HIDDEN GEMS OF 2025
- Hubert Spala
- 4 days ago
- 7 min read
2026 is upon us! I was sitting on the edge of what to write for the start of the year, a brand new kickoff into a whole year of games to look forward to. Initially, I had a simple idea to just share my list of Top Ten Indies I played in 2025 but... Everyone and their uncle posts their own GOTY list anyway. So I figured, damn, you surely don't want me to keep reiterating how great SILKSONG is or why MONSTER TRAIN 2 is the best deckbuilder on the planet. So instead, I decided to write about something that feels closer to my heart and to the mission statement of this blog - sharing fun games in the hope that some of you might discover them here and fall in love with them. And so, without further ado, let me tell you about five fantastic indie games that dropped last year that didn't get quite the shoutouts or traction that I believe they deserve.
This is the kind of game for which I live for. And I am kicking myself in my very own butt for not stumbling upon it earlier. Because it is a wild mishmash of ideas, style and form. It's a narrative experience about bonding, friendship and forming trust. It's a high-octane anime battler with giant and awesome mechs. It's a tactical combat game with a wild system of planning a schedule of actions based on multiple pilots in your singular machine. And each of them is going to perform adequately to how much they like your sorry ass! Thus, every system here is deeply interwoven to a degree that feels utterly fresh. It's a strange whiplash of various activities that somehow merge together seamlessly. And I say somehow, but frankly, I know exactly why it works so well.
Because it's stylish as hecc. Actions have their own flourished animations taken straight from an episode of kinetic anime. Characters are expressive, motions are fluid, everything feels so very alive and sparkling with energy. The style even reminds me a bit of Code Lyoko, with those big foreheads! Now that's a blast from the past.
The game is currently in early access and you can feel it here and there; the open world is a bit barren, the animation - while amazing! - are limited and after some playtime you will start to sense the repetitions in their beats. But the developers have a lovely roadmap already laid down with plenty of new stuff coming every month! So there is a lot of goodwill on my end to see the project hit its 1.0 launch in May with a depth of content to satisfy anyone willing to give it a spin.
Oh boy, a Survivor-like. I am sure you might be tired of seeing them, and even more so with my mild but unending addiction to this particular genre. But please, hear me out! Any genre can still be iterated upon. It can show something new, something fresh. Bring to the table ideas that are transformative enough to inject new life into a mechanic milked to oblivion. FUNGUYS SWARM... isn't that, but damn it gets close!
I don't even know why it works so well. It is, ultimately, a rehash of so many systems we've already seen in the countless dozens of games of this type. You know the drill - meta-progression of levelling up skills, weapons, and characters. Events during arena combat. Relics, power up, companions, bosses, bah... It's the whole shebang. There isn't really anything uniquely innovative here, but I don't want to sound mean or derogatory, because all the systems that work here to give player agency and spikes of power are designed with an extreme degree of polish and some nouvelle notions. Weapon mutations, mecha suits, companions being more than decorations but important aspects of build crafting. Great events with unique mutators during play that are strictly connected to the main baddy of the setting. As great Todd Howard once said - It Just Works.
Again, the game is in Early Access with some extras still on the chopping block of the developers to add to the title. But honestly? For its superbly low price and the depths of content it already has inside the package, it is quite a steal. And a supreme addition to the libraries of any fan of the genre. Did I mention it's stylistically unique, too? If there's a word I would use to describe the vibe of the whole game, it would be Whimsical. Colorful, vibrant, with wacky forest creatures, fiery minions of the Fire Lord, and even more peculiar weapons and skills to play around with. It's mighty good fun.
If you follow me on BlueSky you might've noticed that I am a bit of a stan for this game. It has everything I love. Dice. Grimdark artstyle. Unique and riveting combat system. Great vibes. Just... perfectly made for me. I don't want to oversell it. It is a small game. Compact game. Three stages, same bosses, just a few characters and a rather modest assortment of weapons to play with. But, and it's a big butt, they are all crafted with great care to offer quite a plethora of options for a canny deck builder enthusiast. Or, uh, dice box collector. The dice are the main players behind the fun, as the game operates on a pretty clever blackjack ruleset. Each tool you have - and you can carry three: weapons, shields, you name it - has a target number you want to reach with your rolled dice to unleash their powerful critical effects.
