Sony’s State of Play Focuses on Indies and Third Parties

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Sony’s State of Play is essentially PlayStation’s answer to Nintendo Direct, and this time, Sony has treated us to an Indie-focused showcase

State of Play September 2023: How to watch and what to expect | Digital Trends

Luckily for us, this State of Play focuses more on third-party and Indie titles, and while there were only a few indies, they were pretty in-depth.

It mainly focused on the third parties rather than the indies, but the indies that did get shown off were more impactful and showed off new content rather than just announcing their presence on PlayStation. That said, I’ll offer a rundown on every indie shown at Sony’s September 14th State of Play.

State of Play 14.09.2023 at a Glance

As per usual, I’m not going to be covering every Triple-A title in detail, but I’ll give a quick summary and list of the announcements today to give you an idea of how this presentation went down so you can seek out more info on the more significant titles if you wish. Here is every announcement from today’s state of play:

  • Baby Steps gets a new trailer after its reveal at the 2023 Devolver Direct, showing off the comedy-focused fusion of Walking Simulators and games like QWOP or Getting Over It.
  • Roblox probably needs no introduction, being the extremely popular free game platform mainly targeted towards kids or inexperienced game devs, and it’s coming to PS4/PS5.
  • Ghost Busters VR is exactly what it sounds like: a co-op VR game where you explore spooky places and use your gear to bust some ghosts.
  • Resident Evil 4 VR and Resident Evil 4 Remake Separate Ways is the remake of the original 2000’s survival horror classic, now with PSVR support, and it’ll be getting a free content update soon.
  • Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora seems to be a big open-world adventure game, with a lot of riding on the fictional creatures of Pandora with some combat, platforming, and stealth elements mixed in
  • Ghostrunner 2 is a sequel to the original cyberpunk action game with just as many neon lights, cool ninjas, and synth-wave, though the trailer didn’t show much.
  • The Deep Earth Collection of PS5 Systems is dropping, just controllers and consoles with a metallic Red, Blue, or Silver coating.
  • Helldivers 2 gets an extended look; it’s a co-op space shooter where you can take a squad onto planets to take on different alien creatures, similar to Monster Hunter, but in space.
  • Spider-Man 2 gets another trailer, much to the Live Chat’s relief. It’s a first look at the game’s open world, namely showing off the web-wings and the new areas introduced in the sequel. It also gets some extra suits shown off at the end of the presentation.
  • Tales of Arise Beyond the Dawn expands to the original anime-styled action RPG, showing the aftermath of a great conflict and the search for a missing girl in the midst of it all.
  • Honkai Star Rail receives a new content update, focusing mainly on adding a few new characters and some extra bosses.
  • Foamstars is the Splatoon-like arena brawler where you play as many different classes of characters, all battling it out using foam, now in Open Beta.
  • Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth gets another trailer, the much-anticipated sequel to Final Fantasy 7 Remake. This trailer shows off many new areas, Low-Poly fighting, some cutscenes featuring Sephiroth, and some battles, with Cloud and Sephiroth working together. All I can say is I miss Lance Bass Sephiroth from Kingdom Hearts.

Indies from September’s State of Play

Games like Spider-Man and Final Fantasy 7 might have caught everyone’s attention with this presentation, but the indies that were present weren’t slacking either. Here’s a quick rundown of each one and what they announced.

Baby Steps

Opening the entire presentation with an indie game, Baby Steps is a comedy-focused walking simulator where every step is a struggle.

It has the same vibe as Getting Over It, which makes sense, considering this is Bennett Foddy’s next title. On top of the usual fare for his games, it also has more comedic, character-driven writing than usual.

This trailer, in particular, shows us a look at the actual gameplay, and it seems to be similar to QWOP, having all of your limbs work independently and making every small task an incredible struggle.

It shows off more environments, with the tease of a grappling hook, implying there will probably be more depth to this game than it looks on the surface.

Roblox

This trailer went by so fast that they didn’t even post it individually on the Playstation Youtube channel, but it’s just announcing that Roblox will be coming to PS4 and PS5.

While Roblox itself is nowhere near an indie company, the games on it are almost all made by either small teams or individual people, and some of them are way better than you’d expect, so maybe give some a shot sometime.

Ghostrunner 2

The original Ghostrunner is one of those (debatably) indie gems that I feel gets shafted in the discussion of movement shooters often.

Still, it’s an enjoyable and frantic action platformer, having you slide across ziplines in a big cyberpunk world, feeling like a ninja as you slash through enemies. Ghostrunner 2 is the sequel, promising much of the same gameplay.

It starts with rebuilding the protagonist, Jack, to be better, faster, and stronger, and we get a few quick gameplay shots showing off new energy projectiles, the cyber katana, some magic attacks, and dynamic camera angles when cutting into big bosses.

Most of the trailer is cinematic, but a sequel to Ghostrunner is already exciting in its own right, so that’s fine.

Helldivers 2

This trailer commits the criminal sin of having fake comms in a gameplay reveal. Despite that, the gameplay of Helldivers 2 looks quite cool, showing off a Monster Hunter-style gameplay loop where you and a squad of other players drop onto planets to take down massive monsters, with side objectives to complete and strategies having to be created on the fly.

If you’re a fan of space games, co-op shooters, and Monster Hunter, this game looks right up your alley. The rest of the trailer shows off several other planets, some customization given as a reward for completing the mission, and a battle against an army of other humanoid creatures on a snow planet.

Further Reading

If you want to hear more about the best indies to try on PlayStation or just some more great indies in general, stick right here for more.

Best Indie PS5 Games

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