Itch.io is a gold mine of indie videogames and niche tabletop RPGs, a cauldron bubbling over with creative projects from small teams and solo developers which you won’t find anywhere else. Hundreds of Itch creators have come together to make the ‘No ICE in Minnesota Bundle’, a $10 pack containing more than 1,439 indie games, TTRPGs, asset packs, soundtracks, and books worth $5,008 – a discount of roughly 99%.
The funds are being directed to the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota, which “Provides free immigration legal representation to low-income immigrants and refugees in Minnesota and North Dakota” and works “To educate the community about immigration matters and advocates for public policies which respect the universal human rights of immigrants”.
You can grab the bundle from Itch right here. With so many games, it seems practically impossible that you won’t find something worth your cash in there.
And then there are 1,072 physical games – indie tabletop RPGs and journaling games, mostly. The three that provided art for the header image in this article are, left to right, Rebels of the Outlaw Wastes; Substratum Protocol; and Lo Thy Dread Empire.
Searching for ‘card games’ uncovered HOUSE of Cards, a two-player TTRPG using a deck of conventional playing cards inspired by Mark Z. Danielewski’s experimental novel ‘House of Leaves’, which is so laser targeted at my interests specifically that I had to pinch myself and check I wasn’t in a dream. If you already have a favorite indie TTRPG game, you’re likely to find modules for it – I’ve found modules and spin-off games for indie systems like Mothership, Mörk Borg, Lancer, Blades in the Dark, among others.
Among the 274 videogame titles, I recognise Baba Is You (a coding puzzle game), Calico (cat themed cosy life sim), and the XCOM-like Depth of Extinction; then in the “never seen it, want to know more” camp there’s Brush Burial (low poly FPS horror), Gunhouse (OTT tower defense), and Hyperspace Dogfights (a Luftrausers-like). Top of the “WTF?” pile I’m gonna put “Frasier Fantasy”, which is a turn-based Frasier RPG running on a simulated Gameboy Color. Wild.
If you discover something cool – or weird as heck – in the bundle, we’d love to hear about it in the Wargamer Discord community. For a regular round up of our best stories, sign up to the Wargamer newsletter!