Every Wednesday, dive into the Indie Select Hub , your gateway to a fresh, curated indie collection plus four themed spotlights that rotate weekly! You can always find this collection hub in the XBOX Store and on XBOX.com/IndieSelects.
The holiday season is just around the corner, and the ID@XBOX team is excited to share November’s Indie Selects! Think this is our last Monthly Selects of the year? Think again. Stay tuned next month for our first-ever December Selects, with plenty of indie games to add to your wish list, whether you’re asking Santa or just dropping not-so-subtle hints to your roommate.
This November, we’re thankful for six standout Indie Selects that invite you to survive unbelievable horrors, live your best life, and sometimes do a little of both. Do you slay the undead by the dozen, or put them to work as a surprisingly productive agricultural workforce? Do you prefer solving puzzles surrounded by vibrant colors or unspeakable nightmare fuel? And that sound you hear? Maybe there’s a killer after you. Or maybe the rhythm is going to get you.
Outside of its odes to Resident Evil and Twin Peaks, Silver Pines has borrowed some of the most innovative features seen in modern gaming to deliver a highly polished survival horror experience. It has Silent Hill’s map annotations, Gears of War’s active reload, and most notably, Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown’s photo system.
If you find a boarded-up door but don’t yet have the crowbar, or a cryptic clue for which you haven’t found the puzzle, you can use your in-game camera (you play as a detective after all) to take a photo which will be pinned to your map. This makes backtracking when you find the necessary item so satisfying, as you work through your own visual to-do list.
It’s a feature that should be mandatory for all Metroidvanias moving forwards.
Wych Elm, the ex-Arrowhead developers, opted for rotoscoping to give their protagonists, NPCs and enemies a unique aesthetic that fits perfectly with the unsettling town they have built for you to explore. The gameplay takes place on beautifully drawn 2D scenes which have routes towards and away from the camera, allowing you to explore an intricate, interconnected 3D map which encourages and rewards exploration.
Silver Pines is the best survival horror game you will play this year. It delivers a cohesive, consistent experience, with a single protagonist and play style that eerily builds the tension and mystery over its 15-hour runtime. Any fan of horror or Metroidvanias owes it to themselves to jump in. See you in Silver Pines, detective.
Halloween might be over, but the spooky season lives on with a dark medieval RPG called Graveyard Keeper 2. You don’t have to have played the first game in order to enjoy the second, but there are some delightful narrative callbacks that deepen the mystery. In the first game you were pulled through a portal from your mundane contemporary life into a strange medieval fantasy world of magic and zombies; there was a village the explore, lots of NPCs to meet, tasks to accomplish, and zombies to recruit as your helpers.
In the sequel, the town has been overrun by zombies and you are the last hope. While the premise sounds dark, there’s a lot of dry humor here and yes, everyone’s favorite sassy revolutionary Donkey is back, of course!
The overall gameplay loop is similar to the first game (a good thing, since it was so effective.) You perform tasks like crafting, building, gathering and farming. You level up and unlock new abilities in the tech tree and advance quests. There’s a lot to juggle in Graveyard Keeper 2, but an improved quest system helps keep your goals clear. While some grinding is unavoidable, finding your groove is deeply satisfying as its many systems begin to automate, overlap, and fuel your progress.
Graveyard Keeper 2 is a stellar sequel that builds on everything that made the original so enjoyable. Gorgeous pixel-art environments and fully voiced story scenes bring its darkly charming world to life. If you want a cozy game with a morbid twist that can easily devour your free time, this is it.