Indie News, Tips, Tricks & Ideas

Vampire Survivors is an indie title that is ripe for collaboration, and developer Poncle clearly thinks so too. Earlier this week, during the first Triple-I Initiative showcase, it was announced that Vampire Survivors is collaborating with none other than Konami to team up with one of the publisher's biggest and most beloved franchises. Yep, you guessed correctly, it's Contra.

Fallout: London, the DLC-sized mod for Fallout 4, has been delayed.

Gun Interactive has confirmed a fix for Texas Chain Saw Massacre's latest Victim is on the way.

Among the onslaught of game trailers at the terribly named Triple-I Initiative was a release date for Gestalt: Steam & Cinder. It's a 2D platformer with a heavy dose of combat and a big upgrade tree, and there's a demo available now.

In , you and your friends will brave the depths of the Old World to get spooky footage and get as many views as possible. The aim is to dive into the depths, record the horrors below, and make it out alive to upload your hard-earned footage and appease the masses.

Gross-out humor reached its apex in 2010’s Jackass 3D, when the boys slingshotted a ripened port-a-potty 100 feet into the air, and a bungee-cord bounce sent fecal matter splattering all over Steve-O — in glorious 3D, no less! That was it. There was nowhere else to go. Or so I believed.

«Bring out the party poopers» – Content Warning has sold over one million copies.

Possibility Space, an independent game studio with employees distributed across the globe, was abruptly shut down today by its CEO Jeff Strain, former employees revealed on Twitter. The studio launched in 2021 with the goal of creating a AAA title, and it had also hired industry notables like Waypoint's Austin Walker and Ubisoft designer Liz England. Its closure follows the shutdown of Crop Circle Games last month, another studio owned by Strain's Prytania Media, which he co-founded with his wife Annie Delisi Strain.

As if you needed more proof that Baldur's Gate 3 is, in fact, a pretty damn fine video game, Larian’s D&D RPG swept through the video game BAFTA awards yesterday, picking up five of the British entertainment org’s top trophies. Even more impressively - after all, Baldur’s Gate 3 winning a shedload of awards is old hat by now - its latest Best Game triumph means that the sprawling RPG-slash-fanfic machine is now the first video game to win all five of the industry’s major Game of the Year awards.

Why not catch some magical music notes while you’re out and about? Well, if gaming and music are the two loves of your life, then Melody World is perfect for you. Indie game developer Daniel Santer has just rolled out the game exclusively on Android, and it’s all about melody.

I have a rule: no more than one post about a horror game per day. The mind can only withstand so much, after all. But POOLS isn't really a horror game. It's just a walking simulator in which you explore a bunch of underground swimming pools. True, their size and layout defy explanation - what is this, a swimming pool for Slender Men? - but look, there are cute covered slides you can ride down in first-person. You know, like the ones you used to enjoy as a kid. Always that element of anxiety though about getting stuck halfway down, am I right?

Need anything from the shop? Mushroom milk? Fresh tarts? Mystical bejewelled skull? I'm just popping out to Dépanneur Nocturne, a lovely little game which came out in 2020 and I kept forgetting to post about. It's a small first-person explore-o-chatter set within a corner shop in a magical, mystical Montreal, full of things to admire, find, poke at, and chat about with the owner. And it'll only cost you about as much as a pint of semi-skimmed and loaf of Kingsmill from your own local shop.

Hollow Knight fans parched for more Silksong news are no strangers to disappointment when it comes to the big trailerthon showcases, but this week's Triple-I Initiative stung extra hard.

Some new videogame releases pounce on us like excitable Golden Retrievers, while others become apparent to us more insidiously, like undead Golden Retrievers creeping back from the grave to do their master's bidding unto eternity. Withering Rooms is one of the latter: released out of early access last week, and noticed by me just yesterday, it's a haunted mansion metroidvania in which you are a small girl in a nightie who must use meat cleavers, pentagrams and spells of self-enlargement or possession or incineration to overcome various monsters of the Silently Hilly and/or Residentially Evil persuasion. No, none of the monsters are Golden Retrievers.

The highly successful indie survival game V Rising is exiting early access on May 8, so Swedish developer Stunlock Studios has released new information on what players will find in version 1.0.

The boss of the newly independent Saber Interactive, Matthew Karch has questioned the business logic of charing $70 for a new release.

