The 50 Indie Game Challenge

December 12, 2025December 12, 2025 ~ mpklamerus ~ 2 Comments

There’s a trend happening on bluesky that came from The Game Awards discourse where someone said if you post “play more indie games” then you need to also post 50 indie game recommendations. I assume this was because the person was tired of the performative posts just vaguely gesturing at indie games. But it worked. People have actually been posting indie game recommendations. However, because I cannot be a normal person, I got annoyed that people were only linking to games on Steam. I posted a list of 50 recommendations on Bluesky but thought I would do the list here as well, where it’s a lot more readable and I can add some nice screenshots. There’s probably a fun theme I could have done instead like 50 Amiga or ZX Spectrum games, or adventure games, but here’s a batch of 50 games I liked and maybe you’ll feel compelled to do a post recommending indie games.

a guy in sunglasses saying "Perseverence: If you can believe a sports car, you can achieve a sports car"

Landlord Quest – Short point-and-click adventure game where you can see a landlord eat shit. Buying on Itch gives you files to run in ScummVM on everything

DOSember Game Jam – Did you know a game jam just wrapped up where we got 39 brand new games for DOS? So many great games here

santa's arm stretching out to catch presents

SANTA SACK – Tom Hall, of Commander Keen/Doom/Anachronox fame, does so much for the PICO-8 community on Itch, organizes game jams, and makes a Christmas game ever year. This one is an arcade game where you catch presents and avoid coal.

a boy looking at another boy that is stuck in a tree

The Round-about Orchard – Julia Minamata, creator of the amazing adventure game The Crimson Diamond, made a fan game for Over The Garden Wall along with people that worked on the show.

a first person view of five people fighting four monsters

Minerva Labyrinth – Just a really good first person dungeon crawler!

Egg by Terry Cavanagh – The best platformer where you play as an egg. Eat shit Dizzy

Everything by DOMINO CLUB – An anonymous game dev collective. No one is doing more interesting experimental games than them

Nikhil Murthy’s Syphilisation – An incredibly interesting take on the 4X genre, like an anti-imperialist and anti-colonialist take on Civilization

Eulogy for Nonno – Very funny short adventure game where you delivery flowers to a home and are mistaken for a long lost cousin and must escape

Maura & Ash – Nice, short queer point-and-click adventure set in space and runs in DOS

first person view looking down a giant tree

FALLSTRUKTUR – Free first-person platformer where you must make your way down a giant structure. Very challenging

The Chambers Beneath – Challenging but easy to pick up roguelike for DOS, available for pay-what-you-want

pixel art of someone on a building's rooftop

Neon Hearts City – Cyberpunk point-and-click detective adventure with nice pixel art. I actually wrote more about this one here.

Root Bear – An arcade game for the Playdate where you pour root beer for bears. My kids love it!

Atuel – A free surreal documentary game about the environment with beautiful art. Wrote more about it here.

Backwater Eulogy – A short visual novel memoir about growing up in a rural area. Wrote more here

Rainbows Are Carnivores – The newest game by Robert Yang. A good gay fishing game.

Billy Masters Was Right – A pay-what-you-want point and click adventure with Maniac Mansion-inspired art and a story inspired by The Burbs. Wrote more here.

You Are Generative AI – Twine game where you are a Generative AI consuming power and being useless

Castlevania: Simon’s Destiny – A great, free Castlevania fan game made in GZDoom

CorgiSpace – An excellent collection of PICO-8 games by Adam Saltsman

Mixed Feelings – A ttrpg with mechanics based around making playlists

Type Help – An excellent deduction adventure game made in Twine

two columns with rows of different shapes filling the columns

Spirit Swap – A Match 3 combined with a queer visual novel. I like the spells/powers you can use during the Match 3 part too. Fantastic soundtrack. Wrote more here.

museum with board game photos hanging on walls

Museum of All Things – Explore Wikipedia in the form of a 3D museum

little cartoon guy playing a pinball table that has candy as obstacles

Pinboll – Very cute pinball roguelike

Hardcoded – Very NSFW cyberpunk dating sim

Indiepocalypse – Incredible games compilation featuring new indie games every month and excellent curation. New issue each month!

low poly bowling lane floating in the air with stone heads next to it

Super 10 Pin – Bowling game that absolutely nails the aesthetic of N64 games

green girl collecting big ornaments in the snow

Madvent 5 – Advent calendar of horror games with the aesthetic of PSX games

ocean::ephemera – Beautiful space to explore for 7 minutes

Shindig – Cute point-and-click adventure for kids

A Short Hike – Everyone knows this one but my oldest loves it so much

The Annual Ghost Town Pumpkin Festival – Same author as A Short Hike. You must play this in October. It’s a small Halloween MMO and I had so much fun playing it with my kids

Frogsong – Very cute action adventure game where you play as a frog

Kitsune Tails – Amazing Super Mario Bros 3-like platformer!

