It’s only been a week since I’ve done one of these and there’s already been a billion games that have come out, so I’ll probably do a few of these over the next few days. It’s a bit less overwhelming and one of my kids has their birthday today so I don’t want to spend all day writing one of these.
If you enjoy this post, consider checking out Michael Coorlim’s site (games writer and narrative designer) and buying one of his books, checking out his patreon, or hiring him to work on your game. I liked his book Cold Reboot.
Anyway, here are just some of the games released this week
Oktrollberfest 2025 just wrapped up on Itch. It’s a game jam where people create troll games using ZZT and MegaZeux.
Minerva Labyrinth (Steam/Itch.io) is now available! It’s a first-person turn-based dungeon crawler set in the future. Sometimes these are referred to as blobbers. I was a beta tester on it and while I wasn’t very good at finding bugs, it’s a very good game and I recommend it.
No Players Online (Steam) got a commercial release! I was a huge fan of this horror adventure about a dead online game when it was just a freeware game so this is probably very good too.
It’s kind of been a ridiculous year for adventure games. Foolish Mortals (Steam) has been another big release that folks have been waiting for. I think the art looks fantastic and Adventure Game Hotspot gave it a glowing review.
Pepper Odyssey (Steam/Itch.io) is the newest game by Wavey Games. I was a big fan of their adventure game Melon Head and this one looks wild too. It’s an rpg where you are a pepper merchant stranded on an island and need to explore and interact with others to find a way off.
And finally there’s Indiepocalypse 70 (Itch.io), an excellent collection of experimental indie games.
That’s it for today because I don’t have time for the whole list but I’ll try to do one every day for a while and hopefully that’s not too much.
If you’ve noticed that I’ve been doing these a lot lately, you’re right! It’s less daunting to do a post on a smaller list of games than a big one so I’ve found I’m enjoying these more when I don’t wait so long. I’m also hoping that each game gets more attention too if it’s not part of a giant post.
If you enjoy this post, consider tossing a few dollars to the (very good fmv) Morph Girl creator’s (Itch.io/Steam) GoFundMe for Facial Feminisation Surgery.
Here are The Games
ECTOCOMP (Itch.io) just closed its submission window and now there are plenty of interactive fiction games available for voting on. ECTOCOMP is an interactive fiction competition focused on the month of Halloween and includes Twine games, parser adventures, and more!
DeadSight (Itch.io) is a short, free horror game that is modeled after DS adventure games. It was created by Siactro, who I am a big fan of because of their Toree platformer games.
Blood & Money (Steam) is a Gauntlet-like that came across my feed from one of those bots that posts every release on Steam. I haven’t heard anything about it but 1. I like Gauntlet and 2. the graphics remind me A LOT of early 90s VGA DOS games so I would really like to know more if anyone has tried it. It sounds like there’s a demo but I haven’t been able to get to it.
Streamer and organizer of DOSember emmfoolery has released Emmy, Fool of Fen (Itch.io), a new CGA game for DOS that is available as Pay-What-You-Want. It was created for the DOSember game jam, which still has a month left.
HitoPetto! (Itch.io) is a free ttrpg for two people (but supports more) by Bez where someone must take care of the soul of someone that is trapped in a virtual pet game.
Lil Kobold’s Big Stew (Itch.io) is a new PICO-8 game by Adam Saltsman where you are a little kobold gathering ingredients for a Big Stew.
Speaking of PICO-8 games, The Door In The Wall (Itch.io) is an Atari-esque adaptation of the HG Wells short story by the same name. It was created for the Book Club Game Jam and you can check out the other entries here.
Faster, Ace, Kill, Kill! (Itch.io) is a board game where you are a teenage monster on a volleyball team trying to win this year’s tournament for your school. It was made for Folklore Jam 2025, an analogue game jam.
Finally, because I am a big Myst nerd, I need to mention there is a big Humble Bundle of the entire Myst series.
