Hello folks, and welcome to the second edition of the Gaming In The Wild x So Many Games indie game guide!
This month has some pretty wild indie releases, from a chef game in which you only cook for wild animals, to an alien hive-mind simulator, to a pixel adventure that fuses Bloodborne with classic Zelda. Many of the games are self-published small team efforts, so be sure to support the devs by wishlisting the ones you like and dropping reviews on what you play.
There’s a video version of this game guide here, and feel free to send tips for next month’s article to johnisgaminginthewild(AT)gmail(dot)com.
February 2nd: Tearscape
Game Boy-style action-adventures seem to be having a mini renaissance at the minute, with the long-awaited and recently postponed Mina the Hollower leading the charge. If you’re still waiting for Mina with bated breath, Tearscape might help scratch the itch. It’s a game that clearly understands the Zelda-like assignment, with sword and spell combat, puzzles to open paths forward, inventory management, upgrades, and a sprawling world map to explore. There’s some Bloodborne DNA in there too, from the protagonist’s design to the lore-packed item descriptions. It’s out on PC, Mac, and Linux, and there’s a demo on Steam.
February 3rd: Sector Zero
This one is a physics-based dark sci-fi adventure set in a space mine on a far-flung asteroid, where mining activity has awoken an alien hive mind. You’ll be exploring the maze-like mine, avoiding traps, operating machinery, and solving puzzles. But interestingly, you don’t play the last surviving miner or the beleaguered administrator of an automated facility—you play as part of the hive mind. That puts Sector Zero on a very short list of games where you play as the monster rather than the hero, like the underrated Carrion. It’s available now on Steam for just a couple of quid.
February 4th: Leaver’s Rift
I’m a sucker for deck-based games—I have scores of hours in Slay the Spire and Monster Train and a frankly terrifying hour count in Balatro at this point. One thing they all have in common is fairly simple visuals—but Leaver’s Rift is a new roguelike deck builder that defies that formula with a very lush visual presentation. Its Steam page says it’s “more than a deckbuilder—and you can see what they mean in its richly realised sci-fi world.” The game promises 25 arenas across multiple biomes, over 50 enemy types, hundreds of cards, and a story involving characters like The Stranger and The Mother. It’s been through early access and is coming out the other side with a 1.0 release on February 4th.
February 5th: Lovish
Another one for retro game fans, Lovish is an 8-bit action platformer that’ll tickle the nostalgia of anyone who grew up on the NES and Game Boy Advance. Each room you enter is a small self-contained puzzle, and between every room you’ll also get a short event scene, with over 150 of these gradually filling in the story. The trailer shows your little blue character saying that not only does he want to rescue the stricken princess, but also that he wants to keep her all to himself—don’t be surprised if the princess ends up as the final boss, escaping not just the castle but also her would-be rescuer. It’s coming to all consoles and PC and might feel particularly at home on Switch.
February 5th: Hermit & Pig
A pixel-art RPG where you play as the titular hermit and his pig companion, this game tells the story of a grouchy forager who’s dragged from his quiet life to help defend the local community from a monster invasion. It has turn-based combat, with the addition of timed inputs to pull off the Hermit’s moves and some trippy cut scenes. The Next Fest demo (still up on Steam) was a big hit—it was one of those demos you play for five minutes and instantly know you’re in the bag for the full release.
February 6th: Dead Pets
In Dead Pets, you play as a member of a punk band who are looking for their big break, apparently. You navigate everyday life stuff like friends, lovers, jobs, and landlords, and then play rhythm-game segments to do well at band practice. There are also mini-games for diner shifts, cooking, and plant watering, which all make this an extremely wholesome take on punk—it doesn’t say whether there are mini-games for bricking windows, scoring speed, finding a new squat, or administering stick-and-poke tattoos. Punk-rock authenticity aside, it does look super fun, flicking between drawn visual-novel scenes and chibi top-down art, with an original soundtrack to play along to.
February 6th: Creature Kitchen
This game’s trailer won me over within about 20 seconds. It’s a first-person cooking simulator set in a rustic cabin—with the twist that you’re cooking for the animals of the forest, including mice, birds, frogs and raccoons. I’m very much here for this kind of odd experiment, so I can’t wait to become a vigilante animal butler when it lands on Steam on the 6th.
