Plus, a deep dive into the wild Kingmakers.
Welcome to our latest roundup of what’s going on in the indie game space. There are a whole bunch of new games you can dive into this weekend that don’t involve a certain gruff Marvel hero. We’ll take a look at some of those, as well as several others that are on the way.
I recently checked out the first hour or so of Emberville from Cygnus Cross, a studio co-owned by Twitch streamer Ben “CohhCarnage” Cassel. This is a top-down action RPG that blends the dungeon crawling and looting of Diablo with the life-sim aspects of Stardew Valley.
I’ve made several attempts to play Diablo IV and thought Outriders was fine, but I’ve never been able to bring myself to care about hunting for weapons and gear with slightly better stats than what I already have. However, Emberville is more compelling than many loot-based games for several reasons.
It’s downright beautiful, for one thing. The lush pixel art and dense environments drew me in, while the animations look slick. There’s a stellar voice cast that includes Baldur’s Gate 3 narrator Amelia Tyler, BAFTA and Game Awards winner Jennifer English (who earned those honors for her portrayal of Maelle in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33), Abubakar Salim, Matt Mercer and Ben Starr.
Combat feels good too. I switched between a sword, bow and fists — which can have a stun effect that was useful for the preview’s main boss — and all were strong options. There’s a nifty combo system too. I do not like having to manage stamina in any game and I’m glad I didn’t encounter that here, even if the hero’s dash is on a (thankfully short) cooldown.
The world that Cygnus Cross is building is captivating. It leans into the trope of your character waking up in a mysterious place with no memories and having to figure out what’s happening. Since it’s written on the Steam page, it’s not too much of a spoiler to say you’re in a large underground prison and your goal is to escape it. Along the way, you’ll help out NPCs and rebuild a ruined town.
I encountered a ton of gameplay systems in my short time with Emberville, from the swappable classes, weapon and armor mastery, crafting, cooking, mining and so on. I didn’t even get to the farming or base-building aspects. That’s already overwhelming to me, but it might feel great to someone who really loves building out their own character and having a boatload of different things to do.
I don’t know that Emberville is a game I’ll play much more of, especially with such a stacked game release calendar over the next couple of months, but I enjoyed my time with it so far. It’s coming to Steam in early access on October 27.
New indie game releases
Developer: AttritoM7 Productions
Publishers: IZilla Games, AttritoM7 Productions
Platforms: Steam (Windows), with plans for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S at an undetermined date.
Price: Usually $25, with a 10 percent discount until September 23. Includes access to acts two and three, which should both arrive in 2027
The debut of Blackwood snuck up on me amid an extremely busy spell for game releases. Still, I managed to play a chunk of the action-life sim hybrid this week.
This game has an irresistible setup. It’s 2012 and by day, you run a DVD store. At night, you become an ersatz John Wick. The first act, with around six hours of playtime, is out now and two more will follow next year.
This game caught my eye when a trailer popped up last October. I thought the gun fu looked neat and the DVD store used to be my happy place, so I was into that aspect too. It clearly wears its influences on its sleeve, not least because you can dive toward the ground to trigger Max Payne-style Bullet Time and slow down the action for a moment. I also dig that the game drops you into an action sequence to help you get to grips with combat right off the bat.
However, Blackwood is rough as things stand. Hand-to-hand combat is clunky, the audio mix is often out of whack and the car handling is atrocious. The action is just not as fluid as it ought to be for a game like this either. For instance, it takes far too long to pick up a weapon, which is tough when you’re out of ammo. On top of that, the DVD store aspect can’t really hold a candle to Retro Rewind.
It’s a shame because there’s real potential here. There are some neat ideas (like weapon customization and trying to balance the protagonist’s double life) and cool takedown moments in there. I wonder if taking an early access approach rather than an episodic one would have been a wiser strategy. A buggy launch is more forgivable for an early access title.
At least the developers are responding to feedback quickly. They released a day-one patch that resolved a few issues. AttritoM7 plans to make further changes before releasing Act Two. Among other things, they’re adding an autosave function, so you won’t have to wait until you sleep to save your progress. More side missions are on the way too. I hope the studio can polish things up in the coming months, as I’d like to come back to this when it’s in better shape.
Developer/publisher: Sage Boatman
Platform: Steam (Windows; playable on Steam Deck). Demo available on Steam and Itch
Price: Usually $20, with a 10 percent discount until September 28
Sage Boatman did everything possible in Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon, but was left wanting more. After failing to find another game that was likely to fill the void, the developer decided to create their own mech action title that they (and perhaps others) could keep coming back to. As such, Rig Riot is a roguelike.
