The reveal trailer introduced you to Cel, a young combat technician. Her task is to unravel the mysteries of an underground facility. As Cel navigates this abandoned world, you’ll face monstrous creatures and a haunting environment where nothing is human. Survival demands adaptability, with tense combat and a system for upgrading gear to battle twisted horrors. Much like Little Nightmares, End of Abyss prioritizes exploration, but it sets itself apart with branching pathways and hidden areas that deepen the game’s eerie allure.

End of Abyss stood out during the showcase, grabbing attention with its unique top-down FPS view. This style has drawn comparisons to Playdead’s Inside. It is set to release in 2026 on PC via the Epic Games Store, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S.

The post End of Abyss Revealed Official Trailer Following Multiple Teases at Summer Game Fest 2025 first appeared on IndieGames.

Set in the decaying ruins of Toska, a fictional Soviet nuclear complex in Siberia in 2034, you control NODE, an autonomous AI robot tasked with preventing a catastrophic reactor meltdown. The game introduces a unique timeline-based command system, where you sequence actions (e.g., moving, jumping, interacting) to solve puzzles.

Game that will challenge your brainpower

The gameplay is highly detailed and demands precision. You can choose how many seconds or tenths of a second your character moves, then command it to jump over obstacles and continue, all to reach the next checkpoint. However, the path to stopping the nuclear reactor won’t be easy: it’s filled with traps, crumbling walls, holes, and stairs.

The gameplay revolves around a unique command system where you don’t control NODE in real-time. Instead, you sequence actions like moving forward, jumping, pausing, interacting, or turning on a timeline and press “play” to execute them. You can precisely set the second or tenth of a second for each action, ensuring your character reaches the next checkpoint.

But the journey to halt the nuclear reactor is challenging, packed with traps, decaying walls, gaps, and stairs. If NODE fails to reach the goal, you rewind, adjust the timeline, and try again, creating a trial-and-error loop. The game requires careful planning, as actions must sync with environmental elements like moving platforms or timed switches.

Puzzle games can always surprise with their creativity

NODE: The Last Favor of the Antarii offers more than just pure gameplay, it’s accompanied by a story. You can interact with your creators, choose narrative dialogues to learn more about the world, or simply execute given commands. However, it’s all quite linear, so you don’t have much choice in certain matters, and it’s unclear whether your decisions impact the story’s progression. The game’s world is also rather dark and highly atmospheric, enhanced by stunning, beautifully detailed graphics.

Unfortunately, this game has a significant flaw: you can’t view the entire map while setting commands on the timeline. Instead, you must first make the robot move, explore, and scout the area, then go back to adjust and plan its movements. This isn’t ideal as it wastes a lot of time. While you can speed up the movement to mitigate this, the game also features many repetitive puzzles. Though this is somewhat acceptable once you realize the entire structure has its own logic, it can still be distracting.

The demo version effectively showcases the game’s core features; everything is well-executed, and I recommend giving it a try. It was engaging to dodge lasers and mathematically calculate the exact time needed for specific actions. However, the game feels unforgiving with your time, expect plenty of repetition and frustrating moments. Despite this, it’s an impressive title that puzzle enthusiasts will likely love.

The post [PREVIEW] NODE: The Last Favor of the Antarii – Spoj zagonetki i platformiranja first appeared on IndieGames.

You play as Vasily, a local driver with a big heart and a knack for fixing problems. His main goal is to breathe life back into his struggling village, one delivery at a time. Whether you’re hauling cargo across bumpy fields, towing a broken-down car, or helping a neighbor get their harvest to market, every task feels personal. The game’s world is alive with various characters and relatable moments. It’s the kind of place where everyone knows your name.

What makes Zarya special is its unique blend of freedom and storytelling. One minute you’re navigating overgrown paths to drop off a package, the next you’re roped into a fishing trip or a roadside repair job. The game leans heavily into those post-Soviet vibes, think creaky old cars, faded billboards, and that classic “we’ll make it work” attitude that defined the era.

Your trusty vehicle is the star of the show, and Zarya lets you tinker with it to your heart’s content. You can upgrade your ride to tackle tougher terrain or trick it out for style, turning heads as you rumble through town. The game’s car collection, full of automotive nostalgia, feels like a piece of history. Sure, your vintage ride might not be the fastest, but it’s got character, and so does the game itself.

