The Best Looking Pixel Art Indie Games of the Year - 2023

[@nicksuitup7822]

About 65% or more of my wishlisted 1550 games are from your channel. A couple years ago I didn't look into indie games at ALL and now indies are my favorites!!!

[@ClemmyGames]

Love to hear this

[@UBMadaraKN]

Anyone looking for a game to play with family, friends, or even just a little cousin when he's over, ember knights the move

[@jeffrodrequez]

Love that game, I gotta get my Ember Knights fix every couple of days ;-)

[@nicksuitup7822]

Thank you for saying that! Really good to know for the holidays.

[@simplified42]

Also, try kingdom two crowns

[@DocsPrescription]

My sons love this game

[@commentarytalk1446]

I think almost all my favourites are in this round-up from this year and they're variable in genre but all have stunning pixel art ! Too many to mention but definitely looks like >5 of my Top 10 are knocking around in this collection while it's also swarming with many in the Top 50 !! What an incredible round up of indie gems your channel has show-cased over the past year. You really need to get cosy, crack open a can of some favourite beverage (or two) pull the pizza out of the oven and sit down to this feast for the eyes! Definitely one of your best videos of the year. Hunt The Night, Pocket Bravery, Fading Afternoon, World of Horror, Back To The Dawn, The Last Faith and so many more...

[@DrEcho]

"My name is Clementc and I love pixel art" The first step is admitting it. I'm here for you brotha. It works if you work it 🙏🏿

[@ClemmyGames]

:)

[@FrostKing104]

I must have added at least 90% of these games to my wishlist, and downloaded almost 20 demos XD thanks a lot! It's great to get a somewhat curated list in an area that's becoming more and more saturated-not that that's a bad thing!

[@ClemmyGames]

Cheers

[@AbeKenney]

Clemmy you have helped me to pick fun games to play so thank you! I also just enjoy seeing what’s out there.

[@ClemmyGames]

Happy to be of service

[@bucketsGG]

I swear, the vast majority of indie games that I have on my list are all from your videos! ABSOLUTELY love the content that you do! :)

[@stchrispl]

Krzyżacy is polish translation of Teutonic Order, which is group of catholic religious knights set up in medival. Country of Poland has quite interesting story with them, including the one of the most prominent win in Battle of Grunwald in 1410. Transcription is something like /ksh-ysh-acy/ (last one read like in 'legacy').

[@ClemmyGames]

Ah right, thank you

[@XionSteel]

Its videos like these that keeps me here, every one I watch easily fills up my Wishlist with new games and reminds me why a few games are still there. I usually pick a few up during sales or I buy straight out if I really want to play a certain kind of game like with sea of stars. Sadly when it comes to steam it has a lot on the platform, almost too much and has a lot of junk which doesn't interest everyone, and although it has a discovery queue its still quite limited in what it will show you. I usually am biased more towards anime looking games so I tend to miss out on a lot and watching videos like this gives me an idea of how a game plays and if it looks interesting to me. And yup, I often see games I never heard of or I HAVE seen in a search list but there is a huge difference between seeing the title of a game and not recognizing it, and actually seeing the game in action.

[@hanzflackshnack1158]

@13:34 "Correct if I'm wrong, but I think pixel art might be easier to do in fighting games." The number of animations per character is steep, every animation has to be play tested for hit detection (usually resulting in several iterations of a single animation), and the animations themselves are more detailed than other genres. Skull Girls averaged 2,000+ hours per character just on animation.

[@ClemmyGames]

Thanks! The more you know 💫

[@UBMadaraKN]

The gameplay looks amazing for astral ascent, and you have optional lines added to the characters. I think that's fully personal for you, as astral ascent was my game of the year in looks, only second to ember knights gameplay.

[@ClemmyGames]

Thanks for sharing!

[@elijahmeilak2906]

​@@ClemmyGames 7:50 What's wrong with the name "Return" Sounds fine to me, can you tell me why you don't like it?

[@ClemmyGames]

google return game and see what you get@@elijahmeilak2906

[@Nateanderthal]

Vengeful Guardian Moonrider is amazing, it is such a shame that it was overshadowed by tons of other games because it is wickedly good, the sound the graphics and the gameplay are top-notch.

