Hey everyone! I’m helping the Claymatic Games team share Knuckle Creek with you all. After seven years of development, they’ve finally announced that it’s coming to Steam on 29 October.
The team have settled on $5.99 / £4.79 / €5.79, after a lot of going back and forth. They wanted people to be able to pick it up and get their mates involved without it being a big expense. After looking at similar games and talking it over, this felt right.
Anyway, here’s our earworm of a the trailer. I’m really pleased to help them get it out there.
We're working on a Foxy Dumplings a Cozy Cooking Sim where you run your own foodtruck with Dumplings! Just implemented new animation in the game so sharing some dancing vibes for a good Wednesday!
It's a weird hybrid of rogue(very)lite ARPG and shop-keeper, with a unique combat system that requires you seek out shadows to manage your secondary resource and power your special abilities.
You have 30 days to pay a debt to Death, progressing through a grimdark world inspired by Breton folklore. Scavenge by day, sell by night. Perks, meta-progression, crunchy combat.
This is our first public demo, after 2 years of development and months of aggressive playtesting. Any feedback at this stage will be hugely influential to the next stage of development, so I'd really love to know what you think (ratings/comments on Itch are also really appreciated).
NB: HAWKER contains zero generative AI content. We're a team of just 3 friends based in Australia & New Zealand; all meatbags, no clankers!
You might have seen my post about reviewing 130 Roguelikes and because I am releasing a game myself, I was curious how the current Steam release landscape even looks like. I have been reviewing/posting about Indie Games for 25 years now and started looking into the 450 recently released Steam games that were sent to my Curator account over the last 2 weeks.
I managed to look at 100/450 for first impressions and figured you might all find this interesting as well and finding the occasional gem you havent heard about yet.
Some games I played for a few hours, others for 0 as they didnt run and most somewhere in between.
As for me: If you want to check out the game I am working on, you can find Rogue Elements on Steam or Itch.
So onto my post! Would love to hear which games stuck out to you, or if you had other games that recently released under the radar games that would suit this list.
Stats after 100 games:
8 ❤️❤️❤️
19 ❤️❤️
20 ❤️
27 😑
26 👎
Some takeaways
- I am immensely impressed that I found 8 ❤️❤️❤️ games that I would put into my pantheon of my favourite games/best Indies I ever played over the years, many of them relatively unknown.
- I am even more impressed that almost half of the games I played were good to some degree. ❤️❤️❤️ and ❤️❤️ games I would play without hesitation any time, but even ❤️are original, unique and offered something that I found worth playing for and talking about, especially considering the online debate about the Steam store being flooded with "no effort slop". Absolutely not the case
- So much roguelite. Its an immense crutch for game design when people just slap roguelite elements onto their games, in exchange for "not needing to do game balancing" or have any other game progression loop. Good games with Roguelite elements still landed at the top of my list, but not because they relied on the roguelite elements to carry their games. I feel like this is a huge thing I want more of these developers to be aware of. Do not design only around Roguelite progression and there is value in a properly balanced gameplay challenge.
- Most games in 😑and👎 werent outright bad either, but lacked polish, clearly arent ready for a Steam release, have some bugs, UI issues or are early experiences for someone dabbling in game design. Again, surprised how few games were outright "slop" that entirely relied on AI.
- About 5 games were outright bad AI slop games, which is a number I expected much higher.
- I would estimate about half of the games used AI in some form. AI in most cases was used as an added layer for a developer, not to outsource the entire game making project. Most often it was used for localization and synchronization to give the game an added layer of polish. I may disagree on that type of AI usage, but I feel like most developers used it to plug a whole in their skill arsenal or to reach more players, which feels well intended at least.
2D Pixel Soulsvania, apparently a medium sized hit in 2024 with a new DLC. Really good stuff with an interconnected puzzle like overworld and great combat.
Gorgeous and deep automation game has some cool ideas with its programmable robots. Absolutely going to play more of it and it honestly deserves a lot more attention.
Absolute fever dream of a lofi artsy gory horror shooter with incredible art direction, incredibly satisfying gunplay and a million more things you wouldnt expect here.
Really cool extraction shooter with a proper PvE mode and all kinds of crazy space and time bending anomalies, that makes exploring this world a blast.
First autoattacking game that I genuinely love because of how hard and unforgiving it is. Very satisfying skills, tons of variety and stuff to discover, tough challenge. My jam.
Very, very cool zeldalike with challenging combat, intricate and difficult puzzles and a sizable world to explore. This game has a ton of very cool ideas. Put this on your wishlist.
Genuinely great, couldnt stop playing the entire morning. Good risk/reward, super satisfying deck building and cool enemy threats that make you reevaluate your options.