Thank you for reading today’s roundup. Always feel free to reply with what you’re working on or enjoying, or send me an email. Nothing AI generated please! Consider adding this blog to your RSS feed reader too.
Yes I know I just did one of these a few days ago but I’m sad about real life stuff so I’m doing another. There’s a few Halloween appropriate things too since I thought it would be good to mention those before tomorrow and the list of things to post about has already grown a ton in the last couple days so here we are. If you enjoyed this post, please donate money to support Jamaica in the aftermath of Hurricane Melissa.
Sugar Ghouls (Itch.io) is a cute browser collect-a-thon where you run around collecting candy while avoiding monsters. It has some really nice PS1 inspired art too. I also recommend checking out soda raptor’s Itch page if you want more games with a PS1 aesthetic and game recommendations from them.
Slop (Itch.io) is a short horror Twine game and the exciting thing about this one is that it’s meant for three players over voice chat. I always get excited about multiplayer interactive fiction.
Barbarians (Itch.io) is a Pay-What-You-Want strategy game for DOS where you need to defend your empire from barbarians. It’s also available for the ZX Spectrum.
Gorgon’s Garden (Itch.io) is a short, free horror game about exploring a dead MMO and forum devoted to it. I will always get excited about games focused on dying/dead MMOs.
Ron Gilbert’s newest game Death By Scrolling (Steam) is now available. It’s an arcade game with roguelite elements where you explore purgatory and collect gold by killing monsters. The screen is constantly scrolling upwards and you occasionally have to avoid the grim reaper, who is chasing you. I’ve been really enjoying this game. I love the pixel art and as someone that bounced off Vampire Survivors, I don’t think it actually has much to do with that game other than the auto attacking. I’ll probably write more about it later but I really like it.
I don’t know a whole lot about the action rpg Stray Children (Steam), which just came out today, but it’s by the Moon and Rule of Rose devs and people love those so I think it’s worth a mention.
Microvania (Steam) looks like a lovely small retro-inspired Metroid-like and it has a demo if you want to give it a shot too!
Greek Tragedy (Steam/Switch/Playstation/Xbox) has also just come out today after being in development for a few years. It’s a survival horror game where you must survive a college campus that has been overrun with cultists.
I haven’t had the chance to try it yet but I’ve seen a lot of praise online for シンゴウブレイカ SINGOU BREAKA (Steam). It’s a puzzle game where you destroy blocks modeled after pedestrian lights. It has a demo too if you want to give it a try.
Simon the Sorcerer Origins (Steam) is now out after being in development for a while. It’s a prequel to the Simon the Sorcerer adventure game series. I’m not the biggest fan of the games but a lot of people are and the art in this looks nice too.
lil’ Henry and Penny’s Big Adventure Pack (Steam) looks really cute. It’s a set of short point-and-click adventure games that the developer made with his kids, with voice acting and options to make adventure games more accessible to kids too. More people should make games with their kids. I think it’s a lot of fun.
A few folks have said it’s the year of the ninja in games but 2025 is actually the Year of the Egg between the twin stick shooter Evil Egg (Steam), Terry Cavanagh’s free browser game Egg (Itch.io), and Dizzy’s corpse making a cameo in Lumo 2.
And last but not least, the free zine ChoiceBeat #15 is here, featuring news and reviews of interactive fiction and visual novels.
Oops, I guess it’s been a while since I’ve posted on here. Because of so much real life stuff I just haven’t really had the time but I thought I would do one today since I will be too busy to do one on Halloween and there’s some stuff in here that you may want to play before the Halloween season is over. If you enjoy these posts and can afford to, please consider donating money to your local food bank. Food donations are good too but they can get so much more with money than you’ll be able to. You can probably find one close to you here.
Anyway, here are The Games
I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned it before, but The Annual Ghost Town Pumpkin Festival is up again! It’s a free (but consider donating money) MMO where you are a ghost that carves pumpkins, can do an escape room, hedge maze, watch public domain movies, go on a hay ride, and more. It came out a few years ago but gets new stuff added on every month. I’ve been playing it with my kids and cannot recommend it enough.
