When it comes to personal computers, the Mac has never been known as a gaming heavyweight: Apple doesn't focus on building machines that have the hard-core processing and graphics power you might find in, say, a Razor PC laptop. That said, there are still a number of excellent games available to play on your Mac — especially of the indie variety. Two-person development teams and small studios shine on Apple's laptops and desktops, building stories with smart twists and heart-wrenching endings. There have been many great indie titles for Mac over the years, especially with the advent of the Steam Store, but here are our all-time favorites.
Braid I'm not generally the type to get overly invested in a game — I'm more of a book and movie person. But when I picked up Braid in 2009 after an off-hand recommendation from a friend, I found myself completely captivated by its mechanics and story. On its face, Braid is a simple puzzle platformer: You play a man named Tim searching for a princess across the landscape of a strange world, encountering puzzles as you progress through each level. But the true delight of the game is in its controls: Not only can you run forward, jump, and the like — but you can rewind time at any moment, reversing your decisions and movements.
Top 5 Best Steam Indie/Independent Games of 2017 PC (Steam Links in Description) Top 5: Youtubers Life http://store.steampowered.com/app/428690.
It's a simple but beautiful mechanic and quickly becomes one of the primary ways you can solve the hardest puzzles; all the while, it makes you think about time and movement in a completely different way. Years after its release, Braid is still considered a masterpiece — and it's not hard to see why.
(If you can't — just rewind.) Firewatch We've said a lot about the magic of Firewatch on iMore over the last year, but the Campo Santo/Panic collaboration continues to merit praise. The 3D mystery and exploration game, which places you as a firewatch in a national park around the late 1980s, captures the essential beauty of being alone in the U.S.
Wilderness — and the eerieness factor, too. The voice acting here is also top-tier; this is a game that demands headphones and a wistful spirit. Gone Home Another entry in the first-person mystery genre, Gone Home puts you in the shoes of a student recently returned from a lengthy overseas trip to her family house, only to find it empty — with her younger sister apparently vanished. It's a wonderful example of the mystery and exploration genre, providing just enough of a creepy flair to keep you on the edge of your seat with just a few major jump-out scares.
For all of its intrigue, however, the game's core centers around family, ambition, and love — and paints those feelings with wrenching truths. Transistor Modern RPGs are a dime a dozen, but none are painted in quite so stunning a manner as Transistor. Supergiant Games's sci-fi/action game sets you on a path through a futuristic electro-punk city with a mystical weapon and enemies to outwit and defeat. Though shorter than your average Final Fantasy entry, Transistor nevertheless captivates and offers great replay value with its quests and power-ups — though I'd settle for just exploring its beautifully rendered environments.
Stardew Valley This was an outlier pick for our indie games list courtesy Mobile Nations video producer Justus Perry, but I have to admit that I quickly fell in love with it myself after a few hours. If you're a fan of simulation games but want a little more quirk and a little less 'send your Sim to work for the fortieth time' monotony, Stardew Valley offers you the chance to run your own pixelated farm, interact with the locals, defeat (or join forces with) a possibly evil corporation, explore caverns, and create all sorts of endless weird cooking experiments.
In a month where it's been hard to regularly read Facebook or Twitter, Stardew Valley is an appropriately delightful escape from the real world. FTL: Faster Than Light If you've ever dreamed of captaining a starship, it's hard not to love FTL. Subset Games's tactical strategy title puts you in the captain's chair on your way to save the galaxy — if you can make it through any number of insane and sometimes impossible challenges. And those, honestly, end up being the heart of the game: You become attached to your ship and crew — even when you end up accidentally killing them and having to start over. Your favorite indie games for Mac?
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It takes a lot of dedicated work to put together any kind of video game, but independent games are labors of absolute love. Indie games are typically developed without financial assistance from a publisher, so the projects are often money-starved and hanging by a thread. On the flipside, there’s no guy in a suit poking at the developers and saying, “Hey. This game needs more birds. Kids these days like birds. Put in lots and lots of birds.” That’s why indie games generally turn over some of the most creative and compelling ideas in the industry. That’s also why we feel that we ought to make note of ten of the best independent games of all time.
