Here's everything featured in Day of the Devs' 2024 indie showcase
Woolly shooters! Sandwich musicals! More!
The showcases continue! Following yesterday's batch of cosily tantalising indie games via this year's Wholesome Snack jamboree and just ahead of the triple-A glitz and glamour of The Geoffs, Day of the Devs has returned to spotlight its own bunch of promising indies.
And as always, it's delivered. This year's showcase brought us intriguing glimpses of everything from star-slinging puzzling to a musical about sandwiches featuring Shakespeare-reciting by children. We've got ever-shifting mansions, witchy broom-racing, convenience store management, fascinating felt creations, and even some sort of haunted 1-bit TV station tumbled straight out of the 80s. And if that's sufficiently whetted your appetite, you can see everything featured in Day of the Devs' latest showcase below.
Faraway
Faraway, from developer Steph Thirion, is a 'musical and infinitely replayable' minimalist one-button puzzle game that challenges players to create constellations by connecting stars together - all while extracting handy life energy and maximising scores. There's a little bit more to it than that, of course, with talk of score-multiplying loop-building and other mechanical nuances to add depth - and it even features a couple of different puzzle modes to really get those brain cells humming. Faraway comes to PC next year.
Ultimate Sheep Racoon
Ultimate Sheep Racoon is the work of Clever Endeavour Games, and is described as a spiritual success to the studio's Ultimate Chicken Horse. It's a party game of tumbling, side-scrolling, bike-riding action, where up to eight players can work together - either locally or online - to create perilous obstacle courses featuring the likes of whirling axes, rotating platforms, and conveyor belts. Then with the track built, it's time to see who can race to the finish line first. Ultimate Sheep Racoon is coming to PC and consoles next year.
Sleight of Hand
Sleight of Hand is a third-person "stealth-action deck builder" that sees players, in the role of Lady Luck, taking on their old witch coven using a cursed deck of cards. It all unfolds across the "hardboiled, rain-slicked" streets of Steeple City, with developer Riffraff Games promising the "experimentation and expression" of deck builders, mixed with the "possibility space and environmental strategy" of stealth-sims. It doesn't have a release date yet, but it's coming to Xbox, PC, and Game Pass.
Demon Tides
Demon Tide, from developer Fabraz, is a vibrant 3D platforming adventure with a big seamless open world - and it looks a little bit like Sonic the Hedgehog with a touch of The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker's island-hopping seafaring thrown in. At the heart of all this is Beebz and her crew, on a voyage of self-discovery across the oceans of Ragnar's Rock. It's a journey blending platform challenges and secret-hunting built around an "expressive" range of chainable, upgradable, and modifiable abilities forming a flexible traversal toolkit. It's got a "cinematic" story, multiplayer, ghost challenges, extensive character customisation, and you can even slap stickers all over the world for other players to see. Demon Times is out next year on PC.
Kingmakers
There's a very good chance you're already more than a little familiar with developer Redemption Road's Kingmakers; its mesmerising blend of third-person shooter and strategic medieval city builder - featuring literally tens of thousands of soldiers careening around at any given time - has already turned enough heads that it's being made into a movie. And it's still not out yet. This is a game of time-travelling medieval warfare in which players and their friends very much get to bring a gun (or tank, or rocket launcher, or motorbike) to a sword fight in the name of saving future-Earth. Its Day of the Devs showing featured a bit more footage, and it's coming to PC early access via Steam and Epic next year.
Recur
Angry dogs, bad weather, unhelpfully numberless doors; all things I'd imagine are quite high on the list of annoyances for posties. And to that, you can probably also now add the apocalypse, thanks to developer Kaleidoscube's Recur. What you've got here is a side-scrolling narrative puzzle adventure in which an "average postman" is suddenly faced with the end of the world. It's a calamity brought to life through a striking art style and some appropriately apocalyptic scenarios that see massive objects hurtling around the screen. Bridges collapse, vehicles rain from above, bombs explode - but our postie friend can escape (or cannily utilise) the carnage by controlling the flow of time. There are puzzles to solve, platforms to traverse, and secrets to discover - and all that'll be possible when Recur launches for Steam in 2026.
