Art Games: Best Indy Titles

When I think of art that has influenced me most, it is generally work done by individuals. I can't recall the last time a corporation created a brilliant painting. I find that this also tends to be true in the emerging area of art games. Individuals are not generally driven to create purely for profit, and have more leeway to experiment and create according to their own artistic vision.

I thought it was time to compile a "best of" list for art games, because there has only been one other such list that I recall online. I'm sure someone will correct me on that point if there has been in fact another well drafted list somewhere out there. The first list can be found in an article on Artifical.dk, titled Art Games - Artificial's List [...]. I thought that Kristine Ploug had done a great job with her articles, though the list did leave out a number of titles which I thought should have been included.

This was also about two years ago, and since then more art games have surfaced. In the meantime, some of the games are no longer accessible, which is the unfortunate reason for why I could not include or rate them here. The creations of Geoffrey Thomas (i.e. Left to My Own Devices) cannot be played anymore. Torrent Raiders is still available for download, but I had the game crash on me every time, which renders it unplayable. Last but not least, a collection of mods of games and engines used as art is still up at Selectparks.net, though most links are now dead.

As such, I am providing this list of 27 titles. Some of these are older, while others are quite new. Each game was rated based on mechanics, visual style, and auditory stimulus which then determined it's place in the list. Keep in mind that I used my background as an artist to judge the merit of each category. This means that each games place in the list is not based on whether it was simply "good" or "pretty." It's not a perfect system, but it should hopefully serve as a guide to the indy art game scene.

So, without further ado, I present to you the link... Art Games: Best Indy Titles [via Mentisworks].