Trimjob (Steam) is a game that combines mini golf and lawn mowing. I’m against lawn mowing in real life for environmental reasons but this is a video game so it’s fine. It’s less harmful than shooting people or doing a capitalism I guess.
I just really like that CaptainD keeps using Adventure Game Studio to make things that aren’t adventure games. This time it’s The Last Bite (Itch.io), which is Snake but with power ups.
Darkenstein 3D (Steam) is a free FPS where you shoot Nazis. It’s clearly inspired by Wolfenstein 3D but plays a bit more like late 90s/early 00s FPS and lists Return to Castle Wolfenstein as an influence.
Leaftaker (Itch.io) is a free short mystery game about investigating a body in a grave and inspired by games by The Roottrees Are Dead. I think we’re using terms like Deduce-em-ups for that style of game now? I don’t know what’s going on anymore. Anyway, good game. Go check out Kaden’s tabletop rpgs too.
The Séance of Blake Manor (Steam) is another game with those influences and looks wonderful. It’s been getting some great reviews so far and I was a big fan of their Darkside Detective games.
Issue #4 of Funland (Itch.io) is here! It’s a video game zine that always has some great layout design and covers and this issue is focused on Halloween stuff.
Call of the Golden Valley (Steam) is a first-person adventure game where you search for your missing friend in the Australian outback. I don’t know a whole lot about it but it looks like it’s influenced by the Nancy Drew adventure games, Steam reviews have been positive so far, and there’s a demo so I think some people may find it interesting.
Lumo 2 (dev site) is an isometric Metroid-like inspired by 80s British computer games where you wander from room to room and solve puzzles. I was a huge fan of the first one and this one looks like it has lots of fun little surprises buried in it too from looking at the screenshots.
HYPERBEAT (Steam) just looks like a great Rez-inspired rhythm game with lots of accessibility options.
Dispatch (Steam) is a superhero management comedy game where you are a former superhero working as a dispatch at a superhero dispatch center. The game was developed by folks from Telltale and seems like a good time from watching the stream on DecafJedi‘s channel.
We got a new Sylvie game! This one is Discover the World (Itch.io), a free turn-based rpg platformer. Go check it out and the play everything else by Sylvie.
There’s also a few games being crowdfunded right now. Midnight Saturn is a new sci-fi point-and-click adventure by Cosmic Void, Shores of Night is a cosmic horror ttrpg with no Lovecraft or Sanity rules, and Stomp and the Sword of Miracles is a cute platformer by the developer of the wonderful Frogsong.
Apologies in advance for this being a big one. Even with how massive this list is, I am missing a ton of stuff. Everyone released a game these last two weeks so this one is probably focused mostly around who I follow on Itch.
Video Games
New Eyes Cycle from the DOMINO Club Boneyard Collection
A new collection of DOMINO CLUB games is out! No one is doing experimental games better than this anonymous collective. You can check out all the games from the Boneyard Collection for free on Itch.io
Landlord Quest (Itch.io/Steam) is a new point-and-click adventure where you play as a landlord. This is not a pro-landlord game. If you buy it on Itch.io, then you can run the game on any platform you want using ScummVM.
I think most people reading this know about Unfair Flips (Steam) but in case you don’t, it’s a short incremental clicker game about flipping a coin and getting 10 heads in a row.
Indiepocalypse #69 is now available (Itch.io)! This nice issue features another collection of games including a new game commissioned for this issue.
Detective Daydream (Itch.io) is a free stealth puzzle game for browsers where you sneak through rooms without being seen
Messenger (website) is a relaxing browser game where you explore a city, doing tasks for folks living there, and you can see other folks running around the city as they play.
Radar Rally (Itch.io) is a fun take on the Rally-X style of arcade game for browsers. This dev has made quite a few remakes of old arcade games.
House of Necrosis (Steam) is a turn-based horror rpg where you explore a haunted mansion with art inspired by the original Resident Evil. I have never played Mystery Dungeon but that’s an inspiration, so if you’ve played it then maybe that’s very exciting to you.
