Sony has formally announced PlayStation Indies. It’s what Shuhei Yoshida has been working on since he left his previous post as president of Worldwide Studios. In his new role as Head of Indies Initiative for PlayStation, everyone’s favourite executive has been looking after the industry’s little guys, culminating in this new program.
Yoshida says the aim with PlayStation Indies is to “spotlight and support the best of the best indie games being published on PlayStation and the entire indie community as a whole”. He hopes for the platform to become the “best place to develop, find, and play great indie games”.
How exactly that will manifest itself is yet to be confirmed, but Yoshida confirms that a new indie game will be added to the PlayStation Now service every month, beginning with Hello Neighbor this month. It’s good to hear the company speak so highly of indies, as there was some concern not too long ago that the company didn’t care about them any more. Between this and the number of indies present when unveiling the PS5, but now we can be confident enough that Sony is backing them in a big way going forward.
A shortlist of PlayStation Indies:
F.I.S.T: Forged In Shadow Torch (PS4) –
This 2D action-platformer sees an anthropomorphic bunny with a giant metal fist fight his way across a dieselpunk-inspired Metroidvania map. It launches for PS4 soon.
Maquette (PS5, PS4) –
A first-person puzzle game from Graceful Decay (and published by Annapurna Interactive) bound to garner comparisons to The Witness, Maquette has you manipulating objects in simultaneously simulated, recursive worlds to create solutions to progress.
Creaks (PS4) –
Coming in “a few weeks”, Creaks is a hand-drawn adventure-puzzle game by Amanita Design (Chuchel, Machinarium). The game tasks you with discovering the secrets of a mansion, avoiding the eponymous Creaks, and collecting a series of crudely animated, bizarre paintings.
Recompile (PS5): Explore, fight and hack your way through a virtual landscape that’ll react to your actions as you try to escape deletion in Recompile, the upcoming exploration-based hacking platformer.
Worms Rumble (PS4, PS5): The upcoming game introduces a real-time, arena-based, 32 player, cross-platform extravaganza that puts a new spin on your favourite warmongering invertebrates;
and a few more indies to allure the PlayStation gamers!
It is always very warming to see a huge name like Sony has started to give importance to the minute of things; we can expect some big things for the gamers in the near future!
