When designing a triple-A smash hit game, companies tend to go all-in. This usually means aseembling a large team of very talented individuals, each with unique skills and specialties. Look at the likes of Rockstar or Ubisoft and you’ll find companies with hundreds of staff working tirelessly to create worlds spanning miles of digital space. It’s a process that requires a balance of different skills, opinions, perspectives, and a whole lot of manpower to achieve.
So imagine the process of creating a solo-developed game, where one individual creates an entire game on their own. It seems unthinkable, but incredibly, this is not a foreign concept in game development. The efforts of small, but dedicated dev teams managed to kick off the indie game boom of the early to mid 2010’s, giving us a collection of wonderful indie titles. Amongst those, however, were a small handful of games developed by a single person. Yet they have the depth, brilliance, and attention to detail that suggests otherwise. So, lets look at the best solo-developed games ever.
5. Fez — Phil Fish
Indie Game: The Movie. The documentary follows Fez’s development, along with another solo developed title, Braid, and action-platformer Super Meat Boy. It serves as terrific insight into the amount of work, pressure, and hardship that comes with indie game development. Sadly, Fish’s exit from the gaming industry means we probably won’t ever see the proposed sequel to Fez, though the original will forever stand as a masterclass in solo design.
4. Pokémon GBA ROMs — Various Creators
Source: Pokémon Snakewood. Yes, that is a Pikachu head on a stake.
Again, not a conventional entry, and this is more of a movement than one sole title. Game Freak’s GBA outings were arguably the pinnacle of the top-down, 2D Pokémon RPG format. So, when individual hobbyists began taking the base games and tweaking them to create brand new and interesting titles, it gave Pokémon fans a plethora of new content to enjoy. And it was all free to download. Was it necessarily legal? No, not really. Was Nintendo pissed about their intellectual property being stolen? You bet. Yet, for that brief spell, developers created brand new pocket monster adventures for everyone to get stuck into.
Now, it may seem strange to be piling praise onto developers who simply recycled assets from big name developers. And I agree, those ROMs usually suck. But the ROMs that I’m talking about have their own stories, new graphics, unique monsters and mechanics, and tweaks to the original game’s difficulty and tone. So although these are not completely solo-made, it’s clear that the developers have put their heart and soul into the development of these ROM hacks.
One of the best examples is Ash Gray, by Metapod23, which allowed you to play through the original anime story. Snakewood, by Cutlerine, treated us to a weird zombie Pokémon narrative. Advanced Adventure by Dbzmay stuck to the usual formula but offers a zany twist in the narrative with your rival being an evil overlord. And then there’s the crushing difficulty and unique storyline of Dark Rising created by DarkRisingGirl. There are so many new and innovative ROMs to download and play — just don’t tell the big wigs at Nintendo when you boot them up.
3. Papers, Please — Lucas Pope
Naughty Dog developer Lucas Pope’s various xenophobic run-ins with immigration authorities, taking further influence from various espionage This unique indie game is Set in a dystopian nation during a Cold War, this unique indie game casts the player in an usual position of power — your character mans a border control kiosk, giving you the power to deny entry to the great and glorious (and fictional) nation of Arstotzka.
However, it soon turns into a fight for survival as you have to balance your conscience with your domestic life. As mistakes become life threatening for you and your family (you’ve got bills to pay and mouths to feed, after all), critical thinking and careful analysis become essential. Then, added work responsibilities like checking work permits or local terrorism only adds to the tension, and minor decisions become moral dilemmas. Papers, Please asks the player how evil they can be when the “moral” choice inflicts suffering on you and your in-game family.
Papers, Please is a fantastically crafted game with a gritty art style and soundtrack that provides thought-provoking social commentary. Not bad for one guy. Lucas Pope, take a bow.
2. Undertale — Toby Fox
IGN’s Kallie Plagge said it best when discussing the game’s specialty in her review for Undertale. Kallie says Undertale is great at “playing with our expectations of what an RPG should be, subverting them, and using them to drive a story unique to what games can do.” To think that Fox created every fiber of this masterpiece on his own is mind blowing. Undertale received massive critical praise and various award outlets nominated it for Game of the Year in 2015.
1. Stardew Valley — Eric Barone
Are there any solo developed games that would have been in your top five? What solo developed games did we miss? Let us know in the comments. Also if you’re interested in more Culture of Gaming content, why not check out this review on new indie title 7th Sector? Thanks for reading!
