Indie Game Roundup (Feb 6, 2026)

We’ve made it through another week! Hope you’re all doing well. I’m still recovering from learning that the Detroit Historical Museum will be having an exhibit on the ttrpg Rifts. If you enjoy these weekly indie game roundups, consider donating to this GoFundMe for an Ann Arbor family facing deportation hardship.

The Gaming Like It’s 1930 jam wrapped up, featuring dozens of games, both tabletop and video games, made from materials that just entered the public domain.

The latest issue of the indie game compilation magazine, Indiepocalypse, is out today with issue 73. This features a combination of ttrpgs and video games. This month’s commissioned game looks very interesting and I’m happy to see a game by ttrpg designer Maria Mison in here too.

Anonymous game collective LITHOBREAKERS released a batch of new games with a focus on outer space. The really wild one that I haven’t had time to play yet but need to is a MUD? I think it’s fantastic to see a new one of those being made.

isometric view of a guy fighting a green monster in a dungeon

Dungeon crawling roguelike Roguecraft DX is available for the Amiga/Mega65/Game Boy Color. I’ve only played the original version of Roguecraft on the Amiga but I highly recommend it if you’re looking for a nice and approachable turn-based roguelike with multiple difficulty levels to choose from if you’re a fan of the genre but bad at them like I am. I don’t really know what the Mega65 (EDIT: I guess it’s a modern day version of this) is but if you can figure out the headaches of emulating Amiga games, I think it’s a very worthwhile platform to dig into. I think more people should make games for the Amiga because I like how the beeps and bloops sound.

low res black and white image of a pinball table

JUNJI ITO PINBALL is a roleplaying experience in the forums for a product page on Itch where folks are roleplaying and posting about their experiences with a Junji Ito pinball table. It’s the best. Just read the PDF before participating and start reading some of the threads.

conversation with people with one saying "Game Over Babe!"

another panel saying "After too many letdowns," and a man saying "You are fired!" and a guy saying "where's my taco shop!?" and a final panel with text saying "Fed up with U corp-like power, Clark enlisted in R.A.B.I.T.: Rebels Against Big Tech"

Welcome 2 The Machine is a brand new platformer game for the ZX Spectrum. Longtime readers will know that even though I’m an American born after this era, I have a weird fascination with this platform anyway and I think this one looks really neat. Those colors!

I keep forgetting to highlight new releases on the Playdate Catalog despite being an owner of the handheld and fan of it. I even made a little game with my kids for it. But I think the recent thread from Playdate on Mastodon does a better job highlighting how active the platform is.

low res first person view of a piano

DEMON DUST is a new survival horror dungeon crawler. I don’t know much about it really but I think there were some positive early impressions floating around. I just really like how grimy it looks and the UI is interesting.

Between the Scanlines is a fanzine launched in October 2023 and inspired by 90s anime and video game fanzines. This issue has features on Jerry Lawson, 2000AD games on microcomputer, and the early days of ID software.

Syl is a much better writer than I am and she just published a free zine recommending five indie games.

Satan, the Alien Vampire is a first-person game where you have five minutes to escape Satan, who happens to be an alien vampire, as it says in the title. Loved the art in this. I personally didn’t have an issue with the browser version but the Itch page says the downloadable version works better.

two alpacas in a car wearing balaclavas

Global Game Jam wrapped up which means there’s now a billion games you can play from that. Some that I think are worth a look are The Masked Charade, Alpacas in Balaclavas, and mutual aid builder It’s Going to Be Ok.

man standing in a creepy office

The Dark Rites of Arkham is a new lovecraftian point-and-click adventure by Postmodern Games on Steam and Itch.io. I think I’ve seen nothing but critical acclaim for all the adventures by Postmodern Games and I get excited for new adventure games made in Adventure Game Studio since it’s what I use.

a pig with glasses walking across a plank going between two buildings

I don’t know anything about Hermit & Pig, sorry. I just like the art. The rpg seems to have a lot of very positive reviews judging from the Steam page, like one from the AV Club.

It’s also zine month for the indie ttrpg community so you’ll start seeing crowdfunding campaigns pop up in these roundups such as Aqua Tofana, a solo ttrpg about poisoning your husband.

That’s it for this week! If you found this useful, add it to your RSS feed reader and/or do your own roundup of things you like on your website or blog.

Indie Game Roundup (Feb 1, 2026)

We made it through January. What a year. If you enjoy these roundups, please consider donating to people in Minnesota, who are struggling in the fight against fascists. A donation to help folks with rent would help them a lot

first person view of someone on a bike and text saying "I never really know how to position myself here."

To all the rocks that bear me is a game where you explore Coruña both during the day and night. As a sicko for FMV, it was great playing a game that documents a place through an interactive medium and would love to see more of this.

It’s not a game but I really liked this free zine about cooking for others.

