Indies to Catch in September 2025!

Let's start by addressing the very real elephant in the room - HOLLOW KNIGHT: SILKSONG. I would be horribly remiss to not mention this titan of the Indie Scene coming out this month, but also, I feel that including it in my monthly 'games I am hyped for' summary is cheating, somehow. After all, it is not like that title needs any more passengers on its hype train. Everyone is looking forward to it. Everyone knows about it. It's not a public service for me to yap about it! So yeah - it is coming, we are all riveted to see it, we are likely all going to play it, so that's the duty done, let's give the spotlight to some other great games coming out this month! September is fat and rich like a greasy duck in orange sauce when it comes to awesome games, so without further ado, let's dig into this tasty dish.

STAR BIRDS | 10th September

The game is clever. From the creators of ultra-chill DORFROMANTIK and with the visual touch from KURZGESAGT comes a logical colonization game on a nifty microscale. As the industrious birds expand into the cold embrace of the cosmos, it will be up to you to create sensible chains of industry on the various asteroids and planetoids. It starts small, but quickly grows in complexity, forcing you to juggle input and output on multiple frozen rocks in space. Shuffling what goes where to empower more and more demanding pieces of engineering and fulfill the quotas of the mission is the name of the game. And it's fun!

There are some cute and engaging tacticle bits to the process - from plugging and unplugging pipes to riding your little buggy to collect resources to kickstart your economy.

There were some issues - the UI, albeit very stylish and cutesy, felt a little unclear in what's what. Every now and then, I wasn't sure if the little boxes with simplified icons were quests, requests, bonuses, quotas... I got lost more than a few times between them and needed a bit of time to learn what's what. It is a relatively minor nitpick and I hope the full version will sacrifice a little of the clean, minimalistic style to give us more concise data - remain to be seen, though. Other than that, though, it felt already like a clever little game about ever-expanding chains of supply. I do believe I will have a solid bit of fun with this title.

FLICK SHOT ROGUES | 17th September

Oh boy, this one is the big one. The demo blew my socks off, exploded my jorts, and made me do a backflip. Which is physically impossible for a gentleman of my portly stature, and yet, it happened, trust me. I cannot overstate how much of an achievement this game is, and I urge and urge everyone who is any kind of a roguelike fan to check it out - right now! In short, though, the brilliant mechanic of flicking your heroes at flickable discs of various enemies works brilliantly. Each hero has their own mechanic, their main feature, but there's also progression of abilities and arsenal for each hero to modify the gameplay. It clicks so well, it's hard to grasp in the humble medium of words! The tactile feeling, the cleverness of the arenas, and the variety of behaviours from different enemies. The impossibly fun and grandiose boss battles!

Add to that superb art style, hand-drawn, comic style with a little bit of cheek, reminding me a little of the aesthetics of the French comedic comic book Lanfeust de Troy. An upbeat set of tunes to sprinkle the adventure with some zest. And a promise of a pretty robust system for raising the challenge with a very organic difficulty spikes within your control... And we've got an absolute banger in the making. If the full game gonna be as delightful as the demo was, I have no hesitation calling this one a masterpiece that is likely to rear its head during my GOTY ranking by the end of the year.

THE HOUSE OF TESLA | 23rd September

Some years ago, by a sheet accident on one day in which I mindfully cultivates a state of boredom, a game fell into my lap. Its title? THE ROOM THREE. And no, this is not some peculiar game adaptation of the infamous movie by Tommy Wiseau, but a third installment in a delightfully complex puzzle game series. In the ROOMS you are tasked to uncover mysteries and ancient secrets by applying a keen mind and a sharp eye to manipulate seemingly mundane objects filled to the brim with hidden compartments, wobbly knobs, sliding drawers, and a variety of bits and knobbly bobs you need to put together to progress, each puzzle getting more and more complex by the minute.

I loved it, bought every game in the series, fought their intricate puzzles to their devilish completion, and then, starved for more, jumped right into THE HOUSE OF DA VINCI series - which is more of the same, but with a bit grander scope. It is no surprise, therefore, that the demo for THE HOUSE OF TESLA was an easy sell for me. More puzzles! Higher fidelity! Introduction of peculiar devices to add another layer of complexity to the conundrums! If you are a fan of brain-burning challenges, you will struggle to find a better game coming anytime soon, I can safely promise you that.

STRANGE ANTIQUITIES | 17th September

STRANGE HORTICULTURE was a weird little gem of a game. A slow-burning mystery told through methodical cataloging of plants and steady exploration of the area and personas visiting your humble shop. It is a strange game to even grade, at least for me - at some points it feels very 'on rails', a curated line of things to follow, a steady pacing of one by one discoveries. But then you figure out that under the seemingly linear progression lie quests and stories that need more of your direct input. A bit heavier investment in reading between the lines, figuring out some crucial bits of info to click a proper thing to progress in that questline. It is a the same time a rather cosy, casual experience and a more demanding, cerebral exploration of the mysteries surrounding you. I reckon that unique mixture is what made the game quite beloved by fans and highly rated!

No wonder the sequel has quite a few eyes gazing at it in anticipation. I, myself, am part of that crowd - curious what the developers will bring to the table this time, full of hopes for it to be less rudimentary in the core play of indexing things. Offering a broader selection of puzzles to tackle and making the loop of identifying items a bit more demanding. The trailer looks promising, and the Demo has been out for a while now! I should absolutely check it out.

CLOVERPIT | 26th September

BUCKSHOT ROULETTE aesthetics meet LUCK BE THE LANDLORD vibes with a bit of INSCRYPTION mystique and mystery generously sprinkled all over. That's how I would describe the feeling of playing CLOVERPIT if I were about to be very lazy about feeding you some direct and digestible comparison. But despite my feeble attempt at making it sound like some cheap rehash of great ideas, the game has teeth, and it bit into my flesh.

It's a pretty visceral experience that blends a lot of little elements in subtle, atmospheric ways. The sense of claustrophobia, for example, locked as a debtor and a gambling addict in a tiny, industrial cell, with only rudimentary tools and your one true god: a slot machine - you can feel the burden of oppressive despair hanging over you. The stakes are as high as they can get. Either you keep winning, churning coupons and coins to feed the ever-growing demand for your earnings, or down the chute you go into the literal grinder.

It's not, however, just a simple gimmick, a shocker that tries to sell you on its grim premise. The game has meat on its bones with the usual, well-designed rougelike trappings! A balancing act of investing into bonuses for your uncaring machine to give you better odds, to build combos and strategies to keep milking that income, and to stay ahead of the curve. And it's not just pure chase after the numbers - there is a plotline here, an isolation to be broken, a mysterious voice on the red phone to be uncovered! Plot, high stakes, and mysteries to solve! Count me in.