Block machinations puzzle. This is ri-di-cu-lous-ly good puzzle design. I was in awe at these designs multiple times already in the first few levels. Top tier, every puzzle enjoyer needs to play this.
Almost shockingly good, space exploration, upgrading, combat, building up your fleet, quests and some very pretty space and particle effects. Good stuff.
Electrical Grid management game where the city develops around yourr infrastructure build by a power engineer. Goes into deeper systems and abstracts them enough for missions in a videogame. Really good.
Addictive jump & run auto battler by the Nidhogg devs, in which your weapons fight for you. Satisfying loop, good upgrades, unique art style and a lot of madness.
Fighting game, where you win/lose by dismembering and severing arteries in potentially one hit. Won by severing someones feet and waiting for blood loss while he crawled. Community is hit or miss.
Roguelite with very satisfying combat upgrade mechanics, where you give new effects to your 5 hits as upgrades. Sometimes a bit fiddly and could use visual variety, but overall a really good time.
Autoattacking game, with a ton of crazy upgrades, pets and a solid Roguelite loop. Sometimes a bit frustrating to encounter elements that will need more grinding, but varied abilities makes it satisfying to play.
Really cool horror game with a repeating timeloop that makes you investigate your surroundings at different times of day. Camera drives me a bit insane, but otherwise very interesting.
Short and very unsettling point and click adventure game that is more art than a puzzle game. Absolutely worth it for the experience if you enjoy that. Read achievements and item descriptions.
At its core its a buying low/selling high shop simulator, but the added mystery through exploration and how items interact with each other is very fun to explore and rewarding on replays
Very cute buy high-sell low RPG that slowly gets more intricate over time with new mechanics, cute and actually funny dialogue, some romancing options and ship management.
Square force is a chaotic multiplayer FPS that pits you and up to 11 friends against relentless hordes of unforgettable enemies.
Elemental weapons, hundreds of skills and abilities, endless chaos, and an absolute random mess of fun. check out the free demo on Steam.
I am preparing some screenshots for my steam page.
It's hard to keep consistency, it's hard to decide what it should go in there, especially because I am still developing and there are so many things that have to be created... but yeah, here are some snapshot of how it's looking like.
Watch a lively village, study it's villagers and find their weak spots to spread your corruption.
A sociable person will carry a curse that spreads on contact through the village.
Secluded people respond more strongly to your dark visions.
Lure them ALL to the forest and make them yours.
Only the villages priest stands in your way and counteracts your plans by burning your cultists and doing exorcisms.
Yes, they will resist... Let them.
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Kickstarter just went online yesterday & the first backers are in 🙏🏻
Hey everyone! Thanks for checking out this boss fight! I’ve put a lot of work into balancing it so it feels rewarding, not frustrating.
If you enjoyed this and want to support a solo dev, wishlisting the game on Steam would mean the world to me 💙 https://store.steampowered.com/app/5201210/NON__The_Forgotten_Hand/?beta=0
I'm working after hours on an Arkanoid-inspired game with paddle upgrades, random elements, and boss fights. The project is still evolving and I honestly don't know where it'll end up yet. Let me know what you think of this direction!
I’ve been working on a game called Phosphor Command, a real-time tactics game with a base builder behind it.
This post is about how your squads move together: formations, the formation designer, and AUTO, which lets the game command your squads for you.
Without a formation, if you select a group and click somewhere, your squads bunch up around that point and all end up coving the same area. This is acceptable early on and for getting from A to B, but the game has a line of sight system, so whatever your squads aren’t looking at is somewhere the enemy can come from there.
The formation bar gives set formations; FREE, LINE, WEDGE and COLUMN, plus any formations you’ve designed yourself.
A formation decides where each squad ends and how they move around the point you click. Each squad finds its own path there, so they work their way around the terrain rather than walking through walls, they attempt to keep a perfect shape.
There’s also a SYNC toggle. With SYNC on, the group moves at the pace of its slowest squad, so on open ground they move as a block. With it off, faster squads like scouts will run ahead on their own. Sometimes that’s what you need, and sometimes it’s how you end up with a dead scout.
The formation designer is the part I’ve spent the most time on. You can edit LINE, WEDGE and COLUMN, and there are four custom slots you can rename. Each formation can have multiple positions on a grid.
Each position can accept any squad, or be marked for a specific troop type. Marked positions are filled first by the nearest squad of that type, then the remaining squads fill the gaps, nearest first. If you bring more squads than there are positions, the extras form ranks behind.
So you can build a wedge with a scout on point, snipers on the flanks and a medic in the middle, and the game puts the right squads in the right places whenever you use it.