Dragonsweeper – Took over my life at the beginning of the year. Great combination of dungeon crawling and Minesweeper

KIDNAME: ICEBOY – Incredible parody of Sierra’s Codename:Iceman and other games by Jim Walls

Stair Quest – Another great parody of Sierra games. An intentionally frustrating game where you navigate stairs. Also has a Winter Edition of the game

Alone on a Journey – Trilogy of solo ttrpgs focused on exploration that were influential to me. Wrote more here.

VIDEOVERSE – Beautiful visual novel inspired by the Wii online community stuff

Enclosure 3-D – Remake of an adventure game inspired Sierra classics and the 3D engine presents that retro art style in a really interesting way

black and white pixel art of a woman next to a downed power line

Midnight Scenes – Looooove the Midnight Scenes series. Anthology horror series with each game being playable in one sitting. Wrote more here.

He Fucked the Girl Out Me – Short visual novel about being a sex worker and trauma for the Game Boy. Wrote more here.

Hunger – Another influential solo ttrpgs where you are a vampire. Uses a really neat blackjack-inspired mechanic. Also has a companion game called Thirst. More about it here.

Dinocar – Very cute ttrpg where you build a city for dinosaurs driving cars. Loved playing it with my kids

Parsely – If you are a text adventure fan and want a similar experience with friends, check this out. One player is the “parser” and the rest say commands to solve the adventure

Songs for the Dusk – Great Forged in the Dark ttrpg where the players try to build a better future

Co-open – Really nice game about a child’s first time buying groceries on their own

Cartomancy Anthology – Another influential one. An anthology of games inspired by tarot cards

I hope this helps you find something new on Itch.io!

Indie Game Roundup (December 11, 2025)

December 11, 2025December 11, 2025 ~ mpklamerus ~ 3 Comments

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.

DOS Games Are Alive and Well on Itch.io

December 9, 2025December 10, 2025 ~ mpklamerus ~ Leave a comment

people investigating a safe — Quid Pro Quo

Despite the Industry moving on from DOS decades ago, Itch.io has an incredibly active community of folks making games for DOS, that folks to play on their retro computers and emulators. DOSember, the annual streaming event on Twitch where people play DOS games, just wrapped up their first DOS game jam on Itch.io. The jam received 39 submissions, which I think is a fantastic number of new games for something the games industry and tech world decided was “dead” decades ago. There’s a lot of fantastic stuff in there for you all to play with. They’re all free but if a game is taking donations, consider tossing a dollar or two to the games you like and consider streaming them.

top down view of someone shooting at monsters — Europa Panic

If that wasn’t enough, there’s been DOS games being published on Itch before that. THP put together a list of DOS games made for jams I hosted and there’s so many good games in here. There’s a few paid games as well that I think are worth supporting. THP also made this free DOS demo disc, like in the old days of shareware. Go check the list and demo disc out!

person skiing down a hill — Did you know the original version of SkiFree isn’t actually a DOS game? It’s true!

Finally, there’s plenty more for you to check out on Itch. Poke around the site and check out tags such as the msdos and DOS tags and games like The Aching and Hibernated 1. You’ll find many more DOS games to play and enjoy!

pixel art of an office and some wizard stuff like a staff and monster head hanging on the walls — Quest for Erasmus

Landlord Quest thoughts

December 8, 2025December 8, 2025 ~ mpklamerus ~ Leave a comment

Developer: katbrush
Publisher: katbrush
Year: 2025
Genre: Adventure
System: Windows

a man in an office saying "Perseverence: If you can believe a sports car, you can achieve a sports car"

Landlord Quest is a short point-and-click adventure game where you play as a landlord who must do a task for one of your tenants but as expected in a comedy adventure game, this goes off the rails very quickly. It features multiple endings, with an extended ending if you do all the goals and max out your Landlord Score, but all of them are “good” unless you like landlords for some reason. It’s always a little goofy to try to write a longer review for any game that’s 30-45 minutes long but I wanted to write some kind of log since I thought it was a fun adventure game and always appreciate when a point-and-click adventure takes an anti-capitalist stance. It’s definitely not a pro-landlord game.

