Official programming suggests that it's creative appreciation week this week around the Blaugosphere,and this time around I couldn't help but make a shout-out to the excellent folks at Subset Games.
Subset made FTL, in which your plucky little spaceship must repeatedly outrun, outwit and occasionally outfight an overwhelming enemy fleet in a universe full of nihilism, space pirates and goofy fun. One of the worst encouragers of just-one-more-turn-ism I've ever met, with endless possibilities and combinations, and one of only two games I've ever bought three times1.
Then they turned around and made Into the Breach, an ever-engaging and tight little micro-puzzle game about time-travelling mechs defending the remnants of the earth from a never-ending swarm of alien bugs with an endless assortment of doodads and gizmos, choosing the least worst options that they can while packed into chessboard-like battle grids.
Both games will run on a potato, have simple graphic styles, construct beautiful and engaging things out of basic building blocks, are endlessly replayable, and have the kind of effortless minimalism and simplicity that can only come from countless hours of polishing and refining and perfecting every single system. If you've never tried either, I heartily recommend them both, but I think that Into the Breach is undoubtedly an unmissable classic, whereas in my opinion FTL is merely damn good, even if sales figures want to suggest the opposite.
But perhaps more than the games themselves, I admire Subset for the way they go about their work. They're a small studio, with a core team of just two guys with additional art, music and QA support towards polishing end of a project , and I think that must give them the freedom to march to a different drum to most developers our there.
Here's a few of the things that I really appreciate about them:
Ongoing DLC
Don't Rush Things
Mod Support
The other being Theme Hospital