It’s kind of difficult to quantify what exactly catches my eye in a prospective game purchase. I like the stuff from the major brands just fine, but sometimes, whether through word of mouth, aSteamNext Fest, or random bits in a presentation, I see a game that just makes me say, “huh.”
That little audible “huh” means that a game has captured my interest, which is usually followed by adding it to my Steam wishlist and periodically checking up on it.
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Sorry, still no Silksong.
The appeals of a lot of major upcoming games are readily apparent, but for some games, especially smaller productions, there’s a certain special sauce, something that makes it distinct from everything else, that makes it deeply unusual or experimental. This is a good thing, as the experimental and weird must be championed and pursued in the interest of wider artistic development.
I don’t know for certain whether the following games will be worth writing home about when they release, but each of them has at least a drop of that special sauce that made me double-take, and that might just be worth taking a chance on.
Swing The Bat
When you lurk long enough through the back annals of indie game social media and forums, you always tend to notice a few familiar faces. For example, around the time I got really into RPG Maker games, like ten years ago, I always saw the same image of a baseball player and a weird-looking cat.
I just figured they were someone’s OCs that got really popular. It was not; it was the two main characters of OFF.
OFF is an RPG Maker game that was originally released all the way back in 2008 by a small Belgian development team. It was kind of like Undertale before Undertale was Undertale, a deeply personal, heavily experimental RPG with surreal art and themes. All the game tells you from the outset is that “the Batter” is on a mission to purify the world. With a bat.
While the original release is nearly two decades old, it’s never been available in an official capacity until now. On August 22, 2025, it’ll launch on Steam and Switch, and I’m eager to see what kind of reception it’ll get.
9Shuten Order
Kodaka Can’t Stop Cooking
SHUTEN ORDER
I’m glad thatThe Hundred Line did reasonably wellfor TooKyo Games and Kazutaka Kodaka, because it means we can keep getting more direct feeds from Kodaka’s bizarre mindspace. I need more of those awful, wonderful Dangranronpa stylings injected into my veins. you’re able to imagine my surprise when it was announced, not long after Hundred Line’s release, that Kodaka was cooking once again with Shuten Order.
The premise of this game is that our protagonist, Rei, has been brought back from the dead with a four-day time limit and one mission: figure out who amongst his country’s government murdered him.
To do this, you’ll have to pick a suspect and follow their route, which entails wholly different gameplay mechanics for each of the five. Five suspects and four days means you won’t have time to investigate everyone, so you need to trust your gut.
One route is a top-down 3D action puzzler, one route is a visual novel investigation, one route is a series of escape rooms, and so on. Kodaka and company seem like they’re trying to hit every possible permutation of visual novel gameplay in existence for the game’s June 17, 2025 release, and something horrible compels me to let them.
8Showa American Story
Weebs Shall Inherit The Earth
Showa American Story
I’m a huge nerd for retro pop culture, not just from America, but from other countries as well. My love of tokusatsu TV shows like Kamen Rider in particular has instilled in me a longstanding respect for Showa-era Japan stuff, which goes hand-in-hand with my interest in 80s memorabilia. I guess I’m not the only one with those specific niche interests, at least if Showa American Story is any indication.
Thisexceptionally bizarre-looking gameseems to take place in a timeline where Japan literallyboughtAmerica, and then some manner of apocalyptic event turned everything into a zombie and monster-infested wasteland. As the recently-revived Chouko, you explore the ruins of “Showa America,” fighting off the undead in gory action combat and meeting the occasional weirdo survivor like a dude dressed in Astro Boy undies.
Plus, you get a big RV that you can decorate with old movie posters and retro toys, like that little water box toy where you try to get the rings on hooks.
Showa American Story, to me, has a similar energy to something like Deadly Premonition. I’m not sure how well it’ll come together when it launches in Q4 2025, but however it comes out, it’ll certainly be a spectacle to behold.
7Skate Story
A Man Of Glass In A World Of Spikes
Skate Story
Like most 90s kids, I had a very,verybrief skateboarding phase, which ended pretty much the moment I fell off a board for the first time. I didnotcare for that.
Even so, I still like skateboarding media, games especially, and the idea of a skateboarding game where you can’t fall at all feels oddly relevant to my life experience. This is why I’ve been hoping for a proper release date for Skate Story for a while now, beyond its 2025 window.
Skate Story is, at least I think, about a demon made of glass skating through the underworld to reach and devour the moon in order to attain freedom. Why skateboarding? Why the moon? I dunno! But it looks cool, and I want to know more about it.
It’s not super clear as of yet what the format of this game will be, but it seems to be a pseudo-open world where there’s a critical path of ramps and tricks to follow, but also upgrades to buy and side stuff to engage with. It might just be the new Tony Hawk’s Underground I’ve always wanted.
Invader Zim Meets WarioWare
HoloHammer
A lot of indie games have what I like to call “I’ll do it myself” energy. The big publishers don’t always give us what we want in new iterations of their franchises, so sooner or later, someone will make a game closer to their perception of what it should be. Mindwave, for example, seems to be an “I’ll do it myself” take on the early WarioWare games, with a hefty dash of Invader Zim-esque stylings on top.
The premise of Mindwave is that a city’s worth of competitors are attempting to climb a giant corporate tower, engaging with each other in the titular battle of minds and memories as they go.
This battle manifests as a series of microgames pulled from the competitors’ heads. In this way, it’s a lot like the original WarioWare, though the stages may have additional gimmicks like needing to close pop-up windows that obscure your view.