Fuck Ice is an arcade game for browsers where you tell ice to fuck off. Something a lot of us need right now.

text of a MUD-like rpg on an old computer monitor

Second Hand Computer is a toy that lets you make and play text games. I’ve only played Swords of Freeport in this collection but I feel that even that alone is worth the price. People that grew up with these sorts of games (old people, me) will probably really enjoy this collection.

the front exterior of a house standing by itself
Screenshot of it’s easy and it gets easier

I’m not actually sure what vextro is, but it looks like they had a game jam and now there’s 4 experimental games and writing by folks I like.

a low res image of rocks at a beach at text saying "It was a fair-weathered day at Margato Manor."

The Ocean Welcomes You is a murder mystery/horror interactive fiction game for browsers with inspirations like the visual novel Umineko When They Cry, the movie Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, and the TV show Poker Face. I’m a big fan of the VIDEOTOME game engine and love seeing works like this being made for it.

The 48-word RPG Jam also wrapped up and now there are hundreds of minimalist ttrpgs for you to check out.

first person view of someone holding a gun and looking down at a futuristic facility.

MeowGun: Hell Denizen is a new fast paced FPS that has just entered Early Access on Steam. You play as a catgirl and run around shooting demons, zombies, and other monsters in an aesthetic heavily inspired by the Quake 2 era of FPS. There’s a demo available if you want to give it a try.

Adam Saltsman continues doing great work by making little games in PICO-8. KOLYDR is an arcade game for browsers where you fly a little ship around into blue circles to make explosions and get points. It’s a really lovely arcade game that I should play on something better than a macbook keyboard.

the two dragons from bubble bobble and lots of little bad guys on platforms

Lost Cave is a pay-what-you-want fan sequel to the classic arcade game Bubble Bobble on the Commodore 64, featuring 100 new levels.

Earth Must Die is a new comedy point-and-click adventure on Steam by the creators of Ben There, Dan That. The clever gimmick behind this one is that your character doesn’t want to touch anything himself and must make minions and other folks do everything for you.

Chromatic Conundrum is a first person adventure game where you solve puzzles by manipulating light and mixing colors. It has a colorblind mode as well. Recommended if you liked doing puzzles in games like Antichamber and Portal and want a shorter experience based on light-based puzzles.

Space Warlord Baby Trading Simulator is, and it sounds weird to say this, what it says on the tin. You are a space warlord, and you trade babies on a stock market like interface. It’s by the folks at Strange Scaffold, who have made a variety of wonderful games including the previous game in this series, Space Warlord Organ Trading Simulator. I also just really like the art in these games.

ABIDE is the new stop-motion game in development by the folks that made Judero. This one is a horror game and actually reminds me of the 90s experimental game The Dark Eye. It’s currently in crowdfunding and think you should give it a look.

That’s it for this week. Thanks for reading! If you haven’t already, consider adding this site to your RSS feed and sharing with a friend.

Indie Game Roundup (January 23, 2026)

Once again I am starting one of these posts with “what a week.” Solidarity with Minnesota. I try to do one GoFundMe or whatever in each one of these because I just do the roundup posts for fun but ICE is just kidnapping multiple children a day so here are two GoFundMes to help with legal fees and food for families in Minneapolis here and here. It would mean a lot if you could send a few dollars to whatever one has less money at the time you’re reading this. Anyway, Minneapolis is winning and will defeat ICE and one day ICE will be crushed everywhere else. Help people around you if you can.

There isn’t really a good way to transition to talking about video games after that, sorry, but maybe you’ll find something to distract you from things or be compelled to post about things you’ve been excited about on your own blog.

Video Games

I guess I’ll start with some self promotion. The British Game Generator is a silly thing in development that spits out ideas for video games inspired by 80’s British computer games. Even though I didn’t grow up with that era of games and live in the US, I’m a big fan of a lot of them, especially Llamasoft. They have a very unique feel to me that I have a hard time describing but I feel is quirky and charming in a way that is unique to that scene.

bunny girl riding on a space ship and shooting other space ships

Speaking of British games, Go-Go BunnyGun is a new game for the ZX Spectrum available for Pay-What-You-Want. Itch.io is home to so many good ZX Spectrum games and this looks like a lovely arcade shooter. It was highly recommended by Davey Sloan on Bluesky, who has also made quite a few ZX Spectrum games you should check out.

a woman outside a van at night saying "It's fine, let's just go"

Perfect Tides: Station to Station is now on Steam. It’s a point-and-click adventure where you are a woman named Mara and must deal with all of the issues of being a young adult and features non-linear exploration and branching narratives. I was a big fan of the original game because of its art and how accurately it depicted being a teen in the early 00s, even the awkward and painful parts, so I’m looking forward to how this will recreate the experience of being a young adult in the same awkward and embarrassing ways I did. While it is a sequel, the game is designed so you don’t have to play the original game first. That said, I highly recommend that one too.

