izigame.me

I'm all for "small games" but this is kind of a perfect summation about why chasing the token indie aesthetic and its audience can be deeply shallow. In short, the game is one long fetch quest / trade train a la Zelda where backtracking is a core feature, alongside dialogue almost entirely centered around Twitter memes, dead-simple puzzles that take at most 10 seconds of brainpower to solve, and some truly awful stick-and-poke combat that might be forgivable if not for free DLC that gives you a neverending arena. Most embarrassingly it tries to about-face its completely skindeep tone with a shock twist ending, posturing as something deconstructionist as if this sort of thing isn't a trope unto itself at this point.
Turnip Boy is a complete mess, and one that basically doesn't try to be anything but recognized by itch.io people, but it's cute and you can pet the heckin' doggo, so it gets to sell a hundred thousand copies or whatever. Most of the time I feel like the only person on earth that sees this nonsense for what it is, common-denominator pandering designed to sell copies. At least it's over in one sitting.