Indies to Catch in March 2026!
- Hubert Spala
- 1 day ago
- 7 min read
March is here! And with it, Spring sprung out, with glorious sun, longer days and banishment of all snow and ice. Glory be! But with the wakening of the world around to the new season, the gaming scene picks up the pace too, and we have quite a few stellar titles coming to us this month. As is tradition, I would love to shine a little spotlight at the few of them that I am most excited about. Here we go!
ESOTERIC EBB | 3rd March
Finally, I've been waiting for this moment my whole life! Well, passing the poetic exaggeration, the fact remains that my hunger for a proper DISCO ELYSIUM successor is unending. We are having quite a few of them emerge from the murky waters, but the harsh reality is that most will fail to reach the astonishing standards set by the original. And the best creators not only know that, but also bet that they might not need to try to emulate that whole vibe. Instead, they should borrow the flow from it and make something uniquely theirs.
ESOTERIC EBB has that juice in it. It is, very much, DISCO coded. What do I mean by that? You're a bit of a bumbling open canvas, a persona of your own making that converses with your inner self and your gut to find out what the heck is going on. And how to interact with whatever, indeed, is happening around you. It's a book you play, choose your own adventure with sprinkled-in numbers and gamey checks. To make it stand out even more, it is a very different tone - it's not grim and tired, not blasé and filled with rainy-day ennui. It's colorful, it's vibrant and more leaning into Python'esque humor. It is meant to be wacky, zany and a bit unhinged, but more for the hahas, and less for the 'aww man, this sucks, let me ponder on it for a bit'.
But the demo proved to me this is a story I want to roll with. Possibly multiple times. I want to be a cleric that can eat ALL the apples and converse with walls. I also want to be a cleric who is most uncaring of his tasks and political views but is very much interested in items in other people's pockets. I want to help the workers of the world and then, next time, side with the ultra-rich trade guild to make it big, money-wise. The world written here is intriguing as well - magic is strange, and all sorts of folks of every shape and size wander around, muttering about their baseline alignment. It's weird and embracing that weirdness, and for me, this is a recipe for a game that I want to live through. Let the dice roll and the story engulf me.
LUXMAN: MOONLIT MARKET | 3rd March
I enjoyed the demo to this game quite a lot, even though it is one of the many rehashes of BALATRO formula and rather shameless about it, too. You know the drill - there's a threshold of points and you aim to beat it by creating good combos with the bits and bobs that the game offer. However what makes it stand out is how we are getting there. Instead of adapting one of the thousand popular tabletop games, like many other developers do, LUXMAN offers a fresh take of their own making! You are a bit shady and a bit sleazy master of a traveling amusement park, and your goal is to utilize as few attractions and charms as possible to squeeze all the money you can!
It is a pretty darn interesting formula - you have eager patrons lining up in a few queues, with their own depths of pockets to pilfer. But you must make sure, of course, that they are happy to part with their coins by offering attractions they find interesting. And your little booths, rides, and shows each have their own values, too, so matching isn't the only challenge - you must make sure your "deck" of stuff, your trinkets and passives all line up to score big each and every time. To help you with that, there are some secondary systems here that make the game unique - mainly tilting the scales of what kind of fun folks will enjoy. This is a clever mechanic that makes sure no matter which direction you take your build, you'll have a proper chance of winning.
Add to that a lot of player agency across the board - you can meld cards with your attractions, modify them quite a lot. Control your discard and flow of cards, alter stuff with your trinkets and one-time use items to help you in a pinch. It is a bit of a resource management play in here, but it's all bound to your deck and your game plan. It's fresh, it's fun, and it has my attention.
SLAY THE SPIRE 2 | 5th March
If there is a title that is a locked hit in the making, this is definitely it. SLAY THE SPIRE was a groundbreaking deckbuilder. A titanic contribution to the meteoric rise of the genre, the main reason why we have a dozen of these released every week. It was just so... robust. So tight. Seemingly endless combos, a cornucopia of artifacts and cards to create your own terrifying card engine of doom. And then, of course, clever bosses that might wag their finger at your murderous deck and say "oops, it turns out my gimmick cancels your stuff, how nasty of me." It was a riot to play, and many players sunk hundreds of hours into it.