Blue Prince
This first-person "atmospheric architectural adventure" from developer Dogubomb already has puzzle fans a-chatter. It presents players with an ever-changing house they'll need to explore as they search for the elusive Room 46. Each of the manor's shifting chambers - arranged on a 9x5 grid - promises mystery, strategy, puzzles, and secrets, but players can only venture so many steps before the house reconfigures itself again. "The deeper you go the more you will discover," teases Dogubomb. "The more you discover even deeper you'll go." I am super excited for this one, and it's coming to Steam in spring 2025.
Incolatus: Don't Stop, Girlypop!
And then, in a dramatic tonal shift, we've got Don't Stop, Girlypop - a "Y2K girly-pop arena-style movement shooter where standing still is not an option". The trees are dying and the fairies are fleeing, all thanks to a nefarious mining corporation. That's where you come in, pinging around the place while keeping the golden rule in mind: "the faster you go, the more damage you deal and the more you heal". There's also a dress-up meta game - inspired by 90s CD-ROMs and 2000s Flash games - and it's out on PC "soon".
LOK Digital
Based on Blaž Urban Gracar's book of whimsical puzzles, LOK Digital is word-search game built around an entirely invented language. The more you play, the more words you'll learn, with new rules being introduced as you go - meaning by the end of it all, you'll be fluent in the LOK language. On top of its core puzzles, there are secrets to discover, plus daily puzzles where you can compete against friends or strangers on global leaderboards. LOK Digital launches today on PC and is coming to mobile next year.
Neon Abyss 2
Veewo Games's frantic 2020 roguelike run-and-gunner Neon Abyss is back and as garishly hued as ever. Neon Abyss 2 promises the same relentless action as its well-received predecessor but brings a few new twists to the table, including an all-new combat system enabling players to mix and match fight styles as they rip through enemies using their arsenal of melee weapons and firearms. There's also talk of powerful stackable items capable to creating "crazy combinations" each run, and if that's left you curious, Neon Abyss 2 is set to debut on Steam next year.
Crescent County
Crescent County, a "game about underground street racing and kissing your friends", is an open-world witch-tech adventure that's part life-sim, part hurtling around on the back of a motor broom. When you're not making friends or smooching them, there's money to be made by doing delivery jobs, herding sheep, or fixing leylines. But will you use your earning to spruce-up your home or use it to trick our your broom? After all, once the sun sets, it's time to head out into the night for some "crunchy, flow-state" racing. Crescent County doesn't have a release date yet, but it's coming to Xbox Series X/S and PC. And if you fancy giving it a go before then, developer Electric Saint is having a play test right now on itch.io and Steam.
PBJ: The Musical
For all the unquestionably good stuff seen elsewhere during Day of the Devs latest showcase, PBJ: The Musical absolutely stole the show for me. Inspired by Romeo and Juliet, developer Kamibox tells the "badly researched story" of the beloved sandwich's tragic origins - all as players guide a strawberry and disillusioned peanut across ten wildly surreal stages, each accompanied by a different song. Stages are fashioned from the animated cuttings of vintage cook books, it's all voiced by children struggling their way through Shakespeare quotes, and it features music (and remixed music!) written by Britain's Got Talent contestant Lorraine Bowen. PBJ: The Musical is coming to iPhone and iPad next year, and I can't bloody wait.
Curiosmos
Developed by Céline & the Silly Stars, Curiosmos is a delightful-looking "whimsical space sim" that gives players the tools to create solar systems from the ground up. That involves gathering stardust to fashion new planets and moons before diving down to shape the land. You can conjure clouds, rain, thunder, mountains, and volcanoes into existence - even animal and plant life that can be tweaked through evolution. It's not all chill cosmic expansion, however; an insatiable black hole is closing in and player must stop them from swallowing up their solar system. Curiosmos comes to PC in 2025.