If you've been eying up your teetering games backlog and thinking to yourself, «You know, this games backlog isn't anywhere near teetering enough!», the Epic Games Store has you covered. It's just announced The Big Con and Town of Salem 2 will be its next freebies, from 18th April.

It's been lovely to see Thatgamecompany bring the likes of Journey and Flower to PC, following their debuts on other platforms long before, and oh look here comes their latest too. Sky: Children Of The Light is now available free-to-play in early access on Steam, inviting everyone to explore a pretty world full of pretty sights and sounds in this "peaceful" MMO. Having installed it and started playing it myself, the important part is: yes, you can slide down hills in this one too.

Continuing our ongoing coverage of Yellow Brick Games’ debut action game, Eternal Strands, we sat down with some of the indie studios’ leadership team to discuss the origins of their scrappy studio, and learn more about the indie world they’re using their AAA backgrounds to create. First, we chatted with CEO Thomas Giroux and COO Jeff Skalski about the studio's origins, then we spoke to Chief Creative Officer Mike Laidlaw and Lead Writer Kate MacMullin about their journey to the indie scene, and the characters and story in Eternal Strands.

After a lot of speculation and a few rumours, the Five Nights at Freddy's movie adaptation is officially getting a sequel.

Never Alone, a quiet, snowy adventure set in the Alaskan arctic wilderness, won a Bafta in 2014, and at the Triple-I Initiative stream last night we got a glimpse of the upcoming sequel, Never Alone 2. It's still the tale of Nuna and Fox journeying through aforementioned cold tundra, and like the first game is inspired by Indigenous Iñupiaq storytelling traditions, but this time the story unfolds in co-op. No release date, but we have a teaser trailer for your viewing pleasure.

Revealed during yesterday's Triple-i Initiative, procedurally generated detective sim Shadows Of Doubt largest update yet is playable right now. Dubbed "The Sharpshooter Assassin", the the patch introduces two new killer variants, both snipers who'll blast lead from vantage points around the city. And the city's expanding too, with new uber-rich gated communities as well as a contrasting shanty town. Not to mention a new auto-travel feature that lets you wander about these spots and attend to some casework without pausing the game.

The past year was the Legend of Zelda series’ moment to shine thanks to the excellent Tears of the Kingdom. Unfortunately, there’s something bittersweet about that: It means we’re likely not getting another Zelda game for a long time. While Switch ports of some classic 3D games have been long-rumored for Switch and we could always get a surprise remake à laLink’s Awakening, Link isn’t currently scheduled to set off on his next journey anytime soon.

Tchia, an utterly enchanting open-world indie game first released on PlayStation and PC last year, is coming to Switch on June 27.

It's almost tradition these days for Hollow Knight fans to spam Silksong in the live chat accompanying almost any showcase event, no matter the size, and regardless of whether they believe it's actually going to show up or not. PlayStation could announce a live stream solely dedicated to showing off one of its first-party titles, and there would still be Hollow Knight fans in the live chat hoping for a "one more thing" Silksong release date reveal.

PlayStation Plus subscribers have a lot to look forward to in the near future, and May 9 is one date that marks a particularly exciting addition to the service. PlayStation Plus offers both a rotating library of monthly games and, on its Extra and Premium tiers, a less transient catalog of titles both classic and new. Accessing any PlayStation Plus perks requires a subscription, but that also throws online access for multiplayer services and more into the mix.

Palworld is arguably 2024's most popular indie title at the moment, having exploded onto the scene earlier this year, bringing in millions upon millions of players in just a couple of weeks. That is despite the game being pretty barebones in terms of features, which is understandable given it's still in Early Access, but developer Pocket Pair seems to be doing its best to give its fans something to do.

Sky: Children of the Light, the acclaimed free-to-play «social adventure» from Journey and Flower developer ThatGameCompany, has — just shy of a year since being announced for PC — finally launched on Steam, initially as an early access release.

The Prince of Persia series’ renaissance is continuing, and I couldn’t be happier.

Laysara: Summit Kingdom, the promising mountain-themed city builder from developer Quite OK Games and publisher Future Friends Games, has surprise launched on Steam, where it's expected to remain in early access for between six and 12 months.

We first learned of Spiritfarer studio Thunder Lotus' latest endeavour 33 Immortals at last year's Summer Geoff Fest. They showed off some brief snippets of its 33-player cooperative roguelike-ing, where you'd beat up hellish monsters in a miniature take on MMO raids. If you were intrigued by it back then, I have good news. The Triple-i Initiative gave us more of a glimpse at how the game would look in the hands, with precious UI markers and the promise we'll uncover new "Torture Chambers". Lovely. No seriously, it does look quite lovely, if a touch predictable.