[@andrewschmitz9756]

Joymasher just does a great job on the indie scene! You all should check their other games

[@ClemmyGames]

so good

[@alr2157]

you're the best indie game channel, by far !

[@ClemmyGames]

thank you, appreciate it!

[@alr2157]

@@ClemmyGames don't know if you previously mentionned "Islands of the Caliph", it also has very nice pixel art

[@hotworlds]

fighting games are probably the hardest genre to do pixel art for lol. Characters need to have hundreds of frames of animation for it to look good, and people won't even play fighting games with four characters, so it is common for them to have tens of thousands frames of character animations in one game. for an RPG you can do two frames of animation for a walk cycle. Fighting games usually have eight for each of idle/run/walk alone. And a single attack often has anywhere from three to twenty frames for really big ultimates. Plus, actually making the animations themselves requires deep knowledge of anatomy, plus animating actual people in dynamic actions is the hardest type of animation there is imo. For the last King of Fighters that used pixel art, their process took two years of full-time man hours per character. And there were 39 characters. And they used shortcuts by making 3d models to do the movements and rotoscoped them. Only because they had a huge team of animators did they get it done in a reasonable amount of time. Plus, hand drawn unique level art is much harder than tilesets most genres use. Even making one requires years of art experience to look actually good and it can take at least a week for a very experienced artist depending on how big it is. Other games use tilesets where you can reuse a ton of small assets and quickly make large levels with very little actual art. Even very detailed hi-bit games often use tilesets to speed things up. The same artist can probably make a good tileset in a day.

[@ClemmyGames]

Thanks for the correction and very detailed explanation! Guess I was thinking of backgrounds instead of characters

[@AttnDefDis_]

If I can come away from one of your lists with just one new game to play or keep an eye on, I'm happy. I got Bat Boy off this list and it's been really fun.

[@Paozinh_o]

Caraca um monte de game bacana, gostei to colocando tudo na lista pra jogar rsrs❤❤❤

[@ClemmyGames]

Nice

[@Gwgitu77]

Looking forward to this year recap, much love

[@DashCourageous]

Sanabi was a seriously meta story.

[@daxvasiliou730]

Thanks for the review! I always enjoy your insights into all the indie games. Now to add more to my wishlist…

[@daviddefortier5970]

11:10 its sad to hear 30XX has dissapointing sales. Have you ever considered doing dedicated micro reviews of individual games to help spread awareness? Because this game looks really brilliant & it would be nice to encourage the developer to make new games in future, because you can clearly see the talent would be appreciated

[@tojitoshizou835]

FIRST TIME IVE SEEN A VIDEO WITH ONLY GOOD GAME THANKS YOU

[@controladortv]

Sanabi and Sea of Stars were my 2 Indie GOTY

[@enggalwz3499]

so many worthy and appealing games, yet so less my ram capacity and my processor quality

[@vidwatcher30s]

Lunark is a great game that deserves more love.

[@BlastBoyX]

Thanks for reminding me about Bat Boy!

[@pigbat85]

Savant ascent remix. SAVANT is also a sick electronic music producer and his music is some of the most complex stuff I ever heard a producer do. Check out the music. SAVANT

[@HurricaneSparky]

I got into Ember Knights back in The Rise of Praxis update, and it's changed and grown so much since then. It's still being developed a lot even now, and it's a lot of fun. Sea of Stars is a solid game with the veneer of a great game. It's not bad, but the game feels a little bland. I, effectively, 100%'d it (sans the 10 hour relic achievement that begins in a new playthrough if you didn't bother with it), and it never felt that challenging. I might've been a little too good at its timing system for what it was balanced for, but I beat one of the final bosses with the perfect block challenge relic without too much effort, even. Pretty long RPG, though, and it took me around 35 hours to 100% into the true ending. If you want a long game it'd probably be worth it. I'd argue it takes about 3ish hours to pick up, though.

[@jorgeroman328]

SoS is a solid game indeed, but I had a better time playing Chained Echoes. Go check it if you haven't :)

[@NicolasREVA7X]

I will never forgive Black Skylands devs for what they did with that game. I purchased an incredible Early Access game and 1.0 was a shallow version of that. Sea of Stars has the best pixel art I have ever seen in my life, already loved The Messenger but they just hit it out of the park with SoS.

