Introducing: games by dev team Sokpop.
Probably the most inspiring indie dev I've ever come across.
Sokpop Collective, or Sokpop in short (which means “sock puppet” in Dutch, fun fact) is an indie dev collective from the Netherlands. I came across them a long time ago, through Stacklands and quickly figured what it is that sets them apart: they spew out a new game every month, and they’re qualitative and creative each and every time.
It’s not one of those “we just mass produce cheap AI renders for money-grabbing purposes” scammy situations, they are genuinely good games. The team has a history of participating in game jams like Ludum Dare, which already gives them a lot of credibility in thinking up a game and developing it quickly. Combined with their reuse of assets, meaning that they save a lot of time by not having to design new assets for each game, that means they can focus on the important parts of game development: fun!
And they are very generous with their prices, too. Through their Patreon, I receive a couple of games each month, effectively catching up on the old games while staying on top of their new ones. I have more Sokpop games than I know what to do with, send help.
Sokpop delivers a whole series of simply yet brilliant games that all share the same pencil-y, sketchy style, yet have entirely different genres and gameplay, which, to me, makes them an incredibly talented and creative bunch of people worthy of their own spotlight.
I’ll show you my favourite ones, are you ready?
Stacklands
Stacklands is the first game in my “… but it’s cards!” collection. It quickly became one of my favourite games, and introduced me to what would end up being one of my favourite game genres.
It is basically a village builder / exploration game, but everything is cards. You villagers are cards, that you can stack other tool and armour cards on to equip them, drag them onto resource cards to harvest them, stack resources cards together to combine them, drag resource cards onto your cooking pot card to cook them - you catch the drift. It’s all cards.
Stacklands also grew a lot bigger than other Sokpop games, leading to it having DLC, which adds even more content (and even more challenge, too). Not only that, but it also comes with a modding community that offers even MORE satisfying scratches to my brain itches.
It's a game that is brilliant in its simplicity - as I've come to except from Sokpop. I truly love their vision on game design and am always pleasantly unsurprised when I see a game I'm excited about and then realise it's by them.
👍 Surprisingly addictive and lots of “brain goes brr”. Love it!
Guardener
Can we first take a moment to admire the portmanteau that Guardener is?
Okay. Thanks for that.
In Guardener, you grow different types of crops to help you defend your little house from monsters. It’s sort of a tower-defense game, but without structures. Your only defenses are your little crops, who each have their own specialty. Some of them will be tanky, others will do a lot of damage, others will do ranged damage, while others are farming your guarden (see what I did there?) for even more troops to defend your house.
Very simple, very bare-bones, and if I’m honest, very challenging, too!
👍 A very simple yet challenging introduction to the tower defense genre.
Wurdweb
Wurdweb is singleplayer Scrabble.
The premise is simple: you get words, you place them like you would on Scrabble, and if they hit the special tiles, you get more words to place.
There are daily, weekly and other challenges for you to complete.
👍 I can’t express in human words how happy it makes me that someone FINALLY made a single-player Scrabble game.
clickyland
Okay, so clickyland comes with a personal, very autistic anecdote.
When clickyland came out, like most Sokpop games, I thought: "ooh that looks great!"
I read the description: "you get 20 clicks every day" and I got so frustrated. “Why would they limit a game to only twenty clicks a day? That's a lame way to force people to return daily. I would expect this from shitty Facebook games à la Candy Crush or FarmVille, but not Sokpop. I mean, sure, they do every genre, but this is just lame.”
So I didn't buy the game and didn't think about it anymore, until someone recommends it to me. I relay the above story and they go "...Amy, you realise it's twenty clicks per IN-GAME day, right?" And I have to honestly admit, I didn't until right then.
So I bought clickyland and even though tower defense games aren't my thing, I really enjoyed playing it.
The game is what you’d expect from a tower defense game: build structures, get fighters, protect your home base against invasions, rebuild, upgrade, rinse repeat.
👍 One of the best games I loved to play despite being really bad at them.
Soko Loco
And finally, we arrive at Soko Loco, the reason I started writing this blog post.
You may or may not remember from my ‘I like trains’ blog post that I love LEGO LOCO, so when I saw “soko loco” in my recommendations, you can guess where my brain immediately went, right?
I finally got around to buying and playing Soko Loco today and… wow!
It’s not the same gameplay as Lego Loco - that was more of a sandbox, build your own thing and get weird postcards from the Loch Ness monster type of game. But Soko Loco definitely borrows some of its charm and makes me feel nostalgic about it nonetheless.
Soko Loco is more train-oriented, strategic city builder. You start with the basics of creating a train, making it pick up logs at the lumberjack’s and dropping them off at the sawmill to turn them into planks. That’s the first level. After that, as the game progresses, the puzzles get more complicated, as you have to manage not only wood production but also things like food production.
👍 Choo-choo!
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