Tuesdays are all about new games on The Mommy Gamers Twitch stream. I scoured E3 this year to find some games that I knew Marcia would love to bring to her channel on New Game Tuesday. Below are three indie games that are all but surefire hits. Take a look and let us know in the comments if they sound like games you would play too!
Ooblets
Ooblets is an adorable indie game that is being developed by a two-person, patreon-funded team. Rebecca Cordingley and Ben Wasser have been working on it since 2016 and it is scheduled for release on Xbox One and PC sometime in 2018. Ooblets is a farming, town-life, and creature collection game that draws heavy inspiration from games like Stardew Valley and Pokemon. Players run a farm, manage a shop, and explore all while trying to uncover the secrets of “Oob” (whatever that is).
All of the different mechanics in the game are centered around collecting the titular Ooblets. You grow them in your garden, you explore the wilderness looking for new seeds, and you even battle them with your own team. Anyone who has felt to the urge to Catch ‘Em All should feel right at home here.
I could talk about interesting mechanics all day, but that would betray the true strength of this game: Its charm. Every line of code and frame of animation is just oozing (oobing?) with it. Characters walk with a fun bob in their step. The Ooblets sway to the music and battle each other using dance moves. Heck. Even the plants in your garden are practically dancing as they grow.
This is definitely a game to keep an eye on. I don’t know if it will dethrone Fortnite as Marcia’s game of choice for streaming, but I think it’s got a shot.
Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin
Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin puts players in the shoes of a lonely Harvest Goddess who has been banished, along with a small group of mortal humans, to a dangerous island. She needs to fight dangerous monsters to clear the land for settlement, and then help grow rice to help keep the humans alive.
Sakuna is two different games joined at the hip. Gamers from the SNES era might compare it favorably to Actraiser. Both games include a side scrolling action mode where the player controls a hero as they battle their way through stages to gather resources and to clear away monsters. The difference is that Actraiser paired that action with a Civilization style kingdom building game. Sakuna replaces that with a peaceful rice farming simulator.
I’ve played Sakuna at each of the last two E3’s. I came away from my demo impressed both times. The art is gorgeous, the animations are smooth, and I was intrigued by how the two different game modes played off of each other. Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin will be launching on PS4 and PC in 2019! I can’t wait to play it again.
Mineko’s Night Market
Mineko’s Night Market, by Meowza Games, is a game about “crafting crafts, eating eats, and catting cats.” All quirky humor aside, Night Market is a game that is intended to celebrate Japanese culture while also delivering a wide variety of interesting activities to perform and quests to complete. Players take on the role of Mineko as she moves to a new home on a superstitious Japanese island. The island is overrun by cats, which is fitting considering everyone on the island worships Abe, the Sun Cat.
Gameplay is diverse, but the main loop of the game involves gathering materials through quests, exploration, farming, and trading. You then use those materials to craft items to sell at a market that takes place every week. Selling better items not only earns you money, but it improved the market as a whole which gives you access to even more resources.
The cat theme runs deep here as well. Mineko is accompanied through the game by an, as of yet unnamed, giant cat as well as a cadre of “normal” cats. Its anyone’s guess at this point what those cats do, but you acquire them in a number of interesting ways including growing them out of plants! I can’t wait to play Mineko’s Night Market when it comes to PC, Mac, and Nintendo Switch later this year.
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If Marcia’s love for farming games is any indication, then she should love streaming these games. What about you? Do any of these three games interest you? Sound off in the comments!
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