The post Russian narrative simulator Zarya is a game you never knew you needed - until now first appeared on IndieGames.

Instead of relying on cheap jump scares, the game focuses on a slow, creeping sense of dread. Your goal is to solve puzzles to escape these maze-like environments, which are clearly inspired by the viral “backrooms” phenomenon. It’s less about fighting monsters and more about the quiet, disturbing horror of spaces that just feel wrong.

The Playrooms expansion takes that familiar formula and twists it into something much more personal and deeply unsettling. You’ll find jungle gyms, finger paintings, and playpens all rearranged into a bizarre, dreamlike nightmare. “We’re exploring the infinitely imaginative mind of a child”, says Valentín Iribarren, the game creator at Montraluz. “Mixing those shared memories of childhood into something unsettling was really exciting for us.” The result is a new level that adds about 50% more content, making Dreamcore feel bigger and even weirder than before.

Right now, Dreamcore costs 8.99 € across all platforms. But with the Playrooms expansion arriving on June 17, that price is going to jump to 11.99 €. Here’s the really good news: if you buy the game before that date, you’ll get Playrooms and two more chapters planned for 2026 completely free.

“We wanted to reward our early adopters,” explains Iribarren. “Current and new players can still grab the game at the entry price and enjoy every expansion as a free update.” It’s a pretty sweet deal for a game that’s already earned an impressive “Very Positive” rating on Steam from over 680 reviews.

The post Playrooms Expansion Is Coming To Dreamcore This June, Dives into Childhood Nightmares first appeared on IndieGames.

The moment I saw the trailer for The Midnight Walk during Sony’s State of Play last year, I was completely hooked. Imagine this: a dark fantasy adventure, but every single bit of it is made out of clay, giving it that classic stop-motion feel. It screamed “Tim Burton meets Little Nightmares” to me, and right then, I just knew it was going to be something special.

Since the game launched on May 8th for PS5, PS VR2, and PC, I’ve had the chance to play through its wonderfully haunting world. And I’m calling it: The Midnight Walk is one of the most unique games ever created. This horror title from MoonHood Studio and published by Fast Travel Games is incredible. Its art is just breathtaking, the storytelling is emotional, and it’s one of those journeys that stays with you long after you’ve finished playing.

A Tale of Fire, Loss, and Redemption

Your journey takes you to Moon Mountain, guiding Potboy’s flickering flame through a dark, twisted land where all sorts of monsters are eager to snuff him out. The story unfolds across five distinct tales of fire and darkness, each one introducing different characters, like a village of disembodied heads or a creature consumed by grief. It really digs into heavy themes like loss, hope, and finding redemption.

Every single monster, every tree, every broken-down ruin feels like it was sculpted by hand in clay, then scanned into the game, and animated with unique stop-motion tremor. And the music? The soundtrack, with its clarinet and saxophone melodies, just evokes heartfelt emotion that really gets to you, especially when Potboy lights up a forgotten flame at the end of each chapter.

Gameplay in The Midnight Walk keeps things pretty simple, but it’s really clever. You use Potboy’s flame to light candles, solve puzzles, or even distract the scary monsters. You’ve also got a little gun that flings matches, and a special button to shut your character’s eyes, which actually does interesting things like turning chasing monsters into stone statues.

Now, some players, including me, felt that the sneaking parts could be a bit clunky, trying to get past those Crawlers sometimes had me fumbling around. But honestly, the game is really generous with its checkpoints, so it wasn’t a big problem. The puzzles were great too; whether it was using a wardrobe to teleport or just staring down glowing eyes to clear a path, they kept me engaged without ever getting frustrating. This game isn’t really about complicated mechanics; it’s all about soaking in the amazing atmosphere and the powerful story.

“Every single monster, every tree, every broken-down ruin feels like it was sculpted by hand in clay.”

It’s not perfect, but offers a unique experience

Sure, The Midnight Walk isn’t perfect. That 39.99 € price tag definitely raised some eyebrows on Steam, and I’ve seen people complain about the game being so short. And I get it, forty euros for a five to six hour experience can sting if you’re not totally won over by the unique art style. The story can also be a bit vague at times, which might leave some players scratching their heads, but for me, that ambiguity actually added to the dreamy, almost surreal vibe.

