indie games

30 years ago, Success’s shoot ’em up series Cotton made the leap from 2D side-scroller to Space Harrier-style rail shooter in Panorama Cotton. 24 years ago, Rainbow Cotton expanded upon that 3D flight of fancy on Dreamcast, and now it’s finally making its way to the West.  While Rainbow Cotton launched in Japan only on Dreamcast back in 2000, ININ Games recently announced plans to bring a remake to PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, and PC. Those spring 2024 plans were just narrowed…

Image: InnerslothLast year, CBS Studios revealed it was adapting the hit social deduction game Among Us into an animated TV show from Infinity Train’s Owen Dennis. Odd as it was—and still is—you had to wonder who’d end up voicing the little crewmates at the heart of it all. And like plenty of other animated TV shows these days, there’s some pretty well-known actors lending their talents to this thing.Making the Freddy Fazbear Pizza Band Come to Life for Five Nights at Freddy’sLeading the voice cast for the series is…

Detective Dotson, a mystery-adventure game for PC by Ahmedabad-based independent game studio Masala Games, was announced on Monday. A demo of the game has been added to Steam and is now available to play. Its full version will be released later this year. The 2D platformer game, which is set in modern India, is influenced by Bollywood and Indian TV shows like CID, as per the publishers. Masala Games has previously released Word Mess, a word game, for iOS and iPadOS.The eponymous protagonist of the game is an aspiring…

BerserkBoy Games Every year, like clockwork, I end up playing one retro-style 2D game that gets its hooks in me. It’s not that I harbor a lot of nostalgia for the Super Nintendo or Sega Genesis; it’s just that indie developers have gotten very good at both replicating and modernizing the fun of old-school platformers. So far in the 2020s, I’ve had a blast with Cyber Shadow, Vengeful Guardian: Moonrider, and now, Berserk Boy. The debut title from the aptly named BerserkBoy Games, the new retro release is a throwback…

Good Shepard Entertainment Who would have thought that 2024 would be the year of the monster-collecting game? While several have tried (and often struggled) to recapture the joys of Pokémon, this year’s Palworld is perhaps the first game that’s ever truly been able to pull it off. Granted, it did that by trading in finely tuned RPG combat for Ark-like survival crafting that makes it an entirely different game, but a win’s a win. While Palworld has broken records on Steam, its early access nature means you can hit its…

LocalThunk Have you ever stopped to think about your average deck of playing cards and what a design feat it is? Those 52 cards have kept people entertained for centuries thanks to limitless creativity. You can use them to play anything from Go Fish to King’s Cup. No matter how many times you shuffle them, there’s seemingly no bottom to the amount of games that can be dealt out. The new video game Balatro isn’t just another example of an inventive card game, but a celebration of playing cards themselves. In this…

“Ultros is a bold and beautiful artistic vision, but a convoluted Metroidvania.” Pros Psychedelic art Fantastic music Unique gardening system Cons Unclear visual design Underexplained systems Tedious backtracking My bloody quest to kill a grotesque demon is about to reach its…

Lysfanga: The Time Shift Warrior MSRP $25.00 “Lysfanga: The Time Shift Warrior's time-bending combat hook is so smart, you'll want to show it to everyone you know.” Pros Ingenious time-bending hook Clever enemies Just enough exploration Time challenges are a blast Cons Dull story…

Devolver Digital I’ve played a whole lot of puzzle games in my life, but I can safely say that I’ve never played one as pitch-black as Children of the Sun. Published by Devolver Digital, the newly announced Children of the Sun is an unholy hybrid between a shooter and a spatial reasoning game. It follows a lone wolf with a sniper rifle on a bloody quest for revenge against an evil religious cult. He has to take out swaths of zealots one bullet at a time. It’s as dark as video game premises get, but one that’s steeped…

is always of Summer Game Fest and The Game Awards. The showcase places the spotlight firmly on emerging indie games and underground titles, and each event always has at least a few projects that are worth adding to your wishlist. Now, Day of the Devs is shaking things up by becoming an independent non-profit organization.It started in 2012 as a collaboration between iam8bit and Double Fine, which Microsoft bought in 2019. The restructuring means that Day of the Devs will no longer have a formal affiliation with…