HoopDungeon (Itch.io) is a basketball turn-based strategy game currently undergoing testing. Give it a shot and fill out the feedback form.
I’m a fan of Akril15’s adventure games and they made another one! Like the others, this one is free. I recommend checking out the rest here.
I Made a Game for You from the BRIEFS 2025 collection
BRIEFS 2025 (Itch.io) is a collection of three games that were created for the Australian art collective gold extra, with this year’s theme being cheese.
SloanySoft makes plenty of cool games for the ZX Spectrum and they’re back with another one. BubbleBack: The Story of Forward to the Past 2 (Itch.io) is a pay-what-you-want sequel to a platformer. If you’ve never played a ZX Spectrum game before, consider downloading an emulator and trying a few out on Itch.
Blippo+ is out on Itch.io/Steam/Switch! I was a big fan of this one on the Playdate and it’s fun seeing it come to more platforms and in color. You basically uncover a storyline by flipping through channels on tv.
Videonauts (Steam/Itch.io) is a new game by resnijars where you must escape from a haunted mansion with your friends while solving puzzles. I’m a big fan of their previous games so I’m looking forward to this. The developer lists Illbleed as an influence, which is super interesting to me too.
Tabletop
Melisma (Itch.io) is a pay-what-you-want ttrpg created by Adam Bell that is part character generator and part music trivia game. It was created for the minimalist jam, and you can check out the rest of the entries for that here.
Monster Truckers (dev site) is a ttrpg by Table Cat Games where you play as truckers that just happen to be monsters. It’s also on Itch and DriveThruRpg.
VOID_SHIFT (Itch.io) is a deckbuilder where you are the captain of a corporate-owned salvage and repair ship and need to put together a deck to complete jobs.
Jazzmanji (Itch.io) is a pay-what-you-want card game for 1-4 players where you explore a jazz dungeon and fight The Jazzman.
Not Games
There were also a few things released on Itch that weren’t video games but I think are still worth a mention.
Star Sword Nemesis (Itch.io) is a new book by Christine Love, developer of games such as Digital: A Love Story and Get in the Car, Loser. Girls in mechs!
Cats in a Frame (Itch.io) lets you have pictures of cats sitting on your desktop.
Moosadee released a tutorial for learning how to program for the TIC-80 virtual machine with either Lua or Python (Itch.io). Since I’m learning Python right at this moment, this is very interesting to me.
Rose made a Lovely Lodgings character generator for browsers (Itch.io) based on the recent batch of Domino Club games.
The Works of Egan put together this nice template and tutorial for creating your own blog (Itch.io). I’ve said it a million times before but I can’t recommend having your own site enough, where you have more control over the platform and this tutorial will help you setup a RSS feed too so anyone following you can see your posts through their feed.
Wurm Fud made a nice pay-what-you-want asset pack of folk magic pixel art icons (Itch.io)
CGALIB 2 (Itch.io) is a free library for making CGA DOS games and includes a sample game.
That’s it for this week! Thank you for reading this and making it to the end. Always feel free to comment or email me if there’s stuff you’ve worked on.
Developer: Witch Beam Publisher: Humble Games Year: 2021 Genre: Adventure System: Windows
I think at this point everyone has heard of this one. It’s a game released in 2021 where a story is told through a series of relaxing puzzles where you unpack boxes in a new home and need to fit all your stuff in each room. This is one of those games that had been sitting in my backlog for a while despite it being relatively short. I think everything about this game has been covered by folks smarter than me but I did enjoy it. It’s one of those things where there had been so much universal praise for it for years that when I finally got around to it, my first thought was “well yeah it’s good but that’s it?” It’s not fair to the game but it’s so simple and straightforward that I had expected there to be more to it when I finally played it. In fact, if I did have an actual criticism of it, it’s that I had felt like I had “got it” after I played just a few levels. I remember people complaining it was too short at the time but I think it would have become a slog if it was longer.
