5 Indie Platformers that are ACTUALLY "Hidden Gems"

Hi, Decline’s Drops dev here! Thank you so much for featuring my game, it was a real joy to hear your thoughts! Not to mention being included alongside so many amazing indie titles! You made my day and definitely earned my sub! :D

You pretty much nailed exactly how we made CHAIRS. Scary. Glad the process shown through the ART!!?! :o The game is actually on sale now, lol

I love how most of these games are about saving the world from mega corporations

great video! i remember having to play pokemon under the lamp so i could actually see what was going on... and thanks so much for mentioning my boy Garbanzo Quest! 💖✨ (also also the Steam Summer Sale started today, so great timing! haha)

The FOUR second span of the "not the bees" bit was fantastic. I had a full arc from starting with smiling, to thinking "okay that's enough of that", to high comedy of the timing of when the bees actually caught you. A+++ would recommend

my dude went on vacation and then came back to drop an instant classic. now i gotta go dedicate my life to pru and garbanzo (i ship them)

i can't believe you only have 29k subs with this sense of humor, explanation for each game, and editing. nice video, hadn't heard of these games before!

This is one of the best YouTubers on the platform. Great humor and good recommendations.

16:00 I never owned a Gameboy, but I have exactly that experience with reading books in the car as a kid.

I was brought here by the Decline's Drops dev recommending it on their Twitter and gotta say, great vid! I'm so glad more people are talking about games like that and Yellow Taxi! You also got me to buy Pru (Because it is 2 DOLLARS WHAT?!?), so I'd say the video did its job and then some!

The amount of charm and visual appeal in these hidden gems always astonishes me. I’d rather spend $70 dollars to look at Garbanzo instead of playing another COD if I could. Btw the Skellyboi cameo was oddly smooth lmao. Thanks for doing that!

This video is how I learned about side and backflips in Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom. Funnily enough I knew about the double boost and I've been using that to brute force certain sections probably in the same way you were using side and backflips for double boost sections. Didn't know about the other games so great recommendations!

Declines Drops is stupidly fun! More people need to play it!

Thanks so much for checking out Decline's Drops, and especially (selfishly) pointing out the music! ;) I agree it starts pretty slow, and I think that was to appeal to a perhaps younger audience, or those less familiar with platform fighters, to ease them in. As it is very inspired by games like yoshi's island, you'll notice the first stage(s) of that game are pretty easy as well. But I get that a hardcore p-fighter may want to jump straight into the carnage. Either way I'm glad you enjoyed yourself, and glad your audience that may not have even heard of the game prior to this vid may now be interested. drazglb. (The developer) deserves much more players of his awesome game. Oh, and big things coming by way of updates very soon!

I remember seeing Decline’s Drops on kickstarter. I’m very exited to play it.

GARBONZO QUEST, i watched the devlogs of the person who made it

Woah Garbanzo Quest mentioned!! That one’s real fun, wish it got noticed more, because it’s got all sorts of fun charm to it. Also like a whole hidden level editor which is super duper awesome and nobody interacts with it 😢 (Shh I know I’m in the credits as a playtester too, helped squash bugs ahead of the final major update release last summer)

Another underrated platformer is Webbed it's a cute 2d platformef with great webslinging mechanic it's has some puzzle here and there but it's pretty fun

Second comment, i only watched through the Decline's Drops segment so far but want to say i really like your vid, presentation and pace and will be checking out more of your channel. There's a bit more to Decline's Drops in terms of themes than the Dragons of the Hydra being an oil company. I wouldn't really have caught onto this myself, but: Lead dev shared through twitter multiple times about general themes of natural things having to make way for "progress" and "profit". For example, the second or third level introduces those tomatoes you can bounce off. There's various giant syringes in the ground or ceiling which you can attack to make them blow their load-- and it will make new plants grow VERY QUICKLY and VERY BIGLY. But these plants start producing very nasty-looking tomatoes too Allusion to genetic modification. Ravage (the first dragon) gets upset by a big power plant being destroyed too, the same power plant which can be seen in the intro screen and disappears after beating the game. The harbor levels have the oil and the carelessness with which it gets lost in the ground, i can't bring up anything else to that. Webbing Waves are a more abstract concept. Once again something i wouldn't have caught onto myself and instead learnt through the dev's twitter account: A theme of... digital poisoning. A desire for human connection. Internet allows us to connect with anyone across the whole world, it's a whole universe. But in some backgrounds you can see giant mannequins tangled in cables, reaching up to... something. Other backgrounds show a beautiful young woman holding a phone, some sort of Android or iPhone, with a web pattern emanating from it. But she's not looking happy, even with the world in her fingertips. Lead dev stated something along the lines of Webbing Waves having a theme of true connection with direct living beings, still missing. Mayhaps you can start thinking of some ways people react to that-- including diving ever deeper into the internet. Making more "friends" just to have someone new to talk to when the person at the other side of the phone or computer, isn't there to immediately reply. One of the levels has a gimmick of activating routers to activate platforms in order to progress. Perhaps you can look at it symbolically, like how internet connection has now become nearly integral for a way of living. The next area is one set in a warzone. I don't know any explicit symbolism for this and i don't even know what *sides* are at play. It may be something about war as a business. The big boss you fight is a dragon that has a mechanized shell over it which first needs to be peeled off with enough damage. It can be as simple as "boss needed the dragon to have extra protection & weapons and we have the technology". But if you go looking for symbolism, perhaps there's an element of dehumanization or employing technology for conflict & warfare instead of constructive and sustainable purposes. The level after that is some sort of laboratory. It's not just technology anymore but outright science. And as the boss there attests in his intro monologue-- a theme here seems to be science for the sake of it, purely to slake the scientist's curiosity. Test subjects' well-being, both physical and emotional, are only new opportunities for further experiments. More skin to prod and cut, more surface to stimulate so that the researcher can see how the subject will react. For science, of course! And the final area... seems to be more about the lore or history of the world itself. The land where the Dragons of the Chimera come from, judging by all the imagery of serpents and lizards. The boss himself (forgot his name), I don't really know what to make of. He seems tired. From what i remember he alludes to a cyclical nature of things, how this situation has happened before. Goes over multiple reasons for why Globule could have come here. Goes over multiple possible twists or revelations that he could share. He's tired and after that, quickly goes to business. From what i remember, he speaks of "her" and of terrifying dreams or visions he had. And then tells Globule to do what she must do, again. There seems to be something more sinister, hidden and mysterious occuring. Something strange you can find after collecting all half-hearts and inspecting the statue in Globule's garden. Oh, and various of the frog enemies are references to scientific experiments involving frogs, like the frog/light bulb hybrid and assumedly the flying embryos as well. One of them is known as a Testard, which i assume is he last name of a real-life scientist who was involved in such experiments. Even the shopkeeper, Serge, is part of the themes in the game considering he's a grumpy chimpanzee with his head sawn open that shows his brain. He may or may not have a syringe somewhere on his body. There's more planned to come, some other regions, bosses, even entire characters. I'm curious for more. Hope this was interesting to read th

2:52 God, that takes me back. The Fancy Pants games had no right to go as hard as they did.