Now we will see if the sequel can beat the current king of deckbuilder games, at least in my eyes - MONSTER TRAIN 2. This puppy has it all, is vast beyond reason, and extremely fun, since every clan plays so very differently. SLAY THE SPIRE 2 has quite a task ahead of itself - not only does it have to be better than its predecessor, but the competition in the genre was never more cutthroat. Still, if anyone can pull it off... Yeah, let's say there is real hype here, with plenty of card-tossing addicts foaming at the mouth, waiting for this puppy to drop. Me included, naturally.
There was no demo to play, so the devs are keeping the game relatively close to their chests. Plenty of info drops in development diaries, so we do know that the game is shaping up to be more of the same - which is excellent; this is what we need - but bigger. Grander in every way imaginable. More cards, more artifacts, more combos to uncover, more enemies to bash. I honestly couldn't ask for more, but we'll see once the game drops if it also includes some breathtaking new features and mechanics to boggle the minds of veteran deckbuilding enthusiasts.
AETHER & IRON | 31st March
Now this, for me, might be a giant sleeper hit that nobody should be sleeping on. Demo was... intriguing, to put it lightly! AETHER & IRON is definitely an ambitious project that is trying its hardest to elude simple classification. It's... so many genres blended together, and only time will tell if this fusion will create a scrumptious dish or something bold but unpalatable. I am leaning towards the former because it has already shown that it has the vision as well as the chops to execute it well! Now what is the game about? It's a narrative-driven tactical combat vehicular noir decopunk RPG. That's a mouthful, yeah. And while it is easy to make a stumble in any of the aspects of such a multifaceted game, so far it all comes together lovingly!
The narration is fun, the characters - alive and interesting. The world? Curious, a blend of soft magic in the form of the titular Aether and almost BIOSHOCK-like aesthetic, but done with its own flair. There is a bit of DISCO sprinkled in, with conversations being a big part of the game and unfolding story, as well as multiple checks with dice rolling to keep playthroughs interesting and offer different outcomes based on how you want to play your character. Then there is the whole vehicular combat bit! A tactical turn-based grid in which you'll use one of your - it seems! - many vehicles, crew members, items, and abilities to take down a variety of high-speed challenges. It's pretty damn gorgeous, too, with so many things to look into that it might genuinely be a bit much!
But I am more than eager to sink my fangs into this one, to suckle on its marrow and see what kind of flavors it can bring to the table. It has all the elements I love! Deeper narrative, unique worldbuilding, charming characters to follow, and tactical combat to test my wits! It's looking pretty darn great, and I just hope it will deliver on the promises that the trailers and demo laid down before us. It might be an indie darling in the making.
RACCOIN | 31st March
This is a dumb game and I love it. Yeah, okay, so I don't mean dumb in its harsh, dismissive way. I know how it sounds, but the dumbness here is very smart! See, it is dumb because it is a god damn coin pusher machine... Ever seen one of those? A little gambling booth where you toss coins and a slow shelf pretends to jostle the pile, giving you a feeble impression that you're just a single lucky push away from a cascade of money? Yeah, those machines. And as expected in nowadays gaming, some sneaky devs decided that gosh - this can be turned into a BALATRO-like roguelike, like literally everything else in existence!
And so, here we are, tossing coins into a booth to make the numbers go up.
What makes it a game I can recommend is how very well-crafted this is, how cleverly designed. Sure, yeah, the dumb, slow-moving shelf is not going to do you any favors, but this is where the rogue elements come in with a variety of Wacky Coins you can feed the pile. And there are many of those. Oh, so, so many! Coins that merge and grow bigger. Coins that spawn bouncy clones. Coins that explode, sending piles of others down the cliff of glorious payout. There's a combo meter; there are passives that modify a variety of in-game components. There's a very real potential here to create engines of endless money, with a fantastic collection of coins, chips, prizes, and even slot expansions for the coins you can spawn. And despite the random nature of the core play here, you even have some tactical control here! Not only by shooting your coins at proper angles, but also in the order you need them added to the growing pile.
So yeah! RACCOIN is perfectly made to tingle the gray matter, not with puzzling challenges, but in the very real monkey-brain "Oooh, this does THAT and THAT does this!" kind of way. Seeing all the interactions, watching the heaps of gleaming coins cascade with a massive waterfall, mmm, this makes the brain happy, makes it crave more...
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