Anyway, glad I played it. Sometimes you like a thing and think it’s very good, just not as much as everyone else. Like everyone says, it’s a good time and the pixel art is fantastic. Something I didn’t expect would be that my 5 year old would see me playing it, ask to try it out, and fall completely in love with it. She now says it’s one of her favorite games.
It was fun looking up the studio and seeing that they had made Assault Android Cactus+, which I think is brilliant and deserves to be just as popular as Unpacking. It looks like they have one game I haven’t played yet, Tempopo, which was released earlier this year. I’ll have to check that one out too given that I’m a fan of their other work.
It’s Friday! How are you? How was your week? There’s been a billion indie games that have come out in the last week so there’s going to be a lot that this post leaves out. Also if you’ve written me an email and I haven’t responded yet, sorry, I have just been super busy. I even saw Devo and the B-52s last night and had a good time. But please feel free to let me know about your indie game through my contact info on the About page. Or even just to say hi! That’s always nice too.
Spirit Drop, an entry in the Falling Blocks jam
A few game jams wrapped up this week with many wonderful games created for each. If you like games like Tetris then I highly recommend the Falling Blocks Jam on Itch.io. There’s a lot to dig through there but it has lots of interesting takes on the falling blocks genre. If you like adventure games, you may enjoy the $109 Adventure Game Challenge. I’m a bit less enthusiastic about this one since it allows AI art, especially since it has a cash prize, but there’s some good games in there like Eulogy for Nonno or Intern’s First Day.
I think one of the biggest releases this week is Consume Me (Steam), an semi-autobiographical game about being in high school. It won the Seamus McNally Grand Prize at the Independent Games Festival!
3D Don’t Die Mr. Robot (Steam) was one of my favorite indie arcade games from last year so it’s fun seeing it get a demake for the Neo Geo Pocket Color. Well I guess technically it’s a demake of the first game but I only played the 3D one. Also on Itch.io if you prefer that
Creepy Redneck Dinosaur Mansion 3 got a standalone expansion? Prequel? Anyway, the Puzzle Quest-like Creepy Redneck Dinosaur Mansion 1 Re-Raptored is now available on Steam.
Arctic Awakening (Steam/PS5/XBox) is a first-person sci-fi thriller about surviving in the arctic after a plane crash.
Waste Your Wedding (Itch.io) is a free platformer about trying to eat a giant cake.
Mala Petaka (Steam) is one of those retro shooters but look at those colors! It’s made in the GZ Doom engine too. If you want to try it out, there’s a demo on Steam.
That’s it for this week! Like I said, feel free to let me know about your game in whatever way works best for you. Nothing with AI art please!
I’ve now put all the indie games covered in the indie game roundups that are on Itch in a single Itch list and will add things to this going forward. This isn’t a perfect list, sometimes my posts covered an entire jam or collection of games. For cases like this, I kinda just included one or two games from the list. Not an ideal solution but oh well. Of course it’s missing anything that didn’t have an Itch.io release. It’s also missing all context for why I thought the games were interesting that I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. I just think it’s a fun way to check out small, experimental indie games from a year or two ago since the memory on games feels like it’s extremely short lived and people move on extremely quickly unless it’s a massive hit. Search on Itch.io has also always been flawed. So I guess consider checking out the list, scrolling down a ton, and opening a random game?
There’s probably better ways of highlighting indie games that are older than a year but aren’t old enough to be considered “retro” and I think it would be fun to poke at that more. I think point-and-click adventures and interactive fiction seem to have a pretty long tail to them for maintaining interest after they come out, despite having smaller audiences, but who knows.
SNAKE Lucky Laugh, one of the games that’s already been delisted from Itch
The biggest bummer about going through the list was that there’s been a few games that have already been delisted even though I’ve only been doing this for a few years. It’s good stuff so it kinda stinks I wasn’t able to save them. I thought I should start submitting this stuff to MobyGames as I do these roundups but I tried to submit one just not and got hit with a message about how I hit the limit on pending new game submissions because it takes mods there months to look at anything. You’d think with Atari owning the site it would have a bigger budget to deal with this but I guess not. I have no interest in submitting anything to IGDB since it’s owned by Amazon and Backloggd, which uses the database, just feels like another harassment vector at times. So the only documentation of some of these games is just my half assed weekly posts, and nobody deserves that.