Folks should check out the indie game collective Cutie Collective and see all the games they’re making.

a little white blob guy with legs in a cave

SEBI 16 is a collection of sixteen games of various genres made in PICO-8. I’m a fan of PicoMix and CorgiSpace, so it’s fun seeing more PICO-8 compilations coming out.

Karous is a rerelease of a shoot ’em up originally released back in 2007 for the Dreamcast. Don’t know anything about it, it just seems neat and I think it’s interesting that it is a port of a Dreamcast game that is almost 20 years old but also well after the console “died.”

notes being displayed on a large chunky orange monitor next to other electronic equipment

TR-49 (Steam/iOS) is a narrative deduction game by the fine folks at Inkle. I’ve been a fan of all of their interactive fiction games so it’s fun seeing them do a game in the deduction subgenre that’s been picking up in popularity in the adventure game genre. People like mysteries! According to their founder on Bluesky, it’s been their biggest launch in the company’s history. As an adventure game fan, it’s always nice that I can post about multiple games in the genre coming out in the same week and they’re being critically well received and selling well. People are still going to do the lazy “adventure games are dead” narrative but it feels like a golden age for the genre.

Tabletop Games

I’ve posted about the mech tragedy ttrpg Dragon Reactor before but now you can pre-order the print version on the Dinoberry Games website. Even if that one doesn’t seem to be for you, take a look around their site, read some blog posts, and see what else they’ve made. I’m personally a big fan of their games Sprouts and Dinocar.

Breathing Techniques Against Monsters is a lyric game about dealing with negative thoughts via breathing exercises and intended to help you with your anxiety and stress. Available for Pay-What-You-Want.

Demos

Uncle Lee’s Cookbook is an upcoming point-and-click adventure where you play as the teen Ines as she tries to save the world caused by the fallout of her Uncle Lee’s experiements. There’s a demo playable in the browser on Itch.io.

Wishlist

Oh!Ware looks like a very neat Mancala roguelike to me. I don’t think I’ve seen Mancala in any video game form before outside of pure recreations of the game itself.

That’s it for this week. Thanks for reading. If you’ve got a game you’re working on and it doesn’t use AI, feel free to send me an email about it. See the About page here for contact info. I just like to hear about what folks are working on. Or feel free to send an email or post in the comments to say hi. That’s fine too.

Indie Game Roundup (January 18, 2026)

It really does feel like I start half of these with a variation of “man, what a week” but jeeeezus. This one is two days later than I’d like because I wasn’t feeling great but I clearly wasn’t feeling that bad because I went and made a Gubble website yesterday. Anyway, if you enjoy these posts, donations (if possible) to any of these Minnesota based groups would be nice.

Adventure

Pathologic 3 is now out on Steam. You play as a medical doctor who has 12 days to save a town from a mysterious plague. I still haven’t played any of these games because I’ve had difficulty finding the time to play a very stressful video game when I’m also in a good headspace, but I’ve heard all 3 are very good and you do not need to play previous entries to do later ones.

dolphin swimming in the water. There is a red orb on a pedestal

Abyssal is a browser game created in PICO-8 inspired by the Sega Genesis/MegaDrive Ecco the Dolphin. You explore the water and use sonar to locate gems.

WHODUNNIT is a pay-what-you-want/free visual novel on Itch.io and Steam where you must investigate who you hooked up with last night. The first episode is available now.

Laugh Track is a dark comedy horror visual novel where you are the lead writer for a sitcom. Available for free on Steam and Itch.io.

Arcade

top down view of a frog between a busy road and river

Froggo is a new-ish (a few months old) arcade game for the Apple II that is influenced by both Frogger and Crossy Road. It’s available for free on the dev site, along with the source code and a link to play it in the browser.

Books

cover of Game Poems Issue 1, titled First Moves and showing lots of names and a flowery pattern

Game Poems is a new online literary magazine dedicated to exploring the artistic and poetic potential of short-form video games by publishing new games directly in a playable format. Visibility with short poetic games made in Twine and Bitsy is so difficult so I think it’s fantastic this exists. It’s free and I’m really looking forward to seeing more issues. Books probably isn’t the correct category for this but at the same time it reminds me a lot of literary anthologies so maybe it is?

Technically not a game itself but reading is good! Mages & Modems is a memoir involving tales of growing up with emerging technologies in the 80’s and 90’s. You can get a digital copy on Itch.io but the page has a link to where you can get physical copies if you prefer that.

Bundles

There’s a bundle running on Itch.io for the next 14 days to raise funds for disaster relief in Jamaica. For $6 or more you can get 100+ games. I’m personally a big fan of co-open.

Game Jams

Wonderville did their monthly 2 hour game jam and I want to give a shoutout to drip for doing their first solo game. It’s a VN about being a tattoo artist. You can check out the rest of the games here.

