Back when we were at the ENDIX Expo a few months ago. My stand-out game of the show, was Mexican Ninja. From the get-go it had my eye. I did a preview, and even listed it in my Top 3 games from the show. To quote myself: Every now and then, a game concept comes along that makes you pause, blink, and then immediately grin.

Wordle may have helped turn the daily browser game into a ritual, but you certainly don't have to stick with the big names. There are loads of smaller developers building clever games designed to eat up five minutes of your morning, distract you during lunch or become yet another thing you absolutely must complete before going to bed because losing a 47-day streak is apparently now unacceptable.

Pigxel finally has a date for his biggest cleaning job yet. Acclaim and indie developer Valadria have confirmed that Pixel Washer will launch into Steam Early Access on 15 October 2026, giving PC players the chance to start scrubbing their way through its increasingly filthy pixel-art world. The announcement arrives alongside a new Early Access release date trailer, showing off more of the locations Pigxel will be tackling with his growing collection of grime-destroying equipment.

Plenty of city builders let you drop down a power station, connect a few cables and consider the electricity problem solved. Power Network Tycoon is considerably less willing to let you get away with that. Created by Australian power engineer David McKenzie of David Made This, Power Network Tycoon takes the usually simplified business of keeping a virtual city powered and digs into what actually goes on behind the scenes.

Carnaval Marbles lives-up to the expectations we had of it. Tricky, fun, clever and filled to the brim with character. An excellent roguelike that everyone should find the time to play.

Mobile gaming has given us some brilliant ways to kill five minutes, but it has also taught us to expect something else: interruptions. Finish a level? Watch an advert. Want another life? Watch an advert. Accidentally press the wrong part of the screen? Congratulations, you may now know considerably more about an unrelated mobile game than you ever wanted to.

Chemistry lessons and puzzle games probably do not immediately spring to mind as natural companions, but Moleculox is making a pretty convincing argument that perhaps they should. Created independently by Whiteway Studio founder Orhan Akyol, Moleculox turns real molecules into sliding logic puzzles. Atoms continue moving until something stops them, meaning players need to think several steps ahead as they try to recreate the target structure with as few wasted moves as possible.

We’ve all looked at the stock market and thought: "I could definitely do better than those people". Well, now is your chance to prove it. Without losing your actual house. Conradical Games and publisher Oro Interactive have released a playable demo for Screen Stocks, an upcoming multiplayer trading game that combines a constantly moving simulated stock market with the progression and questionable decision-making of an incremental clicker.

Carnaval Marbles is due out in a few weeks, and we've had the great fortune to engage with the development team behind it. Hear all about it, here!

Our review for the card-match masterclass, FLIP, is here. It has room for improvement, but there's no denying the fun from the word go.

Every now and then, an indie title comes along that quietly consumes your entire evening before you even realise what has happened. Combolands is precisely that kind of game. An endlessly charming title that takes simple mechanics, pairs them with stellar presentation, and creates an absolute monster of an addictive gameplay loop. Popping it on the Steam Deck, taking a trip on a plane and having it in the hotel on holiday meant Combolands has been a very central part of my past week.

Buying a new game used to feel like a treat. Now it can feel like a minor financial decision requiring several tabs, a household budget and a quiet conversation with yourself about whether you really need to eat somewhere nice this month. The standard price of a major console release has settled around £69.99 in the UK. Nintendo has pushed even further in some cases, with…

Romania’s game development scene has been growing steadily, with independent studios and creators bringing increasingly distinctive ideas to the international gaming landscape. From atmospheric horror and narrative adventures to cosy management games, rhythm experiences and experimental indie projects, these titles showcase the diversity, creativity and potential of Romanian game development. This selection, put together with the support of CuibulCuJocuri, focuses not only on technical achievements, but also on the personalities behind each project, the concepts, artistic styles, and creative perspectives that are helping Romanian developers build an increasingly recognisable identity.

Open-world crime games have grown considerably bigger, shinier and more complicated over the years, but there is still something appealing about the simpler promise of being dropped into a city and told to go cause trouble. Cartoon Crime looks like it understands that. Developed by BuBa Games, the upcoming PC game mixes third-person and classic top-down perspectives with missions, police chases, rival gangs, recruitable bodyguards and plenty to do when you are not actively making yourself a problem for local law enforcement.

Between These Two does not exactly ease you in gently. You wake up inside a house, head downstairs, and then a storm rolls in. Nothing too strange there. Except the storm appears to be happening inside the house too. A graphical glitch or an intended consequence of the strange things to come? Only the developer, Mihai Calarasanu, will know the answer to that one.

Not every game needs to consume your life. Sometimes you want an enormous RPG with several continents, 200 side quests and enough inventory management to qualify as unpaid administrative work. Other times, you just want to begin something on Friday evening and reach the credits before Monday starts making demands again. Shorter games are sometimes treated like lesser experiences, particularly when people insist on measuring value by dividing the price by the number of hours played.

