There’s an uncomfortable sense among the gaming community, as industry layoff numbers stack up, project after project is cancelled, and as console life cycles slow, that we’re on the cusp of a bit of a video game dry spell. That feeling isn’t totally unfounded – there are very few AAA game release dates announced for the second half of this year, and the AA market isn’t exactly hopping either. All three console communities – Switch, Xbox, and Playstation – are feeling empty on the games front right now, and only the Switch has the excuse of a new box being imminent. And even that’s still technically just a rumor!
But video games are not mysteriously vanishing off the face of the earth tomorrow. I recently attended the Game Developers Conference in March, and at a series of events hosted by major publishers and other groups, I got to play an absolute buffet of amazing games that are coming up. No, they’re not the massive budget blockbusters that move console units off shelves. Who cares? They’re exciting. Many explore novel concepts not often explored in games. A lot of them have unique and vibrant art styles, or gorgeous music. Most of them were made by small teams who just want to make good art and sell enough copies to support themselves while making even more good art.
So here is a little rundown of all the best things I played at GDC this year. It was difficult to narrow it down. I ran out of time at every single showcase I attended to play all the cool-looking things I wanted to play. I’m already sitting here kicking myself for missing games like Tales of Kenzara: Zau, Dome-King cabbage, ODDADA, and Dungeons of Hinterberg. And I ran out of space and time to talk about a number of other games I really enjoyed, like Sonzai, Doggy Don’t Care, Botany Manor, and Janet DeMornay Is A Slumlord (and a witch).
This is your invitation to expand your horizons. Go play some indie games! There are enough out there to last us forever!
Go-Go Town!
While hanging out at the ID@Xbox event at GDC, I got a little distracted talking to people and forgot to play as many games as I intended to when I first came in. At the moment I realized it, I was chatting with Chris Charla, director of the ID@Xbox program, so I told him about my predicament and asked him which of the remaining games I hadn’t seen yet he thought I should play. He directed me to Go-Go Town!, a darling city builder than won me over by force of its cute characters and goofy animations. I’ve fiddled with it enough to confidently say it has the things you want in a city builder: lots of fun customization, slow power growth from tiny little buildings to a fully automated city, the usual. But what captured me in the demo is the ambient silliness. Your streets get dirty, so you clean them with a bubble machine. Aliens can land and move into the town. You can get around faster by car or truck or motorcycle…or skateboard, or tricycle shaped like a unicorn. I think the word I’d use to describe Go-Go Town! Is “bouncy.” It’s a bouncy city-builder. And one worth playing with a friend, too, thanks to couch co-op! Go-Go Town! is planned for release on PC, Xbox, PlayStation, and Switch later this year.
Animal Well
Okay, here’s my secret. I didn’t actually play Animal Well at GDC. Because I’ve already played it at, seriously, like three or four other events and demos in the last year and a half. I played a version of it weeks prior to the show, even! But I had to actively stop myself from running over to play it again when I saw it at Nintendo’s indie showcase. This game rules! You play as a little blob guy blorping around in the titular Animal Well, and initially your character sucks at everything. You can’t move fast, you can barely jump, you have no clear objective, and everything around you is deeply dangerous. But the Animal Well is full of secrets. Plants that explode like fireworks. A frisbee. Switches that do things. Hidden corridors. Glowy stuff. And you’ll find ways to wriggle forward again and again, moving closer to some unknown objective and puzzling out what’s going on in the well as you go. I love the secrecy and weirdness of Animal Well – the esoteric vibes remind me of Rain World, another mysterious platformer about a creature that’s bad at everything. And the promise of multiple “layers” of secrets and ARG-level discoveries means I’ll be combing the subreddit of this one for months after launch to keep an eye on what other players discovered that I couldn’t. Animal Well comes out on May 9, 2024 for PS5, PC, and Nintendo Switch.
On Your Tail
I went into On Your Tail thinking it was a bit outside the usual genre range of games I tend to enjoy, but something about the breezy, Italian seaside vibes really worked for me. I spent most of my demo messing around with the life sim elements, such as making friends, fishing, exploring, shooting marbles through a sand obstacle course. I found the citizens of Borgo Marina charming, in no small part thanks to their excellent art and design, and wish I’d had more time in the demo to get to know them better. Supposedly there’s a mystery I should be solving as well, and while I had the option to explore that in the demo, I can see myself easily getting distracted in such a perfectly little vacation of an environment. On Your Tail is out later this year on PC and Nintendo Switch.