Compared to some of the other big games that already came out out this year, like Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 or Blue Prince, The Midnight Walk doesn’t offer the deep role-playing or endless replayability of a roguelike. But, it doesn’t need to. The team at MoonHood, some of whom were apparently on the verge of quitting game development altogether before this project, truly poured their hearts and souls into The Midnight Walk.

Honestly, you can absolutely feel that passion in every single moment of the game. It’s a powerful reminder of why I absolutely love indie titles, they take the creative risks that big, “AAA” games rarely dare to.

“The Midnight Walk is a passion project made out of love for art and gaming.”

Review copy provided by the publisher

4.3

The post The Midnight Walk – Jedna od najjedinstvenijih igara ikada stvorenih first appeared on IndieGames.

You play Senka, dragging toys from shelves and arranging them on a table to cast shadow silhouettes on a wall. The goal is to recreate specific shadow outlines by rotating, placing, and stacking objects, with no single correct solution, as long as the shadow matches, the level is complete. While you progress, the shadows unfold into a wordless narrative, conveyed through discovered objects.

The game’s ever-changing room evolves with the story, revealing new details and atmospheric settings that enhance the nostalgic vibe. Drawing inspiration from games like Unpacking and Gorogoa, Projected Dreams combines minimalist mechanics with emotional storytelling, that will appeal to fans of cozy and narrative-driven titles.

A demo released during Steam Next Fest in February 2025 earned praise for its intuitive puzzles and art. The full game, on the other side, offers around five hours of content, with 50 puzzles and a replayable free-play mode unlocked after completing the story.

The post Cozy puzzle game Projected Dreams gets release date first appeared on IndieGames.

Deckline is a single-player card game with elements of psychological horror, strategy, and subtle storytelling, offering a 2-4 hour experience across and an infinite competitive mode. The game uses the Russian card game Durak (meaning “fool”) as its core mechanic, blending it with a grim war narrative to create a tense experience. Set in a war-torn Eastern Europe during the 1990s, inspired by the Yugoslav Wars, it places you as a soldier in a hopeless situation, out of ammo, encircled by enemies, and abandoned by command.

Has anyone heard of Durak before playing this game?

Each player (you and AI squadmates) receives 6 cards from a 36-card deck, with one suit designated as the trump suit, placed below the deck for reference. You then take turns attacking and defending: the attacker plays one or more cards of the same rank, and the defender must beat each with a higher card of the same suit or a trump card, which can only be countered by a higher trump. If the defender succeeds, roles switch, but if they fail, they take the table’s cards, and the attacker continues. After each turn, you draw to replenish your hand to 6 cards, unless already at or above that number. The goal is to avoid being the “fool” – the last player with cards.

However, the game’s tutorial is overly basic, pointing you to Steam guides for more depth, leaving you confused for the first hour. This means you will definetly fumble through, place cards on the desk without clarity, and even when it starts to click, there’s no satisfying “aha” moment. Success often hinges on luck and the AI’s cards rather than skill. This doesn’t make it bad, but it struggles to hook you early. Its unique premise and atmospheric vibe are the ones that keep you intrigued despite the steep learning curve.

It shares similar gameplay vibes with Buckshot Roulette or Liar’s Bar, emphasizing high replayability. But, don’t expect a Balatro-style experience, this feels more like a social, real-life card game you’d learn from your grandparents, grounded in realism rather than flashy mechanics. There are some clever small features, like turning your head around to observe the room, switching on a lamp when lights dim, or taking pills to reduce arterial attacks that impact your mental state and can black out your screen.

The game takes place in a first-person view inside a dimly lit bunker, featuring low-poly squadmates, a battered card table, and scattered war relics. The PSX-style graphics, with blocky textures and muted colors, create a retro-horror feel, enhanced by a grainy VHS filter. Card animations are simple but clear too, with easy-to-read suits and ranks, while environmental effects amplify the war’s creeping dread. The aesthetic nails the gritty 1990s Eastern Europe vibe, with small details like squadmates’ nervous movements and flickering bunker lights.

“It shares similar gameplay vibes with Buckshot Roulette or Liar’s Bar, emphasizing high replayability.”

Really needs a multiplayer mode

Deckline is a short game, offering a complete experience in about two hours, depending on how quickly you grasp its mechanics. Priced at just €2.99, it’s an affordable option with decent quality, ensuring you won’t feel like you’ve wasted time or money. However, its shortness and lack of surprising twists hold it back. The absence of multiplayer is a missed opportunity, and the leaderboards don’t feel important. This is the kind of game where you might mute the game sound, and listen to music while playing to chill, despite its heavy atmosphere and storyline. It’s still just Durak.

