2026 is warming up this month both figuratively and literally, with a bumper crop of indie games hitting the virtual shelves as summer approaches. With over twenty games vying for your attention and playtime, you’ll have to choose carefully — will it be the flawless vibes of Motorslice or Call of the Elder Gods? Will it be an ecological colony sim, like Amberspire or Life Below? Or the bleak WWI narrative experience, The Caribou Trail? The decision is yours.
As always, wishlisting or buying any of these games helps out the developers, and you can see the games in motion in the video version of this article here. Happy gaming!
May 5th: Wax Heads (PC, PS5, Xbox, Switch)
A warm and heartfelt narrative game set in an independent record store, Wax Heads is like Papers, Please, but cosy. You serve customers and figure out what record they need, sometimes using contextual clues like mumbled or garbled requests, tote bags, button badges, t-shirts, and even social profiles. It has lovely hand-drawn art and a warm, nostalgic vibe — it’s clearly a game made with a lot of heart and talent.
May 5th: Motorslice (PC, PS5, Xbox)
A compelling parkour game in which you explore an enormous industrial megastructure, clearing out hostile robots as you go. This involves wall-running, power sliding, triple jumping, and using the titular Motorslice chainsaw to cut through walls and propel yourself to new heights. There’s something hypnotic about the sheer scale of the architecture, and the bosses are vast machines you’ll have to climb to defeat, giving a mechanised Shadow of the Colossus feel.
May 6th: Amberspire (PC)
A science-fiction city builder with some unique gameplay flourishes, Amberspire is set on a remote moon under the glow of a gas giant. You’ll be building, managing resources, and handling your population – but you have to do so in harmony with the alien environment around you, navigating rust blooms and viscous plains to grow your city in synergy with the natural world. This ecological focus is a huge relief, given that these games often involve mindlessly devastating the landscape to endlessly expand. Here’s hoping this one does well for the layoff-struck Bithell Games.
May 7th: Mixtape (PC, PS5, Xbox, Switch)
The second game from Artful Escape developers Beethoven & Dinosaur, Mixtape is a nostalgic ‘90s adventure with a magic-realist twist. The stop-motion art style is magnificent, but the gameplay is something of a mystery, seemingly including skating, driving, exploration, and minigames that reference classic coming-of-age films like Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Wayne’s World. It’s all soundtracked by nostalgic alt-rock classics by The Cure, Siouxsie, and The Smashing Pumpkins – fingers crossed for it to be the feel-good hit of the summer.
May 7th: WILL: Follow the Light (PC, PS5, Xbox)
A moody first-person exploration game, WILL features realistic sailing that almost makes you feel the sea spray on your face and wind-whipped subarctic islets to explore. I played an early build that was very much a work in progress, but the potential is clear — there’s some wild poetry in being alone in the waves and the rocks, forging your way forward, trying to make sense of it all. It’s also another entry in the burgeoning “sad dad” genre pioneered by The Last of Us, Under the Waves, and Death Stranding – heads up, sad dads!
May 7th: Alabaster Dawn (PC, Early Access)
An ambitious pixel art adventure from the developers of CrossCode, Alabaster Dawn’s protagonist wakes in a vault to find the world they knew devastated by a strange infection. They embark on a hazardous journey to figure out what happened and rebuild what’s left of humanity. The demo blew me away, with speedy movement and tight, strategic combat, and the setting is genuinely intriguing. This early access edition promises ten hours of content — roughly a quarter of the full game, which is pencilled in for a 2027 release.
May 11th: Besmirch (PC)
A gloomy farming sim that mixes distinctive, crunchy visuals with farming gameplay in a weird little outback town, Besmirch is a high-stakes horror-farming game. By day, you’ll farm to help feed the starving population — but you’re told not to go out at night, because that’s when the bad things come out. I’m into this new trend of farming games that are self-aware and critical, like Wanderstop and Neverway – it’s like a troubled reflection of cottagecore that acknowledges the existence of toxic productivity and burnout.
May 12th: Call of the Elder Gods (PC, PS5, Xbox, Switch)
A lot of games get described as ‘Lovecraftian’ these days, but spooky first-person adventure Call of the Elder Gods – a sequel to Call of the Sea – is more directly influenced than most. It draws from Lovecraft’s The Shadow Out of Time, which hopefully means it goes beyond purple-clad sorcerers and Cthulhu tentacle monsters and gets into the genuinely metaphysical weirdness of it all.
May 14th: RoadOut (PC)
A game that was delayed out of March and into May, RoadOut is a post-apocalyptic RPG with all-action car combat, enemy-infested dungeons, community building, factions, and a whole lot of upgrades to unlock. Imagine a retro, 2D, top-down take on the Mad Max game, and you’re in the right post-apocalyptic ballpark.
May 14th: The Caribou Trail (PC, consoles)
Set in the dark heart of World War 1, this first-person narrative game draws on historical documents and eyewitness accounts to bring some groundedness and realism to its scenario. You play as a young man called Fisher, who leaves his home in Newfoundland to join the British war effort with two friends – but as the store description puts it, “What awaits him is not glory, but dirt, loss, and a touch of madness.” Set in the trenches, the game explores how the three friends process what they’re experiencing — or, perhaps, lose touch with reality entirely.
