These are the best indie games of 2016 - now can we play them on mobile?
Small budgets, big fun
Some of the best games on iOS and Android this year are expatriates of the console and PC indie scene.
You might have played games like Invisible Inc., Human Resource Machine, Severed, Samorost 3, That Dragon, Cancer, and Snakebird on Steam or PS4 or wherever, but no one's complaining about getting a second version for their phone or iPad.
But there are still plenty of brilliant indie games that we'd love to get on the App Store. And here they are, specifically picked because they would just about work without a keyboard or controller.
Stephen's Sausage Roll
Stephen's Sausage Roll is the most critically acclaimed game that you've never heard of. But anyone who takes the time to play it, and get past the utterly brutal difficulty, is going to find a wonderfully elegant puzzle game.
It's all about rolling sausages onto grills to cook their porky belly, but one wrong move will send your banger into the ocean, or burn it to a frazzle. Each stage seems impossible at first, until you hit that beautiful moment of epiphany.
Duskers
Duskers is a pretty scary game - no mean feat, considering that it looks like it's running in DOS.
You're in charge of sending unmanned drones into derelict - and probably alien infested - spaceships, using nothing more than keyboard commands and dumb luck.
It's better on a clunky physical keyboard (the older, and louder, the better), but we'd put up with the iPad's virtual keys to play Duskers on the go.
The Witness
This one is slated for an iOS release. It's just a matter of when.
The Witness dumps you on a lush tropical island, which is littered with touch screens. Each screen contains a puzzle about tracing a line on a grid. Which sounds easy, until you realise that these are some truly devious riddles.
Creator Jonathan Blow has mined every possible aspect of this simple set-up, to come up with hundreds (literally) of unique puzzles - each with some clever new idea.
Inside
If Limbo made its way to mobile, then there's no reason why Playdead's follow up shouldn't follow suit.
Like Limbo, this game is about leading a small boy through a dour and dangerous world. You'll solve puzzles, escape traps, and wonder what the heck it was all about.
No giant spiders here, but plenty of mind-control, vicious dogs, weird fish girls, and other such abominations.
Stardew Valley
Remember Harvest Moon? Well, yes, I know they're still making Harvest Moon games. But remember when they were actually any good? Stardew Valley does.
It's a charming and colourful farming game, filled with stuff to do like characters you can talk to, dungeons you can explore, and seasons you can exploit.
It has come to just about every platform under the sun but we'd love to have a version we can play away from home. Harvest Moon was at its best on Game Boy, right?
Darkest Dungeon
We play lots of games where we command groups, parties, armies, legions of humans. But we do ever stop to consider the psychological toll that is being paid by these people?
Well, no, because these are video games and these people aren't real. But still!
Darkest Dungeon accurately depicts how a bunch of people would actually fair in a fight against Lovecraftian monsters: they'd go mad. They'd become alcoholics. They'd run away. They'd have a heart attack and die.
Look, just trust me, it's good.
Oxenfree
Oxenfree takes Telltale-style storytelling, and jams it into a quaint 2D adventure game about teens having a spooky ass summer.
Your choices in conversation dictate relationship and story events. And whatever you choose to say, the characters are well written and voiced by top talent.
Also, the music is good. Like, so good.
Kathy Rain
Wadjet Eye Games is not the only one making stellar, 90s-flavoured point and click adventures. Kathy Rain also looks like it should come on 12 floppy disks, and is rather splendid.
You play as a determined journalism student who come to terms with her own troubled past as she investigates the mysterious death of her grandfather. Expect puzzles, dialogue trees, and going "hmmm".
Hue
You can tell Hue was made by an artist. It's all about changing the colour of the background and then seeing that it made similarly-coloured objects disappear. Aka: A Photoshop Nightmare.
But this annoying artistic problem is the basis for a fun puzzle game about hiding some objects and revealing others to move boxes, clamber over danger, and escape falling boulders.
It will need a virtual controller for moving Hue about, but changing the colours by wiggling your finger over a palette would feel rather good.
Tharsis
All video games are numbers and die rolls. Most of them try to obscure that fact, but Tharsis makes it plain as day: the game is literally about rolling dice around and hoping that the outcome is good.
If it is, you'll fix your ship and live to float through space for another day. If it ain't, critical parts of your ship will break and you'll be forced to eat your best engineer. So, yeah. Here's hoping for a six.
