Steam | Direct Site | Google Play
Created in 2012 by the husband and wife team of Kevin and Aneissa Wells, Hubert's Island Adventure: Mouse o' War is a delightful game borrowing from Commander Keen and many other platformers to make a real diamond in the rough. Can you rescue your wife from the dread pirate Dekker and get back your stolen cheese?
Steam (Director's Cut) | Steam (Super Lone Survivor) | Playstation (Director's Cut) | Nintendo e-Shop (Super Lone Survivor)
| ESRB Rating: Teen 
| Steam Net Revenue: $63,412.20 63k| Game Engine: Adobe AIR 
Created by Jasper Byrne and published through his solo initiative Superflat Games, Lone Survivor is one of the most important entries in the survival horror scene available today. You play 'You' (Your name is...no longer important.) and you are on a mission to find somebody, anybody that might have survived the apocalypse. All around you are instances of unreality and sanity-questioning situations as you try to balance your mental health needs with your survival needs. Sneak through the grim remains of your apartment, use your gun to clear enemies (or don't), bear grotesque witness to the horror and how it's changed you, all that good stuff!
| Net Revenue: Freeware N/A | Game Engine: GameMaker 8.1 
One of the earliest works by David Szymanski, Pit: The Bite-Sized Shooter is a very capable FPS game you can finish in roughly 30 minutes or so. You play Thomas Gage, a man who finds himself stuck in a series of labyrinthian tunnles under rural Pennsylvania and must fight tooth and nail to escape! The player assets are heavily borrowed. sometimes outright, from Wolfenstein 3D, enemies are mainly floating metallic heads and a ghostly figure that's clearly based off of the ghosts in the final level of Spear of Destiny. Gameplay-wise, the enemies can be easily circle strafed due in no small part to the enemies using physical bullets as opposed to being hitscan enemies. This has so many clear design decisions that would go on to influence DUSK, including a jumpscare of enemies masquerading as harmless items, a special weapon called the Perforator which shoots so hard it changes your FOV for a second when fired, and a really strong volumetric fog shader in the GameMaker engine (!!!).
Direct Site | Steam | GOG
| Part of the DROD series (5th of 6)
From the minds at Caravel Games comes a prequel to the epic tale of Beethro Budkin as he recounts a tale of his ancestor Gunthro Budkin to his nephews. One of the more approachable difficulty levels of the DROD franchise, this is a delightful puzzler as you explore through dungeons and attempt to bring the culprit of regicide to justice.
Steam | itch.io | itch.io (Browser Ver.)
A delightful CGA throwback title by J. Kyle Pittman, You Have To Win The Game is as direct a title as one could ask for. You play a Little Nemo-esque character as they dodge snakes, avoid spikes, run from crabs, fall down pits, and collect bags of cash to raise the percentage of the game's completion and find their way out of the sprawling maze. It's good stuff!
| ESRB Rating: Teen
A fine Metroidvania by the developer studio Platine Dispositif and ported by both Mediascape and Rockin' Android, Bunny Must Die! Chelsea and the 7 Devils is the ludicrous story of a bunny lady growing cat ears as the effect of a explosion using 'thermomewclear power' and having to fight seven devils to cure her malady. Commonly referred to as a 'rage game', Bunny Must Die has a stringent difficulty curve that rewards the skilled and careful on their hunt through the labyrinth! Regretably, this game was delisted from Steam in 2019 by the developer, but the Nintendo version is still available.
| Steam Net Revenue: $71,659.24 71k
A little over half a decade before Disco Elysium would come out of Estonia and blow everyone out of the water, a three-man team comprising of the brothers Johann and Mikeal Tael, and fellow programmer Edwin Adema, would make an intense top down roguelike. You're the last holdout on planet Medusa-1C as the corporation you work for has decided to not send a rescue party, and so it falls to yourself to make it to the major teleporter on the planet and make it back to Earth. Easier said than done, because the creators of this game aimed for an extreme level of difficulty in their game, and it comes out swinging. A generous use of negative space helps you maintain your sense of where you are in the world, which is crucial to surviving the number of zombies and mutants roaming the halls of your facility. Death is frequent and you'll find yourself having to really focus to get past the 10 levels to make it to the end. Will you truly escape from Medusa-1C?