This month’s crop of indie games are an interesting bunch — from a gorgeous spelunking Metroidvania to a puzzle game that takes place inside a music box to a rhythm-battling RPG set inside a simulation at the end of the world. As always every wishlist and purchase helps to support indie developers, so please do check the games out — and if you’d like to see them in motion, check out my video version of this article here. Take care, good luck, have fun, and happy gaming!
1st: Lost In Art: A Miniature Realm (Archaic Game Studio, PC)
The month kicks off with a gorgeous top-down puzzle-adventure based on ancient Eastern manuscripts from the Persian and Ottoman empires. You’ll walk the streets of miniature paintings, meeting characters from history and mythology and solving puzzles – visual, logic, and rhyme-based. It’s like an ancient Asian take on Pentiment, using traditional art styles, folk instruments, and myths from a bygone age.
1st: Freefall ’95 (S-Bend Games, PC)
A wacky, retro game that harks back to ’90s arcade titles, early Flash games, and the Minecraft “dropper game” trend of the ’00s — that is, games where you jump into a seemingly endless hole and skydive to ground level, avoiding obstacles and lasers on the way down. Freefall ’95 puts a different spin on that viral-hit formula, turning it into a 2D, side-on roguelike action game. As you fall from a burning plane, you trick to avoid flaming debris and fulfil objectives on the way down, like opening a bottle of champagne mid-air. Then when you inevitably splatter on the ground, you’re miraculously back in the plane, where you can talk to passengers, power up, and unlock skills and outfits for your next run.
4th: Shepherd Knight (Cadabra Games, PC)
Shepherding games are having a moment right now — we got Herdling last year, and The Free Shepherd and Summerhill are both in the pipeline. Shepherd Knight puts a different spin on shepherding gameplay — it’s a chill third-person action-puzzle game from Brazilian studio Cadabra (creators of the 2023 creature collector Adore) in which you collect sheep from precarious locations, keep them safe from predators and pitfalls, and get them safely to the target area. There’s also a story element here about how humble sheep are guardians of the natural world’s balance. Maybe vegetarians were right about everything.
4th: Swan Song (Business Goose Studios, PC)
A mellow puzzle adventure in which we guide a small swan through a music box by dropping notes into its mechanism — those notes change the layout of the box and allow the swan to move forward. The puzzles start simple but come to involve more lateral thinking as we look for the tune that will let the swan reach the finish line. The game promises over 100 musical puzzles, with each one telling the story of this magical music box – like who made it and why it was their “swan song”. There’s a demo on Steam now.
8th: Cursemark (CLYDE Games, PC — Early Access)
The first game on the list with combat, interestingly enough. It’s a top-down hack-n-slash-n-sword-n-sorcery action adventure that combines dramatic action, various builds, and plenty of upgrades into a satisfying roguelike formula. Plenty carries over from run to run, so hopefully the player feels stronger with every failure — an all-important element of roguelike progression. Check out the Steam demo if that sounds like your thing.
8th: Solarpunk (Cyberwave, PC/Console)
I raised an eyebrow at a cosy sci-fi building game having “punk” in the title — but it turns out Solarpunk is actually the name of a genre of sci-fi. It’s a utopian spin on Cyberpunk that imagines a future where technology serves nature and humanity rather than wrecking and enslaving it. In the game, you harness technology to create a settlement that’s both idyllic and futuristic — think a wood cabin with automated, sustainable, solar-powered farming and manufacturing pipelines. When one sky island is complete, you can use drones to find the next one, then travel there by airship. It has co-op if that’s your thing — but bear in mind that crossplay isn’t planned if you want to play with friends.
9th: Voidling Bound (Hatchery Games, PC)
An interesting mix of third-person action and creature collecting in which we play as a space wrangler who collects voidlings — space creatures with individual abilities that can be harnessed for exploration and combat. Each Voidling is vastly customisable, with attributes to level up and elemental affinities, and there’s a gene-collecting mechanic that lets you combine Voidling DNA into new creatures. Management aside, it’s an action game too — how the combat feels will be make or break for this one. There’s a demo on Steam.