I dare to say this is a bold, experimental war-horror card game that blends Durak’s simple mechanics with the grim atmosphere of 1990s Eastern European conflict. However, basic card mechanics, a repetitive bunker setting, and a short, thin story hold it back from being as good as Buckshot Roulette for example. Still, its brief experience is worth a try and you won’t be dissapointed.

“Deckline is a short game, offering a complete experience in about two hours.”

Review copy provided by the publisher

3.8

The post Deckline – Hrabra, eksperimentalna kartaška igra first appeared on IndieGames.

Deck of Haunts is a solid game, flawed but surprisingly polished for a full release. Blending deck-building with roguelike progression and strategic depth, it shines in a 1970s American setting. You play as a sentient, malevolent 1920s art deco mansion, in other words, a haunted house with a pulsating stone Heart. Over 28 nights, you will have to lure humans, exploit their fears, and drain their essence to grow your power. During the day you construct new buildings for the mansion, and get news cards, while at night you haunt.

Starts strong, but falls flat as it progresses

My biggest problem with Deck of Haunts is that while it starts strong and hooks you, it grows frustrating and repetitive the longer you play. By day 15, it feels like you’ve seen 70% of the game. Every playthrough begins with the same house layout, cards, and fixed calendar of events. You can unlock or upgrade cards and rooms during a run, but these are too sparse to feel impactful or counter the steep difficulty spikes. When a run ends, you lose all progress, no upgrades, no new modes, just back to the same cards, layout, and calendar. Worse, every run forces you to replay the same stage-setting tutorial cards, which gets old fast.

In Deck of Haunts, the tile-based building system lets you create maze-like layouts with 10 room types: basic (guest, living, kitchen), special (Phobia, Mechanical, Sacrifice), and one unique. You can expand rooms by matching cards, like merging guest rooms, or use special ones like the Phobia Room to drain sanity or the Bell Tower to summon a Witch spirit.

The interface is user-friendly, with mouse-scroll rotation and a “show layout” button, but it lacks an undo option or merge warnings. Building does feel fun, but the small starting grid and fixed Heart room limit creativity. Upgrading rooms for bonuses, like a Mechanical Room boosting action points, adds strategy, but it’s underused, and larger rooms don’t always pay off. The biggest letdown is the lack of randomization and this basic system feels too simplistic.

Each night 2-5 humans (sometimes more) invade your mansion, with health, sanity, and traits like Pathfinder (faster movement) or Bleeder (more damage taken). You play 34 sinister cards to attack, drain sanity, or add Tension (enhancing insanity effects), using 3 action points (AP) per turn, which can grow through combos or rooms. Some cards hit lone humans, others affect rooms, and can also teleporting victims. Your mission is to block humans from reaching your heart.

“Tile-based building system lets you create maze-like layouts.”

Deck of Haunts struggles with weak mid and late-game progression

Humans include civilians, door-smashing police, priests (untouchable unless alone), and occult investigators wielding items like Pistols or Holy Books that shift their actions. Killing a human in front of others causes panic, making them flee but draining your essence. On paper, everything sounds great, but it lacks meta-progression beyond minor card unlocks. You can only swap cards at fixed points, and most upgrades are underwhelming, like a slight damage boost or a single cost reduction. Humans start with low health and sanity (8-9) but scale to the twenties, while your damage barely grows, making it feel underpowered.

The balance is all over the place too. The damage types are seriously unequal, the sanity damage is extremely fiddly and relies on you building ‘Tension’, but building tension fades after a single use except in rare circumstances, so you’re really better off just throwing lots of cards at the problem. On the flipside, physical damage offers a lot of control due to synergies with unique mansion rooms, making more strategic, easier to use, and outright better.

Beyond the issues mentioned, Deck of Haunts also struggles with weak mid and late-game progression. Building special rooms adds fun and combos, but there’s little room to experiment. When enemies grow stronger, the real challenge kicks in, forcing you to construct more rooms under tight action point limits, which can feel harsh. The game doesn’t hold your hand, but it also restricts your freedom too much.

The most frustrating part is the Pathfinder trait some humans have, letting them start in a random room instead of the entrance hall. Sometimes, that room is right next to your Heart Room, the one you’re desperately trying to protect by building a maze. If you get a few humans spawning nearby and lack cards to redirect them, you take damage through no fault of your own, making your choices feel pointless.