Super Meat Boy (XBLA, PC, Linux, MacOSX) — With its reliance on super-precise jumps around meat-ripping traps, Super Meat Boy offers up some of the most hardcore platforming challenges that a retro games enthusiast could ask for. It began life as a humble Flash game, and has since spread out to several online markets. If Super Meat Boy‘s challenge doesn’t sell you, consider that it’s the only game on the market wherein the hero makes a distinct, slightly nauseating “squish squish squish” sound with every step he takes. Fl0w (PC, PSN) — fl0w is a charmer of a game. You guide a multi-segmented creature through waters that are rich with cellular life. Your creature grows as you consume smaller critters, and it can also descend down into deeper planes.
Though there are several struggles for survival against other multi-celled organisms, fl0w is one of the most calming video games you can possibly experience. Evolution has never been so peaceful.
Though a graphically-enhanced remake of fl0w is available on the PlayStation Network, the original Flash version was a school project by two programmers, Jenova Chen and Nicholas Clark. Another World/Out of This World (PC, iOS, Windows Mobile) — Another World is a dark, atmospheric, and highly unforgiving adventure game that was designed and programmed by developer Eric Chahi. The game was originally released in the Amiga in 1991, though it gained a wider audience in North America (where it was marketed as Out of This World) when it was retooled for the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis. Currently, Another World is one of the most widely-distributed indie games available–and is as worthy of your attention now as it was in 1991. Braid (XBLA, PSN, PC, Linux, MacOSX) — Braid is a platforming game that’s about a hero rescuing a princess–or is it? There’s more to Braid than meets the eyes, especially as far as story and gameplay are concerned.
As you play through dozens of unique levels that combine running and jumping with puzzle-solving, you can pause and scribble down some theories as to what each object in the game represents on a metaphorical level. Try it with your friends!
Bit.Trip Beat (WiiWare, iOS, PC, MacOSX, Nintendo 3DS) — Bit.Trip Beat combines the simple yet maddeningly addictive gameplay of an old Atari game with the irresistible rhythm and beat of some expertly-composed chiptunes. Your mission is to bounce back projectiles, Pong-style, to the tick of the music. Dwarf Fortress (PC, Mac OSX, Linux) — Dwarf Fortress mixes roguelike-inspired gameplay, city-building, and simple graphics for an exceptionally deep gaming experience that is not for the faint of heart. This is a game that has no qualms about sending you back to “Go” for a single mistake, therefore reducing everything you’ve built up into a fine dwarf-flavored powder. A more casual player might want to dive in with Dwarf Fortress’s “Adventure” mode, which tasks you with chopping up the local wildlife. Trine (PSN, Windows, Mac OSX, Linux) — Trine is a side-scrolling platforming/puzzle game that’s set in a medieval world. You take control of three separate characters–a thief, a knight, and a wizard (walk into a bar)–and switch between the three to solve puzzles and complete levels.
If you have some pals at hand, they can join in, take control of a character, and help you out. Trine looks good, plays well, and has received critical acclaim throughout the indie game community.
Limbo (XBLA, PSN, PC, Mac OSX) — Limbo is another puzzle/platforming game, but with a creepy aesthetic twist. Limbo offers you a desolate landscape that’s washed out in shades of grey and black, leaving even the nameless protagonist a seemingly soulless silhouette. Meanwhile, enemies move with shuddering realism; when you first encounter the recurring spider “boss,” the hair on the back of your neck will surely prickle. Minecraft (PC, iOS, Android) — Minecraft is the hottest thing to hit the indie game scene in a long time, and you only need to play it for a few minutes to understand why it’s captured the hearts, minds, and precious spare minutes of gamers worldwide. Minecraft is a simple-looking sandbox game that goes on, on, and on. You are given a world that you can shape to your liking, and you can live alone as a hermit, or among friends on a multiplayer server.
In Survival Mode, players must build up their defenses and survive attacks by zombies and skeletons. Cave Story (WiiWare, DSiWare, PC, Mac OSX, Linux) — Cave Story is often the first name that is dropped in a discussion about the best independent games ever made. The original incarnation of the game was put together by one man, Daisuke “Pixel” Amaya, who programmed and polished the game for five years. The end result is a platformer that recalls the style and challenge of old NES games like Metroid and Mega Man, but is thoroughly its own adventure–with some pretty sweet chiptune music, to boot.