February 10th: Mewgenics
Mewgenics is a cat-breeding tactics battler where you breed kitties across generations, combining and mutating their bloodlines, before sending them into turn-based combat. The game promises over 1,000 abilities, which leads to a near-endless web of synergies and permutations. Development was led by Edmund McMillen—the creator of The Binding of Isaac and one half of Team Meat—and it arrives on Steam, Deck-verified, on the 10th.
February 11th: BLEMO
This month’s games are a weird bunch, and that trend continues with BLEMO. It’s an intriguing short game in which you play as a penguin lost in the jungle, who must cross a pit built by an “evil, snazzy-hat-wearing monkey”. According to the developer, Blipping Bloppy Games, it’s only five minutes long—but it seems like there might be more here than meets the eye. I can’t wait to find out when it launches for free on Steam on February the 11th.
February 12th: Lil Gator Game – In the Dark DLC
Lil Gator Game was an extremely charming little experience that built on the foundation laid by the iconic indie game A Short Hike. It tells the story of a lil gator on summer vacation who decides to build a giant LARP-style adventure on a holiday island. As the story unfolds, it touches on themes of childhood, coming of age, and the value of play. The In the Dark DLC is a sequel in disguise, literally doubling the size of the base game with a new area in the caves beneath the island. It launches on all the consoles and Steam on February 12th.
February 13th: REANIMAL
Tarsier Studios are the creators of Little Nightmares I and II—and they famously left that series behind to explore even darker ideas. The result is REANIMAL, a creepy adventure in which two children try to survive a nightmarish disaster on the island they call home. You’ll travel between locations by boat, hopping off to explore terrifying ruined factories and buildings and staying ahead of the giant creatures who lurk in the dark. It’s coming to Switch 2, Xbox Series, PS5, and Steam on the 13th.
February 17th: Placid Plastic Deck – A Quiet Quest
A wholesome deck battler in which you play as a girl named Zoi who sets out to win a local card tournament. Placid Plastic Quest has a fresh, Earthbound-esque look and a card battling system that seems partially inspired by Inscryption. There’s a demo available on Steam if you want to get a feel for it, and the full game comes to PC on February 17.
February 19th: Death Howl
February 19 is the biggest day of the month on the indie game calendar, with four exciting games coming out. First up, alphabetically, is Death Howl, which receives ports to Switch, Xbox, and PlayStation. It’s a game with a very distinct vibe — earthy, witchy, shamanistic, and primal. A card battler that tells the story of a mother who loses her baby and descends into the underworld to recover its soul, it’s a gruelling journey through a surreal, bleak, and beautiful world rendered in a distinctive palette of moss, eggshell, and bone. There’s some Souls influence here, so be aware: it’s hard as nails.
February 19th: Demon Tides
Demon Tides is a colourful 3D platformer that lets you streak across an oceanic overworld at high speed, wall-running, double-jumping, and ground-pounding through its many levels. The design philosophy is to give the player a toolkit of moves to string together creatively, and there are some nice quality-of-life features, like setting your own checkpoints. The previews have been glowing, with some suggesting it could set a new bar for the genre—high praise indeed.
February 19th: Love Eternal
Another game that heads to some dark places this month is Love Eternal, which explores obsession through the story of a girl imprisoned forever by a lonely, forsaken god in a castle made of memories. This entails some precision platforming with a gravity-switching mechanic—think VVVVVV meets Celeste. Expect a brutal challenge, surprising, vivid pixel art cutscenes, and a sombre tone.
February 19th: Seafrog
The last in this game guide’s trilogy of platformers, Seafrog offers a colourful take on 2.5D skating. It’s a maritime-themed game in which you’ll trick, flip, and power-slide your way through secret-packed levels. The power-up system is built around mod chips that can be combined in different ways to adapt your moveset and tweak the challenge. Game feel is everything in skating-adjacent games, so I’m looking forward to going hands-on with this one—it looks like a winner.