It features all the stuff you would want in a comedy adventure like good jokes, puzzles that are fair, and a mini game as well. The only criticism I have is that some of the inventory items are used in an odd way for the 9-verb scumm interface, with you generally clicking on the item itself and then the object you want to use it on and not clicking the Use verb first, but once you figure it out then it’s not a big deal.

The art is very nice too. The verb panel has the aesthetic of early Windows and I was really impressed with the animation, especially for a solo dev project. It’s good stuff! Sometimes it’s nice to just play through a short adventure game in one sitting and watch a landlord eat shit. It’s only $2 too! Other than the content warning of a possible violent suicide depiction not being for some folks, I feel very comfortable recommending it to adventure game fans who want a short comedy adventure. It’s available on Steam but if you buy it on Itch.io then you get the files to run it in ScummVM, making it playable on basically every platform.

Landlord Quest is available on Steam and Itch.io.

Virtue’s Heaven thoughts

November 29, 2025November 29, 2025 ~ mpklamerus ~ 4 Comments

Developer: MOKKOGRAD
Publisher: MOKKOGRAD
Year: 2025
Genre: Platformer
System: Windows

pixel art box art of the game that I made

Virtue’s Heaven is a 2D Metroid-like where you explore a world that has been ruined by capitalism and you set out to eliminate those that caused that destruction and free your friends. Unlike a lot of games in the Metroidvania genre, you do not get powerups that allow you to explore new areas. You have all of your abilities at the start of the game and destroying bosses will give you keys to open new areas and make you stronger. My experience with the game was one where I didn’t initially click with the game, but when I figured out how I was playing the game incorrectly it became one of the most satisfying gaming experiences in a long time.

a guy about to kick a robot — Screenshot from Steam

My initial experience with the game was that I was very impressed with the art and music, and thought the combat system, which is based entirely on melee attacks, was an incredibly interesting approach. However, soon it felt like the game was becoming too difficult. The combat started to feel like a slog because the character was not doing much damage and enemies were too strong. I knew it was me doing something wrong though, since the game had put so much thought into every other aspect, that I just got annoyed with myself for missing what was probably an obvious detail and then got distracted by other things and put the game down for a month.

Cut to a month later and I finally came back to the game to see how I would do with the game this time. Pretty quickly I saw that I was correct and missed an obvious detail. The game expects you to go back to town after defeating bosses to get an upgrade to get more health and be able to use more of the powerups you’ve obtained, which you get from freeing your friends. This time the game really clicked with me and I was so happy with how great the game felt. The combat was still challenging but very fair and it was immensely satisfying to keep getting more upgrades after beating bosses. I kinda hate the term juice for describing the feeling of sound effects and other effects that happen when the player interacts with the world, like an explosion after defeating an enemy, but folks, it’s got very good juice. Some of the best explosions in a video game to be honest. The game’s anti-capitalist theme was obviously a big selling point to me too. It feels very rare to see it in a setting like this so I really appreciate the developer taking the big swings with the story it’s telling. It’s not really a game that sets itself up for a sequel but I think there’s some really interesting directions that it could go in if they do decide to make one, which I would certainly be the first in line to buy.

I should point out that the initial bounce off the game was entirely my fault. The game is very generous with reminders on other aspects of the game and I was probably playing the game and not feeling very patient, which is the wrong mindset when going into a new game. I could have also played the game at the wrong time, when I wasn’t in the mood to learn a new ruleset. This has happened to me before. One of my all time favorite games, Morrowind, is one that I had initially bounced off of but when I came back and was more patient, it really clicked with me and I loved it. I think this was a similar experience. I don’t necessarily like to say that it needs to be appreciated on its own terms, because that might make it sound like you need to accept the shortcomings of something. These weren’t issues with the game. I had just played it at the wrong time. I think it’s even harder now when there’s just so many games that it’s hard to be patient and understand what the game is doing. It’s not like it’s doing anything radical here, I’m not expected to learn a brand new number system like in Riven, but it was still very easy for me to get distracted to jump to something else.