There is something inherently unsettling about being lost in the woods after dark. Every path starts looking suspiciously familiar, noises become considerably more interesting than they were during daylight, and that perfectly innocent shape between the trees definitely moved when you were not looking. Night Hike takes that feeling and builds an entire roguelike around it. Created by solo indie developer Michael Neumann, …

Running a petrol station while secretly being an alien was apparently not enough. Now the customers are getting abducted. Cybernetic Walrus has released the latest major update for Roadside Research, expanding the co-op petrol station simulator with human abductions, new alien research systems, more automation and the first stages of what sounds like a considerably less subtle plan to invade Earth.

Roller skating and turn-based tactics do not immediately sound like the most natural pairing. One is built around momentum, movement and looking considerably cooler than most of us ever will. The other normally gives you unlimited time to stare at a grid while quietly reconsidering every decision you have made. Canvas City is attempting to make them work together. New Zealand independent studio…

There comes a point where your desk stops being a workspace and starts resembling the aftermath of a minor cable-related disaster. Between laptops, phones, tablets, earbuds, smartwatches and whatever handheld gaming device has stolen your attention this week, modern tech setups have become surprisingly demanding. Most chargers try to solve that problem by adding more ports. The JOYROOM PODIX 140W takes a different approach.

Apparently, killing hordes of enemies is no longer enough. You need engagement. Barcelona-based developer Melbot has released a new public demo for GodsTV, its chaotic action roguelite where fame is power, the gods are obsessed with ratings, and almost everything you use appears to come with some form of sponsorship deal attached. The demo is available now on Steam and offers around two hours of single-player gameplay spread across four levels, with two playable Contenders available ahead of the game’s planned…

The Crimson Maid puts you in the shoes of Marius, a young man training for the priesthood who returns to his childhood home after discovering that his father is seriously ill. So naturally, one of the first major complications is an attractive maid. Probably not in the seminary handbook, that one. Irina has recently joined the household, and it does not take particularly long for Marius to notice her.

For all the convenience digital distribution has brought to gaming, there is still something satisfying about actually owning a game. Not having it attached to an account, a server, or a licence agreement. A box on a shelf. A disc you can pick up years later and, theoretically, still install and play. Chandler Kravitz is trying to make that possible for indie PC games.

FLIP is out now, giving clean, fast-paced memory puzzles. Made by solo independent developer CLKY Studios. Check it out on Steam asap!

Fantasy Online 2 looks like the sort of game I could have easily lost hours to years ago. Bright pixel graphics, a simple fantasy soundtrack, little characters pottering around an online world, quests to complete, gear to collect and other players wandering past doing their own thing. There is a nostalgic charm to it that does a lot of the heavy lifting early on.

When Palworld exploded into Early Access, it captured the collective imagination of millions with its wild blend of creature collecting, base automation, and third-person survival shooting. However, handheld performance on Valve’s Steam Deck was hit-or-miss: severe frame drops, visual pop-in, heavy battery drain, and memory leaks plagued longer play sessions. With the official release of Palworld 1.0, developer Pocketpair delivered an extensive pass of optimisations alongside massive end-game content like the long-awaited World Tree.

Fights in Tight Spaces is a stylish, aggressive and sharp deck-building roguelike. An absolute joy to behold and some seriously addictive fun.

Free League Publishing has added another award to the cabinet after Vaesen: City of My Nightmares took home Gold for Best Adventure – Long Form at the 2026 ENNIE Awards. The tabletop RPG campaign picked up the award during Gen Con, beating a field that also included Historica Arcanum: Serenade for the Damned, which received Silver. The ENNIE Awards recognise tabletop roleplaying games across a wide range of categories, with nominees selected by judges before the final winners are decided by a public vote.

There are plenty of games about saving kingdoms, stopping apocalypses and defeating ancient evils. Pixel Washer would just like you to clean that absolutely disgusting food truck, please. Publisher Acclaim and California-based indie developer Valadria have released a new gameplay trailer for Pixel Washer, offering another look at the cosy cleaning sim ahead of its upcoming release on PC, Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2.

Tower defence usually encourages you to build bigger. More towers. More upgrades. More elaborate kill zones. More things firing increasingly ridiculous projectiles at enemies who really should have reconsidered attacking after wave 37. Kingdom Contracts Tower Defense Incremental has a slightly different philosophy. Build as little as you can possibly get away with. The upcoming strategy game from independent developer Day 1 to 100 launches for Windows PC through Steam on 14 August 2026, combining short tower defence encounters with incremental progression and a mercenary contract system built around squeezing as much profit as possible from every job.

I checked out the original EasySMX S10 back when I was running FULLSYNC, and it punched well above its weight. It looked good, felt great in the hands, and managed to squeeze in enough features to make you double-check the price tag. So when the EasySMX S10 Lite arrived, the obvious concern was whether EasySMX had simply taken a pair of scissors to the spec sheet and called it a day.

