Simply keeping on top of the steady release of “AAA” games is challenging enough these days, with a larger market than ever before, and a massive number of devs and publishers trying to sate that demand. Unfortunately, that often means far too many good indie titles fly under the radar without the recognition they deserve. This weekly post aims to highlight some of those games we’ve got around to playing but never got around to reviewing.

For the King

Developed by IronOak Games, a four-man Canadian indie team, For the King describes itself as a “Roguelike Tabletop Adventure”. The only word missing from that description is “hateful”. The pairing of hex-based overworld exploration, first-person dungeon-crawling, and turn-based Final Fantasy-esque combat works out surprisingly well. Every gameplay element – from the number of movement hexes your character receives per turn, to the chance they can disable a devices, or the likelihood they’ll hit a target – are modified by a dice roll. The most miserable and unhelpful die I’ve ever encountered.

You start out by creating a party from the available classes and limited cosmetic options, before setting out in one of six story modules (“For the King” is just the first, and most narratively-developed of them). Your task almost always boils down to traversing a large map, hex-by-hex, clearing out dungeons and defeating key enemies to restore the world, saving it from some impending doom (usually the spread of chaos). There are towns that offer services and mini-quests, shopkeepers that buy or sell supplies, and a myriad of chance-based random events. For players who hate time limits, be warned there’s no relaxed free-roam mode that allows you to explore the procedurally world at your own pace. Careful planning allows you to keep the chaos level low, but this ever-present threat forces you to keep up the pace and makes the ruthless RNG system that much more frustrating.



On the upside, For the King moves at a brisk pace, with movement turns, events, and battles playing out at speed. A successful adventure is usually over in about five hours, if the RNG-gods grant you great loot drops and merciful enemy combinations. A catastrophic adventure is usually over in less than an hour, with your party receiving almost no gear before stumbling into an enemy pairing that simultaneously curses your team with multiple status effects, while buffing themselves to the point you miss every attack or have any damage negated. Sure, you can be tactical in battle – trying to ambush your enemies before engaging in battle, picking your target based on the turn order, or investing “focus” points to ensure you succeed at a dice roll – but RNG still dominates in the early game.

Death – of which you’ll experience many – introduces the unconventional roguelike mechanics. You can keep using the same party across multiple modules, but they’ll always be reset to level 1 after falling in battle. Instead, you find and collect “Books of Lore” during every run, which are used to unlock new additions that affect every campaign module. These can be new character classes, new encounters in the world, and even new legendary loot that might spawn in dungeons. It allows you to tailor the experience in your favour or make it even harder - if you’re so inclined. It’s the digital equivalent of buying expansion sets for a board game and, better still, everything is earned in-game at a healthy rate. There are no [censored] microtransaction purchases in For the King.

EDIT: I forgot to mention there's online and local-coop. It works well, with the host controlling two characters and the guest one, but it's best played with friends and voice-chat enabled. As a turn-based game, there's plenty of time spent discussing tactics, attack orders, and gear trading.

You can pick up For the King on PC, Xbox One, and PS4 , and it’s currently available on the Xbox Game Pass for both console and PC.

My Time at Portia

Developed by Chinese-American indie studio Pathea Games, and published by Team 17, My Time at Portia started out life as an early access title on PC before receiving console ports this year. It’s best described as a crafting- and exploration-focussed sim. You arrive in the titular Portia, inherit your missing father’s workshop, and set about building a new life for yourself (which can mean sprucing up your home or finding love), all the while performing crafting commissions for different NPCs and the town government. The visuals and soundtrack are a little repetitive, but charming as hell. This game is now my default example when I’m trying to explain what I mean by “nauseatingly cute”.

You trek around the world with a conventional third-person control scheme, able to run and jump, hack down tress and mine stone, engage in simple combat, or partake in several social interaction mini-games. These tasks are basic in function and there are extensive tutorials to get you up to speed. My Time at Portia is one of those games that has several simple systems that don’t hold up on their own, but somehow manage to combine into a captivating experience. A big part of that success is the rapid day-night cycle and a limited stamina meter, which encourages you to plan out your activities for the day. It may sound restrictive – and sometimes it is annoying – but it also keeps the pace brisk and I kept coming back to complete just one more task



Days last 20 minutes in My Time at Portia, with your character awake from 7AM to 3AM (you’ll pass out and wake up in bed if stay up too late). Natural resources illogically respawn in a matter of days to ensure you’re never stuck without a task. After you complete a few introductory missions and construct your first basic crafting station, the game opens up, and you’re free to follow the actual story missions - which explains the post-apocalyptic state of the world that was destroyed by technology gone wrong – or you can simply perform daily commissions, dig through ruins full of old-world artefacts, gather resources to expand your homestead and equipment, or farm crops and fabricate clothing to sell to the locals (and gift to your love interest). As a year in Portia consists of only four months, each representing a different season and full of unique activities, it’s easy to lose track of time, but the story missions never impose themselves upon you.

If My Time at Portia has a major weakness, it’s one shared by the genre. A few bad decisions can leave you grinding for the materials required to complete a task, resulting in a frustrating gameplay loop with little sense of progression (albeit somewhat mitigated by the rapid time cycle). After mistakenly taking a commission that required crafting material I could not yet access, I had to mercilessly cull dozens of panbats (a cute panda-bat hybrid) for their pelts.

You can pick up My Time at Portia on PC, Xbox One, PS4, and the Switch. It’s also currently available on the Xbox Game Pass for both console and PC.



Let us know in the comments below what you think of our choices, or if you’ve been playing an indie game this week you’d like to promote to the community.

Follow the link to see more of our picks for Indies of the Week.