It’s Black Friday, the day when the entire planet Earth goes berserk and spends all its money on things it doesn’t need at 5 percent less than it would have cost yesterday. Planet Earth bought a whole new moon this year, although the old one is fine just because it has Bluetooth. So let’s distract from all this by discovering 12 amazing new games.
As always with Indiegeddon, I do not vouch for these games as I have not played any of them. Instead, I just find them interesting, exciting, scary, or so damn weird that I couldn’t write about them. Most of them aren’t out yet, but the most useful thing you can do for the developers is give them a wish list on Steam: it makes a world of difference.
Continue reading: 10 Incredible Games to Add to Your Wishlist This Minute
There’s bound to be at least one game on here that makes you check the release date and wish it were sooner, unless you’re that one person in the gray tones who feels the need to tell the whole universe that he actually thinks they all look abominable. We feel sorry for you, that one person. Too bad actually. For everyone else, woo-hoo, let’s go!
falling border
Every time I see a space based RTS that looks as cool as falling border, I think: “This will be it! This is going to be the game where I conquer my fear of menus!” And then I fail. But maybe it is will be this one because damn it looks brilliant. Already four years in the making, by just one person, it looks like it came from a team of 100 at Paradox. Watch these spaceships explode! It’s about taking on a procedurally generated star system whose primary factors are intelligence and logic. But then you can also design your ships, ambush enemies, and do all that amazing space strategy stuff that I wish I had developed a brain for.
Developer: Stutter Fox Studios
Release date: 2023
invoice
You, a squirrel named Bill who is great at crafts, stumble upon an alien baby in your backyard who needs your help! It’s a story as old as time itself. The result, invoice, is a simulation game in which you have to craft, farm and organize everything the alien baby needs to survive. And all to explore the concepts of recycling. Which is the weirdest elevator pitch yet looks like it could be adorable.
Developer: Marienburg
Release date: TBA (Demo in February 2023)
We’re screwed
Familiarize yourself with this one: A 1-4 player couch co-op game about maintaining a spaceship under catastrophic circumstances, but also in split-screen where you see the inside and outside of your ship at the same time . whoops Humans can take on various roles on the ship, from captain to caretaker, as everything goes awry on board as they try to defend themselves against enemies. It’s about chaos and multitasking, or as I prefer to describe it, about team failure.
Developer: Rare exchange
Release date: 2023
quartet
quartet looks like an incredibly faithful classic-style JRPG, but with a new twist in its turn-based combat system. Indeed, there are eight characters in this thumbnail above, but you’re fighting four at a time, able to toggle characters on and off as needed. It’s also a quartet of stories, four to choose from, played in any order, and of course in one Octo Traveler Wisely, they intertwine as you play through them all. It’s an ambitious project for an indie team of five, but it looks like they’re going to pull it off.
Developer: Some classic games
Release date: 2023
dreambound
This man has a very small head. That is, that is dreambound, a visual novel that just had a successful Kickstarter (which raised over $30,000) that offers everyone the opportunity to watch handsome young men stare longingly at each other. It’s booooy looooove. On top of that there are also mysterious deaths, dreams that invade reality and demons from the past for the main character Noah to contend with, in what already looks like a very pleasantly drawn and written adventure.
Developer: Two and a half studios
Release date: early 2024
sky of the tides
Coo look at this! It looks like that all-too-seldom explored sweet spot between point-and-click adventure and RPG. sky of the tides is a sci-fi story set in a civilization on the brink of war, telling the personal story of Rin as she searches for her missing father and, as you know, saves the planet Numen. (THE GOD!) It promises that your choices will define your character as you explore the isometric world, and honestly I want to play it already.
Developer: Sublime Sky Entertainment
Release date: Q2 2023
Unconquered Country
Elsewhere in space… Unconquered Country is another super deep space sim that this one immediately reminds me of Stellaris, but with a much more specific focus: Earth. This is from a group of modders best known for XCOM: Long War. The success of this mod sent them pro and Unconquered Country is their first commercial game, a geopolitical space exploration sim where you prevent (or even assist) an alien invasion of our home planet. The game has been in Early Access for a few months and is proving very popular with Steam reviewers thanks to its complexity and size.
Developer: peacock interactive
Release date: Available now (Early Access)
The blocks shoot at you
An Arkanoid-like game, but the blocks you hit shoot back at you! How is that not already a thing. (I think you’ll actually find that there was an example of this on the Amiga Rupture 3400 in Germany, in the parallel dimension of Raaaaaaa – That Guy.) The blocks shoot at you looks like such an obvious idea but I’ve never seen it before: Bullet Hell Breaking out. This looks like it could be my new obsession, which I’m infinitely horrible at.
Developer: pseudo take
Release date: TBA
Phobolis: Stain your teeth
I love it when I can’t quite tell if it’s a nasty video trailer or a retro FPS trailer. That’s a whole scene now. persons fits right in, its scratchy trailer looking at first like a ruined VHS video that will curse your grandkids, then cuts to a dirty old-school shooter. You can pick them up Alpha test build of the game via Itch for a dollar, or wait until the year after next when they plan to release.
Developer: Amon26
Release date: early 2024
spaceship
Call me a sucker, but I can’t resist a game about a space cat detective investigating a crime on an interstellar cruise ship populated by sentient carpets. As Domino, said detective cat, you explore the ship in third-person perspective and try to catch a jewel thief. Given the ridiculous premise, it’s presented in such an excellently down-to-earth manner, as you’ll see during the full half hour of the game in the video above.
Developer: Recombobulator games
Release date: TBA
zero division
I can’t write any of these without a deck of cards – there are laws. zero division is a cyberpunk approach that promises mix Magic the Gathering With Kill the tower. You choose three characters from a choice of nine, each with their own 40-card deck. And fixed deck sizes mean no deck thinning! courting! What grabs me is the combination of cards and epic 3D monsters and robots flinging their arms and weapons across the board. There’s a demo due in Spring ’23 and I’ll definitely be playing it.
Developer: Robot Cat Limited
Release date: Winter 2023
Extreme Evolution: Drive to Divinity
Always end with an existential, non-linear psychedelic platformer, that’s what my grandmother taught me. There is no one here who rejects wise advice Extreme Evolution: Drive to Divinity by Sam Atlas, Creator of the 2022 IGF Nuovo Nomination, Space hole 2020. Extreme development just looks so spectacularly fucked up like David Lynch did it The Lawnmower Man, and I think I will dream this short trailer for the rest of my life. Oh god, that spider virus thing.
Developer: Atlas himself
Release date: 2023
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