There are a lot of indie roguelikes and deckbuilders out there now, but few have the pure addictive appeal or cult following as Slay the Spire. Well, surprise, during the Triple-I Initiative showcase, Slay the Spire 2 was announced! The game doesn’t look to be a radical departure from the first game, but it appears to upgrade the experience in most ways, with updated visuals, new cards, enemies, and still-mysterious “new ways to play.” You can check out a cinematic teaser trailer for Slay the Spire 2, below.

It’s time to call your Pals from out of the mines and into the battlefield. Palworld developer Pocketpair teased the game’s upcoming PvP mode on Wednesday. As previously announced, the new mode is called Palworld: Arena and it will allow players to assemble teams of Pals to fight other players.

Celebrated indie studio thatgamecompany’s most recent title, Sky: Children of the Light, has debuted in early access on Steam. To mark the occasion of its chill, free-to-play MMO coming to PC, it’s knocking 85% off the cost of its masterpiece, Journey. It’s normally $14.99, but this Steam Deck verified game costs just $2.24 through April 17.

Amidst the glut of video game showcases from large publishers and Summer Game Fest, the Triple-i Initiative is trying something a bit different. This collective of top indie developers includes Evil Empire (Dead Cells DLC), Thunder Lotus Games (Spiritfarer), Mega Crit (Slay the Spire), and many more, who all gathered together to show off what they’re calling “iii games” — or “blockbuster indie titles.”

We thought we were done with the Prince of Persia franchise in 2024, but we were wrong. Evil Empire, one of the studios behind indie hit Dead Cells, is launching The Rogue Prince of Persia next month in Steam Early Access.

Brotato, one of the highest rated roguelikes of all time on Steam, is getting its first DLC this Summer alongside a new four-player co-op update.

Open-world roguelike Hyper Light Breaker is launching in Steam Early Access this summer, as developer Heart Machine affirmed in a new trailer showing off another slick boss fight.

We finally know what the Slay the Spire studio has been working on: it's Slay the Spire 2, baby, and oh boy, it looks good.

Action roguelike UnderMine is getting a numbered sequel. That number is two. The follow-up to 2020’s action roguelike is UnderMine 2. It was announced today as part of the Triple-i Initiative, which is a silly name that I’m writing with the correct stylisation out of respect to UnderMine 2’s slimes.

Revealed at the Triple-I Initiative just now, Vampire Survivors is getting another cool DLC, this one a crossover with classic Konami run 'n' gun Contra. It's called Operation Guns. Get on board. Trailed with, as is now traditional, a cool animated trailer that suggests the game is a Saturday morning cartoon and not a top down pixelated nightmare that will flush out any latent photosensitivity lurking in your skull (complimentary), Operation Guns is arriving on May 9th, so about a month away.

No one can see the future, but I've a fairly good sense of where at least 300 hours of my life will go next year. Slay The Spire II was announced during today's Triple-i Initiative stream, returning to the towering fantasy city where Steam says I've spent more than 300 hours building decks and battling monsters. While the announcement doesn't reveal much about the sequel, Slay The Spire is still my favourite roguelikelike deck-builder, so that's just grand.

If you needed one more Pokémon comparison for Pokémon-with-guns survival game Palworld, you’re in luck! The viral monster-battling and -labouring game has teased a multiplayer arena mode arriving later this year, with more than a hint of Pokémon Stadium to it.

Laysara: Summit Kingdom, a breathtakingly gorgeous city builder set in a fantasy world inspired by the Himalayan region, is out now in Steam early access. The meditative mountain environments are the sort of tranquil backdrop I’d happily stare out for hours, possibly with a Bonobo album and some incense, which is helpful, because the actual game is aiming to be quite a challenge.

Today is Tuesday, statistically the day of the week least rife with wacky hijinks, whimsical calamity, or even, dare I say, madcap antics. However, if you want to buck tradition, you could do worse than playing What the Car?, the upcoming absurdist physics game from What the Golf? and What the Bat? devs Triband. You can do it right now, actually. It’s just gotten a free demo on Steam, alongside a proper release date of September 5th 2024. Don’t do it if you’re actually driving, though. That’d be lunacy. We only promote the fun kind of lunacy here, like the type shown off in What the Car?’s trailer at the Triple-i initiative.