World of Goo 2
Has it really been 18 years since the original World of Goo? It broke my brain a little bit to see the gooey bridge-building puzzles return at a demo event at GDC, but there they were. Tomorrow Corporation is still making weird little games for people who love organizing Excel spreadsheets, and even though my brain only overlaps that Venn diagram a little bit, I can get into some goo ball stacking. I played this in co-op in my demo with one of the developers, carefully sticking goo guys together to form wobbly structures that would successfully transfer goo from one end of a level to another. It’s all the sticky gloompiness I remember, but with some shiny new liquid physics thrown in and new kinds of goo balls to interact with that liquid mayhem, sucking it up and spitting it out and making gross messes. Did you like World of Goo? You’ll like World of Goo 2. I’m going to play this with my partner. World of Goo 2 oozes onto Nintendo Switch and PC on August 2, 2024.
Death of a Wish
Death of a Wish caught my eye at a distance while wandering around Day of the Devs. I liked it’s deliberately scrawly, striking scratchpad artstyle and the pleasant chonkiness of the protagonist’s attacks. It’s a top-down, action RPG about slash slash slashing your way through a cult hierarchy and reckoning with childhood trauma. The main character, Christian, has a satisfying arsenal of combos available to him, as well as the ability to rewind time back to a snapshot of the start of a given battle as a replacement for any healing abilities. If things are going poorly, you just start the encounter over – but if you started with low health to begin with…well, it might be better to just admit defeat. While I found Death of a Wish’s demo a bit heavy-handed with the Catholic metaphors, I was having too much fun zipping and slicing through weird polygonal angels to feel weird about it. And surprise, Death of a Wish is one of the rare handful of games on this list that’s out right now! You can play it today on PC and Switch.
Kind Words 2
The original Kind Words: Lo-fi Beats to Write to deserves an award for the game that absolutely deserved a sequel, was absolutely not going to get one under any circumstances given the way the industry is, and then got one anyway. I am thrilled for developer popcannibal. The original game took place in a cozy little room at a cozy little desk, and was entirely centered around writing nice letters to other people and asking for encouragement yourself. That’s it. It was a pure good vibes generator. The sequel, Kind Words 2, dares to ask the question: how else can people be kind to themselves and to one another? Letter sending makes a return, of course, but you can also hold longer conversations with other players, ask for and give recommendations, make wishes, write poems, and even just shout into the void. It’s all anonymous and heavily moderated – the first Kind Words notoriously had very little toxicity seeping through the cracks. I’m so, so happy it’s getting a sequel. We all could use some cheering up, so this will be a welcome relief when it launches later this year.
Horses
I do not understand what I played here, and I do not want to understand. Whatever it was, it’s planned for release this year.
darkwebSTREAMER
I’ve been thinking about darkwebSTREAMER for a while, since I interviewed its creator last year for a feature on indie games using artificial intelligence in unexpected ways. If that puts you off – hear me out. DarkwebSTREAMER is a point-and-click horror game simulating the life of a professional streamer…albeit one living in the creepiest, most messed-up version of the internet imaginable. You stream with haunted objects, surf a web brimming in horrors, and strange creatures prowl outside your room while you sleep. Your ability to attract viewers, keep your energy up, and not get murdered directly affects your ability to make money with which to buy more haunted objects to perform with. As for the AI component, darkwebSTREAMER makes use of one created over several years by the game’s developer, Chantal Ryan, and trained on her own writing, ideas, and prompts. It’s used to generate most of the text in the game: the webpages, the streaming objects, and so much more. As a result, every game of darkwebSTREAMER is different, and yet rooted in Ryan’s own tone, ideas, and creative themes. It’s creepy, it’s often weird and unsettling, and it’s very, very cool. DarkwebSTREAMER doesn’t have a release date yet, but it does have a Steam page for now.
Hermit and Pig
After going on a Mother series kick last year, I was delighted to try out Hermit and Pig, which is clearly inspired by the RPG series visually and comedically. You play as an old man (Hermit) and his pig (Pig) living in a forest, collecting mushrooms, and generally being antisocial. The plot is a little unclear to me this early on, but what drew me in was the battle system. Hermit and Pig fend off various forest creatures through a turn-based system based on a mixture of fighting game combo execution, and common sense. The pair can perform a number of different moves (Kick, Punch, Slap, Stomp, etc) to attack, each of which has a different button combo attached to it. But different attacks are effective against different enemies – for instance, a fly is probably weak to being slapped, but likely doesn’t care if you try to kick it. And you only have a set time limit on your turn during which to decide on a move, remember the combo, and perform it. It’s a very cool, intricate little system that was both challenging yet more forgiving than it sounds. I’d like to play more, thank you. Hermit and Pig doesn’t have a release window yet, sadly, but we know it’s at least coming to PC via Steam.
