TFI Friday: three new indie games to complement the experience of having lived one year twice

If you lot click on a link and brand a purchase we may receive a small-scale commission. Read our editorial policy.

TFI Fri: three new indie games to complement the experience of having lived one year twice

Coming out of lockdown and I've been doing just fine

Happy New year's day! Somehow we went straight from Jan 2020 to January 2022. That's weird. Huh. Well, I'm officially giving united states a exercise-over. I think we've earned it.

The games I've collected this week for the outset TFI Friday of the year are going to ease us gently out of the time loop that we've been stuck in the concluding umpteen months. Accordingly, the first one is a fourth dimension loop puzzle game.

Time Main

Who's it by? MorpheusZ
Where can I become it? Steam
How much is it? £xi/€12/$15

In this, y'all, a wizard who looks similar a beautiful lil' cereal mascot, are guided by the disembodied voice of Lloyd Grossman (who seems to be some kind of time god) to salvage your sister from accidental banishment. This ways getting a fourth dimension crystal, and to do that you have to run a gauntlet of trials - oh such difficult trials, that even the most powerful fourth dimension wizards balk at!

In practise, these trials are a series of platform puzzle levels. Each is a load of blocks built into a agglomeration of different steps and platforms and connecting bridges, made out of different materials. Hidden on each level are a number of crystals that you need to collect, and then accomplish a portal to get to the side by side level. The grab is that you can basically merely reach ane crystal. If you get for that one, the bridge will collapse behind you; become for the other, and yous'll jump down a drop you can't climb up again. But! There'southward a fourth dimension rewind that y'all can utilise exactly once per level, which then creates a ghost of your previous deportment. This means yous tin run over the bridge and selection upward that crystal, rewind, and then drop downwardly the cliff while your fourth dimension ghost is off running over the span.

Unfortunately, the levels rapidly get more complicated than that, plus you tin can also create a paradox, if y'all run and collect a crystal before your past self does... It'south clever equally well as cute, and there's something pleasingly retro about it in how sincere information technology is nearly all the time bollocks the narrator and main grapheme chat about.

You Will (Non) Remain

Who's information technology by? Bedtime Phobias
Where can I go it? Steam
How much is it? Free

I'm told that this game, fabricated for the Women Game Jam, was "fabricated every bit our team'due south fashion of processing our commonage trauma of living through the longest lockdown in the earth" (that being the 262-day stint of restrictions in Melbourne, Commonwealth of australia). It's short, but very effective. Rather than living through a pandemic, the nameless main character is dealing with a Lovecraftian horror - a strange violet creature floating over the urban center skyline. They have been within for who knows how long. They are lonely. One 24-hour interval they discover a dog, which they call Lambshank.

This dog is... weird. Throughout you are not sure if it just a starving canis familiaris, or if it is something else. Each night the person has horrible dreams reliving the mean solar day the giant monster came. They hear things on the radio. They offset to doubt their perceptions of reality. Their understanding of time prophylactic-bands in and out. Is anything real? Are they real? Are there people exterior? Should they get out? It'due south a very proficient game - perhaps likewise effective, if you're feeling delicate still - that captures the loneliness and fear when what you are afraid of could be part of the people you love. Is information technology better or worse to stay alone?

Aquamarine

Who's information technology by? Moebial Studios, Hitcents
Where can I go it? Steam, GOG, Itch
How much is it? £eleven/€12/$fifteen

I played the demo for Aquamarine and constitute it a fleck frustrating, just since and then information technology'southward gone through a bunch of changes that brand it a lot more playable and fun. Yous're given a bunch of starting resources to aid y'all on your way, and the survival in this game is cute and calm rather than hanging on past the pare of your teeth.

You've crashlanded with your little bubble submarine, and y'all can explore the ocean around you. You make a garden on your dwelling house isle where you can grow some of the plants you collect. Yous find something to collect water. You scan the seabed and learn what the dissimilar animals practise. Those duck-billed fellows tin can interruption open crystals, but don't get besides shut when they're glowing! Don't go near the yellow crystals until y'all know what you're doing, either, because they're the lure on top of a big lizardy monster that'll leap out at you lot. A lot of information technology reminds me of In Other Waters, in fact. Starting over, uncovering a world, edifice a place for yourself. It'due south one day at a fourth dimension, innit.