RPGWatch - Game of the Year 2012 Awards: Best Indie RPG

The votes for the best Indie RPGs released in 2012 have been collected brining us some clear winners. Is your choice at the top as well? Find out in our article.
More information.

Link is broken - should be this one: link

We already knew the winner. Unfortunately I have no desire to play any of them ever. I tried a few but quit playing them there not for me.

So I skipped the category without voting to be fair.

First indie I ever finished but to be honest when I finished it I was glad it was over. It was a good game but had it gone on for another 5 or 10 hours I probably wouldn't have finished.

The amount of puzzles started to grate on me towards the end. Also didn't like the magic system. Having to memorize and select multiple symbols in real time was tedious and resulted in me only using magic to solve puzzles.

Really liked the exploration, hidden rooms and character progression. More of that and less puzzles would bring me back for a sequel.

Originally Posted by sakichop
First indie I ever finished but to be honest when I finished it I was glad it was over. It was a good game but had it gone on for another 5 or 10 hours I probably wouldn't have finished.

The amount of puzzles started to grate on me towards the end. Also didn't like the magic system. Having to memorize and select multiple symbols in real time was tedious and resulted in me only using magic to solve puzzles.

Really liked the exploration, hidden rooms and character progression. More of that and less puzzles would bring me back for a sequel.

While I would agree on the first part, I disagree on the rest.
I think the riddles were the only really good thing of Grimrock. The character system was bad imho, the fights were too arcade-style, where the difficulty was mostly set by the enemies turning speed, but the biggest thing which I missed was exploration. While there was secret passages to find, there was never anything to look forward to. After the first two levels you basically saw the whole game besides of other enemy models.
If I think back at Eye of the beholder, I think about the two templars in the second game, the bones you could find and resurrect, the Dinosaur Guy in the third part and so on. All these little "you found something special"-events represented by some text and a nice picture.
All that Grimrock offered in that regards were texts when sleeping and a couple of texts on scrolls. I felt exploration was extremely unrewarding.
And so every time I read "it's like eye of the beholder" it kinda hurts. Besides of the movement it's a completely different game, almost a different genre.

That said, I think it was worth the money if you get it on a sale like right now on steam.

Due to the great graphics and the hype before release it has the most amount of people who played it of course and therefore probably also won this poll.

Thank you for the list (and the link correction).

I absolutely adored Avernum, and it was my first Spiderweb game of any kind. I put more time into it than any other RPG this year, including Skyrim (actually released 2011, but notable, especially when you realize I'm no Skyrim hater).

And if you haven't played Grimrock yet, it is the weekend deal on Steam - $5.09/66% off.

I voted for Grimrock and I really enjoyed it - even after I completed it I played some other user-created levels.

61 votes for the also ran winner vs 14 votes for the "regular" RPG winner kind of tells you something donut?

Thoroughly enjoyed this game and if I was into replaying games, which I almost never do, I think I'd want to try some of the things I missed. Can't wait for the sequel.

Very shocked it was done by only two people.

BTW, is that GOTY an oops or does it just refer to this category?

Originally Posted by Lucky Day
61 votes for the also ran winner vs 14 votes for the "regular" RPG winner kind of tells you something donut?

Err… one list was shorter than the other?

Liked the puzzles and such in Grimrock, combat there wasn't my favorite.

Looking forward to a good 2013 for indie games.

That is 61% of the votes, not 61 votes
If I'm not mistaken there were something like 1100 votes in this category.

Fixed the links as well. Thanks for the info.

Grimrock is a deserving winner, I think. Not only was it a fun game, that does what it set out to do pretty well (I didn't finish it so far, but enjoyed my time with it), but I find it also impressive as a project: small team, yet very rapid development, nevertheless very professional, impressive production values, solid PR work without hyping, good community interaction… It's a model worth noting for potential future indy developers.

I very much agree with this award. Its so well deserved. LofGR is simply put a fun game to play. I loved that it brought the classic puzzle element back into rpg genre. Very impressive and professional entry from almost human I hope their succcess gives more devs the courrage to something equally remarkable.

I only wish the gameworld was more exploreable and had some npcs, but I quess its something they can improve in the sequel.

Unlike GhanBuriGhan who has not yet finished Grimrock, i completed three full runthroughs, the game becomes tedious and repetitive and lacking in various departments. It is not even a RPG as there is no role-playing or any character dialogue interaction whatsoever, It is a dungeon crawling hack-n-slasher….nothing more.

If Grimrock is a "winner" then role play gaming is doomed.

Wulf, I'm intrigued that you played through it three times even though you're quite critical of it…was there something particular which made you want to replay it even for its faults?

I'm happy to have played to completion both the winner and the game which came second place. In fact, I probably spent more time overall with Legend of Grimrock and Avernum: Escape from the Pit than some of the AAA games that I played. Definitely looking forward to more of both sometime in the future.

When will the results from the staff come out ?

Originally Posted by Wulf
Unlike GhanBuriGhan who has not yet finished Grimrock, i completed three full runthroughs, the game becomes tedious and repetitive and lacking in various departments.

If you felt that way, than replaying three times was a very dumb thing to do. Sorry.

It is not even a RPG as there is no role-playing or any character dialogue interaction whatsoever, It is a dungeon crawling hack-n-slasher….nothing more.

Yup, that's exactly what it wants to be (well you forgot to mention puzzles), and it is pretty good at that. These games have traditionally been part of the wider RPG domain, but of course we can have another endless discussion about "what is an RPG" - they are always fun.

If Grimrock is a "winner" then role play gaming is doomed.

Hasn't it been "doomed" for ages? And frankly, while we have yet to see how it will play out, we have had an enormous resurgence of classic RPGs of all flavors thanks to indies and kikstarter. I am less worried about RPGs right now than I have ever been.

Originally Posted by GothicGothicness
When will the results from the staff come out ?

They are not. This year part of the staff have been doing other things than gaming and I could not gather sufficient votes for an Editors Choice.