You can also lock a facing for each position, in 45 degree steps relative to the direction of travel. This means a rear squad can keep watching behind you, or your flanks can keep watching outwards, while the group moves. The editor previews each position’s field of vision, so you can see whether your formation actually covers all around or leaves a blind spot.
Now let me explain "Auto Mode".
AUTO is for when you want to hand over the thinking of your troops and let the game run the operation for you. It has two stances.
CLEAR sweeps the map sector by sector, starting from where you landed and working back and forth across it. A sector counts as cleared once your squads have made sure there are no hostiles. The force splits into multiple fire teams that take the next two sectors, and if the teams get too far apart, one holds while the other catches up.
RUSH goes straight for the most recent contact.
If the objective is known, both auto modes direct troops towards it.
Under AUTO, every squad type has a role. Scouts take point, snipers hang back on high ground, medics stay near the centre of the force, and the UAV pushes out ahead of the sweep. A squad that drops below 35% health falls back to the medic and rejoins once it’s back to 70%.
When in combat squads with a shot hold and look to cover to fight rather than walking into the enemy. If one fire team gets pinned down by two or more enemies, the other team moves to flank.
The thing I cared about most was that AUTO should never fight you for control. The moment you give any order, or press hold, AUTO switches off and you’re back in charge. So you can let it handle the sweep, step in when something goes wrong, and switch it back on when you’re done.
One thing to be clear about: AUTO doesn’t use your formations. It moves squads by their role instead. Formations are for when you’re the one in control.
I’ve attached a show case showing on these features. The formation bar, the designer, facing, how squads are assigned to positions, and AUTO working through a map. The sector grid in the AUTO section is drawn for the video to show how the sweep works; in the game you just see your squads doing it.
I am getting really tired of the new AAA games... maybe I'm just getting too old but there is so much flashy, overwhelming gameplay. I thought maybe it was just my nostalgia marring my viewpoint so I started playing some older games and indie games and wow, it was so much more enjoyable and relaxing for me. I'm pretty much avoid AAA games unless its something I'm really interested in (like Final Fantasy).
The problem I'm having is its so much harder to FIND good OLDER or indie games nowadays with google searches showing links upon links of Ai generated "top 10" articles. Reddit is OK, but I notice the same games get upvoted and recommended over and over and over. Or, in some subreddits like this one, it's a lot of devs promoting their own work, which is fine but not what I'm looking for. I tried some google searches such as "top ps2 games before:2020" to target articles before the AI wave and that game me much better results.
However, since around 2020 i noticed its a lot harder to find the true "best of", and now theres self promoting AI bots which make it even harder. I guess the point of what I'm asking is, how are people finding new indie games to play nowadays, besides reddit, which I find is increasingly unreliable?
Hey everyone! I'm making ROOM CLEANER, a top-down roguelite where one bullet kills you and one bullet kills them. You kick doors, throw barrels, grab robots as human shields and stack cards until your build breaks the game.
Hey everyone, I recently built Xetodus, a space MMO that runs entirely in your browser.
You can explore 750+ procedural star systems, fly 50+ ships, and train 20+ skills. You can also land on planets to build colonies, set up drilling operations on moons, and fight other players or take on PvE battles.
Explore the universe, work toward your next ship, or find a planet to call home.
No separate download required. It’s free to play, with an optional paid membership for additional features. Mobile supported also! WebGL or WebGPU support required (any modern browser).
Feedback on what’s fun, confusing, or missing would be genuinely helpful!d
AI was used in the creation and assisted development of Xetodus
Eddie on Fire, is a fully-narrated visual novel in which you explore the world and discover the multitude of enriching people, animals, and experiences surrounding Eddie before he embarks on a treacherous journey to rescue his mother.
We’ve been working on an indie horror game called Tumbal 1985 and wanted to share it here.
It’s set in an office in Indonesia. You play as a janitor, and part of your job is simply cleaning the office. But while cleaning and exploring, you’ll start finding old documents, objects, and other clues about what happened there before you arrived.
The game is inspired by Indonesian folklore, with some creepy encounters, jump scares, and multiple endings depending on how you play (Multiple endings only available on full release).
Playtest is now open and we also register our game for Steam Next Fest next week. We’d really love for some of you to give it a try and let me know what you think. Any feedback is very welcome!
Little Ghosties is a cozy 2D idle desktop companion game where adorable ghosts live inside a terrarium on your desktop. Hatch, raise, and collect unique ghosts as they grow from eggs into fully grown adult ghosts.
We just hit 20k wishlists on Steam! It is currently in Early Access but 1.0 launches on the 23rd of Oct!
