Top Ten List, work in progress

This is my top ten list which I'm currently working on. Will undergo several changes before the year ends.

You're free to reply with your own top ten list as well.

Notes:
- The FAQ has instructions on how to download files from the Japanese vector site
- Games marked with an asterisk are not free
- I'm trying to avoid games which have appeared in CGW's 101 Free PC Games list, unfortunately this means Gunroar is out

Adventure
Duty and Beyond (review)
The White Chamber: International Edition (review)
Missing (review)
Spooks (review)
Nathan's Second Chance (review)
The Winter Rose (review)

Shooters
Grid Wars (review)
Veck (review, video)
Invisible Vision (review, video)
Terav (review)
Shoot the Bullet (review) *
Touhoukokuhuugi (review)
Mogura 2 (review)
Gamma Bros (review)
Virtual (review)
The Pyramid (review)
ProtoType (review)
Ether Vapor (review)

Platformers
Noitu Love and the Army of Grinning Darns (review)
Poyo (review)
Treasure Tower (review)
Within a Deep Forest (review)
Lyle in Cube Sector (review)
Painajainen (review)
Castle of Elite (review)

Action
Dot Fighters (review)
Swarm Racer (review)
Counterclockwise (review)

Others
Guardian of Paradise (article)
Acidbomb (review)
New Star Soccer 3 (review) *
Pushover (review)
Clockwiser (review)
Tiltor (review)

What about Grid Wars? IMHO it's much better than Veck!
BTW can you enable a quick reply text box for this forum? That way we can post faster.

Hmm...

Shoot the Bullet
Cave Story
Dofus
Seiklus
Uplink
The Endless Forest

I can't even think of ten offhand... I need to play more independent games.

Dang! I wrote this reply so fast no one around me saw it!

I'm gonna try some of these but their kida hard to play/download because some are in japanese. Like, where da heck do I get Soldier Force? Is it freeware or not? All I can see is a update to version 1.20 in their pages.

EDIT: Nevermind, I've read the review and it's payware.

EDIT2: JUST L-M-A-O. Those dudes just have no sense of business. The game seems to be available only 1 (one) webstore located in Japan! And it costs $28 US Dolars! $28 USD + $19 shipping costs to Europe (where I live) would put this game price up there on 37€...
I bet they've sold a grand total of 3 copies of that game to anyplace outside Japan.

The poor fellas never heard of digital distribution. :biggest_roll_eyes_EVER:

Heheh I started downloading that soldier force game, because I thought it was free. Then I read Timerever's post haha.


Veck is a sweet game, I just wish I could get the menu/title music to play in-game.

It's hard to tell which games are "top" in their genre but I'm pretty sure about the following line:
Some top freeware games: Cave Story, N, Within a Deep Forest
Not that freeware: Gish, Elasto Mania, Soldat, Pontifex II (Bridge Construction Set), Tennis Critters
And some other, less known amazing games: AeroStyle, Duel 6, Heroes, Pakoon, The Snowball Fighter, Tappo Tactics, Ufo Game

Bleh, what you can download for free is the 1.2 update to the game.

And in my last post I forgot to add:
+ the import duties and these can get pretty expensive
+ the hassle that is waiting weeks for the game to arrive from Japan, probably 3 to 4 weeks
+ waiting for the game to be cleared in the customs that can take sometimes up to a month and the custom taxes and these are also expensive.

All summed can sometimes exceed the double of the original product, i.e: this game could cost you up to 70€ and two months of waiting!!!
I could also add to this other true 'horror' stories about customs, unexpected taxes and all sort of nutty things that happen when you import.

In face of this and knowing that their game isn't awfully popular (i.e: no one knows it) I dunno why don't they put a Paypal link on their site for us to pay for the game (10€ to 15€ is a good value since they'd keep it all) and then simply e-mail us with a link to download the full version. Yeah this method would be suicide for any half-popular game but this one would get away with this just fine.
Warezing won't be a problem, since it would way much more trouble trying to find the game than buying it, it's like trying to find a crack for one of these minor shareware apps.

Hi guys,

Thanks for all the recommendations! There are a few games that I never heard of as well.

Will go through them shortly after I completed Ac!dbomb. That game is really sucking away all my free time...

I may remove Soldier Force from the top ten link, though it is one of the best shooters this year. Anyway I'll consider it, perhaps they may release a demo (together with Shoot the Bullet) before the end of the year?

The top ten list will contain recent titles and lesser known ones, unfortunately... it's a list to get people who are still playing commercial games to try them out. Probably most of them have heard of Cave Story or Seiklus, and that's about it.

I'll add Within a Deep Forest because that's pretty much this year's Seiklus, and perhaps a few more from everyone's suggestions. The list will only be posted on the front page this December, so there's plenty of time left.

You got me wrong, I don't think indie games should be free, I think they should be different.

The role of indie devs is to produce the kind of game that big software houses won't do because it's too 'risky', they are afraid the they wont get their return of investiment. Indie devs don't have that problem so they can come up with wacky, bizarre, classic, etc stuff, don't go bankrupt and still make some money. Of course if they release the game for free better yet, I won't complaint but if they think their work should be paid then so be it. Now they should do it in the apropriate way and selling the game for US$28 on a single webstore on Japan certainly isn't.

Selling the game for 10€ to 15€ using digital distribution is the apropriate way, not only they'll get more money and cut the costs but we will also get our game faster, if your connection allows it that is

------

Now as for games to the top ten list, I would like to see games in the lines of Alien Hominid (great game BTW, have it on the Xbox), that means Run'n'Gun games and Beat'em'ups of the Streets of Rage fame.
A 'Wierd Games' section would be nice too the only problem is come up with a defenition of what is a wierd game

I think Timereavers got it right, indie doesn't need to equal free, for the exact reasons he outlined; indie games dont have to pander to the largest demographic by relying on the same ol' same ol'.

My problem with Soldier Force was just that the site was in Japanese (as nearly all these indie games seem to be) so it was hard to tell that the game cost money hehe.

It's my undertanding that the majority of people in Japan don't have personal credit cards and that's one of the major reasons indie games aren't sold online, instead they are mainly sold at Comiket conventions or through shops. There are a few Japanese digital distributors online but it really isn't a commonly used source of game distribution in Japan. If you do import I would say use www.paletweb.com. I find them to be cheaper than Himeya and they give you the option between EMS or airmail (cheaper).

Personally I didn't care for Soldier Force. I just found it rather bland. To each their own though. Was Hitogata Happa released this year? If it was that is definitely one of the best shooters released this year (non freeware).

I think Naac was one of the best freeware shooters this year. I can't remember if Gun Roar was released this year but I'd also say that was a top ten freeware shooter if it was.

Two shareware shooters from this year that I would put in my top ten are; RIP strikes back and Phoenicas.

perhaps, i'll post my top ten list later, now i'd just like to "advertise" with my definite top three list:

shuttle 2 http://www.mirumu.com/jordan/?page_id=5
TOU - tunnels of the underworld http://www.niksula.hut.fi/~hkankaan/Tou/
shuttle

edit: well, i add one more to my best of the best selection:
ufp http://www.freem.ne.jp/game/rev/262.html
:-)

two more:

stunt playground
http://walaber.com/index.php?action=showitem&id=7

ray hound
http://www18.big.or.jp/~hikoza/Prod/
:-)