News

IGF announced their nominees. The IGF is probably the only award thing I care about because it’s not just nominating the big indie games that get mainstream press coverage and I discover new things from it every year. I’ve been following it since 2002, where games like Bad Milk and Pencil Whipped were very excited to a very young me who didn’t know experimental games existed.

Platformer

Big Hops (Steam/Switch/PS5) looks like a very cute 3D platformer where you explore a large 3D world as a frog and do frog things like jumping around and using your tongue to catch stuff.

Puzzle

a corgi and pug standing by some ice

Space Corgi 2 is a puzzle game created by Adam Saltsman in PICO-8 where you control two dogs that must get to their dog bed and overcome obstacles. I was a big fan of Adam’s CorgiSpace and I’m happy to see him continuing to make tiny PICO-8 games.

a horse standing in a large field with portals

I’ve been very into enclose.horse, a browser puzzle game where you need to enclose a horse in the largest possible space with a limited amount of walls. You only get one attempt at each puzzle.

RPG

first person view of someone holding a lantern in the dark

Sunless Isle: Keep of the Mad Magus is a first person dungeon crawler where you explore three levels and fight monsters all while maintaining your health, sanity, and lantern oil. A prototype was created for a game jam a few years ago but it just got reworked and completed. It’s available for Pay-What-You-Want on Itch.io.

TTRPGs

Swords Without Master is currently running a Kickstarter. It’s blown past its goal and still has quite a few days left but I think it’s worth a look. It was a game that was previously in Worlds Without Master Issue 3 for years but is finally getting an expanded standalone version. It’s a fantasy game where a DM and 2-4 players, who are rogues, tell a story in a few hours using two Tone Dice. I’m happy to see it doing well and Epidiah Ravachol is just a fantastic game desiger.

cover of new in town, showing houses with different colored roofs

New in Town is a solo ttrpg inspired by Animal Crossing about arriving in town and reminding yourself of all the possibilities that can bring. I got to playtest the game and thought it was lovely. In fact, I will steal the blurb of myself on Itch. “Playtested the upcoming solo ttrpg New In Town by @cutestpatoot.itch.io and I’m looking forward to the final version. I think it’s great at recreating the feel of starting a new town in Animal Crossing and it’s just a nice, chill game. Will probably play it again with my kids, who are big AC fans.” You can find a digital copy on Itch.io and a print zine on Plus One Exp.

CLINCH is a 1v1 dueling dice game inspired by films like The Princess Bride and A Knight’s Tale. You are two dueling sword fighters who must do whatever it takes to win. Available on Itch.io

Wishlist

view of cards, and birds and a poacher facing off

Sparrow Warfare is an upcoming mahjong-inspired deckbuilder where you lead a bird army to freedom. If you are interested in trying it out now, there is a playtest you can join.

That does it for this week. If you’ve got a game you want to post about and you don’t use AI, feel free to send me an email about it (see the About page for contact info). Don’t need to send me a key for it either. I just like to hear about stuff folks are working on.

Indie Game Roundup (January 9, 2026)

First roundup of the new year! If you enjoy these, share with a friend and consider giving to the GoFundMe for Renee Good’s wife and son after she was murdered by ICE earlier this week. Also if you’re still on X/Twitter, get some help. Why are you on the child porn generator site? Jesus Christ. Ok, here’s some games.

booze elroy screenshot of top-down view of a pac man map but it's got extra glowing effects and an outline of pacman in the background

Booze Elroy (Itch.io) is a Pac-Man clone with a billion customizable options to choose from. Even if it was just Pac-Man it would be a good clone of that, but it adds so many options you can enable that change the game quite a bit and I think it’s fantastic. I really can’t recommend grabbing this one enough, it’s pay-what-you-want, before a big site like Kotaku or PC Gamer covers it and gets the game pulled like they always do.

We just got Indiepocalypse #72 on Itch. Each issue features a collection of tabletop and experimental video games, as well as a game commissioned for the issue. You can buy physical copies of the compilations here.

Gardenloom (Itch.io) is a pay-what-you-want collaborative tool for building a tarotesque oracle deck for 1+ players. It’s still being worked on so give a try and give some feedback. TTRPG designers always appreciate playtesters.

celestial coffee quest screenshot of pixel art a head of cabbage

Celestial Coffee Quest (Itch.io) is a short point-and-click adventure available as Pay-What-You-Want. It’s by Wavey Games, who made the great adventure Melon Head, so it’s nice to see a new free adventure game from them. I really love the retro EGA aesthetic that all of their games have too and just how odd and goofy the games can get.

Bimbo (Itch.io) is a static site generator by Izzy! I’m a big believer that people should make their own websites, even on something like Neocities, so I full support this. No it’s not a video game but social media sucks, people should have their own homebase where crappy moderators can’t limit what you say, and it’s my blog so I can put whatever I want in here.

