Top 10 Free Indie Games

8. Famaze

Rogue-likes are gaining traction nowadays in the indie gaming world. This could be due to a number of reasons: Permadeath caters to older gamers' nostalgia for brutally difficult games; managing inventory, equipment, and skills excite the pen-and-paper crowd; procedurally created dungeons help with replayability and ease the pain of repeated attempts to complete the game.

That said, it's still rather difficult to recommend rogue-likes to the average gamer; after all, the failed attempts of progression can be very frustrating, especially in cases where you can lose hours of hard work to a random trap of cruelly spawned enemy. Of course, what better way to get into the genre than by trying a good, free title?

Famaze is just that. You pick one of three classes, and set off on a dungeon crawl. On the upper screen is a very simplistic map that will show your movement, and on the lower half is some wonderfully drawn pixel art of your avatar bouncing around said dungeon on a 2D plane. It's quite enjoyable to watch, and the amount of detail that went into both the art and music makes all the typical rouge-like tropes that much less painful.

In addition, it takes the core of most rogue-likes and simplifies it, making it easier to get into than many of its brethren. For example, you can only hold two items, so it teaches the importance of inventory management without overwhelming you with dozens of different items that you don't know the use of. Battles are a simple affair of attacking until either you or the enemy dies, with little in the way of complicated skills to boost stats or play around with turns or any of that. For that, Famaze may seem just a bit boring to a rogue-like veteran, but for those that want to try the genre without so many complications, this is a good place to start.