Screenshot: Stutter Fox Studios

It’s Black Friday, the day when the entirety of planet Earth completely takes a break from its senses and spends all its money on things it doesn’t need for 5% less than it would have cost. yesterday. Planet Earth this year bought itself a brand new moon, even though the old one is fine, just because this one has Bluetooth. So let’s distract ourselves from all that by discovering 12 amazing new games.

As is always the case with Indiegeddon, I don’t vouch for these games, as I haven’t played any of them. Instead, I just think they look interesting, exciting, scary, or so weird that I couldn’t not write about them. Most of them haven’t been released yet, but the most useful thing you can do for developers is to give them a wishlist on Steam: it makes a big difference.

Read more: 10 Amazing Games You Should Add To Your Wishlist Right Now

There’s bound to be at least one game here that has you checking its release date and wishing it was sooner, unless you’re that person in the grays who feels the need to tell the whole universe that he actually thinks they all look terrible. We are sorry for you, that person. Just a pity, really. For everyone else, woo-hoo, let’s go!

stuffed fox

falling border

Every time I see a space-based RTS that looks as cool as Falling Frontier, I think, “This will be the one!” This will be the game where I conquer my fear of menus!” And then I fail. But maybe it will be this one, because damn it looks awesome. Already four years in the making, by just one human, this appears to be from a team of 100 people at Paradox. Watch these spaceships explode! It’s about taking over a procedurally generated star system, with intelligence and logic as the main factors. But then , you can also design your ships, attack enemies, and do all that amazing space layering stuff that I wish I had developed a brain for.

Developer: Stutter Fox Studios

Release date: 2023

Wishlist here

Marijenburg

Invoice

You, a squirrel named Bill who is good at crafts, come across a baby alien in your backyard who needs your help! It’s a tale as old as time itself. The result, Bill, is a simulation game where you have to craft, grow, and organize everything the baby alien needs to survive. And that’s it for exploring the notions of recycling. What’s the weirdest elevator pitch, and yet it looks like it could be adorable.

Developer: Marijenburg

Release date: TBA (demo in February 2023)

Wishlist here

rare byte

We are screwed up

Take this one around: a 1-4 player co-op game about attempting to maintain a spaceship under calamitous circumstances, but also in split-screen where you see both the inside and the outside of your ship. Yeah. People will be able to take on different roles on the ship, from captain to janitor, as everything goes wrong on board while trying to defend themselves against enemies. It’s all about chaos and multitasking, or as I prefer to describe it, team failure.

Developer: Rarebyte

Release date: 2023

Wishlist here

Something Classic Games

Quartet

Quartet feels like an incredibly faithful classic-style JRPG, but with a new twist on its turn-based combat system. Indeed, there are eight characters in this vignette above, but you fight with four at a time, able to tag characters inside and out as appropriate. It’s also a quartet of stories, four to choose from, played in any order you want, and of course in Octotraveller fashion, they intertwine as you play them all. It’s an ambitious project for an independent team of five, but it looks like they’re doing it.

Developer: Classic Games of Something

Release date: 2023

Wishlist here

Two And A Half Studios

Dreamer

This man has a very small head. That said, this is Dreambound, a visual novel that just had a Kickstarter hit (raising over $30,000), giving everyone the chance to watch handsome young men staring nostalgically at each other. It’s booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo much. On top of that, there are also mysterious deaths, dreams invading reality, and demons from the past to contend with, for lead character Noah, in what already sounds like a very pleasantly drawn and written adventure.

Developer: Two And A Demi Studios

Release date: Early 2024

Wishlist here

High air entertainment

tidal sky

Hello, look at this! It feels like that too rarely explored sweet spot between point-and-click adventure and RPG. Sky Of Tides is a sci-fi story set in a civilization on the brink of war, telling the personal story of Rin, searching for his missing father and, you know, saving the planet Numen. (NUMEN!) It promises that your decisions will determine your character, as you explore the isometric world, and honestly, I already want to play it.

