12 Phenomenal Indie Games That Deserve Your Attention In 2015

9. Shovel Knight: Plague Of Shadows

Y'know what kind of DLC is totally okay? The free kind. The Witcher 3's rollout of 16 individual packs that gave you everything from additional finishing moves to quests and skins was spot-on, and it's an ethos that loveable developers Yacht Club have nailed too - throwing out Plague of Shadows for free across all their versions of 2014's Shovel Knight. It essentially doubles the game's runtime, as although you're going back over the same levels as before, Plague Knight (PK) plays completely differently. Challenging your muscle memory and preconceptions of how best to run through these scenarios you've already memorised, PK forgoes horizontal stab attacks and downward thrusts for both a late-trigger jump attack, and an Assassin's Creed: Revelations-style bomb-crafting system. As lobbing these pouches is your main attack, you get to customise it in immediately impactful ways - ending up with different fuse-timers for far-away enemies, to seek n' destroy homing-missile bombs to clear entire screens of closing-in foes. This first major expansion is the kind of thing guys like Warner Bros., EA or Ubisoft would turn into a separate full-price game these days, and that's precisely what makes having it bundled in with Shovel Knight's base game so special.