9 Indie Video Games That SAVED Doomed Franchises

In 1998 the world was blessed by the presence of two young shinobi who changed gaming forever: Ayame and Rikimaru. The change these two polygonal ninja created was by being part of Tenchu: Stealth Assassins, one of the first games in what would eventually be known as the 'stealth' genre. Comprised of open level mission missions that could be completed in numerous ways with branching events and dialogue that changed based on which character you played. It was beloved and still holds an 87 on Metacritic.

Tenchu also received several great sequels: Tenchu 2 - which was oddly enough a prequel, and Tenchu: Wrath of Heaven, with Metacritic scores of 77 and 79, respectively. Unfortunately it also received a few more middling sequels such as Fatal Shadows and Dark Secret which got ruinous scores of 58 and...37. The final game in the series was the 2008 Wii motion controlled, Shadow Assassins, which Gamespot gave a 5/10.

Cut to little Spanish developer Lince Works which developed Twin Souls: The Path of Shadows in 2016. After spending a few years in Early Access it was eventually released in 2019 as Aragami. While perhaps not as crisp as what a AAA Tenchu game could be, the controls are certainly passable and the story is surprisingly deep. Aragami received positive reviews and sold well enough for Lince Works to make an expansion DLC and a sequel.