Best indie game with a weird central mechanic

Indie games may not have the same production values ​​as their big-budget brethren, but they make up for it with unbridled ingenuity in their mechanics that make them stand out from the crowd like no other game can.

Whether it's using a sledgehammer as the only form of movement or paper review and proofreading, there are plenty of indie games with truly strange central mechanics.

6 Getting over it

Sisyphus has never had it so hard

As the designer of the legendarily frustrating and hilarious game QWOP where players had to control a runner's individual limbs in catastrophic fashion, it's no surprise that Foddy's other great experiment in absurdist humor has a similarly bizarre central premise.

IN Getting over itplayers play as a… naked dude in a cauldron swinging a sledgehammer. Using the sledgehammer to power through some truly wild puzzles that would test the Dalai Lama's patience due to how angry they are, players must make it to the end of a brutal gauntlet while listening to philosophy of resilience. It's weird, doesn't always work, but is incredibly rewarding once the finish line is finally reached.

5 Baba is you

Change the rules

Puzzle games are hard to really innovate on because they are one of the oldest types of games ever made, long before video games. This means that if an indie creator wants to stand out in the puzzle space, they have to do something really weird.

Enter Baba is you. IN Baba is youplayers come face to face with their assumption that the rule set for a puzzle is fixed, and must instead construct their own rules through modular construction to solve puzzles. It sounds wild and weird—because it is—but it's an inventive way to reinvent the puzzle genre that requires genius-level solutions to complete.

4 Goose game without title

Hooting hell

When it was released in 2019, Goose game without title became an internet darling due to its strange and endearing premise of simply being a goose trying to cause as much chaos as possible. But it's about more than just internet fodder.

The premise is weird, but having the mechanics of the game focused on just causing mischief is really weird and relatively uncommon in the world of video games, where mechanics are usually geared toward (generally) violence. Just pure mischief is a fun and weird way to reinterpret the boundaries of gaming and is a great gateway to the world of silly and weird indie games.

3 Doki Doki Literature Club

A visual novel you better not read

Visual novel games are not for everyone, as they involve a lot of reading and some may even debate whether they qualify as a “game” as the choices can sometimes be limited. However, Doki Doki Literature Club showed how powerful the visual novel game is and brought it to a whole new audience.

While the actual mechanics of visual novels aren't strange in the game, the way Team Salvato used it really was, carefully setting up expectations of how visual novel games work and the role of the player, and then subverting those mechanics in some of the most effective and dark twists that modern gaming has to offer.

2 Pony Island

Something rotten under the surface

Nowadays, Daniel Mullins has become a legend in the indie gaming community for his mind-bending games that constantly subvert expectations and question the nature of video games themselves, and Pony Island is really the game that put him on the map, setting him up for monstrous success Encryption.

Pony Island starts out innocuously enough as a strange arcade cabinet simulator, but it becomes clear that the player must change the game's code in order to bypass obstacles and progress, unlocking harmful and effectively annoying narrative twists that go so far as to actually mess with the player's device.

1 Paper please

Stamp of approval

While there is nothing wrong with games that offer an escape from reality, there is a reason why games are liked Paper, please has been cited as showing the game's sincere power as a method of empathy and understanding, using truly strange and unprecedented mechanics to make the player reflect on their own actions.

IN Paper, pleaseplayers take control of a border control agent tasked with assessing documents from would-be immigrants against a thick rulebook of parameters. It's easy to imagine that checking documents is just too weird a mechanic to work, but it's not only mechanically engaging, but it forces the player into compelling moral dilemmas and event progressions that show why mechanical innovation can make for great video game stories.