For the longest time, the most iconic ‘retro’ indies have aped pixel graphics;The Binding of Isaac,Vampire Survivors,Stardew Valley,Terraria,Celeste, and so many more come to mind almost immediately. 8-bit has been synonymous with nostalgia for decades, but that’s finally changing as the zoomers who grew up on early PlayStation get older.
The PS1 is 30 years old, and its successor is 24. They are, much as it may pain some of you, retro. It was only a matter of time before developers with rose-tinted glasses for the good old days stopped looking at the SNES and Game Boy and jumped to the charmingly blocky fuzz of the two best consoles of all time.
We’ve just hadCrow Country, a classicResident Evil-style survival horror with character models inspired byFinal Fantasy 7; the legally distinctBloodbornespin-off Nightmare Kart, which is essentiallyMario Kartthrough a Victorian, PSX lens, is also underway; and of course,we can’t forget Penny’s Big Breakaway,a platformer that oozesSonic AdventureandRatchet & Clank, calling back to the ‘00s in style.
Indies are finally stepping into the low-poly territory of the PS1 and PS2, and one of the best parts about this renaissance is that we have the benefit of hindsight now. We know what was obtuse and clunky, what modern quality-of-life features could elevate the classics, and how to make once impenetrable genres more appealing. Just look at Lunacid, styled on FromSoftware’s most opaque RPG, King’s Field.
Retro indies predominantly styled on the era of pixel graphics are equally accurate to their inspirations but fresh in their approach. They’re more welcoming to newcomers who would otherwise be put off playing a game from before the ‘00s, and these new PlayStation-styled indies are no different.
As I wrote inmy review, Crow Country encapsulates that perfectly by updating the old tank controls of classic survival horror games to allow you to still move the camera. It even integrates shooting more reminiscent of Resident Evil 4, which makes combat far smoother. The beauty of these indies is that they aren’t 1:1 renditions but faithful homages that capture how these games felt in our memories.
That’s the fine line with nostalgia, it can be so easily undercut. Going back to your old favourites only to find out how clunky they really were is heartbreaking and can quickly wash away the fog. I still go back to the first Ratchet & Clank, but my earliest memories of it are soured because the lack of strafing and awkward camera ripped away the curtain. I’ll never get back the fantastical image that I conjured up in my head as a kid, but playing these new indies that call back to those times comes close.
What stands out most about this old-school style coming back is that we’re returning to the best of gaming horror. There’s an unsettling feeling thatonly the limitations of old PlayStation consoles can emulate, because we’re left to fill in so much of the blanks with our imagination thanks to the confines developers were forced to work with.
The jet black dark lingering behind a window, or the unease of what’s lurking inside the fog, are incredibly difficult sensations to replicate with hyper realistic graphics. There’s a reason there’s so much trepidation towards the Silent Hill 2 remake, because there will inevitably be something lost when peeling away the fixed camera and crinkly static of an old TV. That voyeuristic feeling of being watched, as though you’re viewing everything through the eyes of an observer flipping through CCTV footage, falls apart when defaulting to third-person.
The original Silent Hill used fog because of the hardware limitations. It meant that the game only had to render the area the player was in without worrying about the rest of the town, but that fog is now an iconic part of the series’ aesthetic.
With indies finally embracing the era of early PlayStation, we’re returning to the most unsettling of horror games, the lost art of dungeon crawlers, and platformers at their peak. It’s an era so many are nostalgic for because it was when developers were at their most daring, when we weren’t all so obsessed with realism. We could look past the awkward chibi characters and blocky platforms because everything else was so enthralling. I can’t wait to see where this boom leads, because we’re already wading through instant classics.