Every day I wake up and say “What a week.” But it’s Friday, which means it’s actually near the end of the week so that’s something I suppose. Being back in school while having a full time job means that lately it’s just been free and pay-what-you-want indies I’ve been playing. Nothing wrong with that of course, but if you’re wondering why a lot of the bigger commercial indies aren’t on here, that’s why. Six One Indie did a nice indie game showcase yesterday and that’s probably a better way to become more familiar with those. You could also always look at my list of indie game websites and plug them all into your RSS feed reader of choice.
The Play for Peace – Games for Palestine 2025 Charity Bundle (Itch.io) bundle sale ends in a few days. Foor $8 or more you can get tons of great games
There’s another anthlogy from the game dev collective I’m in! I didn’t work on this one but Locally Sourced Anthology II: The Timeline (Steam) is a collection of 5 games set in different points in time in different genres.
_ΩMEGA_POINT (Itch.io) is a Pay-What-You-Want walking simulator where you explore the last moments of a dying world in a mech.
Indiepocalypse #68 (Itch.io) is out. Check it out for a great collection of experimental indie games. Only one more month until we get to the nice number.
I’m just really fascinated by Mars Attracts (Steam) using the dormant Mars Attacks license to make a sim game. It’s nice to see that the user review for it have been positive too. What a weird thing to exist (complimentary).
Eclipsium (Steam) may not be for me because I’m not a big horror games person but I really like it looks. I just like a game that always has a hand sticking out in front.
Toward From (Itch.io) is a short experimental browser game that I think does some neat stuff connected to movement and was created for the Game Poems Community Showcase.
Matt Stark keeps creating really fun browser toys focused on building things and they’ve made another one. Mazegarden (Itch.io) is, as you would expect, a game focused on building maze gardens.
A new PUNKCAKE Délicieux game has arrived! Frontline: War of Echoes (Itch.io) is a capture the flag game where you play against recordings of yourself from previous runs.
Snarl (Itch.io) is a short point-and-click horror adventure set in a diner and available for Pay-What-You-Want. Be sure to check out the developer’s other adventures on their Itch page too if you’re a point-and-click adventure fan.
A Chirp in Space (Itch.io) is just a cute 3D puzzle platformer available for free!
Developer: Oh, a Rock! Studios Publisher: Oh, a Rock! Studios Year: 2022 Genre: Adventure System: Windows
Photo from Itch.io page
The Lost Oregon City Gold is an adventure game where a dad and his two daughters stumble across an old letter from an ancestor with clues pointing them to $25,000 in lost gold. It’s up to you to explore Oregon and find it. Most of the game is played in a first person view where you click on arrows to navigate various spaces in Oregon, made up of photos, and talking to people or solving puzzles that will point you to the next clue in your treasure hunt. Occasionally you make choices in dialog but they’re pretty low stakes decisions and there are parts where you can answer questions about Oregon’s history that you learn by playing the game. I suppose that technically this makes the game an edutainment title, but that might be a stretch.
As you can see, it’s not a very serious game. Photos of people, played by the devs and family and friends, are used for all of the characters and the plot itself is very silly. It all works for me though. Something I really like about the games by Oh, a Rock! Studios is that they all feel like a group of folks having lots of fun making games for each other but without all the inside jokes so they’re still very approachable for folks outside the group. They’re all just like a nice, relaxing, and goofy hangout session and would also recommend Internet Court and The Awkward Steve Duology for the same vibe. They don’t take themselves seriously but the games aren’t doing any sort of ironically bad FMV either.
The Lost Oregon City Gold is available on Steam and Itch.io for Windows, Linux, and Mac.