It feels a little silly to write about this massive journey I took with a game that’s ultimately only 4-5 hours long but if a game takes you on an adventure, you have to write about it folks. I’m so glad I came back and recognized what I was doing wrong because it’s a game that I now love and hope more people check out.

Virtue’s Heaven is available on Steam and Itch.io

Indie Game Roundup (November 28, 2025)

November 28, 2025November 28, 2025 ~ mpklamerus ~ Leave a comment

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!

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.

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)

November 26, 2025November 26, 2025 ~ mpklamerus ~ Leave a comment

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.

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.

Crystal Caves HD thoughts

November 25, 2025November 25, 2025 ~ mpklamerus ~ 2 Comments

Developer: Emberheart Games
Publisher: Apogee Games
Year: 2020
Genre: Platformer
System: Windows

Crystal Caves HD is a remaster of the 1991 shareware game by Apogee where you play as Mylo Steamwitz, a miner in outer space, trying to become rich. The platformer has you going through levels and grabbing all the crystals in each one while trying to avoid various monsters and traps. There’s also a puzzle element as you have to carefully plan the use of the timed power ups in the level to reach certain areas and the order that you’ll unlock doors and activate platforms. I used to play the original version quite a bit as a kid so it was nice to see this rerelease happen. Emberheart has done a few of them at this point, with Secret Agent and Monster Bash being the other two Apogee remasters they’ve done. I’ve previously played through the Secret Agent one and enjoyed that quite a bit, and the gameplay and additions in this remaster are very similar.

a miner jumping on metal or stone platforms behind a giant green monster — Image taken from Steam page

The remaster adds more color and smoother animation to the original game, music, an entire new episode of levels, and a level creator. I can see the argument for the additional colors removing some charm from the original game but I think it looks nice. The music is fine too but if I did have any criticisms of this remaster I think it’s that the music almost sounds more like something on an older video game console rather than a PC game from this era. This is a very minor gripe though. I think the new levels are very solid and feel like a good continuation of the previous three episodes, and the level editor seems to have been embraced by a very active community with the developer still adding stuff years later.

a screen about how the main character has found success with his burger restaurant, which is floating in space — This ending screen from episode 3, also in the original game, is just Monolith Burger from Space Quest 3, isn’t it?

I’m very possibly too nostalgia poisoned to accurately assess this game but I think it holds up pretty well and Emberheart has done a wonderful job with the remaster, just like they did with Secret Agent. If I had any complaints about the game, not the remaster, it’s that it becomes tedious to marathon the game and it’s why I very slowly played this over a year, but it’s still pleasant to play in short bursts. The developer has also done a remaster of Monster Bash, another Apogee shareware game I loved. I haven’t played it yet but the reception on Steam seems to be very positive and I’m sure it’s great if it’s anything like the other two they’ve done. I haven’t finished it yet but Emberheart also developed the fps Wizordum, which kinda feels like if Catacomb 3D had kept being iterated on instead of ID moving on to Wolfenstein 3D and Doom. If you’re a retro FPS fan, I highly recommend it. There’s also an upcoming remaster of BioMenace that is not by this developer but looks amazing, with it having lots of features I wish this had, like the ability to switch between the old and new graphics. Give the demo a try if you have fond memories of the original.

Crystal Caves HD is available on Steam and GOG.

Indie Game Roundup (November 18, 2025)

November 18, 2025November 18, 2025 ~ mpklamerus ~ Leave a comment

Well the Cloudflare issues may have taken down most of the internet but you know what place didn’t go down? That’s right. I guess it didn’t really matter since Itch was down and a majority of the links posted wouldn’t work anyway. Here’s some games:

Gnorts Vs. the Greylenoids (Itch.io) is a free prototype platformer that resembles 2.5D platformers for the Playstation and I think it has a really nice filter it’s going through to make it look like it’s on an old tv. If you like the aesthetic it has, check out SodaRaptor’s other games. Check out the other entries for the ShroomJam 2025 too, since a lot of other games were aiming for a similar aesthetic for the theme like DUCK TAPE.

VIDEOVERSE is a visual novel inspired by the MiiVerse and early 00s forums that I’ve been a huge fan of for a long time on the PC (Steam/Itch) and now it has launched for consoles like the Switch and Playstation.

a bird with a drill for a beak jumping through the air

Drill Bird (Steam) is just a cute and affordable puzzle platformer and it’s got a demo if you want to give it a try.

