The best indie games land on iOS

Lovers of independent games that have an iOS device are in luck: they have just presented three essential classics in the Apple App Store. Three games that, indisputably, are part of the most famous of the indie games catalog.

 

Indie games have gone from being in the background, to occupy a relevant role in the world of video games. This success has had a strong impact on sales, which has enabled the arrival of these games to multiple platforms. On other occasions, it has been the evolution of smartphones that has led to the appearance of independent studies, where we can highlight the recent launch of Monument Valley 2 .

INSIDE, an indie game with an impeccable narrative.

The first of the titles to be highlighted is INSIDE , second work by Playdead, creators of the exquisite Limbo . It is compatible with iPad Air 2, Apple TV, iPhone 6S or higher, and we can test its first levels for free, before deciding if we want to pay € 7.99 for the full version.

INSIDE received excellent reviews from the specialized press , to the point of being at the top of the list of the best of 2016 . It supposes an evolution in the concept of platform-puzzles that already presented in Limbo, but with an aesthetic and a very different message to the monochromatic debut of Playdead. INSIDE puts its jugabilidad to the service of the narrative of a history where conflicts between individual and society are exposed. Where Limbo appealed to tense and uncomfortable emotions, INSIDE bet on touching the fiber from the depth of his background and demands something more to the player to exploit the complexity of his proposal.

The reflection of INSIDE on the control, the social being and its gears, and the continuous turn of them, reminds us that the search for an end can lead to a totally different object; the mathematician Blaise Pascal was looking for the perpetual motion machine, but he ended up laying the mechanical foundations of the current roulette.

FEZ, video game as charming as challenging and with retro aesthetics.

FEZ is another of the jewels that are already available for iOS devices at a price of € 4.99. The adaptation, beyond the overprinted controls on the screen, is excellent, and there are no noticeable differences compared to the original. In FEZ we will be in the skin of Gómez, the protagonist of a colorful story that introduces us to the discovery of a new dimension in his world (which starts with one of the best breaks in the 4th wall of the history of videogames ) .

This moves to a pixel-based platform that offers the possibility of rotating the point of view of a flat system, as if the universe of FEZ were structured as a cube in which we can choose one of six of its faces. Its creators, Renaud Bédard and Phil Fish , build mechanics that combine platforms, puzzles and exploration, mechanics that are complemented by a unique story and that continue to work just as well as in 2012, the date of its premiere.

This game has awakened in my sensations similar to those I could live with a few years less while enjoying the classic consoles (SNES, MegaDrive , Neo-Geo, etc) . If you have not tried a game that is considered a legend inside the indie , now you have the perfect excuse.

Life is Strange, exploration and adventures in a unique microuniverse.

And we left to the end the most recent of the premieres, and also the game for which the use of the label “indie” can be more debatable. Black Wing Foundation is responsible for adapting the adventure created by Square Enix, Life is Strange . It is aimed at the episodic distribution system, something that in this case is very opportune, given the structure by chapters and the excellent design of its narrative arcs. The first three episodes are available for € 3.49, and during the beginning of 2018 the launch will be completed with two other packages.

Life is Strange presents and updates the principles of classic graphic adventures, including an impeccable script, which captures the player without resorting to old gimmicky tricks in their development. Its protagonist, Max, has the power to manipulate time, and the consequences of his experimentation with this gift will provoke a series of events plagued by conflicts and moral decisions, which will have consequences on the development of history .

The iOS version adds extras such as stickers for iMessage and the option to capture images within the game with Photo mode.

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