Welcome to our latest roundup of what’s going on in the indie game space. A bunch of titles that are arriving very late to make it into game of the year conversations debuted this week, and we learned some new details about upcoming projects, such as a release date for a rad-looking arena shooter called Don’t Stop, Girlypop.
Marvel Cosmic Invasion is one of the higher-profile indies to hit consoles and PC this week. It’s from Tribute Games and publisher Dotemu, the same pair that brought us Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge. Cosmic Invasion largely draws from the same playbook: it’s also a retro-style side-scrolling beat-’em-up with a look that apes the Marvel animated shows from the ’90s.
It’s an enjoyable enough game, largely thanks to the variety of characters and how differently they play. Captain America is one of my favorites. Each character has a secondary move (often a ranged attack) to go with their basic melee strikes, and Cap’s one has no ammo or cooldown. I never grew tired of spamming his shield projectile attack and knocking enemies off the screen.
I really enjoyed playing as She-Hulk too. Her secondary move involves grabbing an enemy and throwing them around. She-Hulk can also toss them into the air then leap with McTominay-esque athleticism to deliver a kick and send the baddie crashing into its cohorts. The character swap system (each player chooses two and can switch between them any time) evokes tag fighting games and the co-op features work well too.
There isn’t a ton of depth to Marvel Cosmic Invasion, unfortunately, but the presentation is spot on. It’s out now on Steam, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S for $30. It’s also on Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass.
New releases
It only took 13 years from announcement to release but survival horror title Routine (from Lunar Software and publisher Raw Fury) has emerged on Steam, the Xbox PC app, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S and Xbox Cloud. It’s available on Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass.
Routine offers up a slice of liminal space terror with a dash of retro-futurism. Lunar Software based the aesthetic on “how people from the 1980s might envision a believable moon base” with analogue technology.
Your mission is to explore the base and try to determine how it got to this state. Lunar wanted Routine to feel as immersive as possible, so there are no waypoint markers and you won’t see a heads-up display. Instead, you have a personal data assistant that connects to wireless access points throughout the base and provides you with information about your current goals.
Here’s another horror title we’ve been looking forward to for several years. Sleep Awake deals with things that go bump in the night. It’s a first-person psychedelic horror game in which a force called The HUSH makes anyone who falls asleep vanish. So, our hero Katja and other residents of the last-known city on Earth try various ways to stay awake, but they’ll inevitably have to deal with the effects of sleep derivation.
Sleep Awake is from Eyes Out — a studio formed by Spec Ops: The Line director Cory Davis and Nine Inch Nails guitarist Robin Finck — and publisher Blumhouse Games. It’s out now on Steam, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S for $30.
How about another horror game? It’s the last one we have this week, I promise. Tingus Goose has been on my radar for a while because it just looks so deeply strange. This is billed as “a cozy body horror idle game” in which you “plant seeds in patients, bounce babies for profit and ascend through surreal worlds toward riches.”
I’m glad for that description from the game’s PR team, because I don’t fully know what to make of the trailer. A goose emerges from a human being’s torso and grows a giant neck and human fingers stick out of it and… it’s all just so strange. But I kinda dig it?
Tingus Goose is from SweatyChair and co-publishers Playsaurus and UltraPlayers. It’s on Steam for $5.94 until December 8, and it will cost $7 after that.
I haven’t seen anything that looks quite like Effulgence RPG before. It’s a party-based RPG with a 3D ASCII art style. Here, you’ll need to take out enemies to acquire better gear.
Andrei Fomin released Effulgence RPG in early access on Steam this week for $10. The solo developer is aiming to release the full version of the game in June and to add more content and quality-of-life updates in the meantime. It’s not usually the kind of game that I’d normally be drawn toward, but that art style alone is cool enough to make me want to try it.
Looking for something a little more relaxing? Log Away is a cozy cabin builder from The-Mark Entertainment. There are several environments to choose from and a variety of decorations at your disposal depending on your interests. You can have a pet too, so that qualifies Log Away as this week’s dog game.
I’ve played it a bit and found it to be quite relaxing, a soothing counter punch to the non-stop action of Cosmic Invasion. It’s out now on Steam for $10, but if you buy it by December 11 you’ll save a dollar and get a Christmas-themed DLC at no extra cost.
I adore Sayonara Wild Hearts with every fiber of my being and I appreciated what Simogo did with Lorelai and the Laser Eyes, even if I never stuck with it for long. I haven’t played any of the studio’s earlier games, though. That’s something I’m planning to fix very soon now that the Simogo Legacy Collection is here.
The studio reworked all of its first seven mobile games — including Year Walk and Device 6 — and combined them into a collection that’s available on Steam, Nintendo Switch and Switch 2. It costs $15 though there’s a 15 percent discount until December 12. I’m very much looking forward to digging into this over the holidays.
Upcoming
I’ve been very much looking forward to Don’t Stop, Girlypop! for a while. It’s a movement-focused arena shooter with a Y2K aesthetic. Think of it as an anti-capitalist, hyperpop riff on games like Doom Eternal.
The demo is a lot of fun and I’m glad there’s finally a release date for this game from Funny Fintan Softworks and publisher Kwalee. It’s coming to Steam on January 29.
Limbot seems like it could be a fun party game. You can play it by yourself, but having three friends join you seems like the optimal way to go. In that case, each of you will take control of one of a cardboard robot’s limbs. So you’ll have to coordinate to move around this papercraft world effectively and complete precision-based objectives. It sounds like a recipe for an Overcooked-style tiff between friends.
This physics-based game from Ionized Studios is coming to Steam, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S. It’s slated to arrive between April and June next year.
Polyperfect’s Zlin City: Arch Moderna is a diorama city builder inspired by historical events of the 1930s and ’40s and the architecture of Zlin, a town in Czechia (Czech Republic). The developers used 3D printing, photogrammetry and 3D scanning to capture the objects that are used in the game. The result is something that — at least at first glance — looks beautifully textured.
There’s no confirmed release window for Zlin City: Arch Moderna as yet. It’ll be available on Steam.
