Indies to Catch in October 2025!

Spooktober is upon us! My favorite month of all, the true start of Autumn, and in the hearts of many people, the coziest of all months. Rains and gloom, shortening days, trees turning gold, brown, and orange. A perfect atmosphere for giant cups of steaming tea, a soft blanket, candlelight, and of course, relaxing evenings with some lovely games to pass the time. Sadly, Autumn often means a rapid entry to the Sickness Season too, and I was not spared - got some severe infection squeezing my poor lungs, and trying to get better. Nonetheless, the show must go on, and there are quite a few interesting games on the horizon I'd love to share with you, so let's roll!

DICEALOT | 9th October

Like a well-adjusted addict, I often prowl the dark corners of the Web Central Park in search of my next score. Dice games have a big sway over me, and since I do not wish to become a dedicated gambler and lose my meagre possessions away, I scratch that itch within the safety of fun dice-driven roguelikes. Fortunately for me, there are a dozen of them coming out every month, so I am not exactly starved of choices! DICEALOT managed to catch my attention with its presentation - a very interesting art style, a mix of stark contrasts, simple colors, and sharp stylization based on traditional gaming cards. It's a carefully struck balance, because the game at the same time has this aura of being old school while it displays sharpness and more modern user experience sensibilities. Neat!

What really sold me, however, was the gameplay. Obviously, the biggest challenge in working with dice in a roguelike structure comes from the insane oversaturation. It was tried, mixed, tweaked, reworked, and mangled in literally countless ways before. We had all sorts of variants with the dice, from Yahtzee-based combo games to dice pokers, craft-your-own-dice rogues, you name it. And so, to impress and leave a bit of an impact, you need to do something a little out of the box here... or, at the very least, execute an older idea to some level of mastery that can earn players respect and interest. In the case of DICEALOT it's all about really, REALLY pushing your luck. Scoring combos is never going to be enough to progress into your run smoothly - you need to constantly try to 'brake' the limits, roll over to new rounds, skim the edge of change to score big hits, save your crucial lifepoints, and give your enemies no chance to retaliate. With lots of upgrades, special dice, and a variety of mechanical twists, this one seems quite promising. A single nitpick? Some systems need better explanation - especially handling shops! I lost 2 dice I bought simply because I had no clue how to 'equip' them...

BALL X PIT | 15th October

Damn, I am excited for this one! The Demo was an absolute banger, from start to finish. What a wild and well-executed idea. I remember when I was a little lad, playing Arkanoid and its many offshoots left and right. Can't even explain it, but there was something hypnotic about bouncing the ball and watching those colored blocks eat it and crack open. I already played a few roguelikes using the block-busting framework, but they are still far and few between - so the concept still feels fresh. What BALL X PIT does with it, however, is pretty much next level! Your warrior constantly spills tiny balls that are easy to omit and forget, a tiny pellet gun, but also tosses your primary orb. Which, of course, can vary greatly in type and power. From a spiked iron ball that causes enemy pawn blocks to bleed to a gusty wind sphere that can ignore them as obstacles and fly through entire rows of enemies. And of course, you can have and nourish multiple of them!

The combat feels amazing, really. It's never passive, which is a bit of a strange achievement for such a game genre. What do I mean by that? Of course, in a proper block burster, you need to stay active, right? Moving to catch your ball, bounce it properly. It is the same here, but there are so many extra layers to this experience. Archer enemies litter the screen with projectiles, and melee pawns push and punish you for staying close. And you can move freely up and down the long path ahead, taking your fight to any cluster you deem dangerous to your progress. It's great, high-energy fun. Add to that funny meta-progression with base building, firm dedication to the whole idea of bouncy balls, and we have a banger in the making.

SPOOKY EXPRESS | 21st October

Logical puzzles ahoy! I am quite a fan of a good little brain-sizzler, and DRAKNEK & FRIENDS are a studio I safely trust with having a clever little game ready. They are, after all, masterminds behind a devilishly clever A MONSTER'S EXPEDITION as well as innovative and damn cool LOK - a cryptic language decoding puzzle game. They know what's what. If anything, I would even consider it a warning! Do not be tricked by the game's cutesy charm and toy-like aesthetics - knowing the canny minds behind the game, it will very likely contain stages so nasty that it will make your brain ache and sweat for the solution. Which will feel so obvious once achieved!

But yeah, if you're a logical conundrum solver par excellence, SPOOKY EXPRESS looks like a great game to look forward to. Halloween-ish charm, building proper tracks to transport a variety of monstrous customers across the level. Each with their own requirement or condition to toss a log under your thinking legs. It has the trappings of a good puzzler because, on the surface, the premise and the concept look pretty damn simple. But you just know that stage after stage, the demand for twisty, uncanny solutions will grow, and frankly, I am here for it. Always pushing such games until a stage that breaks me, and then I am glad to shelf it, unsolved, as a testament to my limits.

DISPATCH | 22nd October

Another title I am excited for to no end. I was a major Telltale Games buff. A Fan through and through, devouring their games left and right. So what if the story was more on rails than initially expected? So what if the choices were cosmetic? For a player, they never really feel so, especially if you roll through them once and heck - the writing, the impact, the feelings. They were real to me, Dad! WOLF AMONG US still clings to me, in a good way. So when I heard that vets from various studios - Telltale included! - formed a new indie company AdHoc, and decided to start their folio with a choose-your-own-path storytelling game... Well, I was interested to put it mildly.

And then the coveted demo of DISPATCH dropped. I played it. And I crave more, oh, so much more. It was an ideal teaser, a perfect little lick of the spoon to taste the rich, creamy meal they are cooking up there. It has it all! Fun interactions, well-set pacing, great and easygoing worldbuilding. Took me a minute to get sucked in! And the best part? It's more of a game now! Like, the narrative bits are still the grand flavour of this soup, the primary ingredient, but you playing the role of a sort of manager for the team of unruly heroes also means you have a very active part to play. Managing the team, sending them on suitable missions, avoiding conflicts or clashes, or... of course... enabling them. Yeah, I am itching to get my hands back on this story, and I am adamant that once I start playing this, I won't put it down until I see the credits roll.

THE SÉANCE OF BLAKE MANOR | 27th October

Remember SEXY BRUTALE? No? It was a clever, stylish little game about being at the right place at the right time. A sleuthing game about managing and controlling time as much as memorizing events, pathing, and schedules of dramatis personae through the complex mansion. Frankly, the gamer was ahead of its time - I bet it would make much bigger waves nowadays, in the Golden Age of Indies. But I am bringing it up because THE SÉANCE OF BLAKE MANOR strongly reminded me of that title. A manor full of dark secrets. Mysteries afoot! And a daring detective that must traverse this mysterious place, meet with uncanny characters, and find clues to unravel the truth behind a certain disappearance! Add to it occult imagery, secretive cults, personal vendettas... Sounds like a cauldron of miserable lies ready to be spilled over!

The fun part looks to be exactly the pressure of time. The fact that every action, every fumble, every goose chase after a red herring might mean an end to a certain plotline, a closure of a path we never managed to discover. There is a promise that time matters more than mere resources - it also makes certain events and people be in various places. And you being there or not can influence the outcome. Sounds like a great potential for multiple playthroughs! Of course, it remains to be seen how well this will be executed, how many branches a linear story can contain. But the sharp art style, sombre tone, excellent voice acting, and a curious premise of a story unfolding with or without you... I am curious, and I will surely check it out.