[@NicolasREVA7X]

Oh yea, Astral Ascent is just amazing! I love the art and the gameplay.

[@ClemmyGames]

Thanks for the comment

[@Invaderbob7]

I really wished blasphemous one was optimized for switched better. It's where I prefer to play my metroidvanias but so many hitboxes are just poorly rendered

[@crowravencorvenrow]

I backed Hunt the Night on Kickstarter, but it seems that I and several backers never received any Steam keys. :/

[@ClemmyGames]

Huh. Weird. Might want to email them

[@mehmetcanguler6293]

Hey Clemmy, the content looks really cool. I've tried or reviewed almost all the games, by the way, we released the Pixel Art Action-Tower Defense game Castle of Alchemists in May :) Don't forget us, haha :)

[@lutjejoensen9243]

Very nice collection of games, two thumbs up! 😁

[@ClemmyGames]

Thank you 👍

[@adamruuth5562]

Boneraiser Minions is a lot of fun.

[@Kallasticot]

Vengeful whatever is such a fucking rippoff of Hagane on SNES, unbelievable.

[@christopherm.gitonga6373]

Sanabi, Tevi, And Lots More

[@boxingtherapy87]

A space for the unbound is by far one of my favorite games I've played this year so far. It's a hidden gem 💎 I think everyone should play ▶️ 🎉

[@goissilva]

In my humble opinion, the last faith is the best indie of this year

[@SpotIsFat]

So what are the games that are playable in Android mobile?

[@susmore8575]

KYNSEEEEEEEEEEED KYNSEED GOTY

[@eruvhan3632]

Thanks

[@chriogre2325]

Name of the game pls?

[@meugameb7567]

Lista incrível! 🎉🎉🎉

[@ClemmyGames]

thanks!

[@Kaitri]

okay serious question: am i this critical of a person? cause i played a handful of the games shown here (pretty much every metroidvania and a bunch of others) and i think all of them were okay at best. blasphemous 2, the combat just felt sloppy and slow to me i didnt really enjoy it. am i just too critical?

[@bleaftharuffneck1014]

Maybe you just can't enjoy it for personal reasons. Try Hades, which sets a "high" standard. But I enjoy a lot of 'em, nonetheless.

[@SundaysGames]

I love ❤❤❤

[@TrueInvisible]

cassette beasts, maybe .. also whenever you say "pixel art" .. since 99.5% of all pixel art games are my most hated genres .. metroidvanias, sewage like, and 2D side scroller, rouge like / lite .. it's almost a guarantee i'll skip them all. any game at all that goes under these cursed tags, are for me an instant skip! if you by now didn't get that "sewage like" is literally my way of saying "fromsoft-ified" / "rage game" .. now you know.. these aren't about skill, or patience it's all about rage quitting. so yeah .. 1 game out of an entire year.. still quite the good record!

[@nickpriebe4495]

Huh?

[@TrueInvisible]

@@nickpriebe4495 clarify the question if you are seeking answers

[@positiveframegames2428]

Great video, your channel is awsome. About fighting games. They are very hard to crate pixel art for, because of the animation complexity. Pocket Bravery has about 1500 frames of animation for each character, And 4 months are necessary to develop each character.

[@ClemmyGames]

Thanks! Always happy to learn more. Yeah the animations seem like a lot of work!

[@Invaderbob7]

I really wished blasphemous one was optimized for switched better. It's where I prefer to play my metroidvanias but so many hitboxes are just poorly rendered

[@teraformerr]

bro you are one of the best youtube channels period your content is unmatched, I found a lot of hidden gems thanks to you!

[@Mr__Mario]

Waiting for Best Indie Games of the Year list

[@ClemmyGames]

👀

[@BenFoster-cx4em]

amazing video. so many games.

[@ClemmyGames]

Thanks for the visit!

[@nandakoin]

There are the best rpg pixel game in 2023, the name "Hero's Adventure: Path to Passion". Rating 9/10 in steam

[@sakeun6]

Wrestlequest

[@ejakobs9881]

Great video, added a lot of these to my wishlist!

[@kimberlycelaya1895]

Fire ♨now 😀🤘🏼

[@UBMadaraKN]

BEEN WAITING YES

[@jeffrodrequez]

Great list!