Speaking of puzzle games, the ThinkyCon Jam 2025 just wrapped up and there’s a ton of free puzzle games for you to try on Itch.

top down view of a triangle shooting at various shapes on a grid

Sometimes you just want a nice twin stick shooter with lots of bright colors and exposions and Sektori (Steam/PS/Xbox) looks like a nice one of those.

The Tower of the Forest Wizard (Itch.io) is not a video game and in fact a coloring book, but I think it’s neat that an artist I like put a coloring book on Itch so here it goes.

view of an office with a desk and lots of drawers for files.

The developers of Trüberbrook have been working on this adventure game for the last four years. The Berlin Apartment (Steam) is a first-person adventure game where you explore an apartment to discover its history, but unlike the Robert Zemeckis film Here, it does not have uncanny valley Tom Hanks. There’s a demo if you’d like to give it a try.

it sucks to be us (Itch.io) is a free interactive fiction about a closeted trans masculine person and a trans man who was forced to detransition. Obviously there’s going to be content warnings that come with something like that but I think it’s really a remarkable and well-written game and even as someone who is not a trans man, did have things I could relate to.

top down view of a ship shooting lots of lasers at other ships while dodging dots

BIRDCAGE (Steam) looks like an incredible Radiant Silvergun-inspired shmup for the PC. I only played the demo but it felt great to control, loved that it has difficulty settings, and nailed the aesthetics of its inspirations. It’s a golden age for people who are nostalgic for late 90s video games.

Indie Game Roundup (November 14, 2025)

November 14, 2025November 14, 2025 ~ mpklamerus ~ Leave a comment

My attempt to post about all the indie games continues. I didn’t play that much these last few days because of school and was also listening to Tim Curry’s memoir, which I enjoyed. He mentions having fun working on Red Alert 3 but nothing about Gabriel Knight or Frankenstein: Through the Eyes of the Monster! Unbelievable! Still a very good book though. Video games are good but books? Also good. You’ll see a one or two pop up in today’s post.

If you enjoy today’s post, consider tossing a few dollars to indie game hero Rob, developer of great games like Death Ray Manta and supporter of many indie game devs over the last few decades.

The Games

Rebel Wars (Itch.io) is a new top-down action game for the ZX Spectrum available for pay-what-you-want. If you didn’t know that Itch.io has a very active ZX Spectrum community, then I recommend checking out the tag on Itch.io and seeing all the great games still being made for the computer.

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Alien Detector (Itch.io) is a parody of those novelty programs you would see being made for Windows during the 90s.

Merp in Merpworld (Itch.io/Steam) is a new 2D platformer by maybell. that is inspired by GBC platformers. I am a giant fan of their previous games like satryn deluxe so I am excited to see them make something in a different genre.

MORSE (Steam) is a minimalist strategy game that teaches you morse code. You can even hook up a telegraph key to play it. I need a streamer to play this with a telegraph key, please.

Choose Your Own Adventure books count as games IMO and if you were a fan of the Tex Murphy adventure game series, a new mystery in CYOA format has been released. You can pick it up on Amazon and I THINK on Aaron Conner’s site as well if you want a signed copy of it or any of the other Tex Murphy books.

I suppose it might be a little weird to put something published by Devolver here since they’re getting pretty big but Heart Machine is a great developer that has been hit by layoffs right before releasing their latest game Possessor(s) (Steam). I know there was some understandable hesitation from some folks about buying the game but it sounds like people will receive revenue sharing even if they were let go.

After being in development for 7 years, GIGASWORD (Steam) is now available. It’s a metroidvania that leans more into a puzzle focus and has a demo if you want to try it.

If you enjoy arcade games with trippy visuals (aka Llamasoft fans) then THRASHER (Steam) may be worth a look. It’s from some of the folks that worked on THUMPER and has an optional VR mode.

Gila RPGs has published their free playtest for RAID (Itch.io), which is their take on the OSR style of ttrpg. It mixes sci-fi and fantasy elements into a game about killing gods. It’s only 11 pages long but already looks pretty snazzy.

That’s it for today’s post! If you’ve got something you’ve recently released and it doesn’t use AI, feel free to send me an email or message about it!