What should a newbie play?

[doddsickle]

Hi, I've always been more of a console gamer, but recently a friend has encouraged me to try out these more platforming/2D PC games.

Anyway, I was looking around on Rev3 for a new show to follow and came across Bytejacker, and it seems like this is a good place to talk about these kind of games.

I was wondering if you could help me on 2 things, 1) What is the 'proper' term to refer to these games as? "2D sidescrolly-platformy-pixely-spritey-thing" doesn't really cut it I guess :P and 2) What are some titles I should play as a total newcomer? So far all I've tried are Cave Story and 'Aftermath', the game my friend made.

Thanks alot for any help/info!

- Doddsickle

[acarboni]

Hi, Doddsickle!

A great place to start would be with our Free Indie of the Year episodes for 2008 and 2009:

http://www.bytejacker.com/episodes/069
http://www.bytejacker.com/episodes/indie-of-the-year-2008

Or the amazing "In-Depth Indie Game Guide:" http://www.indiegames.com/play.php

You can't go wrong starting with La Mulana and Knytt as follow-ups to Cave Story.

Definitely let us all know what you think as you start getting into indie games!

[lorddust]

To answer question one, I've always called them "indie" or "homebrew" games and then split them into their respective genre (IE puzzle-platformer, adventure)

[lorddust]

Seiklus (http://www.autofish.net/clysm/art/video_games/seiklus/) is a nice "easy" Exploration Platformer that has a good feel to it.

I Think it's on the "game of the year" list but i LOVE Splunky. (http://www.spelunkyworld.com/) Its a randomly generated perma-death exploration platformer, all features which are very uncommon in the mainstream games but often pop up in indie games.