Posts from year 2025:
Sokpop Collective game recommendations!
Posted on 2025-01-24 21:01
The idea behind Sokpop Collective is that they are a team of indie developers who release small games on a set schedule, with the authors cycling to give each member time to breathe between releases. They've put out over 100 games to date, and while the games were a Patreon thing initially, they seem to (all?) be on Steam by now. I bought the Sokpop Super Bundle on Steam a bit before the end of the year after Hideko was recommended to me, and have been going through the games there since.
The quality of the releases varies a lot (in part because initially the release rate was monthly, i.e. *really* fast); there were some really solid and inspiring games in there, and now that I've gone through them all (+ a couple Sokpop entries not in the Super Bundle), I thought I'd give some recommendations (and anti-recommendations for entries that e.g. didn't work at all). Here goes!
My favourites
- Pocket Watch
Extremely charming puzzle adventure where you play through the same day multiple times, observing how different characters act and slowly piece together a plan on how to get everything you need to be done in time.
- Grunn
Mysterious gardening game with puzzle-solving & exploration. Very atmospheric and inspiring. Contains a *ton* of jumpscares, though, so be wary of that.
- Apocalich
I love maps, and this game sold me over just by the action taking place on a cool fantasy map of sorts. A fairly simple action adventure with semi-turn-based combat, but the fact that you can see things happen on the map as you do your thing elevates it a lot!
- Pear Quest
This feels in some ways like a prelude to Pocket Watch. Has the same map-based selling point for me as Apocalich. The gameplay is very simple adventuring & puzzle solving, again, but the game's very charming and fun to romp through.
- bobo robot
A very standard, small-scale metroidvania. Short but sweet.
- Springblades
Simple but enjoyable fantasy adventure with a turn-based combat system. Surprising amounts of content and some intriguing boss designs, alongside a sweet visual style. The music is also really cool and somewhat unusual for the genre, I'd say.
Games I enjoyed a lot
- Heliopedia
One of several games about combining elements to make a barren world habitable, create life and eventually bring a society into existence. I didn't get too far in this, but I love the way the game feels and looks, and it was fun to try to get different kinds of worlds into action.
- helionaut
Shares visual similarities with Heliopedia, but is a space-exploration adventure in a procedurally-generated world. Find pieces for your ship and upgrade them, collect resources and fight robots. Initially I enjoyed this greatly, but the slightly finicky controls and samey gameplay loop lessened my interest over time a bunch. Still a great time.
- WILD-9
Collect pieces for your broken ship in a space robo-westerner-esque world. I love the general vibe here, and the game reminded me of a bunch of projects I've made in the past & want to work on in the future (namely Apocalypse Adventure & Badland Quest).
- labyrinth
Small platforming adventure in mysterious ruins. A nice display of Sokpop's Game Maker -based 3D engine, although the layering issues present caused a bunch of readability issues here. Gives me ICO vibes.
- Goblet Cave
Delve deep into a cave and rescue spelunkers and rubies, eventually reaching the golden goblet at the bottom. Very janky, but hit my interests spot-on; I love planning my route and navigating & mapping out a cave system. I guess it's telling that Excavatorrr and CWOUN do a very similar thing, haha.
- Hideko
Another combine-elements-to-create-life kind of thing, this time in a more puzzly presentation. Charming and fun to play with, although the game seemed to want me to create marble mazes for my own fun which I didn't really care for.
- Frog's Adventure
Cute and fun point-and-click-esque adventure with light puzzling. Features one of the more unexpected plot resolutions I've seen in a game like this!
- Luckitown
Roll dice to get resources, use resources to build structures that either improve your defense, deal damage to attackers or provide other resources. The gameplay is a whole bunch of fun, but the difficulty gets *very* high by the time you get to the end of the second season (out of 4).
Games I enjoyed
- Klym
Climb around a town to return all baby ducks to their mother. The controls are a bit janky and I had some issues with the scrolling, but otherwise had a good time. Short & sweet.
- Grey Scout
Rescue prisoners from cages and return them safely to your boat. The sneaking mechanic is quite forgiving, which makes the game much more approachable. Quite short but I enjoyed it a bunch.
