Indies to Catch in September 2026!
WANDERBURG | 8th September
An arcade game like grandma used to make! In all due seriousness, this feels exactly like a game of yore, with primary purpose being pure, unadulterated entertainment. I do recall the demo fondly - it was a riot of explosions, wobbly, ramshackle structures of threads or wheel roaming through a vibrant landscape, either hunting for my own castle-on-a-rig or running away from my hungering structure and rapacious knights.
I knew this game is going to be a banger when I approached a small farmstead and both the household and its windmill dug themselves from the ground and tried their darndest to skeedadle away with quite some haste. It made me snort out loud. It’s a lighthearted game with great bones on it - who wouldn’t want to just roll through the meadows on a cartoony Mortal Engine, upgrading their arsenal, their power and facing ever-growing threats in form of titanic, lumbering strongholds the size of small cities? WANDERBURG promises simple fun polished to an edge with great visuals and themes - I am sold, completely.
SHROOM & GLOOM | 10th September
This was an easy shoe in for me. It’s a bit of a secret code to my heart. Shrooms and Gloom!? That’s like two things I like the most in life! I am such a fun guy, after all. Mush room for that gloom. Anyway, the mood and gnarly visuals to begin with were great hook, but what made me excited was, of course, the gameplay. Had a chance to bash through the demo a couple of times, and this is one clever little mamma jamma of a deck builder with lots of small creative ideas to freshen up this rather exploited genre.
First, the double deck. A well-crafted idea here to have your combat deck and exploration deck separated, and for good reasons, too - it’s not merely a thing for inconveniance, but a well-made division of power and game plans. A strong exploration deck gives you plenty of opening, ways to acquire new tools, upgrades and modifiers. But of course, you cannot entirely neglect your combat deck, or the ever-scaling enemies will finally run you over. It’s a fun bit of balancing, a great little way to make sure you have more things on your mental stack than just finding a neat little combo to lock into your cards.
With lots of ways to build yourself up, funny cards, consumables and what felt like a bucketload of options even in the demo version I have a good feeling that this one is going to be an easy win for any fan of deck builders.
CLOUDBREAKER | 15th September
It’s a fun game. I am very tempted to just leave it at that and consider it my own little act of writing trolling. Mostly because writing about a pixel-art indie roguelike shoot’em up isn’t exactly going to win me a Pulitzer. It’s a beaten horse, a cutlet reheated so many times it has discovered new elemental states of being. And yet, somehow, CLOUDBREAKER demo still managed to convince me that it was worth the wait!
I cannot really tell you why, I am not sure myself. It might be immersive progression. The grind for unlocking new parts feels organic, coming back to the workshop, researching new components, upgrading the hulls, modifying the arsenal available. It’s so well made that every run feels like progress was made. Then there is the whole on the fly levelling up system, where you get new gear to cram into your tight hull, use connectors wisely to buff your arsenal and spend scrap to level up your weapons into divergent lines of evolution. It works smoothly, giving you a sense of agency that I always treasure in a roguelike game. And so, I do firmly believe that I will not be having a hard time sinking many hours in this game once it comes out.
NIVALIS NIGHTS |29th September
Now this one has been on my radar for quite some time now, even before it got its recent renaming. It’s an interesting concept from start to finish - a slice of life in cyberpunk dystopian town, that doesn’t try to focus on the dreariness of it all, doesn’t aim to teach us any grand obvious lessons about corporate evils, but rather let us submerge into the setting as your most Average Joe or Janette. Goal? To just scratch up a living, running a small ramen shop, which - if governed well - might grow into a well-oiled feeding hole for the masses, just profitable enough to let us enjoy our place in life.
A cooking joint sim might not sound exciting, but that’s the trick here - the main loop, so to speak, is just an opening. A thing to Do. But the game isn’t called CYBERPUNK SLURP SHOP SIM, right? Because whole things promises to be much more open - the part of the city you dwell in to be a living thing, with people living their lives, crime and corruption evident all around you. A breathing beast behind the neon and flagrant advertising, waiting for your exploration. It might be hard to say what the real scope is going to be, but the project is definitely growing for quite some time, and it might deliver something much more in depth than a simple shop sim. That is my hope here, as someone who always waits for another shot of DISCO in my life…
TOEM 2 |29th September
This one, for me, is a simple matter of expectations. TOEM was pure delight. A whimsical game with superb little story, packed to the brim with charm and sweetness. And on top of all the happy vibes, it was also a very fun game to engage with - with superb structure, light puzzles and clear goals set to fit the whole photography premise. Finding solutions to each challenge and just wandering around with your lens ready to snap a pic on moment notice just felt right. It wasn’t a long experience, but it definitely stuck with me in the form of warm little memory.
And so, it should not be a surprise that I am already recommending looking forward to this sequel. Just like any good game the devs do not even need to do that much to win me over - I would be perfectly happy with just More Of The Same formula. Just news stages, new puzzles, new places to plight my hobby of snapping pics. But of course, I am very open to mixing things up and equally excited about all the new ideas that can be brought to the table. Either way, TOEM 2 feels like a game that has no chance of disappointing me, and so, I am happy to reserve a few evenings for it.
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