I wish there was a site that listed all the new indie game releases. Metacritic doesn't list them even if they are on XBLI. I usually find out about them word of mouth like I did for Penny Arcade Adventures IV and the other Zeboyd games.
Indie PC Gaming for the Console Connoisseur
Indie gaming on the PC is easier than you might think. Here's an introduction to getting started, and some games you might enjoy.
GETTING STARTED
First of all, we need to familiarize ourselves with the distribution of these games. There are a lot of sites where you can get indie games for PC, but we’re going to focus on Steam, GOG, and Desura. Steam and Desura are saddled with DRM, or Digital Rights Management (a method to verify the game you are playing isn’t pirated), but GOG requires none, so keep this in mind if this is an important factor to you. Steam has the biggest releases, and their fabled Greenlight program to bring smaller games to the forefront, but GOG has a lot of these games (big and small) too. Desura, however, is all about the tiny developer, and basically anybody can publish their game on this service.
All three of these sites require that you download their software to get started, but GOG only has a downloader– after that you don’t need to use their proprietary engine. Desura and Steam, however, use programs that run on your computer and ensure you aren’t stealing games.
A lot of fuss was made last month during E3 over the Xbox One’s DRM plans. On the PC, similar DRM schemes are typical, with Steam being the biggest example. While DRM ranges from slightly to seriously annoying, there’s an advantage to the service: seriously low priced, instantly accessible games.
In addition to PC games, a lot of these sites now offer downloads for Mac and Linux systems as well. The cool thing is for most of these sites, if you download for one operating system, you are also free to install the game on another operating system as well. Try buying an Xbox game and getting a PS3 version at no extra cost.
Finally, you might need to check your system requirements. Some of these indie games do require certain amounts of RAM or processing power, and sometimes even a decent video card. Most PCs these days have some sort of video card, even if it’s very basic, so you should be okay. I would focus on the RAM needed most of all, as well as the disk space needed for installation, but most indie games are pretty small compared to AAA releases, and won’t tax your system.
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