Deck-building roguelite Slay the Spire is getting a sequel.

As part of this evening's Triple-i livestream, the developer of Darkest Dungeon 2 has detailed a new campaign mode, Kingdoms.

Vampire Survivors is heading to PlayStation consoles this summer.

This April, several different indie studios have come together to hold a showcase of their own instead of relying on ones from companies like Microsoft, Sony, or Nintendo. Over the course of this 45-minute event, developers and publishers such as Darkest Dungeon 2’s Red Hook Studios, 33 Immortals’ Thunder Lotus, Dead Cells’ Evil Empire, and Hyper Light Breaker’s Heart Machine will showcase new trailers for their upcoming titles.

Today’s the birthday of the Triple-I Initiative, a 45-minute showcase of game announcements and trailers from the likes of Slay The Spire devs MegaCrit, Darkest Dungeon devs Red Hook and Dead Cells custodians Evil Empire. What makes a “triple-I” game a “triple-I” game, as opposed to (hawk, spit) a regular indie? I've given it some thought, and I think the answer is: "has more money and status than most indies, but not, like, Call of Duty levels, and also one our partners is Gearbox Publishing, so this is perhaps ‘indie’ in the Geoff Keighley sense."

Sony has announced the game catalogue additions for PlayStation Plus this April for Extra and Premium subscribers.

A number of Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes Kickstarter backers have been met with unexpected shipping costs, which in some cases have nearly doubled the amount people will pay.

Ori developer Moon Studios has offered a small slice of news on a potential third entry in the series.

I've worked from home for most of the past decade, but it was during the pandemic lockdowns that I was finally indoctrinated into the world of co-working streams, pomodoro timers and lofi beats to chill/study to. I'm better now, but I absolutely see the appeal of Spirit City: Lofi Sessions, a "gamified focus tool" that just launched on Steam.

Adding to the new content in Update 1.6, a dedicated Stardew Valley fan has created a mod that adds an extra 116 lines of dialogue for gift giving sequences. Stardew Valley Update 1.6 has already provided massive dialogue, cutscene, and gameplay additions, and players have been hard at work providing feedback for bug fixes while also updating and improving mods for the indie title.

Palworld developer Pocketpair has warned players on Xbox not to load up their multiplayer saves following reports that doing so will result in all current progress being lost.

This month's RPS Game Club pick is Lethal Company, the indie co-op horror game where you must collect scrap for a mysterious Company or face the ultimate penalty... being fired.

Rebecca (RPS in peace) was our resident monsterfucenjoyer for a while, and she was well up for Sucker For Love: First Date, but was slightly disappointed that as a horror-themed dating sim it leaned away from the dating and well into the horror. Now the sequel, Sucker For Love: Date To Die For has revealed a release date of April 23rd, and seems to be leaning into horror even more, while also still being a dating sim featuring an eldritch goat god with massive cans. Yet the presser also says "no scares this time". I am confused, which is why it's probably good there's a demo on Steam to sort of give you a taster.

Hit indie video game Dredge is getting turned into a live-action, feature length movie – and we're already hooked. 

Black Salt Games and Story Kitchen announced their intention to make a movie based on the 2023 horror indie game hit Dredge.

Physics-based roguelite Noita has received a second Epilogue update that adds a whole host of new features, tweaks, and modding capabilities.

In a year packed with rad fishing sims, Dredgewas arguably the best. It came out in March 2023 and filled the wet, eldritch-horror-shaped hole in the year's gaming catalogue — and now, it's going to be a movie. Developer Black Salt Games and media company Story Kitchen are partnering to turn Dredge into a live-action feature film. The project's logline is, «Think The Sixth Sense on the water. A grounded atmospheric cosmic horror blend of HP Lovecraft and Ernest Hemingway.» That's not not a description of Dredge as a video game, so it looks like we're off to a fine start.

The Splintered Sea is an upcoming expansion for beloved battlements blasting building game Besiege, taking its so far decisively land-based action to the high seas for some aquatic anarchy. You’ll be able to pit your custom war machines rudder to fin with enemy fleets and underwater nemeses when it launches May 24th on Steam.

Noita! A wizardly 2D dungeon crawler without compare, in both good and deranging ways. Man, it feels like only yesterday I equipped something without looking and suddenly everything that damaged me caused me to teleport at random. I flew through entire levels this way like a Tardis set to shuffle, bumbling into one enemy posse after another, granted a few seconds at a time to assess my surroundings before the sorcery swept me deeper.