Solo But Not Alone 6 (Itch.io) just went live. It’s a charity bundle featuring 90 single player tabletop rpgs for just $10. All proceeds go to mental health charity Take This.

screenshot of the procession of horses in motion of horses running in a field

The Procession of Horses in Motion (Itch.io) is an experimental short software film that runs about 6 minutes long and I think is worth watching. The term software film is being used because it really is a program that you run and watch, with no interactivity, and is explicit in that it’s not a game in any sense. I’m still including it though. Does this make it a cousin of demoscene stuff and the non-interactive demos that you would see released for video games in the early 90s? Anyway, I really like it and think you should check out the other works of INFINITE TEARS too.

screenshot from A Nothingness showing the outside of a building with trash by the door and a door going into darkness
Screenshot from A Nothingness

Another jam for Decker just wrapped up on Itch. Decker is a Hypercard-inspired tool for making little apps and games for browsers and now there’s 37 new things made with Decker for you to check out.

And finally, every December Tom Hall, of Commander Keen/Wolfenstein 3D/Anachronox fame, runs a game jam where he makes lots of assets for folks to use and an optional ARG to participate in. It’s a lot of fun and great games are made for it each year. That jam just wrapped up and now there are 94 games for you to play. He’s a massive PICO-8 fan so the assets are built for that but the jam welcomes games made with other engines too.

That does it for this week. If you’ve got a game you want to post about and you don’t use AI, feel free to send me an email about it (see the About page for contact info). Don’t need to send me a key for it either. I just like to hear about stuff folks are working on.

Indie Game Roundup (December 31, 2025)

I meant to do a few of these each week during my break and uhhhhhh oops, I guess that didn’t happen. So now I’m going to put all of them from my notes into one giant post and hopefully you find one or two neat things to play. I’ll try to sort this a bit more by genre so it’s a little less overwhelming. I hope these posts were useful to folks. Even during Steam and Itch sales, people are still releasing games! I even made a free Playdate game with my kids. If you enjoy these roundups, consider adding your own game or other small indies to MobyGames so they’re covered elsewhere too. There’s already been a few games covered in these that are delisted and that’s always weird to see. And consider blogging about small games you like in the new year too! There’s not much coverage of a lot of these games and there should be better writers talking about them. There’s plenty of games that never come out on Steam that are worth your time.

Adventure

a mechanic and the two guys from andromeda lounging on a beach

After being in development for a very long time and then Early Access for a while after that, SpaceVenture (Steam/Itch) is finally out. This is a point-and-click adventure by the creators of the Sierra classic Space Quest. I’m just happy to see it come out. They had to deal with health issues and the worst Kickstarter backers I’ve ever seen, so it’s a miracle at all that it’s out. It’s nice to see that Steam reviews are positive too. I played a very early version and it was buggy but I think the people I know that are massive Space Quest fans have been fairly happy with it.

The Itch page for SOUP ROOMS (Itch) describes it better than me so I’ll just copy that. “SOUP ROOMS is a SOUP-like room tourism experience directly inspired by SOUP, an obscure Japanese minimalist art-game from 2007 where you walk around a series of small abstract rooms and generally soak in the atmosphere. Think of it as a sort of digital art gallery.” There’s 100 rooms from a variety of indie game devs AND a tool for making your own rooms. Plus it’s all for free!

a dog in a mall barking and text saying "You turn and run as fast as you can."

jfrisby has a new horror adventure called MALLICIOUS (Itch) that is available for Pay-What-You-Want. It was made for the monthly game jam on the Adventure Game Studio website. I always like how jfrisby’s adventure games look and love that this has the aesthetics of a C64 game.

The Simogo Legacy Collection (Steam) is a collection of games released by the developer Simogo for mobile devices from 2010 to 2015. The most famous one is probably Device 6 but there’s some other big ones here too and it’s just really nice to see these games preserved on a platform that’s a bit more stable than the iOS App Store.

Arcade

a space ship shooting a large monster in space

Death in Abyss (Steam) just looks like a really solid arcade shooter with a low poly aesthetic, and I feel like I don’t see many arcade games taking place in a horror setting. A demo is available to try.

Unbeatable (Steam) doesn’t really need a mention on this site because it’s done so well already and everyone knows about it by now, but it’s going on here anyway. I joked elsewhere about how a game about a fascist government making music illegal is basically the Aerosmith video game Revolution X, but it looks nice anyway.

FPS

One Rotten Oath (Steam) is an interesting looking one to me. It’s an adventure game/FPS hybrid that uses tank controls and has FMV for all of the enemies. I realize that is probably not for most people but there’s a handful of us that go wild over FMV so I’m including it here. It’s got a demo too. The developer of this previously made a FMV game/interactive movie called A Trip to Yugoslavia.

I can’t believe ROUTINE (Steam) is actually out after being announced like 13 years ago. It looks great! FPS probably really isn’t the right category for this since it’s more of a survival horror thing that happens to have a gun. But it’s here, reviews have been positive, and it seems to be selling well so good for them. It’s weird that this roundup has two games (see: SpaceVenture) that started development over a decade ago.

