The most sought after form of game these days are Indie games. What are Indie games? Indie games are games that aren’t published by a company like Nintendo, SEGA, Sony, or Activision. Famous Indie titles include: “Undertale,” created by Toby Fox (who also worked on Homestuck); the Five Nights at Freddy’s games, created by Scott Cawthon and currently include seven main series games, a spinoff game, three story books, a game guide book, and an activity book; and “Bendy and the Ink Machine,” created by a person known only as theMeatley.
Well, things are starting to get interesting for such Indie titles.
Recently, a game came out on the app store called “Granny.” It’s a horror game that follows a simple enough story line- you are trapped with an old woman known as Granny, and you have to escape within five days or you lose the game. Actually, it sounds a lot like FNaF… but that’s not the point.
Well, during a recent update, they decided to add more plot. Yay.
This same group of developers also developed a game a few years ago about a female Slenderman, and it was just another survival horror game. So what does that game have to do with Granny? Well, during the game, if you put a teddy bear into a cradle that can be found in one room, during the end credits, Granny can be seen with the bear, and Slenderwoman (that’s not what she’s called but I don’t know what else to call her, really) can be seen standing behind her.
Well, you can imagine how people reacted. They started clue hunting. Were the two characters connected? Was the Granny Slenderwoman’s mother, or grandmother? HOW WERE THEY CONNECTED?!
Five Nights at Freddy’s was the first game to use this sort of storytelling. When you played the game, you could find newspaper clippings scattered throughout the building that alluded to a case that happened at the restaurant: five kids went missing, and the place was shut down becasue the animatronics were “oozing.” People began to dive into the lore, and of course, a series of (in my opinion) lore-heavy games with mediocre mechanics was born.
Why do I bring up FNaF? Well, because of this technique, many Indie games after it used this same method to tell a story: they had simple mechanics, and hidden within the game, you found bits and pieces of lore, and people would try to solve the “mystery” these games held within their code. And honestly? It’s starting to get old. So many Indie games have the same basic concept, and it’s starting to become a staple for these games, just like Mario’s jumping on turtles and Sonic’s speed.
Indie games were once about doing things that had never been seen before- they were Indie because people didn’t want to sell their ideas to a big company that would just end up merchandising their games until they were just stale. Unfortunately, Indie games have started their own market, and are becoming just as merchandised as their name-brand counterparts. In fact, I’m currently wearing a “Bendy and the Ink Machine” lanyard.
What was once a fresh and unique market has quickly turned stale, with the same kind of storytelling and the same kind of gameplay. FNaF was the first, and becuase of it’s success, people all across the world stole the idea for their own. And now, what happens? Will games of a similar vein continue to be produced by famous Indie developers? What happens when wer’re no longer interested in solving the mysteries hidden within these games?