Boss makes a dollar, I make a dime, that’s why I poop on company time. This statement has become a well-worn mantra of the working man, but a recent indie game challenges its wisdom. Please Leave Me Alone, I Need To Poop is a game about balancing biological needs with the demands of the workplace, but it takes a quick hand at some WarioWare-style minigames to meet both urgent needs.

Deep Rock Galactic's Season 5 update - which launches in June 2024 - will allow you to reactivate and replay old seasons of Ghost Ship's celebrated dwarven asteroid mining sim. Here's how that works, direct from the bellowing bearded faces of the developers themselves. By which I mean, a new Steam blog. I'm not sure it's possible to get a good dwarven bellow going when you're talking about cosmetic unlock progression, but by all means reorganise this article into some kind of drinking song. Keep it clean, though - there may be elves reading.

Buckshot Roulette is simple, and simply unsettling. Sat across the table from a mysterious opponent clad in a deeply unnerving toothy mask, you pick up a shotgun loaded with shells. Then, you decide whether to point the gun at your opponent or yourself, and pull the trigger. Some of the shells are live, and others are blanks. Guess correctly, and you get to go again.

Balatro, the acclaimed poker-themed roguelike from developer LocalThunk, has just received its first big content update — officially known as Update 1.0.1c — with the patch currently in Steam public testing ahead of a full release «in about a week».

The deck-fixing roguelikelike poker of Balatro is chuffing excellent, no doubt, but my main criticism has been that the higher difficulty modes are just a bit boring. Having beat them myself, I didn't find them a fun or interesting challenge as much as an annoying one that required too much to go right. I'm glad to hear that they're being tweaked in an upcoming patch, which you can now test in a public beta on Steam, and even the lowest difficulty setting will be tweaked. Other changes include improved (hopefully) Steam Deck performance, balance tweaks, and better Joker-related Tags.

Indie gaming’s biggest names will livestream a digital showcase for “iii games” on Wednesday, promising new looks at more than 30 titles from studios and publishers behind hits like Darkest Dungeon, Spiritfarer, V Rising, and Risk of Rain 2.

is a delightful new puzzle game with a botanical twist, taking players around a sprawling mansion and its grounds as they try to sprout rare plants. The title comes from Balloon Studios, a developer founded by Laure De Mey, who previously worked on other unique puzzlers like, and cozy-centric publisher Whitethorn Games. Though it's a very short journey, still manages to be memorable, and provides a laidback solving experience that's quite relaxing.

We have the solution to Wordle on April 7, as well as some helpful hints to help you figure out the answer yourself, right here. We’ve placed the answer at the bottom of the page, so we don’t ruin the surprise before you’ve had a chance to work through the clues. So let’s dive in, starting with a reminder of yesterday’s answer.

The sus team of voice actors for Among Us' upcoming animation is complete.

You can now dive back into DOFUS Touch, the free-to-play MMORPG since it just made a comeback on mobile devices. Ankama, the French indie game studio, launched the game in 2016. They have now given a new lease of life to it with a fresh English server, a better early-game ride and a cleaner UI.

The long-serving top producer of legendary RPG series Dragon Quest has stepped down from the role, according to sources that spoke to RPS Maw tribute site Bloomberg. Yu Miyake, who has been involved with numerous DQ games since he joined Enix in 1989 as marketer on DQ books, is moving on to head up Square Enix’s mobile games.

Vlambeer co-founder Rami Ismail is leaving the studio.

Vlambeer, developers of Nuclear Throne, Luftrausers and Super Crate Box, among others, called it quits back in 2020, so that co-founders Jan Willem Nijman and Rami Ismail could work separately on other projects.

2024 has kicked off with a list of bangers ranging from Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth to Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth, and as excellent as those games are, I'm growing increasingly desperate for more bite-sized titles to maintain a varied gaming diet. And Castaway, an upcoming indie that bills itself as a "short and sweet adventure" and looks like a perfect tribute to The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, feels like just the thing.

GamesRadar+ is thrilled to confirm that our biggest digital showcase event of 2024, the Future Games Show Summer Showcase, will be broadcast on Saturday June 8.

Hellblade director and Ninja Theory co-founder Tameem Antoniades is no longer at the Microsoft-owned studio.