August Is The Month Of Indies Taking Me By Complete Surprise

thegamer.com:

If you’re the type who tries to keep up with the latest releases, it's no secret that 2022 hasn't been the best year for triple-A games. Early on, we got a juggernaut in the form of Elden Ring, but the rest of 2022 has struggled to escape FromSoftware's Erdtree-shaped shadow.

Sometimes, when an epochal game comes along, it's a rising tide that lifts all boats. We got The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild in March 2017, and despite being a masterpiece in its own right, it was also a sign of more great things to come. That year alone, we got *deep breath* Super Mario Odyssey, Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus, Night in the Woods, What Remains of Edith Finch, Horizon Zero Dawn, Assassin's Creed Origins, Resident Evil 7, Prey, Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice, Dream Daddy, Sonic Mania, Cuphead, The Evil Within 2, Destiny 2, PUBG, Fortnite, Splatoon 2, Divinity: Original Sin 2, Hollow Knight, Pyre, Yakuza 0, Xenoblade Chronicles 2, and NieR: Automata.

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Game development takes a long time. So, while Breath of the Wild's standard may have pushed the devs who played it to up their game, those releases likely didn't change dramatically in the final months before release. Instead, BOTW was a signal that we had reached the point in the console generation where devs were getting more comfortable with the hardware. Though it was the first game released on Nintendo Switch, it was one of the last games released on the Wii U. Technically speaking, it represented Nintendo at the top of its game, at its most knowledgeable about the tech it was working with. The same was true of developers working with PS4 and Xbox One around