The dice themselves come with a variety of types. Lucky dice always roll the number you crave. Obsidian dice have the same number on all sides. Bone dice create a bone you can use to nudge your number down if you overshoot. And so on. Add to that a variety of trinkets that have more esoteric effects or static values that you can pull out from your bag of dice to the tray, and you get a surprisingly cerebral game of chance, in which more often than not you feel quite in control of your fate. When your game plan starts gelling just right, you can immediately feel it in encounters - struggling becomes a thing of the past, as you combo off in a single turn to wipe the nasties away.
I would absolutely love this game to get the MONSTER TRAIN 2 treatment - that is, making it like, five times bigger than it is now. Dozens of characters! Twenty more dice types! Multiple various bosses per biome! More, more, more! But, damn, we are called TINY GAMING for a reason and I cannot be huffy at a title simply because I love it so much I would like more of it, forever.
This game deserves a full review, which will surely come this month because it is awesome. It should be studied by future developers - a bold claim from someone who isn't one, but as an avid gamer, I can see the genius behind it. Because, see, NEGATIVE SPACE is brutally simple. It has barely a few systems in play, with an extreme lack of obfuscation, modality, or variety of resources to work with. You have the cards of your crew, you have your energy, and that's it. Then you need to use their skills, positioning on hand, and extremely meticulous deckbuilding to make a resilient deck that works like a well-oiled machine against any scenario the game can toss at you. To be honest, it's more of a puzzler with volatile elements than a classic deckbuilder, but then I reckon this could be said about any well-crafted game in this genre.
Okay, I am getting a little ahead of myself, so what makes NEGATIVE SPACE so lovely? A lot of things. First, it's refreshing to have a non-combat roguelike deckbuilder. Yup! No monsters to slay, demons to banish. No valiant heroes with edgy blades to take into dark dungeons. It is all more soft and tender - cute and wobbly, even! You are a captain of a spaceship on a galactic mission of exploration. Assemble a crew of daring specialists to take on the wacky cosmos and all the dangers it can throw at you. Angry planets with volcanic eruptions, tough frozen globes, phenomena with electromagnetic fields... the further you explore, the more demanding the space becomes; forcing you to play suboptimally and find a way out of a conundrum. It's deceptively clever and very well thought out. Seriously, don't get fooled by the game crayons vibe - behind the mushy aesthetics lies a proper brain tizzler.
Another roguelike! Am I not daring today? Self-mocking aside, IDENTIFILE deserves a spot here because it's plenty of fun for a very simple reason - its combat system. Sure, I could wax lyrical about the unique visuals, taking us back to the times of Windows 98, with its nostalgic retro vibes. How fun the idea of a game set within a desktop turned out to be. But what makes it stand out from the crowd is how you fight the viruses and malware infecting your virtual machine. By... circling them. With your cursor. Which is also your character.
So yeah, it is a twitchy, high-octane game where every blink can cost you a hit point. You need to be fast, you need to be wary, because the enemies are designed very well to test how swift you can be. You need to draw circles around them to damage them, and they come in a solid variety of attacks to counter that. Some emit a pulse to keep you from drawing small quick circles. Others will fire projectiles to avoid or beams that limit your mobility optiosn. Other still will bounce frantically leaving trails of hurtiness you don't want to float into. It's a riot.
It is not perfect, of course. Such demand of wrist activity can't be good for my ever-developing carpal tunnel syndrome. Some cursors do not draw the line and therefore make some bits and bobs you find in the game virtually useless, which is always a bit of a bummer. But hey, it is also an Early Access title, so there's ample time to get the fixes going and introduce more tools for a variety of gameplay styles. I have hope! But to make sure the devs are happy working on this precious gem, please make sure to give it a go. Trust me, it's well worth your time.
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