Indie browser-based video games hosted on websites rarely have the hardware or resources needed to cutting-edge graphics; to compensate for this handicap, developers frequently direct their creative energies towards the game's stories, creating clever, memorable narratives with the surrealist reality of Welcome To Night Vale and the plot twists of an M. Night Shyamalan movie. Without spoiling too much, Fallen London, A Dark Room, and Blaseball are sterling examples of browser games where the narratives goes in decidedly un-expected directions.
At times, there's an inverse relationship between the graphical sophistication of a video game and the creative freedom developers possess. Video games with cutting-edge graphics and up-to-date control systems are made by large development teams whose budgets and publishing deadlines are frequently decided upon by the producers and business executives ing them. In workplaces like these, developers frequently need to cut corners in order to get their games done on time, compromising their original artistic visions and removing features they don't have time to implement.
At the opposite end of the spectrum, indie developers of video games with "retro" graphics frequently have more creative freedom. Liberated from the work-load and budgeting challenges of AAA games with high graphical fidelity, they can invest their time and mental energy into refining fun gameplay concepts and narratives. This holds especially true for the following browser-based video games, presenting players with plots full of twists and turns through the framework of gameplay inspired by visual novels, choose-your-own-adventure books, and old-school interactive fiction games.
Great Browser Game: Fallen London
The browser-based story game Fallen London (formerly called Echo Bazaar) takes place in an alternate version of 19th century London dragged deep into the depths of the earth by an alien race of bats. Player take on the role of one of Fallen London's citizens, navigating through story events in different neighborhoods and drawing random story cards from a virtual deck. As the player explores the world of Fallen London, they'll stumble across many strange secrets, such as the identity of the Echo Bazaar Masters, the true nature of Stars, how to win the love of a demon, and just why Queen Victoria let alien bats pull London into the dark.
Great Browser Game: A Dark Room
The numerous plot twists in the story of A Dark Room go hand in hand with the emergent complexity of its gameplay, modeled after interactive fiction and other games with text-based interfaces. The game starts by placing the player in the dark room of an abandoned house, with a fireplace that must be stoked. Then, as firewood runs out, the players gets to go outside their house and scavenge for supplies in a seemingly post-apocalyptic world.
Then, as refugees of a strange cataclysm show up, the gameplay of A Dark Room shifts to community management simulation, with the player allocating resources and workers to construct buildings and facilities in their settlement. Then, once their settlements is stable, the player can go explore a vast landscape in the style of roguelike RPGs, equipping weapons and fighting off hostile creatures. Then the player discovers the character they're controlling isn't an ordinary human...
Great Browser Game: This Game Is A Business Card
At first glance, the browser-based visual novel called This Game Is A Business Card resembles the website of an indie video game company, complete with information, about pages, and a list of open job positions. Clicking on one of the job positions then introduces players to the core premise of the game – running a video game development studio, hiring talented professionals to bring a game concept to life, then struggling to complete it in the face of crunch time, design complications, meddling executives, budget cuts, and oppressive release dates.
Then, within the game, a sock-puppet serpent creature shows up to help the studio streamline their development process, dovetailing into a clever ment for the real-life Tiny Hydra consulting group. For a good chunk of This Game Is A Business Card, however, the "Tiny Hydra's" cheerful promises to solve the in-game development studio's problems comes off as almost too good to be true, making some players wonder if they've struck a Faustian bargain with some devil or Fae trickster.
Great Browser Game: Blaseball
On the surface of things, Blaseball is a simple baseball simulator where player bet fictional currency on matches between fictional baseball teams. Unlike real-life baseball, however, Blaseball is an eldritch sport (or "splort") where rogue umpires make players spontaneously combust during solar eclipses, dark gods of peanuts can manifest to punish unbelievers, Blaseball teams of cyborgs and monsters can have names like Jaylen Hotdogfingers, and players can periodically vote to change the rules of the game through Decrees enforced by the ineffable "Blaseball Gods." Think Welcome To Night Vale, but with all the post-modern madness centered around a sport game.
