, more indie games released on multiple platforms, and more indie game development tools.
Indie game developers are also becoming more organized by attending conferences like GDC (Game Developers Conference) in San Francisco or Indiecade in Los Angeles.
There will be more “free-to-play” games, which are games that generate revenue through microtransactions or advertising instead of a one-time purchase price.
Conclusion
Now that you know what indie games are, it’s time to start playing some! Remember that there are many other types of games out there besides just indie ones: whether you prefer sports or strategy games; shooters or RPGs; casual or hardcore experiences; there’s something for everyone! So go ahead and explore all the amazing worlds that developers have created for us through their hard work and dedication towards making something special–you won’t regret it 🙂
