Although most of this sci-fi immigrant story unfolds via sharp dialogue and fine voice acting, 1000xResist shows how games can creatively tell narratives. — Sunset Visitor
The dozens of video games The New York Times reviewed last year included anticipated blockbusters (Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree) and smaller gems (Ultros, Neva, Mouthwashing). With hundreds of new releases in 2024, here are five indie games you should explore:
1000xResist
For some reason – trauma? trepidation? – there has been a dearth of pandemic-related art to rival Bo Burnham’s Inside, the comedian’s lyrical look at mental deterioration caused by isolation. Two strong entries finally arrived this spring: the movie “Stress Positions,” about the pot-clanging, Lysol-spraying New York of 2020; and 1000xResist, a 10-hour game where something deadly has spread but immediate answers have not.
Although most of this sci-fi immigrant story unfolds via sharp dialogue and fine voice acting, 1000xResist shows how games can creatively tell narratives. — Sunset Visitor
In the darkened school hallways of the game’s opening chapter, your character encounters students and teachers who allude to something dreadful. The most feared symptom is fluid discharge from the eyes. Why is crying so bad? Metal and silicon shed no tears, and this is a society of clones.
Although most of this sci-fi immigrant story unfolds via sharp dialogue and fine voice acting, 1000xResist shows how games can creatively tell narratives. One section unfolds in an overhead view of an apartment you previously experienced as three-dimensional space; another turns a nondescript hallway into the passage of time.
Each of the clones has a primary purpose: Watcher, Fixer, Knower, Healer and Bang Bang Fire, who is assigned to defend the mysterious vessel containing monuments and shrines to the past. When one dies, the Allmother replaces her with a shell from the proper category. Your brief conversations with those generic characters – labelled “understudy,” “germaphobe,” and “studious” – are insightful in their own way. What are we here for? Does our specific problem really matter?
Reviewed on the Switch. Also available on the PC. – JASON M. BAILEY
Indika
One of this, or any year’s, most audacious narrative-driven adventure games is set in 19th-century Russia and concerns a nonconformist nun who has an ongoing dialogue with the devil in her head.
After suffering the displeasure of those in her monastic community, the nun, Indika, is sent to deliver an incriminating letter to a priest at another monastery. En route, she comes across a convict on the lam searching for a holy relic that he believes will cure his withered, frostbitten arm. The journey they set out on tests and enervates Indika’s self-protective piety.
Despite its serious themes, 'Indika' never gives the impression that it would rather be a book or a film.— Odd Meter
A year into the making of the game Indika, most of its Russian developers fled abroad after their country’s invasion of Ukraine. In an interview with Polygon, the game’s director, Dmitry Svetlow, made clear that its sceptical perspective is rooted in the contemporary, saying that “the Russian Orthodox Church is one of the weapons of Russian propaganda.”
Indika goes places that most video games shy away from. Its world is marred by Christian hypocrisy, sexual violence and callous state power. Yet despite its serious themes, it never gives the impression that it would rather be a book or a film. Indika opens with a star-collecting minigame, and flashbacks to the heroine’s life before the convent are told in pixel art scenes that feature other minigames. There are chase scenes, contraptions to operate, tricky platforms to get past and puzzles to solve. While interesting to play, Indika is also venomous in its moral critique.
Reviewed on the PC. Also available on the PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series X|S. – CHRISTOPHER BYRD
Lorn’s Lure
At first blush, Lorn’s Lure doesn’t look all that alluring. One’s eye quickly gets lost gazing at endless walls of brown, grey and mauve that make up the abstract architecture of its grungy, sci-fi setting. The murky blankness of its backdrop is interrupted only briefly by stretches of rust-coloured piping and winding ventilation ductwork, which your character must navigate up, down and through to overcome the game’s vertigo-inducing climbing puzzles.
Lorn’s Lure lights up all my somatic systems, and it manages to keep doing so over eight chapters, each managing to invent astonishing architectural puzzles for me to traverse and new narrative mysteries to plumb from the abstract world’s scant clues. — Rubeki Games
Venturing further means looking beyond its flat rendering and gaining an appreciation for the impossibly massive industrial spaces that its low-res style allows for. Soon I’m feeling, more than seeing, my character’s fingers as they grip a narrow ledge; I’m feeling the heart-pounding rush of adrenaline after barely making that precarious leap over another endless chasm.
Lorn’s Lure lights up all my somatic systems, and it manages to keep doing so over eight chapters, each managing to invent astonishing architectural puzzles for me to traverse and new narrative mysteries to plumb from the abstract world’s scant clues.
I’m forever kept on my toes, so to speak – always surprised, always delighted, perhaps masochistically so, by the twisted means it uses to torture me, to send my little android body tumbling down into the darkness, only to restart in a split second and dive after its beckoning lure, again and again.
Reviewed on the PC. – YUSSEF COLE
News Tower
My hands weren’t smudged by ink, but News Tower immersed me in a heady time when newspapers were the major force in media, next to radio. In the year’s most fascinating management simulation, I was in charge of returning the family’s post-crash New York paper to its former glory. It was a tall order. Beyond poor previous management, the mob had trashed the printing press.
Despite these challenges, the presses must roll. While watching the bustling activity via a dollhouse view, I felt a happy panic when sending reporters to a crime scene, hoping they would file before a looming deadline. Sometimes they missed a big story and sales declined. When the layout is ready, however, there is nothing quite like pressing the print button and seeing newspapers circulate.
In the year’s most fascinating management simulation, I was in charge of returning the family’s post-crash New York paper to its former glory. — Sparrow Night
My eponymous Goldberg Gazette began humbly in Brooklyn but soon had an office in Manhattan’s financial district. With an eagle eye on the budget, I hired reporters with specialised beats, a new printing press, even a water cooler. The key is to keep the staff content. Human satisfaction leads to increased output and increased sales. I began to dread the signs of writer malaise, indicated by a broken heart animation. But when the reporters obtained exclusives, legions of hungry readers flocked to newsstands.
Hours in and somewhat frantic about whom to send where, I remembered Hugo Black’s words, “The press was to serve the governed, not the governors.” In News Tower, I did just that – without any concern for algorithms or whether a story went viral.
Reviewed on the PC. – HAROLD GOLDBERG
The Rise of the Golden Idol
I relish the rare video game puzzle intricate enough to require a physical notebook. So it’s no wonder I loved The Rise of the Golden Idol, a point-and-click mystery game centred on a powerful artefact and the ways people seek to get their grubby hands on it.
The game, developed by Latvian brothers Ernests and Andrejs Klavins, is a sequel to The Case of the Golden Idol, which saw the same artefact passed between people over several decades in the 18th century. The sequel takes place in the 1970s and considers the legacy that the mythical idol has inspired in the intervening centuries, including rumours of what people think it looked like. (Those who played the first game, of course, can laugh at how far off the designs are.)
The game, developed by Latvian brothers Ernests and Andrejs Klavins, is a sequel to 'The Case of the Golden Idol', which saw the same artefact passed between people over several decades in the 18th century. — Color Gray Games
The gameplay is deceptively simple: Review the scene of a crime and fill in blanks in the narrative with nouns and verbs discovered in dialogue or text within the environment.
That mechanic becomes a massive canvas as players decode tight chronologies, false identities and even instructions in a fictional language. Brute-forcing the puzzles is possible. But take it from someone who devoured the game: You won’t regret busting out a notebook and figuring it out for yourself.
Reviewed on the PlayStation 5. Also available on Android, iOS, PC, PlayStation 4, Switch, Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S, and via Netflix. – ANNIE AGUIAR – ©2025 The New York Times Company
