Memory Card #003
The Age of Indie Sequels
If you keep up with the game showcases like I do, then you’ve probably noticed a lot of indie game sequels being announced lately. Steamworld Dig 2 in 2017 stuck out, as did Spelunky 2 in 2020. But Citizen Sleeper 2, Tails of Iron 2 and Hyper Light Breaker (the roguelike followup to Hyper Light Drifter) all coming out in January 2025 don’t stand out at all.
So what’s the deal with all these indie sequels?
The obvious answer is money. Recognisable worlds and characters are an easier sell to both customers and investors, plus the ability to re-use assets and scrapped concepts can cut down on development time in theory. But nothing is that simple.
I’m going to take Spelunky 2 as my main case study here. It wasn’t the first indie sequel but it feels like it inspired the current wave in some ways. In the build-up to Spelunky 2’s release, lead developer Derek Yu went on the interview junket to speak about why he wanted to make a sequel. When speaking with fellow developers on the Eggplant show (then called the Spelunky Showlike) shortly after its announcement, he talked about his interest in making a sequel to one of his games :
“I didn’t have tons of ideas for a sequel to Spelunky, I just knew that I wanted to make a sequel. [They] are very common in AAA game development but for indie game development – at the time – it seemed like it was pretty rare.”
“I thought about what is the point of a sequel. For me it’s not to completely change the core experience of the game; it’s really to keep building and pushing and take what you’ve done as a foundation and really building upon that.”
Indeed, Spelunky 2 builds upon the first game in every way without changing at its core. New worlds, new enemies and new weapons that collide with each other in new ways. There have been a lot of indie sequels since Spelunky 2 and they all iterate in some way : Darkest Dungeon II went worldwide, Steamworld Dig 2 added more caves that challenge players’ grasp of the mechanics in new ways and Hades II has as much at its Early Access release as Hades 1.0 did.
Why else make a sequel? So you can actually learn from your mistakes and take feedback to heart. Back to the Eggplant interview :
“Building on my feelings on Spelunky after that time and thinking about what people had said about [it], reading what other game developers and players and critics said about Spelunky, I think was really helpful for someone like me…because it helped put into words a lot of the things that I was feeling.”
Even if you go from strength to strength on new projects in completely different genres, you can only improve so much when you don’t take the time to polish up on your weak points. Going back to the drawing board on specific aspects of a game is only really possible when you do a sequel. In Spelunky your guy just walks slowly through a cobweb but in Spelunky 2 they have an animation of them pushing through it. The speed is the same but building on what was already there with a little animation adds the feeling of friction the action needs is the sort of small detail you could only add in a sequel.
One gripe that comes up when a sequel gets announced is the disappointment that an all-new game isn’t being made instead. If Supergiant had gone back to square one for their next game like they did with Transistor or Pyre instead of going back to the Hades well, who knows what could have been? I see this sentiment a lot around guest characters in fighting games : if all of the resources and time that went into putting Yoda into Soulcalibur IV were instead used for an original character, maybe Namco could have created the next Pac-Man for the game instead of a licensed character that just holds up future ports. Of course, this logic ignores how the funding for said development time might have only been available for a guest character or follow-up.
But going back to the well doesn’t mean you’re draining it completely. In his 2021 GDC post-mortem “The Making of Spelunky 2” Yu compared the iterations of Spelunky to the iterations of Super Mario, saying :
“If you think about how Mario started with “Donkey Kong”, and how each new game in the series moved it closer to where it is now – with new characters, new mechanics, more polish – that’s kind of what I wanted to do with Spelunky.”
If Nintendo had stopped at Donkey Kong or even at Mario Bros in the arcade, we wouldn't have the wealth of Mario platformers we enjoy today. We wouldn’t even have Toad! Even if indie games don’t tend to leave much on the cutting floor, giving developers the chance to go back and make a sequel gives them the opportunity to do even more with their games and worlds.
With at least 15 indie sequels coming in the near future, more and more studios are deciding to double down on their hits. Are there any sequels you’re looking forward to? Do you prefer any indie sequels over the original games? I wrote in to MinnMax asking just this but I’d love to hear your thoughts.
The Week in Me : Slay the Spire Charity Stream
Livestreams are at the heart of games in the internet age, with the right streamer being able to make a game explode in popularity or the wrong streamer able to whip up enough bad publicity to drown a game. I'm not really a fan of them, preferring to watch a friend play a game so I can actually talk to them about it, but I love charity livestreams.
On the 27th of January, chess addict and video essayist Sarah Z did a 12 hour livestream where she played popular deckbuilder Slay the Spire to raise money for the Transgender Law Center. Charity doesn't occur in a vacuum and this campaign was inspired by the recent spate of executive orders that seek to strip back the rights afforded to trans people amongst other things.
Her initial goal of $10,000 was met before the stream even started and over the course of the day she raised over $130,000. Funding goals are a big part of charity streams, with the hosts promising to do something unusual if a certain amount is donated or an overall amount is reached. Shaving your head, doing a round of “Smash or Pass”, reading out embarrassing childhood poems – you give a little, you get a little.
Part of what keeps me interested in these streams is the rotating cast of guests that join the streamer, cycling in every hour or so. It keeps the dynamic fresh and incentivizes people to donate while they're on if they want to see Jacob Geller or Princess Weekes get on their soapbox about some random film. The recent Wicked adaptation would not stop coming up on the stream.
The world can be a lonely place sometimes and seeing these people unite to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for a good cause reminds me of the good collective action can do. People from around the world coming together because they all believe in protecting the safety and dignity of trans people. None of us are alone in this world and with enough of us coming together, maybe we can get by.
The stream may be over (and the two post-streams held the next day that raised an extra $20,000 are over too) but the cause is ongoing. If you have the means, consider giving to https://transgenderlawcenter.org/. In an ideal world charities would not exist, tackling the symptoms of an issue rather than its cause, but we do not live in an ideal world so if you have the means, I hope you consider helping us get there.
The Week Ahead :
8/2 Cats & Critters: A Dungeon Claw-er (Alphabet Soup) – PC
9/2 Unblinking (Bit Fox Den) – PC
10/2 Museum No.9 (YaoYi Technology) – PC
11/2 Undying (Vanimals) – Switch, PS5, Xbox Series S/X
12/2 Urban Myth Dissolution Center (Hakababunko) – PC, Switch, PS5
13/2 Hellcrackers (Balazs Maczak & Balazs Sabransky) – PC
14/2 Afterlove EP (Pikselnesia) – PC, Switch, PS4, XBox Series S/X
Saving Data...
Thanks for reading! Thanks for your patience too. You hopefully saw my update about moving from Substack to Ghost. Shouldn't affect anything on your end. Also, consider following me on BlueSky if you want to see me reblog stuff now and then. I have no idea how to use social media.
An update on last issue’s lead story : Marvel Snap has found a new publisher in US-based Skystone Games, calling it “a full-team effort between Second Dinner, Nuverse, Skystone and Marvel”. They're also giving US players a hearty compensation package for the downtime and global players a little something too, so long as they'd played in the last 30 days.
I'm not too sure what I'll cover next time but look forward to coverage of Citizen Sleeper 2 and “look forward” to coverage of David Cage from me in the near future. See you next week!