Itch.io Winter Game Sale 2025 Recommendations

December 21, 2025December 21, 2025 ~ mpklamerus ~ 4 Comments

For some reason I got a little crabby yesterday that people were only recommending indie games on Steam yesterday, which is kinda silly, but it did lead to me doing a recommendation thread on Bluesky of games on sale on Itch that I enjoy. It’s a flawed thread because I didn’t recommend any ttrpgs but I’m going to list the recommendations here as well because they’re good and worth a look. Some aren’t even on Steam and others give you a Steam key. It’s not that I hate Steam, even if I do have issues with it, I just get frustrated by people not being curious about what else it outside of it.

First I want to recommend Indiepocalypse, a monthly anthology zine featuring many experimental indie games every month! I’ve mentioned it on a blog a billion times but I’m going to keep doing it because I think they’re doing amazing work curating indie games that I would never find otherwise.

first person view of a ship shooting at a purple ship in space

Liberation is a space sim inspired by early classic like Elite and shows like Blake’s 7, and has a great sense of humor. It’s very easy to pick up and play too, which is often the issue I bump into with a lot of modern open world space sims.

first person view of a group of people fighting four monsters

Minerva’s Labyrinth is a first-person turn based dungeon crawler with nice pixel art and great combat system. Again, I’ve mentioned this one a few times before (probably a pattern you’ll see in this post quite a bit) but I’ll keep doing it until it somehow becomes a smash hit that pulls in millions of dollars for the dev.

Inspector Waffles is a point-and-click adventure where you play as a cat detective investigating a murder. I really like the way this game uses clues to question folks at crime scenes. The Game Boy Color prequel is also on Itch. I don’t know if you get the rom if you buy that one on Steam but you do on Itch. I also recently learned that one got ported to the Playdate.

Manglepaw is a first person adventure game with art inspired by early 90’s 3D art. I love the game looks. It’s also available in Indiepocalypse #26

Cyclopean: The Great Abyss is a rpg inspired by early crpg classics like Ultima, with an overworld map when you explore the world and first-person dungeon crawling when you enter a dungeon. The dev has made a few rpgs at this point and they’re all on sale right now. Islands of the Caliph is another one I enjoyed.

Snoik! is just a very good Snake-like game for the Playdate, with a neat mechanic where you can weave in and out of the snake by switching layers. Itch has a lot of great games for the Playdate for sale.

If you like VVVVVV or Super Hexagon, consider checking out Terry’s Other Games, a compilation of various smaller games Terry Cavanagh has made. Comes with a Steam key

CorgiSpace is a very nice collection of 13 PICO-8 games by Adam Saltsman and published by Finji, each offering a unique mechanic. The Itch version also gives you the .p8 files to run in whatever you use for PICO-8 files.

Melon Head is an incredibly weird point-and-click adventure game featuring stellar EGA-inspired artwork. I love it

Hylics is another weird one. It’s a rpg and it’s doing kind of a stop motion aesthetic thing for the art that I really like. It got a sequel and that’s on sale as well.

VIDEOVERSE is a visual novel inspired by early internet forums and the Miiverse stuff on the Wii U. Comes with a Steam key. I’ve found that it’s been a very good introductory VN for a few folks.

a woman standing in a bedroom and there is a butler moving around there too

The Crimson Diamond is a point-and-click adventure inspired by the Sierra classic The Colonel’s Bequest. I love that it uses a text parser and the artwork is fantastic.

Cosmic Void has made many great adventure games but I will recommend Devil’s Hideout, a very creepy first person adventure.

Spirit Swap combines visual novels with match 3 puzzle games. I think it brings some great innovations to the match 3 genre and I love the art and soundtrack in this game as well

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

I can’t recommend the Midnight Scenes series enough. It’s an anthology series of horror point and click adventures and each one can be played in a single sitting.

Super Video Golf is a solid golf game with tons of features and an early 90s 3D aesthetic I really enjoy. I hate real life golf for many reasons but like a good video game about golf. Comes with a Steam key.

There is not a game in recent memory that does the Super Mario Bros 3 style platformer better than Kitsune Tails.

Rainbow Laser Disco Dungeon is a kinda sorta Berzerk like, at least in how you move from room to room, twin stick shooter combined with a rhythm game. Comes with a Steam key too!

co-open is a very nice first person adventure game about a child’s first time going grocery shopping alone.

Again, some of these are repeats from the recent Itch recommendation thread but they’re worth another shoutout.

Many Nights a Whisper thoughts

December 19, 2025December 19, 2025 ~ mpklamerus ~ Leave a comment

Developer: Deconstructeam, Selkie Harbour
Publisher: Deconstructeam
Year: 2025
Genre: Adventure
System: Windows

someone sitting by an alter with a braid hanging through a hole and prompting to if you want to accept the wish

Many Nights a Whisper is a short (about 60 minutes) third-person archery game where you play as the Dreamer, an archer who must make an incredibly long shot into a massive chalice to grant the wishes made by people in your community. During the day you can make practice shots into closer chalices to get better at archery and at night you listen to the anonymous wishes from people and choose to accept them or not. You repeat this cycle for a few days as your mentor makes your bow stronger, until it’s the big day where you have one chance to make your big shot.

I finally picked this one up because I had seen it on a few End-of-Year lists and I’m glad I did. I can’t really say anything more insightful than what a much better writer at an outlet like Rock, Paper, Shotgun can but it’s a lovely game. The game does a very nice job of mixing lighthearted wishes with heavier ones, and never feels like it’s punishing or judging you for the wishes you choose to keep or leave. In some ways it kind of reminds me of a solo tabletop rpg where it will prompt you for your thoughts and make you think about your choices, but never gives you a definitive “you have chosen wisely” statement. I was surprised that the game has a final shot that you only have one attempt at and need to replay the game to try again. Obviously I made it because I am a Real Gamer (I hope my sarcasm is clear here) but even if you do, to continue the solo ttrpg comparison, the game does not do an extended epilogue telling you about the wishes you accepted and what happens. It leaves this all to you to think about and I think that’s part of why this game works so well for me.

I appreciate that all the actions seem to have some heft to them too. Cutting a braid to accept a wish requires you to hold down a button for a second or two before letting go to cut it. When you’re practicing to shoot arrows, the longer shots take a few seconds to fully pull back on the bow and let go, with you watching the arrow fly through the air for a while to see if it hits its target. It all helps make that final shot a lot more tense, when you need to pull back on the bow all the way and make sure everything is all lined up before letting go.

It’s easy for me to recommend Many Nights a Whisper. It’s a very short adventure game/interactive fiction that can be experienced in under an hour, longer if you want to replay it, and very affordable at $3.

Many Nights a Whisper is available on Steam and Itch.io

Indie Game Roundup (December 16, 2025)

December 16, 2025December 16, 2025 ~ mpklamerus ~ Leave a comment

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.

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.

The 50 Indie Game Challenge

December 12, 2025December 12, 2025 ~ mpklamerus ~ 4 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

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, 2025December 21, 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. This review was made possible thanks to a key from the developer.

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.