Every so often my granddaughter Jess sends me a link with the words "Nana, you'd actually like this one," and this week it was a roundup of new indie games over on MSN. She knows her grandmother well. I've been playing games since the days when blowing into a cartridge counted as troubleshooting, and the indie scene is where the interesting stuff happens these days.

Two things jump out from this batch. First, a pair of genuinely lovely-looking Metroidvanias. If you're not familiar with the term (and don't worry, my spellcheck still isn't), it means exploration-focused platformers where you unlock new areas as you gain new abilities, named after Metroid and Castlevania. The genre has become the comfort food of modern gaming, and the ones highlighted here lean hard into beautiful hand-drawn art. I remember when "pretty" and "2D game" couldn't live in the same sentence without someone laughing, and nobody's laughing now.

The second headline-grabber is free Bomberman-style multiplayer chaos. Free is a word I always pause on, in games as in gadgets. Sometimes free means "you're the product," but sometimes it just means a small team wanted to make something joyful and get it into as many hands as possible. Bomberman-style games are the board games of the digital world: easy to learn in five minutes, capable of ending friendships in ten. If you've got family visiting over the long weekend, this is the kind of thing that gets everyone off their phones and yelling at the television together.

The roundup covers more beyond those two, naturally, a grab bag of smaller releases that would never survive a marketing meeting at a big publisher but that's exactly the point. Indie developers try things the big companies won't. Sometimes it flops. Sometimes it's the thing you end up playing all autumn. My rule is the same one I apply to gadgets: don't buy everything that looks charming, pick the one or two that genuinely fit your life, and actually enjoy them.

If you want my advice, read the source piece, wishlist anything that catches your eye, and grab the free one tonight. Worst case, you lost nothing. Best case, you've found your new Friday night.

And if you try one of the Metroidvanias, tell me. I'll be the one on the couch with a cup of tea, getting hopelessly lost in a map I swore I'd memorized.