Game Jams

Do you like Yuri? Well a whole game jam for it just wrapped up on Itch with 94 entries!

first person view of shots being fired at floating orbs

I don’t think I mentioned the 7 day fps jam in the last post either but that was also wonderful and had lots of entries on Itch. There’s also some very good ones that went past the deadline and were released outside of the jam instead like Dronelord Hyperviber. The look of that one actually reminds me of the DOS game Magic Carpet although it plays a bit differently.

Simulations

a city that looks like it was drawn by pencil by a child or me

Tom City (Itch) is a very cute city builder for browsers by Dave Lloyd of Powerhoof and his son. Obviously I’m a fan of people making games with their kids so this gets a 10/10 from me.

Sports

I feel like I’m trolling a bit by putting Skate Story (Steam) in the sports section but it’s gotta go somewhere. Anyway, I’m the last person who hasn’t played it yet but I keep seeing everyone say the vibes are very good. It has a demo too!

Old School Rally (Steam) is exactly what it says it is. It’s a rally game that looks like it’s between the PSX and PS2 in terms of aesthetics (so Dreamcast era then?) and I think it looks nice.

TTRPGs

We Shall Be Monsters (publisher page) is a solo ttrpg inspired by Frankenstein about creating a living being, and now you can buy it in the form of a 20 page zine. I’m a big fan of Good Luck Press and their designers!

Dragon Reactor (Itch) is a mech tragedy game about conflict on a grand scale using d6 and for 2+ players.

Indie Game Roundup (December 16, 2025)

I have a very minor cold today which of course means that I’m acting like I am incapable of doing anything and just being miserable all around. The good news is that in a few more days I’ll have a few weeks off work. The bad news is that this means they are some of the slowest days of my life. I am hoping this means I’ll get to play a lot of neat stuff during all that time off and maybe make a tiny game. I actually recommend the post Small Christmas/Winter Indie Games on Syl’s Blog, but here are some more games for you to play after you’re done checking out those.

New Releases

cat trying to ascend a tower and jellyfish floating in the air with spike balls surrounding everything

Ken Griffey Jr.’s Horrible Tower (Glorious Trainwrecks) is an incredibly difficult platformer where you try to ascend the floors of a tower while Ken Griffey Jr. taunts you. I am absolutely terrible at these kinds of platformers where you repeatedly try levels until you beat them, but this is a good one of those and it’s free.

Robo Attack 3D (Crazy Games link?) is a free browser game where you save astronauts and shoot robots in a Vampire Survivors-ish inspired game. It’s by John Passfield, who has made games like Halloween Harry, Ty the Tasmanian Tiger, and Flight of the Amazon Queen. It’s just a fun little arcade game! I have never heard of the site Crazy Games before in my life!

The 2025 PICO-8 Advent Calendar (Lexolaffle site) is an advent calendar where you get a new game made in PICO-8 every day. I just love playing little PICO-8 games and it’s fun seeing folks like Tom Hall (of Commander Keen/Anachronox fame) making stuff for it too.

top down view of someone fighting a headless horseman

Angeline Era (Steam/Itch.io) is a new game by the developers of Sephonie and Anodyne. I’m so excited for this one! I love how it looks and I will always get excited about bump combat, which is literally when you bump into enemies to damage them. There’s a demo if you want to try it out.

Rainbows Are Carnivores (Itch.io) is a short gay fishing game by Robert Yang that you can play for free in your browser. It’s great, as Robert’s games always are, but I think the most fascinating part about the game is actually the blog post about its inspirations and the making of it that you should read after you play the game.

Southeast Asia Games Onward 2025 is a nice showcase of games that you can check out on Steam and Itch.io. They have different games being featured so be sure to look at both!

christmas lights hanging up on trees on a trail

Light Up The Town (Steam) is a cozy Christmas game where you are a ferret and hang up lights in your town. I watched decafjedi stream it and it looks incredibly cute and relaxing.

The TTRPG Bookmark Jam just wrapped up on Itch.io. It’s a jam where people made a ttrpg (or ttrpg related thing) that fits on a bookmark.

an antibody shooting black things

Blendo Games released their second game this year after already putting out Skin Deep earlier in 2025 after a few years in development. Antibody One (Itch.io) is a short shooter where you explore the inside of a human body and it’s only $1.

Sales

I wanted to give a shoutout to the Resnijars XMAS Extravaganza Sale!! on Itch.io because I am a fan of their games and this bundle is an affordable way to get them all. If you like 90s looking first person adventure games then I think Manglepaw is worth a look.

Crowdfunding

Chess Joker (Backerkit) is a tabletop game by Asmadi Games that combines Chess with cards that have effects on the game.