“The game doesn’t hold your hand, but it also restricts your freedom too much.”

The full game feels stagnant

Deck of Haunts has almost no narrative. no deep lore, campaign, hidden letters, or story elements to uncover. You just survive and move on. While you meet new humans from time to time, the experience feels bare-bones. The spooky atmosphere is decent, with passable graphics and generic horror vibes. The game leans on psychological horror through card effects, but without thematic depth, like possession or monster summons, it feels overly simplistic.

In the end, it’s a creative roguelike deckbuilder with a unique premise, but it doesn’t fully grab you. The demo impressed, but the full game feels stagnant. Its intuitive mansion-building and strategic card combos create a fun loop for deckbuilding fans, yet repetitive gameplay and generic horror vibes hold it back. Without a gripping narrative or chilling scares, it feels more like a passing title than a standout horror hit.

“Creative roguelike deckbuilder, but gets boring quite quickly.”

Review copy provided by the publisher

3.2

The post Deck of Haunts – Razočaravajući deckbuilder first appeared on IndieGames.

An Interactive Experience Beyond Adventure

ENA: Dream BBQ takes place in a wild and surreal universe. We follow ENA, a humanoid character, on her mission to find the Boss that everyone wants to be. During our adventure we are able to explore environments filled with hidden secrets and oddities, meet peculiar characters who want us to run errands for them and use odd tools to solve unusual problems.

It seems to me that it would be more fitting to describe ENA: Dream BBQ as an interactive experience rather than adventure game – not only because of its bizarreness, but also the way it exceeds our expectations. The first chapter did more than simply bending the rules of video games; in fact, it looked like they were put aside entirely, which resulted in a chaotic, but quite intriguing story.

The first chapter is a blend of many different ideas, themes and references. The setting draws inspiration from surrealist art, post-apocalyptic fiction and worldwide culture, especially from Peru and Japan. We can hear dialogues in various languages such as Japanese, French, Russian and Italian. The artstyle combines 2D and 3D animation, utilizing webcore aesthetic, pixelated imagery and the style of Picasso’s abstract paintings. So yeah, it’s pretty avant-garde project.

A Promising, Imaginative Journey

The same mix of everything applies to the characters and the plot. There is a thin line between accessible and inaccessible parts, which can make you start wondering: was I supposed to make that jump to the other side? Did that character serve any purpose in my task? How did I trigger that event? As far as I can tell, the point of the game is not to undertand ENA’s world, but to just go along with it. Although some solutions are quite confusing and take time to figure them out, the comedic tone and pure craziness of the outcome are worth the trouble.

I’d also like to point out that despite randomness, the game is consistent in its content. There are tutorials, quests and items necessary for advancing the story, which we know well from other video games. In Chapter 1, we only get to visit the world of the Lonely Door, with its jobs and inhabitants, however the other doors we will have to go through are already present, teasing our future adventures.

As subsequent chapters are still in development, we’ll have to wait in order to learn the rest of the story – while I’m not fully convinced what to make of it yet, I have to admit that from what I’ve seen this chapter succeed in catching the interest of gamers and stimulating their imagination, If you’re up for a bizzare adventure, then this might be something just for you.

The post [PREVIEW] ENA: Dream BBQ – One of the most unique games ever made first appeared on IndieGames.

After Earth fell to ruin, the few remaining survivors had to rebuild civilization from the Stone Age. When they finally advanced to the age of space exploration, they decided to explore the far reaches of space, but the distance meant it would take them hundreds of years to arrive. For this expedition, humankind decided to send condemned convicts. On the way to an unknown red planet, the expedition’s spaceship breaks down, forcing two members of the crew to make a crash landing. They both have their own reasons for needing to return to Earth no matter what, but will they be able to make it back alive?

BOKURA: planet requires two players, who communicate and work together to solve puzzles. They need to share what they see on their own screens and cooperate to solve puzzles and progress through the stages, just like in BOKURA, but there is a new action: Push. You can now send the other player flying with the push of a button. Sometimes you might get in the other player’s way, or maybe even push them off a cliff… cooperating isn’t everything in this game.

The post Puzzle Co-Op Adventure BOKURA: planet Debuted on Steam Today first appeared on IndieGames.