What are some Japanese indie games worth playing?
No super-obvious stuff that the western indie clique already promoted to no end like La Mulana & Cave Story.
Nip indie games
Michael Wood
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Justin Walker
Mecha Ritz: Steel Rondo: beginner-friendly bullet hell shmup with neat dynamic difficulty-based gameplay along with inventive enemy designs & bullet patterns.
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The gameplay good and the presentation is also surprisingly good. The soundtrack is nice and Megadrive/Genesis as hell, the sprite work is not the most technically competent to say the least but still comes together into an interesting art style and the writing is somehow great. The little bits of text inbetween levels tell a subtle & well-worded and thematically interesting yet unpretentious story and the little fluff text for the bosses is great and well translated.
Robert Adams
Pharaoh Rebirth: the dev calls it a "Metroidvania" on Twitter but
1. that's not a very good term
2. it doesn't really fit the common description; it's a more straightforward level-based platformer with elements of what people call "Metroidvania".
Nonetheless it's a good game; once again the writing is really charming, the sprites are well-done, the gameplay is pretty good and there are some unpredictably creative little things that make it a great experience. Two notes though:
-DON'T SAVE BEFORE THE HOTEL BOSS UNLESS YOU'VE BACKED UP YOUR SAVE. You might trigger a really bad glitch that ruins your save file.
-don't bother doing 100% item hunting completion until after you've beaten the final boss, because otherwise you'll be overpowered.
Anthony Reyes
Astebreed: fun anime mecha arcade game wrongly categorized as a "bullet hell". I dunno if I'd even call it a shmup. If you like shmups you'll probably like this, but I still wouldn't call it one. You might also like it if you enjoy Sin & Punishment.
Fucking amazing visuals as far as indie games go, not very hard to get to the end but challenging to get a decent score in. Lots of perspective-shifting that makes the game feel cinematic while also helping keep the gameplay varied. A LOT of moves to pull off for the genre, I can only compare it to Alien Soldier in that regard.
Story can be turned off completely but it's charming if you're fine with modern otaku-targeted anime.
Henry Lewis
This right here looks pretty cool. Ancient Egypt based stuff is right down my alley.
Adrian Morris
Gunhound EX: Fun, but perhaps not worth the normal Steam price. The "horrible controls" complaints the reviewers have are bullshit and simply a result of trying to control a game where you play as a heavy-ass robot the way you would Megaman or Contra or something. There is one problem with the controls (locking on to a direction and using secondary fire at the same time is a bit unintuitive) but none of the reviews mention it except mine so fuck them.
The actual reason it's not worth 15 dollars is that even though it's clearly designed as an arcade game in length there's neither a global score ranking nor a replay feature. 1CCing can be your final goal but beyond that there's no real way to compare your score with others because there's no online community for it. If that doesn't bother you fine, but it does harm the replayability for me.
I've not played the other similar robot side scroller games on Steam so I dunno if they are better or worse. They all have the same "bluhbluh controls" complaints in the user reviews so it's hard to tell what they're really like.
Angel Diaz
i figure this is the best thread to ask, but a few years back I found this doujin side scroller that was about a guy in a exo suit/mecha and his sister got taken by some evil spirits or some shit
it has dope metal slug esque sprites, and is kinda creepy, and the first stage takes place in a forest.
Isaiah Ramirez
I forgot to mention the music is nice too. It's all "Egypt level" music but it's quite varied anyway.
OH YEAH, you also get a Jojo stand in it, which fits well with the egyptian theme: youtube.com
And in one of the later levels, you're beating up hordes of Egyptian hotel employees trying to kill you for bounty money while dodging laser beams being fired from a satellite by opening umbrellas and hiding under them.
Gabriel Martin
Oh yeah the developer, Krobon, also has a free game out called Action Mogura (and other, older "Mogura" games which I've not played all starring the same mole protagonist).
It's much more straightforward and actiony ina good way and any game where you play as a mole that can kamehameha his opponents is a good time.
There are also flying shmup segments to add variety.
Julian Jenkins
It's not translated and it can be hard to figure out where to go in the hub areas at times. Just look up a Youtube longplay if you get stuck.
OH ALSO there is a free version of Pharaoh Rebirth too if you want to try it, but it's not translated, there's no difficulty setting and the final extra chapter isn't there.
Oh and two other things worth noting about Rebirth:
-When Andre (the turtle guy) falls out of the helicopter after the first boss battle and is unconscious, ignore the game calling you a cunt and beat the shit out of him until his shell falls off. He has spares so it's not like you've crippled him for life, and it's the ONLY way to get 100% item completion.
Another kind of obscure thing is that there are exclusive items you can get from bosses if you defeat them without getting hit once, but it's not as big of an issue because you can fight the bosses that drop those every time. You can NEVER fight Andre again since he becomes your friend and is playable later.