That’s it for today. Hoping to do a few more this week to get any/all holiday games out there. I hope you find something new to play! Feel free to message/email me about anything you’re working on if it’s not using AI.

Indie Game Roundup (December 11, 2025)

I’m finally free from school for the next few weeks which means you’ll probably see these posts more often. Since it’s been a while, this will probably be a longer one but there’s a few things I had to get out there now, so you’ll probably see a bunch of these over the next few days. Maybe play an indie game from Itch tonight instead of watching a bad awards show. If you enjoy today’s post, consider signing No Games For Genocide.

New Releases

low poly green girl running in the snow and getting ornaments

The fifth Madvent Calendar is available for free on Itch.io. Every day a new short game with a PSX aesthetic becomes available for you to play! If you somehow get through all the games in this, I highly recommend checking out previous years.

picture of a level of platforms of ice with items on them and a snowman

Did you know that Raymond Briggs’ children’s book The Snowman had a game for the ZX Spectrum in 1984? I’m not British so I didn’t! Well, now it has a remake for the PC that is available on Itch.io as Pay-What-You-Want.

‘A Normal Lost Phone’, ‘Another Lost Phone: Laura’s Story’ & ‘Alt-Frequencies’ are getting delisted on Steam on January 30th 2026. I don’t know what that means for the games on Itch.io, but if you want to pick them up before then, they’re all on sale for less than a dollar. I only played A Normal Lost Phone out of these but liked that one.

Phobos Down (dev site) looks like a neat little low-poly twin sticker shooter on Steam and Itch where you shoot bugs.

The Krampus Case (Itch.io) is a free interactive fiction game made in Twine where you find out who kidnapped Santa. You’ve got 25 actions you can take but only 20 days so choose your actions wisely.

Random Dungeon Generator (Itch.io) is just a fun little browser toy that generates new dungeon ideas for you.

santa's arm extending out to collect a falling toy

Every year, Tom Hall of Commander Keen/Doom/Anachronox fame makes a little Christmas-themed PICO-8 game and organizes a game jam for the community. This year his game is SANTA SACK (Itch.io), a game where you are Santa and extend your arm back and forth to collect falling toys and avoid coal. Tom is the best and it’s fun that someone who made games in my childhood that I loved is still noodling with smaller arcade games and helps organize things for the community.

I assume everyone reading this already knows about HORSES (Itch.io/GOG/Humble), the game that got banned by Steam despite being pretty tame. Not going to get into the bad faith takes on how Steam can do what they want or how it’s a good game, much smarter people have discussed it. I’ve been a hater of Steam’s moderation both on the store and community for a very long time. It’s why I do these posts, because so many indie sites and streamers will just not look at anything that’s not on Steam, even if they have Indie in their name. Anyway, good game, go check it out.

Game Manual Jam 25 is a jam on Itch.io where people make manuals for games that do not exist.

menu showing a collection of games to choose from

Finji has released CorgiSpace (Itch.io/Steam), a collection of games made in PICO-8. If you’ve been playing the PICO-8 games by Adam that I’ve been posting in here, you already know they are a good time. This contains some of those with fixes as well as new ones. Not that everything needs to be commercialized, but I do enjoy seeing people making commercial games with smaller engines like this. There is also a game jam to promote the game and encourage people to make small, experimental games.

That’s it for today. I’ll try to knock a few of these out over the next week so apologies for the spam in your RSS feed reader if you’ve got the site in there. If you’ve got a game that doesn’t use AI, feel free to send me an email about it with a link to your Steam/Itch/whatever page. Or you can just say hi. That’s fine too.

Indie Game Roundup (November 28, 2025)

Today is the Black Friday day on Itch.io, where the site is not taking a cut from sales. Technically you can adjust the scale on your page so they never do this, but it’s fun to have a day where it’s enabled by default. Plenty of people have put their games on sale like mine, but I probably have more respect for people that have increased the prices on their games for today. I suppose you could always scan through this list I made on Itch to see what games that have been covered in these roundups are on sale.

Unrelated to indie games, have this video of a moose hitting a cop car on bluesky

There are still lots of new indie game releases happening every day too and here’s some of the ones I’ve noticed. Apologies for today’s post being a little low effort but for me today is a day where I don’t do much and mostly eat leftovers.

The Games

Endless Stairwell (Itch.io) is a pay-what-you-want system-neutral TTRPG one page dungeon inspired by surreal horror games like P.T. and MyHouse.wad. Throw it into your campaign if you want to mess with players.

TRANSMORFIGATION (Itch.io) is a solo lyric ttrpg about transmorfigation. It’s a new game by Maria Mison and that’s always exciting news.

This bundle of queer art on itch just launched!

first person view of a gray tunnel

erysdren released a free compilation of MS-DOS demos (Itch.io)

The fantastic Moonring is now on Switch. My understanding from comparing the DX version on Switch and the Steam DLC to the free version is that it comes with a massive dungeon? In any case, Moonring! People should play it on either platform.

pixel art bartender saying "There was no woman. The girl came here by herself."

