For five years the indie designer known as Pizza Pranks has been publishing Indiepocalypse, a monthly “bundle-zine” of 10 experimental indie games by different developers. They’re always a bit off-kilter, and they come with a helpful pdf zine where the creators of each one do a postmortem on their inspirations. It’s also full of handy links to other places you’ll find niche games, like the interactive fiction zine ChoiceBeat.
The latest issue of Indiepocalypse is #63, and as always it’s a zip file full of surprises. Among them is Wizard Party, a point-and-click adventure where you navigate a house party where ideas manifest as interactable objects once they’re mentioned in conversation, which you can then use to solve puzzles.
There’s also Sarpedon, a first-person Groundhoglike where you wash up on an island full of Greek mythology with only the instructions SLAY THE BEAST and RETURN WITH HER HEAD. Should you die on this perilous quest, you awaken on the beach to try again. And again.
These strange delights and eight others make up the contents of Indiepocalypse #63. All the creators are paid for their inclusion, and earn royalties on subsequent sales. Which is nice. You can find the complete back catalogue of Indiepocalypse at itch.io and with 62 back issues to work through, the odds of finding something you like are pretty decent.