Bionic Bay
Who'd want to be a scientist in a video game, eh? You're either being typecast as the baddy or on the run from extraterrestrial forces after some laboratory mishap. I'm pretty sure the protagonist of Bionic Bay (from developers Mureena Oy and Psychoflow Studio) falls into the latter camp, given he's trying to escape an ancient biomechanical world filled with "imaginative technology, deadly traps, and hidden secrets". Thankfully, he's got some sort of teleportation device to help him navigate Bionic Bay's striking sci-fi vistas and physics-based puzzle platforming - and that's alongside time control powers, gravity flipping abilities, and a kind of comically dramatic force punch. Oh and there's some sort of online racing component against other players too. All this arrives for PS5 and PC on 13th March next year.
InKONBINI: One Store, Many Stories
I do love a title that gets straight to the point. Nagai Industies' InKONBINI: One Store, Many Stories is a slow-paced, meditative game about working in your aunt's small-town convenience store in the early 90s and hanging out with its customers. Officially dubbed a "slice-of-life narrative-driven simulation", part of your time will be spend stocking shelves and keeping things in order, but as regular customers come and go, you'll gradually piece together details about their lives - and, depending on the choices you make, maybe even influence their stories. InKONBINI is coming to PC, Mac, Xbox Series X/S, PS5, and PC in 2025.
Feltopia
What happens when you take a bunch of fuzzy hand-crafted visuals and turn them into a cosy take on the arcade side-scrolling shooter genre? Why, you get "cute 'em up" Feltopia, of course. Described as a "felt-crafted stop-motion video game" - and by me as "ooooOOOooooooOh" when I saw the trailer - Feltopia casts players as a sheepherder with magical powers on a quest to save their flock. On a fundamental level, it plays out much like any arcade shoot-'em-up of yore - but instead of obliterating enemies into atoms, you'll transform them back to their true forms using your elemental powers. Sadly, Feltopia is still some way out - it's coming to Steam in 2026.
Blippo+
"Hooray!", is what I thought after receiving a factsheet for Blippo+. "Finally I've got something that'll help me parse its inscrutable Day of the Devs trailer!" But no - here's what it listed under features: "non-demand", "linear broadcast", "????? enabled", "commercial-free", "over-the-top", "read-only", "end-user information system, with robust electronic guide". What Blippo+ appears to be though, is an FMV game featuring fictional 80s public broadcast TV footage squeezed through a 1-bit filter. Why, I don't know, but I'm definitely eager to find out. It's developed by Blippo+, comes from Thank Goodness You're Here publisher Panic, and is due to arrive on Steam "soon".
Hyper Light Breaker
Hyper Light Breaker - developer Heart Machine's fully 3D rogue-lite spin on its acclaimed Hyper Light Drifter - has been a long time coming. It was initially announced in March 2022, with a release of spring 2023, but has seen a number of delays since then. But now, finally, Heart Machine has announced a new release date, revealing it'll be launching into Steam early access on 14th January next year. It looks to be a very different beast to its predecessor, each run challenging players to venture out from their upgradable settlement across a "vast, ever-changing" world of massive, open biomes and deep labyrinths - where they'll defeat "hordes of enemies and gigantic bosses in frenetic third-person combat". It all sounds closer to Risk of Rain 2 than Hyper Light Drifter, but given Heart Machine's strong track record, it's still one to watch.
TankHead
And finally, there's developer Alpha Channel's TankHead, set in a war-torn sci-fi world that's become uninhabitable for humans. Unhelpfully, what's left is still rich in resources, and the only way to scavenge them - and to survive - is to "tele-project" into drones that can roam the world unhindered through the medium of GREAT BIG TANK. What you have there, then, is a bit of a roguelike based around vehicular exploration, where the goal is to venture out, take on huge bosses, then use any salvage to upgrade your tank and improve your chances in tougher fights to come. TankHead's got some pretty nifty creature design - the robot with an entire motel on its head is a real winner - and it's out today on the Epic Games Store.