Between battles, you can talk with the other competitors in the waiting room and get to know them. I don’t know if there’s a branching story element here, but just getting to see these weird character designs is already a treat. There’s alsoan endless modeif you just want to play the games.
Mindwave doesn’t have a release window yet, but its devs are still posting updates on both its Steam page and its Kickstarter campaign.
5Truth Scrapper
Like Memento, But Cuter
Truth Scrapper
Whenever an indie creator manages to emotionally desolate me with an excellent narrative experience, they basically earn a free pass into my interests with all future projects.
One such creator that’s earned this is insertdisc5, creator of one of my favorite games, In Stars and Time, and it’s because of that privilege that Truth Scrapper pretty much immediately secured a spot on my radar from the moment it was announced.
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Truth Scrapper is a visual novel mystery game in which our protagonist, an investigator named Sosotte, needs to solve the mystery of a mind-eating sinkhole. The problem is that Sosotte’s memories reset every day, and the only way to preserve them is to write them down in a scrapbook. You can only write down a few key details per day, though, so the memories you choose to place importance on will affect how the story unfolds.
I have every confidence that insertdisc5 will use this mechanic to utterly destroy me, and I welcome and relish their attempt to do so. No release window yet, but dev note updates are coming out at a steady clip.
Maniac, Maniac On The Floor
Dead as Disco
I wasn’t around for the disco era, which is probably why I don’t know why exactly disco died. I think it had something to do with oversaturation or something. Either way, I think disco music is cool, especially when it’s used in a really good fight scene. If you like disco and fight scenes too, you might just have a time to remember with Dead as Disco.
Dead as Disco is a rhythm-powered character-action game, kind of like Hi-Fi Rush, but with an even bigger emphasis on following the beat of the backing tracks, all of which are super-sick disco beats, if that weren’t obvious.
All of your combat moves automatically sync to the beat, but pressing on the beat amplifies your strength and speed, allowing you to build up bigger and better combos. It’s also got an Arkham-style counter system, which helps you stay in the groove.
Dead as Disco doesn’t have a release window yet, but it made quite an impression atthe June 2025 Steam Next Fest. When it does release, it’ll have both a story mode and a custom mode, where you can upload your own tracks and battle punks to them.
Diet Friendslop
I confess, I’m not a huge fan of the unofficially-named “friendslop” genre. Putting aside the fact that I prefer single-player games anyway, a lot of them just seem like cheap ways for content creators to farm reactions. Though, I wonder if perhaps my distaste stems less from that aspect, and more from the fact that a lot of such games are half-baked horror and platformer titles.
Maybe if we had something a little different, more lighthearted. Something like Big Walk, which is slated for release in 2026.
Big Walk is a “cooperative online walker-talker,” according to its Steam page. It’s set in a large, open, outdoor world, within which you and some online friends can freely traverse and explore.
Rather than chucking jumpscares in your face or knocking you off cliffs, it’s merely a conduit of conversation, a pleasant hike that you and your buddies can chat over, probably good for variety streamers that have a lot of guests.
Big Walk isn’t just about exploring, though; there are also lots of little puzzles and challenges to solve cooperatively, kind of like We Were Here or The Talos Principle. They’re low-pressure puzzles, though, so if you don’t want to bother, don’t. Just spend some quiet time with people you like.
Thank You For Holding
The idea of burnt-out, jaded superheroes has gotten a tad played out in recent years. It’s a good idea on paper; it’s just that there’s only so many ways we can watch a superhuman put their head in their hands as they shoulder the weight of the world.
Maybe we can try tackling the concept from a different angle: rather than the heroes themselves, we follow the ones who manage them, like in Dispatch.
Dispatch is a hybrid narrative adventure and management strategy game set for release some time in 2025. Our protagonist, former hero Robert Robertson, works as a dispatch agent for a superhero support center.
It’s your job to field incoming reports of crime, mundane and super, and dispatch the appropriate crimefighter for the job. Making the right calls, alongside the choices you make in interacting with heroes and coworkers around the office, will alter the progression of the story.
Dispatch is being created by an impressive crew of writers and creatives across game and TV, including several who worked on Telltale’s Tales from the Borderlands and The Wolf Among Us, so I’ve got reason to be interested in its storytelling chops.
1Grave Seasons
Mysteries Make Life Interesting
Grave Seasons
I think we’re all getting a little tired of self-proclaimed “cozy farming games.” It was great when the genre made a comeback in the 2010s, but now we’re drowning in them, and half of them are indistinguishable from one another.
If a farming game really wants to stand out from the crowd, it needs to throw a curveball, something you wouldn’t expect from a game in this genre. Something, perhaps, like a supernatural serial killer mystery.
Grave Seasons is a hybrid sim and mystery game. During the day, it’s business as usual. You raise up your farm, harvest crops, and craft nifty stuff. When night falls, though, there’s a killer on the loose, and you’re the only one who can hunt down evidence. The items you craft, along with the characters you befriend, might just decide who lives to see the light of the next morning.
You’ll also need to solve quests for the townsfolk to build a rapport with them, aiding your search for evidence and establishing trust. you’re able to even romance the townsfolk, and without giving away who it is, the game’s Steam page says you can romance the one who turns out to be the killer, if you’re into that.
No release date yet, but it did show up at Summer Games Fest, so it’s definitely got some presence to it.
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