Nintendo just hosted an Indie World showcase and previewed some exciting indie games like Rift of the Necrodancer, Blasphemous 2, and Oxenfree 2: Lost Signals. While the Nintendo Switch has always been a first-party, AAA-title machine, it’s also become an indie powerhouse over the years and is home to some of the best small games on the market. To celebrate its stream, Nintendo just launched a weeklong sale on some of its top indie titles, including all-time greats like Celeste and Hades.
The sale kicked off on April 19 and runs until April 26 at midnight PT. While you have a good week to browse, here are seven excellent deals that you’ll want to take advantage of before time’s up.
Celeste is hands down one of the best 2D platformers of all time (if not one of the best video games of all time), and it’s an absolute steal at $5. The game’s protagonist, Madeline, has come to Celeste Mountain to discover herself, and over the course of 10 or so hours, she’s put to the test. Rendered in SNES-reminiscent visuals, Celeste‘s gameplay solely revolves around jumping. Aided by expertly designed set pieces, the task is both challenging and immensely rewarding. Madeline’s journey is emotional and revealing, and this is one of the few games that accurately and unabashedly depicts mental illness.
While Hades didn’t end up taking home the Game Awards’ Game of the Year title in 2020 (the honor belonged to The Last of Us Part II), it was one of our personal favorites that year and has only grown on us since then.
Hades is a roguelike action game that sends players to the underworld. In it, you play as Zagreus, the son of Hades, with the goal of escaping the underworld while developing relationships with other characters. Roguelikes are often criticized for punishing players after a run ends, causing them to lose much of their progress. While Hades does start you at the beginning after each run, you always unlock new abilities or dialogue options with other characters, making death feel less punishing.
Now is a great time to make sure you experience this indie all-star because Hades 2 is already in development.
Much to the dismay of longtime fans, we didn’t get a new trailer or any new information about Hollow Knight: Silksong at Nintendo’s recent Indie World showcase. If you were confused about why viewers were spamming the live stream’s chat with Hollow Knight references, this steep discount is a good opportunity for you to find out what the series is all about.
The 2D Metroidvania-style game starring an insect knight with a needle for a sword masterfully weaves exploration and combat to deliver one of the most engrossing experiences in a crowded genre. The spacious map has numerous distinct biomes with various themes, dangers, and enemies to slay. Where Hollow Knight truly excels is in its sense of wonder. Every time you stumble upon a new area, it feels as if you are the first person to discover it.
An emotional journey that’s centered on the taboo topic of death, Spiritfarer is a wonderful management sim where you’ll help ferry spirits into the afterlife. The hand-drawn graphics keep everything lighthearted, and the unique story is among the best available on the Switch. Gameplay is open-ended, letting you farm, fish, mine, craft, and explore the world as you see fit. Throughout the 30-hour adventure, you’ll encounter dozens of memorable characters that will stick with you long after the credits roll — along with a story that is sure to tug on your heartstrings. Spiritfarer includes a local co-op mode, allowing a second player to join in on the action as Daffodil the cat. How can you say no to that?
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge is a retro beat-’em-up game that’s way more fun than it should be in the year 2023. A master class in old-school co-op gaming, Shredder’s Revenge takes everything that was great about classic arcade fighters and adds modern mechanics for a simple, but stellar brawler. It throws players into the world of the Heroes in a Half Shell and gives them full reign to pummel every Foot Ninja and enemy in the way. Every mode in the game supports up to six players, so this is one of the best indie multiplayer games out there right now.
What can we say about Cuphead that hasn’t been said already? The original game was met with rave reviews in 2017, gaining high marks for its 1930s cartoon art style, challenging gameplay, and unique co-op action. StudioMDHR followed up on the award-winning title with some killer DLC content in The Delicious Last Course just last year. If you still haven’t given this game a shot, you can snag the main game and DLC right now in a really cheap bundle.
Even if you don’t normally like card battlers, Slay the Spire might hook you.
Slay the Spire sees players work through a series of battles across three acts. Your deck is your weapon in this turn-based, single-player RPG. At first, success seems impossible. But the more runs you try, the more cards you’ll have in your pool at the start of the next. What makes Slay the Spire so addictive is how all of its moving parts come together. You have your deck, but you also have potions with stat buffs and relics that permanently alter your hero for that run. With multiple heroes to play as and an endless number of possibilities for each run, Slay the Spire gets better and better the more you play.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.