11th: Beastro (Timberline Studio, PS5/Xbox/PC)
Another game that crosses the streams of divergent genres, Beastro mixes restaurant management with elements of social sims, visual novels, and card battling. There’s a Spyro-ish look to the visuals during the exploration/restaurant section, then a cute top-down cooking puzzle game in which you prep your meals. Once fed, you can engage in striking papercraft card battles. This three-stage loop has been tough for the devs to convey in trailers, so I’m curious to see if these gameplay ingredients will combine into a Hearty Durian Stew or Dubious Food. But either way, the creativity and ambition are obvious, and that’s always worth applauding.
11th: SpaceCraft (Shiro Games, PC — Early Access)
This game draws a lot from No Man’s Sky — and it’s not subtle about it. From the jet trails behind spaceships’ wingtips, to the colour of the crystals and mining lasers, to the look of the planets and architecture, to that iconic planet-to-space travel, it wears its influence on its sleeve. But it does have a different gameplay vision — SpaceCraft is a play on words, as the game mixes build-from-scratch modular ship crafting with a granular automation element that’s closer to Satisfactory than NMS. So while I have one eyebrow firmly raised at just how openly it’s courting the NMS audience with its visual style, it’ll be interesting to see if it can assert a personality of its own.
17th: Goblin America (Gil Lawson, PC)
Firmly in the lineage of intentionally garish FPS games like Cruelty Squad and Don’t Stop Girlpop, the devs describe Goblin America as “a squirmy, bouncy shooter filled with lovely sights and horrible places.” It’s a time-travelling action game where your mission is to possess various presidents of America to make different choices, fix history, and – as the Steam page says – “make life beautiful forever”. Gameplay-wise, you’re parkouring through Neon White-style levels, blasting enemies and collecting pickups. There’s a demo on Steam now if you want to try before you buy.
19th: Maseylia: Echoes of the Past (Sol Brothers, PC) ⭐ Top Pick
A 3D Metroidvania with an art style reminiscent of Sable’s Moebius-inspired line art, Maseylia is an exploration game inspired by Metroid Prime, Hollow Knight, and Pseudoregalia. The developers say the game prioritises “freedom of movement, deep exploration, and atmospheric discovery” and that new powers will change how you move and interact with this colourful world entirely. The vibrant palette and varied biomes are gorgeous, with a fluid moveset making them fun to traverse. It’s worth noting that Maseylia is a small-team indie game with some quaint rough edges, but go in with your expectations at the right level, and you’ll have a good time.
22nd: Dark Scrolls (Doinksoft, PC/Switch)
A retro 2D platformer from Doinksoft, the creators of the excellent Gunbrella. But where Gunbrella’s retro look was complemented by a contemporary feel, Dark Scrolls is retro through and through — maybe to a fault. It plays like something that could have been on UFO 50, with clunky NES-style movement, screen scroll that runs regardless of your movement speed, and inputs that made me appreciate how games have improved over the last four decades. But even if it’s not for me, I still wanted to put it on your radar — CRT perves and UFO 50 fans, check it out.
25th: The Life You Missed (ZykinArt Games, PC)
A heartfelt autobiographical walking sim, this one was made after the developer had a realisation that they were sleepwalking through life without being truly present. To explore this theme, they made an introspective exploration game in which we arrive at a house in the woods to renovate it, only to find the remnants of the past owner’s life still there. Exploring the house and the surrounding woods and lakes, we’ll puzzle out who they were and find parallels between their life and our own. It’s slow, meditative, and narrative-focused – a game for people who like Dear Esther, Gone Home, and existential pondering generally.
30th: Nocturne (Pracy Studios, PC) ⭐ Top Pick
An interesting cosy fantasy RPG that replaces traditional combat with rhythm battling to keep the formula fresh. The overgrown pixel art environments look gorgeous, and it’s apparently set inside a simulation at the end of the world, with themes of immortality and sacrifice. So there might be more here than meets the eye — I wouldn’t be surprised if we end up leaving the Matrix and finding ourselves in some far-future facility. There’s a demo out now, and it’s my second top pick of the month.