Sometimes you just want a game where nothing is trying to kill you. No enormous boss waiting behind a suspiciously large door. No stamina bar deciding that climbing three feet was a bit much. No horrible creature waiting in the woods because you made the terrible mistake of exploring after dark. Seina: a Tale of Spirits is going in a considerably calmer direction.

Open-world games have taken us to sprawling American cities, tropical islands, fantasy kingdoms and enough post-apocalyptic wastelands to make you wonder why humanity bothers rebuilding anything. Last Drop is taking us somewhere rather different. Finnish indie studio Lohkare Games Oy has confirmed that its debut title will launch into Steam Early Access on 18 August 2026, bringing players to the fictional city of Nykylä and surrounding countryside in 1994 Finland.

Ghoul Fright is not exactly trying to be subtle. It is loud, chaotic, ridiculous in all the right ways, and more than happy to throw players into a playground of fists, flying props, and increasingly unhinged waves of enemies. Between its physics-driven combat, survival structure, and 90s and 2000s cartoon-inspired energy, it feels like the sort of game that wants players to laugh, panic, and cause an irresponsible amount of damage all at once.

You know the setup of a co-op horror by now. You and a few friends have accepted a job that no sane person would touch. The building is dark, your employer is probably evil, and something tall with far too many teeth is wandering around nearby. There will be equipment to carry. There may be a quota to meet. Somebody will suggest splitting up, despite every horror film ever made explaining why that is a terrible idea.

We’ve been running Dying Art Media for 5 months now. It’s been pretty interesting and fun to start from scratch. Seeing very low traffic numbers come through after starting to see some decent figures from the old site, is probably the worst of it. But that’s because the other site was years old and had loads of legacy content. With over 500 posts in about 9 years.

A new, social streaming platform? UK-based? Yep! Castyr has just gone into an open beta and the team have been kind enough to let us ask some questions.

Combolands is looking incredibly enticing as a city-builder roguelike. Here's all the detail about the soon-to-be-launched game that we've got our eyes on.

Combolands is looking incredibly enticing as a city-builder roguelike. Here's all the detail about the soon-to-be-launched game that we've got our eyes on.

One of the most recognisable images in Dungeons & Dragons history is making the jump from a cardboard box to the tabletop. Independent accessories company Sirius Dice has unveiled the D&D Red Box Basic Set Minis, a four-piece collection recreating Larry Elmore’s famous artwork for the 1983 Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set. The antique-finished metal figures are due to launch in September, with pre-orders priced at $79.99 through…

Getting an indie game onto Steam has never been easier. Getting anyone to notice it once it is there is an entirely different matter. Steam remains the obvious destination for most independent PC developers. It offers access to an enormous audience, established purchasing habits and a storefront players already trust enough to hand over their money every time a seasonal sale rolls around.

Your wedding night is supposed to mark the beginning of a new life. For Silviya Nebula, it begins with her husband being murdered by something that apparently has very little respect for either romance or traditional ceremony. Not a Cat Studios has released a public demo for STARCULT. Night: Twisted Age, a dark fantasy visual novel built around murder, manipulation, supernatural horror and an unusual dialogue system where choosing how Silviya feels can completely change what she is able to say.

Some games grab you through mechanics first. Dead Spin gets its claws in through atmosphere before you have even properly worked out what it wants from you. The abandoned casino setting, the grubby late-90s and early-2000s horror energy, the grotesque little weirdos sitting across from you, it all makes a strong first impression. Thankfully, once that first impression settles in, there is also a properly interesting game underneath it.

Palm Sugar: A Village Story will launch for Windows PC on 12 August 2026, publisher 1312 Interactive and developer Mono Tusk Studios have announced. The story-driven pixel RPG will be available through Steam, GOG and the Epic Games Store, while anyone curious about its particular mixture of romance, village life and criminal violence can currently try a playable demo through…

Neil Casini, Head of Games at WOLF, owner of WOLF Qanawat, shares important lessons for independent developers looking for sustainable growth. For years, independent game developers have been told that success depends on creating the next viral hit. Build something unique, launch globally and hope the algorithms work in your favour. The reality is rather different. Discoverability has never been more difficult.

Most party games are already perfectly capable of destroying friendships without throwing rifles, minefields and fatal workplace machinery into the equation. Machine Party has decided to add them anyway. The violent multiplayer collection from Buckshot Roulette creator Mike Klubnika and co-developer GDeavid will launch for PC through Steam on 30 July 2026, publisher Oro Interactive has announced. Designed for two to four players, Machine Party takes familiar party-game ideas and feeds them through Klubnika’s particular brand of grimy industrial horror.

Phasmophobia is preparing to make ghost hunting a little smoother, a little less awkward and, thanks to one carefully censored addition, potentially a lot more dangerous. Kinetic Games has shared two detailed previews of the quality-of-life update launching across all platforms on 21 July 2026. The update will arrive alongside the long-awaited rework of 13 Willow Street, while also introducing new controls, improvements to evidence collection, animation changes and a mystery ghost that the developer is not quite ready to identify yet.