Developer: Lofty Sky Entertainment

Release date: 2nd quarter 2023

Wishlist here

Pavonis Interactive

Terra Invicta

Elsewhere in space… Terra Invicta is another super deep space sim, this one immediately reminding me of Stellaris, but with a much more specific focus: Earth. This is from a group of modders best known for XCOM: Long War. The success of this mod sent them pro, and Terra Invicta is their first commercial game, a geopolitical space exploration simulation, where you prevent (or even aid) an alien invasion of our home planet. The game has been out in early access for a few months and is proving very popular with Steam reviewers, thanks to its complexity and scale.

Developer: Pavonis Interactive

Release date: Available now (early access)

Buy it here

seudo nimm

The blocks are shooting at you

An Arkanoid-like, but the blocks you hit shoot you! How is that not already a thing. (I think you’ll find, in fact, that there was an example of this on the Amiga Rupture 3400 in Germany, in the parallel dimension of Raaaaaaa – That Guy.) The Blocks Shoot At You seems like such an obvious idea , but I’ve never seen it before: Bullet Hell Breakout. It looks like it could be my new obsession, which I’m infinitely terrible at.

Developer: seudo nimm

Release date: to be determined

Wishlist here

Amon26

Phobolis: show your teeth

I love it when I can’t quite tell if it’s a mean video trailer or a retro FPS trailer. It’s quite a scene right now. Phobolis fits right in, its squeaky trailer first looking like a crumbling VHS video that will curse your grandkids, then morphing into a grimy old-school shooter. You can pick up the alpha test version of the game via Itch for a dollar, or wait until the following year when they plan to release.

Developer: Amon26

Release date: Early 2024

Buy the alpha version here

Recombobulator Games

space ship

Call me a sucker, but I can’t resist a game about a space cat sleuth who investigates a crime on an interstellar cruise ship populated by sentient carpets. As Domino, Says Detective Cat, you explore the ship in third person, trying to catch a jewel thief. It’s presented so superbly down-to-earth, given the ridiculous premise, as you’ll see in that full half hour of gameplay in the video above.

Developer: Recombobulator Games

Release date: to be determined

Demo and wishlist here

robot cat

Division zero

I can’t write one without including a deck of cards – there are laws. Zero Division is a cyberpunk approach, which promises to blend Magic: The Gathering with Slay The Spire. You choose three characters from a selection of nine, each with their own set of 40 cards. And defined bridge sizes mean no bridge thinning! Court! What draws me in is the combination of cards and epic 3D monsters and robots throwing their arms and weapons across the board. There’s a demo planned for Spring 23, and I’m definitely going to play it.

Developer: Robot Cat Limited

Release date: Winter 2023

Wishlist here

Sam Atlas

Extreme evolution: towards divinity

Always end up on an existential non-linear psychedelic platformer, that’s what my grandmother taught me. Not one to refuse sage advice, here is Extreme Evolution: Drive to Divinity from Sam Atlas, creator of the IGF Nuovo 2022 nomination, Space Hole 2020. Extreme Evolution looks so spectacularly screwed up, like David Lynch did The Lawnmower Man, and I think I’ll be dreaming about this brief trailer for the rest of my life. Oh my god that spider virus thing.

Developer: Sam Atlas

Release date: 2023

Wishlist here

In the eponymous level “Storm of Violence”, you must kill more than 900 enemies before the time runs out. Screenshot: Anachronia / Kotaku

I’ve never owned an Amiga, but I’m obsessed with Enemy: Tempest Of Violence, an Amiga game developed in Switzerland released in 1997. Buckle up, it’s about to be a ride.