May 14th: Outbound (PC, PS5, Xbox, Switch)
A road-trip game in which you drive your camper van around a colourful world, Outbound sees the player foraging, resource-collecting, and enhancing their van with new features. It starts off pretty small scale — like adding cabinets and a campfire — but before long the van becomes a kind of Mary Poppins construction with a huge unfoldable structure on top, like a giant house on wheels. It’s a relatable fantasy for campers: the freedom to go anywhere, with all the comforts of home.
May 20th: Phonopolis (PC)
A story-driven puzzle adventure set in a 3D world made entirely of cardboard, Phonopolis is a city that’s always in the process of being constructed by its hard-working populace. But when the game’s protagonist starts questioning the city’s leadership, they find themselves uncovering a dark heart of authoritarianism — a hyper-relevant message for the times we live in. The art was inspired by the avant-garde movements of the last century, with everything made from actual cardboard and scanned into the game at a glorious 12fps. I hope Digital Foundry covers this one.
May 21st: Beastro (PC)
A fantastical restaurant sim with a handcrafted look and some deckbuilder gameplay, Beastro is the story of Panko — a young chef who’s suddenly tasked with taking over an abandoned eatery. This means sourcing ingredients, whipping up dishes, and dealing with locals, each of which involves a new mini-game. Beastro’s success may hinge on how well these varied ingredients combine — the proof is in the pudding, as they say.
May 21st: Zero Parades (PC)
Zero Parades is the first game to emerge from what remains of ZA/UM — the Disco Elysium studio that famously fired its core creative team after some internal strife. The result — in the demo, at least — is a Disco-like that looks the part but doesn’t quite smell right. It reuses Disco’s vibe, mechanics, and motifs, but with less of its trademark wit and self-awareness. I’ll be curious where the critics come down on this one.
May 21st: Coffee Talk Tokyo (PC, consoles)
A sequel to the fan-favourite visual novel, Coffee Talk Tokyo moves the fantasy barista action from the rainy climes of a Seattle-like city to the neon mania of inner-city Tokyo. I enjoyed the first game a lot as a chill evening game, and I could be up for more if the mood strikes – hopefully it throws some new mechanics into the mix alongside the new characters and storylines.
May 22nd: Bubsy 4D (PC, PS5, Xbox, Switch)
Bubsy 4D is a game so self-aware I can’t tell if it’s a troll trading on the well-known ignominy of the Bubsy series or an earnest attempt to make a new kick-ass 3D platformer in 2026. I played the demo and found it to be competent and fun, but with plenty of rough edges — which might just be in there by design. Who knows, honestly.
May 25th: Enter the Chronosphere (PC, Early Access)
A bullet hell roguelike where time only moves when you do, this game draws on Hades and Superhot in equal measure. The gameplay is involved, purposeful, and strategic, and the eye-catching art has a cool, psychedelic retro sci-fi style. There’s a demo out now if you’d like to dip a toe in the water, and early access opens on the 25th.
May 25th: Paralives (PC)
A Sims-like life sim funded by a 25k-member Patreon, Paralives is an ambitious indie project that’s trying to take on The Sims. Games of this type are infamously difficult to make, with complex webs of possibilities spiralling out from every little decision; recent patch notes trumpet improvements to vandalism and pregnancies, which gives you some idea of the scope. Honestly, “world-conquering phenomenon” and “unmitigated disaster” feel like equally plausible outcomes for Paralives right now. Good luck to the team — I’m rooting for them.
May 26th: Life Below (PC)
A twist on the city-builder genre that mixes expansion mechanics with a mellow, luminous underwater setting, Life Below offers eco-conscious gameplay and a heartfelt story by Rhianna Pratchett – daughter of Terry and writer on Mirror’s Edge and the latter-day Tomb Raider games.
May 28th: Moonsigil Atlas (PC)
An appealing, moonlit deckbuilder, Moonsigil Atlas replaces the Slay The Spire-style energy system with a tile-placement puzzle. Each card bears a cosmic shape that slots into a geometric grid, so you can play as many cards as you want, as long as they fit. I love the clean but mystical iconography they’ve come up with here — it mixes crisp star constellation diagrams with the dreamy vibe of divining decks.
May 28th: The Remake of the End of the Greatest RPG of All Time (PC)
An intriguing meta puzzle located in the final hour of a lost RPG, TROTEOTGROAT (catchy) sees the player navigating a game, its manual, and a director’s commentary to deduce what’s going on. One for fans of Tunic, Immortality and Inscryption, this game has “cult hit” written all over it — it might just be a dark horse indie hit.
May 29th: Mina the Hollower (PC, consoles)
The long wait for Mina The Hollower is finally coming to an end, after a substantial delay from its initial Halloween ’25 release date. A stylish retro action-adventure inspired by GBA-era Zelda, it started out as a viral Kickstarter project that caught the popular imagination; under the guidance of publisher Adult Swim, it’ll be interesting to see if it can land the plane.