Isles of Sea and Sky
We love a little sokoban! Isles of Sea and Sky will make any block-pushing-puzzle fanatic happy. It’s set on the titular isles of sea and sky, and stars a darling little fellow who has no idea who he is or how he washed up on shore. In search of answers, you explore a mixture of ancient ruins and natural environments, wandering along whatever paths you choose without a set destination or order. The story is told wordlessly, all through visual cues, and if you’re stuck it’s completely fine to turn around, leave, do something else, and come back later. Isles of Sea and Sky features beautiful spritework reminiscent of the Game Boy Color days, clever puzzles, and a lot of fun environmental surprises and secrets. I didn’t get to play quite as much of this one as I wanted, but I’m eager to push some more blocks around when it releases in June of this year for Switch and PC.
She Dreams Elsewhere
I first wrote about She Dreams Elsewhere four years ago, after playing it and chatting with its developer Davionne Gooden at PAX East 2020. It’s a gorgeous top-down RPG about a young woman named Thalia who’s going through it and ends up dumped in a surrealist dreamscape where her worst anxieties show up to give her hell. She Dreams Elsewhere borrows some of its vibes from games like Undertale and Earthbound, but retains its own visual and emotional style, juxtaposing deep emotional themes with cutting humor.
My heart soared when I saw She Dreams Elsewhere on the Day of the Devs show floor – it’s always great to see how far along a project you’ve been stoked about for years has come. She Dreams Elsewhere gets better every time I demo it. We still don’t have a release date yet, but I’ll be ready for it whenever it comes. She Dreams Elsewhere is planned for release on PC, Xbox, and Switch.
Militsioner
A funny thing about trying to play demos at a big event is that sometimes there are booth attendants who reset the demo between plays, and sometimes there’s no one and you just have to hope it resets itself, or risk breaking the entire kiosk by trying to do it yourself. When I approached Militsioner, I was in the middle of some other person’s abandoned demo. There was a giant (really, GIANT!!) cop watching me explore a dim and depressing little town – I tried complimenting him like a total suck-up and he told me he wasn’t going to fall for that “again.” So I started exploring, but the big cop immediately became furious when I innocently picked up a brick and used it to break into the door right in front of me. He pinched me between his giant thumb and giant forefinger, lifted me to eye level (very high) and demanded an explanation – I apologized, which he accepted, and put me back down.
Then, after walking a few steps and talking to some guy in a sewer, the cop demanded to know if I was trying to escape. No??? What??? Like a bumbling comedian, I kept managing to piss off the mountain-sized policeman until his big, stupid hand chased me down again and he swallowed me whole for my insubordination.
I don’t know what was going on amid all this, but I know I want to play Militsioner again. Ideally from the start of the experience, with a tutorial, but what I saw was pretty fun in its confusion. Militsioner is coming out on PC at a later date.
Sopa
I’m a sucker for games about food, and Sopa is all about…a missing potato. Initially. It’s actually about family, and heritage, and growing up, specifically as a little boy in South America guided by his grandmother. When asked to fetch a potato from the pantry so Abuela can make sopa, Miho gets pranked by a frog mobster and tumbles into a Narnia-like adventure in search of ingredients. What I’ve seen so far of Sopa is sweet, earnest, and appropriately silly – the frog village where Miho tracks down the potato is full of hilarious writing and Looney Tunes-esque critters. But developer Juan Castañeda has hinted to me that the whimsy evolves as the story goes on, and I strongly suspect the ending of Sopa will have me ugly crying when it hits Xbox and PC later this year.
inKONBINI
When I walked into the ID@Xbox showcase at GDC, my eyes were immediately drawn to inKONBINI. It’s a game about running a 90s small-town convenience store. I immediately wanted to stock the shelves.
Dang, this was soothing. I spent waaaaay too much time in the demo taking items from the back room, bringing them out into the store, and placing them gently on the shelves in the right order. I combed all the existing stocked shelves to find items that were shuffled around, misplaced, or facing the wrong way, and adjusted each one individually. I moved one type of instant soup over next to another type of instant soup. I rearranged a display of manga. I restocked a fridge of beer. The gentle sounds of the items moving, the neat rows…after a busy day at a conference, this was heaven.
InKONBINI is all about this slowness, and the reward is satisfied customers who walk in, find what they need, pay, and tell you a little bit of their personal stories. I had no idea until I saw the disordered shelves that this was an experience I wanted out of a video game, yet here we are. InKONBINI launches for PC and Xbox at a later date.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
: ZAU Standard Edition