My partner and I have a ritual where we watch Twitch on the weekends before bed. My partner is a staunch old man (even though he’s only 34) and has no desire to watch popular streamers or games. He’ll only watch streamers on the Retro channel, the Twitch channel dedicated to games as old as us. There we found Ara45, an Australian streamer with a penchant for playing the most obscure dark games. One weekend we watched Macaw45 play an ancient game in which a lone security guard armed with a simple pistol mowed down an army of aliens while leading his human allies to safety. This game was Enemy: Tempest Of Violence, and every weekend for the past month my partner and I religiously watched Macaw45 make their way through this game and it was fucking fascinating.

I will do my best to explain Enemy: Tempest of Violence and I will fail. Simple words cannot fully express its awesomeness but I will try anyway.

Enemy: Tempest of Violence is an action-puzzle game in which you play as a handful of characters trapped on three huge alien ships. There are 34 time-limited levels, each with their own objective of trying to survive and outsmart your alien opponents. Sometimes you will be responsible for guiding civilians from one part of the ship to another, managing them so that they do not die of traps or alien enemies. There are also times when your goal will be to complete a task like defending a room, negotiating with aliens, or destroying their eggs. Other times you will be given a huge pistol, 1000 enemies, and the simple imperative to survive.

Your human allies are dumb and will frequently enter bullets as pictured here.

The different configurations of time and resources make each level a puzzle to solve, and this is where the subtle genius of Enemy lies. Watching Macaw trial and error through them made Enemy a captivating watch. The game gives general clues as to what to do before each mission, but beyond that, Macaw was on his own. Watching his reactions as he worked his way through the puzzles and story was just as entertaining as the action taking place on the screen.

During the Egg Mission, since you are given so little ammo, there were situations where Macaw used all of his bullets to shoot the eggs and then had nothing left to kill the aliens and vice versa. To get by, Macaw had to figure out how to make every bullet count. It meant shooting eggs hanging from the ceiling to fall and smash eggs on the floor, or dropping a grenade through a grid in the floor to smash eggs he couldn’t reach.

During the final mission, Macaw – trapped on the last remaining ship – had to find a way through a room filled with aliens who could, at any moment, blow him and his alien ally Fix to pieces. Through heartbreaking trial and error, Macaw determined he needed to empty one of his most powerful guns of its ammo, leaving it with only a pistol. He then had to go through the following rooms full of enemies, their weapons aimed at him, until he reached the alien queen whom he then had to shoot, kill and quickly pick up the scepter she dropped. before the aliens shoot him and fix it. to death.

The other missions weren’t that complex. During the self-titled “Storm of Violence” level, Macaw and his 400 allies fought their way through an attack of 929 enemies before time ran out. The comedic number of enemies filling the screen to be nothing but bloody traces on the wall and rotting bodies on the floor was pretty darn entertaining.

The attraction of the enemy also lies in its history. There’s no dialogue or cutscene, so the story is delivered only through long scribbles of text that reads like a 1950s pulp novel.

The text is littered with awkward sentences and misspellings, but the mistakes only add to Enemy’s charm. What started out as mere “failed scientists fighting bloodthirsty aliens” has taken so many wild turns. Throughout the game, you ally with a number of alien NPCs with names like Bumbum (so named for the dual pistols he uses) and Bigboss. You are committing war crimes by destroying alien eggs. One of the three ships is destroyed. The other disappears with all his human crew. Hackers present themselves one way or another. One of your alien allies tragically dies offscreen (RIP Foxy). Finally, at the end of the game, through a comedy of errors that defy description, the last human survivor has become the alien queen.

Macaw finished the game last night, and I’m so glad I got to see his final moments. The last handful of missions – from the last 300 Spartans-esque clash against an army of 900 aliens to the absolutely wacky Chronicles Of Riddick style ending “You Keep What You Kill” – has been such a blast to watch live that I don’t regret giving up the ritual of watching Ara’s streams with my partner to watch for myself. I enthusiastically told him the highlights, but he’s disappointed that he missed it. (Our weekday schedules are so different that we only watch the streams together on the weekends.) He won’t be disappointed for long; Enemy: Tempest of Violence has a sequel, and Macaw’s has said he plans to play it in the future. I look forward.