Detective Instinct: Farewell, My Beloved (Steam) is a new visual novel/detective game in the style of older adventure games from Japan. Look at it! It looks great. It reminds me that I need to play Famicom Detective Club too.

robot person shooting and cartoonish robot creatures

Berserk B.I.T.S (Steam) looks like an auto battler/idler game strongly inspired by the Mega Man Battle Network games. While the Battle Network games were never quite for me, I can see why this game would be exciting for other folks. Steam reviews have been very positive too.

duck and turtle jumping over frogs

Windswept (Steam/Xbox/PS/Switch) looks like a really cute platformer where you are a duck and a turtle. It has a demo to try too!

Indie Game Roundup (November 26, 2025)

It’s Wednesday but since I live in the US and it’s Thanksgiving week here, it’s basically my Friday before a long weekend. Hopefully you also have some free time coming up to play games, read a book, work on a little project, or whatever you want. A lot of time sensitive things popped up this week so I wanted to get this one out since I don’t think I’ll be able to do a writeup later this week over the holiday.

New Games

Here, have a bitsy. This one is called Kitten Town (dev site).

a box by binary star games that just says void shift in glitchy text

The physical version of VOID_SHIFT is out. It’s a solo deckbuilding game about doing hard jobs in space in the far future. There’s also a black friday sale on the designer’s site.

Roguelike designing legend Michael Brough just put a ton of their old Windows games in a bundle for Pay-What-You-Want on Itch.io

Angel Amore aka Cutestpatoot has been doing a game every day as well as a vlog about the making of the game. I think this is bananas and my body would fall apart but everything they’ve done this week looks amazing, the videos are interesting, and you should check out their YouTube and games on Itch.io.

pictures of goats and monty hall

Spindley Q Frog has made a game that combines Minesweeper and the Monty Hall problem. You can play it in the browser here.

person punching a robot and text being filled in saying "How do celebrities keep cool?"

Keys of Fury: Typing Action (Steam) combines retro beat ’em ups like Final Fight with typing games. I haven’t played it but Mike Drucker (review link on TheGamer) loved it. I also liked Mike’s memoir Good Game, No Rematch (bookshop.org). I feel like I’ve been pushing books a lot lately on this blog? If you take one thing away from today’s post it’s that people should go to the library more often and read books.

Here, have a new DOS game. Treasure Hunt II is a remake of a DOS game the developer made 35 years ago. Since they own the site it’s hosted on (DOSGames.com) and feel weird about reviewing their own game, they gave it 2/5 stars but I think people should have more pride in their work. You can also play it in the browser.

The Micro Fiction Games Jam (Jam site) has just started. It’s a jam where you make a game in 280 characters or less. This year’s theme is Absorb, Repose, Recursion.

The IF Short Games Showcase 2025 (Itch.io jam page) also started! It’s just an excuse to show off shorter works of interactive fiction that you made sometime this year. Consider submitting your game if you made a short IF this year.

white ball falling and taking out a lot of balls below it

Bubbled Bugs (Itch.io) is a free browser puzzle game where you drop colored balls and match them with other balls of the same color and it has a roguelike element in that you are picking powerups between levels. All done in PICO-8.

Duskpunk (Steam) is a Citizen Sleeper-like rpg that is inspired by tabletop rpgs. This one seems to have more of a survival focus and is set in a Steampunk world. I don’t know a whole lot about it but startmenu seemed to like it.

Dominic Tarason recommends billions of interesting indie games all the time on Bluesky so here are some you should check out. Consider following him if you want to learn about more games. He’s a far better writer too. This is kind of a lazy dump because I need to mention them now or they’re probably never coming up, despite looking really cool and worth your time.

  • Morsels (Steam) is a fast-paced creature collecting roguelite
  • Kingdoms of the Dump (Steam) is a SNES styled JRPG set in a fantasy world of garbage

VORON: Raven’s Story (Steam) is a Norse-inspired adventure game, including puzzle solving, but it has you flying around as a raven and gaining new powers to access new areas.

Wishlist

Here’s some recent indie game announcements that you may want to add to your wishlist on Steam.

Sometimes I just want a 2D platformer where you shoot things. Junk Sec (Steam) looks like a nice one of those. Because I have Amiga nostalgia poisoning, it reminds me of the game Obliterator, despite it actually looking nothing like that and probably being much better too.

I’m so excited for Young Suns (Steam) by KO_OP. A co-op space game with chill vibes and a bunch of great narrative designer/writer folks working on it? Yes, absolutely. That’s 100% for me.

Thank you for reading today’s post. If you’re interested in telling me about a game, feel free to comment or send me an email. Your own games are welcome too as long as they don’t use AI. Comments/emails to say hi are always welcome too.