- Moeras
Hunt a large beast on a battlefield armed with just your trusty bow. Very bare-bones but intriguing.
- Berry People
Not part of the Super Bundle. A short, cute Pokémon Snap -esque exploration game. I wish the game did a *bit* more with the concept, since as it is the experience is very simplistic and all your photos will be of similar-looking berry people, but I had a cozy time with it all the same.
- Soko Loco Deluxe
(I played Deluxe, but only the original soko loco is in the Super Bundle.) Build train tracks to create supply lines to fulfill the goal in each level. I appreciate that the game doesn't push you too hard to do this super efficiently or quickly (at least in the parts I played), but this also opens the door to some rather tedious optimizing since you can tear up tracks you've laid without losing anything. Still a fun time, though!
- Stacklands
Also not part of the Super Bundle. Buy boosters, place cards representing animals and resources onto each other to get other resources, learn new recipes. I enjoyed the game and it was fairly addictive, but the manual mousework needed became a lot and the booster-based card-unlocking method got a bit tedious over time. Still solid.
- Aran's Bike Trip
A mildly interactive travelogue of a two-day bike trip. Features a nice map view of the route taken and beautiful photos of things seen on the way. I love the scenery and I love biking, so I enjoyed following along a lot.
Honourable mentions
- Sunset Kingdom: Fun little kingdom-building strategy game. Takes a lot of time to get going, though.
- Ballspell: A solid implementation of the concept popularized by Montezuma('s Revenge?) Not too exciting but a solid game nonetheless.
- Ginseng Hero: Nice little action adventure in a bug world.
- The Hour of the Rat: Infiltrate a castle & assassinate the emperor. Neat idea marred by fairly janky movement.
- Tile Tale: Push tiles on a grid to rectangle patterns to earn more tiles and unlock new ones. Enjoyable but a bit mindless?
- Pilfer: Steal goods in a town as a sneaky thief. I didn't get too far but enjoyed what I saw.
- Blue Drifter: Assassinate people in a sci-fi setting. There's very little game here, but I enjoyed the presentation a lot.
- Uniseas: Real-time strategy where you command pirates trading and pillaging. Very cool but also very overwhelming, with there being 3 opponents doing their stuff all the time.
Games that didn't work or seemed otherwise off
- Tomscape: Didn't seem to work at all for me.
- Zoo Packs: Didn't seem to work at all for me.
- Rock Paper Sock: Didn't seem to work at all for me.
- King of the Sandcastle: Seemingly a multiplayer-only game with no players left.
- Botanik: Seemingly a gardening game where all players exist on the same map, kind of. No players left, so all I saw was a sea of greenhouses with dead plants.
- huts: You walk in a small 3D forest but can't seemingly do anything.
- visser: You can catch a fish, but other than the cute presentation there didn't seem to be a goal or much to do here.
- Frog Struggles: It seems that there's more to this game, but after playing for a bit I couldn't understand how to progress beyond awkwardly flying around or why I could sometimes pick up cherries and sometimes not.
- Di-Da-Dobble: Yahtzee but without a goal and with n-of-a-kind being the only recognized hand. Being able to slam the table to alter the result was cute, though.
- Wamu Wamu 2: The game seemed to softlock both times I tried to play.
- vissekom: Watch a fish in a fishbowl. Every couple minutes a 3D prop drops into the bowl. From what I could see, there was no further interactivity other than clicking on stuff to make them bounce inside the bowl, but the achievements seem to imply I missed something.
- Pupper Park: You're a dog and spend ~15 minutes in a dog park with other dogs. There are a couple minigames to play but overall it didn't feel like there was much to do.
Overall, I had a lot of fun going through these! It was nice to have a collection of games where I don't have a particular internal pressure to really dedicate a lot of time to each one, so I could do a little taste test and then play the ones I especially enjoyed further.
It feels like the very barebones/unfinished releases make more sense in a Patreon-based release model because the idea is that people support an artist instead of paying for a given product; putting all these games on Steam changed the equation in my mind a bit, which is a bummer when it comes to the weaker releases. Oh well; apart from a couple exceptions I did find it intriguing to check out even the less refined stuff. Thank you for making all these neat games, Sokpop Collective!
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