Boatman wanted to iterate on the Armored Core formula and took feedback from AC6 players into account while designing Rig Riot. Among other things that makes this third-person shooter distinct, it has thousands of different parts that you can equip on your mech.
In a recent dev log video, Boatman said they’re going to be laid off from their day job soon. If Rig Riot sells well enough to allow the developer to work on the game full-time, they plan to look into adding a co-op mode. Console and GOG releases are possibilities too.
Developer: SonderingEmily
Publisher: Kwalee
Platform: Steam (Windows)
Price: Usually $12, with a 20 percent discount until September 24
This psychological horror title reminds me a bit of Screenlife movies like Unfriended and Searching. It’s a desktop exploration game in which you scour the laptop of a teenage girl in the 2000s. As you learn more about Lily’s life, it’ll become apparent that all is not well and she may just be in severe danger.
I’ve seen some positive buzz around Lily’s World XD, not least because it breaks the fourth wall at certain points. SonderingEmily (who is also a creator) used real photos of her and her friends as teenagers to help tell Lily’s story and add some extra authenticity.
Developer: OpenFront Inc, Evan Pellegrini
Publisher: OpenFront Inc
Platform: Steam early access (Windows, Mac, SteamOS/Linux). Also available on browsers
Price: Usually $7, with a 29 percent discount until October 1
OpenFront is a fast-paced, real-time strategy multiplayer game that landed on Steam after racking up more than 2.5 million monthly players on the web. In each match, hundreds of players duke it out for control of a map. You can team up with others (there are hundreds of OpenFront clans), betray rivals, take control of the seas and launch game-changing nukes. There’s said to be a thriving competitive scene, so if you feel like you’re good enough, you can jump into tournaments that have cash prizes.
You’ll be able to link your account so that when you play on Steam or in your browser (including on mobile), you’ll have access to all of your progress and purchases. Both versions of the game run on the same servers.
The Steam version is said to have improved performance — the ability to preload assets will help with that. There are achievements and exclusive cosmetics too. The three developers behind OpenFront are aiming for the full version of the game to have better offline support for matches against computer-controlled opponents. It’s not my usual kind of game, but the action looks fast-paced enough to convince me to give it a go.
Upcoming indie games
Developer: Redemption Road
Publisher: TinyBuild
Platforms: Steam
Alas, there’s still no sign of a release date for Kingmakers, one of the games I’m most looking forward to. It was supposed to hit early access last October, but it was delayed. That said, publisher TinyBuild offered up a longer look at the chaotic-looking medieval action-strategy game during a showcase this week, and now I’m even more excited to play it.
Kingmakers has a pretty great pitch. You play as a person who travels back in time to the Middle Ages with modern weapons, devices and vehicles. The aim is to change history by helping a Welsh rebellion take down Henry V and form an empire.
Battles feature tens of thousands of enemies along with fully destructible buildings and trees. You can even call in air strikes and tanks. The campaign is fully playable in co-op for up to four players, each of whom is in charge of their own army. It looks absolutely bananas, and I can’t wait for it.
Developer/publisher: Targem Games
Platform: Steam
Star Conflict: Burrownauts reminds me a bit of Dome Keeper and a game called ITER-8 that I enjoyed earlier this year. This is an action roguelite set in Targem’s Star Conflict universe. You’ll venture to various planetoids, mine them for resources and use those to upgrade your rig and combat ship. As you’re toiling in the mines, you’ll need to be ready to hightail it back to your main ship whenever you need to protect it from attacks. You’ll do this by engaging in bullet-heaven combat.
I dig the visuals and the gameplay loop seems like it could be fun. Who doesn’t enjoy fending off space bandits? You can try it out right now as a Steam playtest is open to everyone.
Developer/publisher: Team Trifold
Platform: Steam
I’m also into the art direction of Nothing Lost, a game from a new studio that’s under the same umbrella as Dredge developer Black Salt Games and Disc 2 Games, the team behind Canvas City (a demo for which recently hit Steam). In this action roguelike game, you’ll grow stronger after every death as you’ll inherit the capabilities of fallen heroes.
What I like most about this so far is something one of the developers said in a press release. “What resonates most with me is that Nothing Lost is a game that celebrates the optimism of incremental human progress,” Jed Uy said. “The story and gameplay mechanics work together to express the notion that in some sense, time is never truly wasted.” As someone who greatly dislikes feeling like a game is wasting their time, I love that.
