Indie World April 2021 Roundup

With a somewhat surprising and short-notice announcement, Nintendo released a new iteration of Indie World today. Indie World is pretty much like the Nintendo Direct, though with these ones, the entire focus lies on indie games from developers all around the world. Despite a length of only twenty minutes, the showcase was pretty full of games, both completely new announcements and games being ported to the Nintendo Switch. There’s at least a handful I’m personally genuinely excited about.

The first announcement made was Road 96, a procedurally generated narrative game centered around road trips and the people you can meet along the way. I’m quite intrigued by this title, given procedural narrative isn’t really something I’ve seen in a video game before and frankly, I have no idea how something like that works. Definitely excited to try this game out when it releases later this year.

Next up is Aerial_Knight’s Never Yield, a side-scrolling runner game set in Detroit. It was made by someone who was turned away by the gaming industry multiple times, so he decided to take things into his own hands. I think the game actually looks pretty good. Aerial_Knight’s Never Yield releases May 19th, with a demo out now.

Annapurna is bringing us two new narrative-driven games this year. The first is Last Stop, which weaves three entangled adventures into one overarching story. The second is Hindsight, with not too much information about the story so far. Last Stop releases this July, while Hindsight is scheduled to come out sometime later this year.

Fans of the OlliOlli-Series are getting a new treat with OlliOlli World, an adventurous skating game that has you searching for the mystical skate god while exploring multiple paths and secrets along the way. I’m not usually into skating games, but the visual style of OlliOlli World as well as the game’s concept, actually has me quite intrigued. It releases this winter.

Some ports making their way onto the Switch were announced alongside these new games. There’s The Longing, a German-developed Adventure game you play over a course of 400 days of real-time. Now that it’s playable on the Nintendo Switch starting today, I might actually check it out. There is No Game: Wrong Dimension is also available on the Nintendo eShop starting today. While we’ll have to wait for Skul: The Hero Slayer to come out in the summer of this year, I’m still looking forward to playing this Action-Platformer Roguelike on the Switch.

I never got to play games like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time, but the freshly announced Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge promises to be fairly faithful to those games, adapting a pixel-art style and feel from the SNES-era, as well as the overall feel from back then. You’ll be able to play with your favorite turtle(s) later this year.

Cris Tales is a game I’ve been excited about since I first heard of it a couple of years ago. Its gorgeous art style, as well as the time traveling-mechanics you can use in the JRPG-inspired fights, had me hooked from the moment I played the demo of this game. It is finally coming out on July 20th.

Fans of Roguelike games (like me) are really getting a lot of games to play lately and most of them are on the Nintendo Switch. GetsuFumaDen: Undying Moon is one of them and will be hacking and slashing its way onto the Nintendo Switch sometime next year.

Those who enjoy different mythologies and cultural beliefs will likely have a lot of fun with Aztech: Forgotten Gods. In this Mexican-developed Action Adventure game, you’ll be fighting Aztec gods using futuristic technology. The game is scheduled to release this fall.

As Nintendo does, they saved the biggest announcement for last and I’m absolutely thrilled. One of my all-time favorite indie games is getting a sequel. I played Oxenfree close to release and got completely drawn into the eerie but intriguing story and its characters, as well as the beautiful art style and soundtrack. I wasn’t expecting the announcement of Oxenfree II: Lost Signals, much like everyone else. However, I can’t wait to lose myself in the continuation of the original story this year.