Hello Indie Game Fan Reader!

​720 games launched on Steam in a single week. This is the first time it's ever crossed 700, but it is not all doom and gloom

Of those 720, 530 have somewhere between zero and nine reviews. 190 got ten or more. 95 got past fifty, and ten games surpassed 1,000 reviews.

For you young'uns, it's the Steam Greenlight / Direct issue all over again, this time amplified by AI, where the great games get surfaced but there might be some truly good games that slip through the cracks.

Discoverability remains a big issue since an indie dev can do everything right and still end up among the 530, hence my work, but even I am not able to cover EVERYTHING.

So, I'm curious how you deal with it. How do you actually find new indie games these days? (you can reply directly to this email)

Get the list of 100 upcoming pixel art indie games.

​Upcoming Games of 2026

Indie games of interest

1. ​Rebounder - Check out the art style of this hand-drawn precision platformer! Set on a lunar worksite, you grab, throw and bounce off alien wildlife to move cargo, chaining trickshots and wall slides past exploding spores and other hazards
2. ​Graveyard Keeper 2 - You're the Grand Inquisitor now in this inaccurate medieval cemetery sim. Automate your production, lead a zombie army, fortify the town against the undead and milk its residents for profit. Out 22 September.
3. ​Whiskerwood - The Nautical Update is four months of work and the devs are calling it Act II. A full open ocean, naval combat against pirates, deep-sea fishing, cannon towers and a new story act. Free Update, try it today.
4. ​Stranded Deep 2 - The sequel to a tremendously popular survival game swaps the Pacific for a desert river. Navigate rapids by kayak or raft, build a floating home, then pack it up and move it downstream. Animals follow a real food chain and you're in it. Early Access 2027.
5. ​Night Plane - You're a flight attendant beginning your first day on the job in 1999. Board passengers, check tickets and attend to their needs, but the catch is that the airline only serves human customers, but shape-shifting things keep trying to get on. Demo is live.
6. ​The Planet Crafter - There's a whole new moon to terraform in the survival crafting title! Skeo has its own lore and unlocks once you've finished a starting planet and built the travel rocket.
7. ​Chronicles: Medieval - Hundreds of soldiers clashing at once, and you're commanding your troops in real time while also fighting in the line yourself. Set in a Europe shaped by the Hundred Years' War
8. ​Timberborn - Update 1.1 has landed, the first big one since launch. Population and goods statistics with proper graphs, watertight buildings, Tier 4 monuments, a new desert plant and new maps.
9. ​Heart of the Machine - Update 86 reworked the animal code so they can now be shocked, tasered, hallucinate and go into anaphylaxis, and killing sapient ones counts as murder. No more bribing velociraptors.

​God Tier Indie Games​

My videos this week

1. ​Best Indie Games Fall Showcase 2026 - The showcase, in full.
2. ​Indie Gaming This Week: 31 August - 06 September 2026 - The weekly roundup.

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Best Indie Games @clemmygames This indie developer made a one-button rogue-like about skipping rope - Timing is the whole game - Rogue-lite style choice between 2 upgrades when you level up This is Scarlet Skips and it's out today, would you play this? 1:2 PM • Sep 3, 2026 674 Retweets 18156 Likes Read 565 replies

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News & Articles

1. ​"This is the worst crash we've seen since the 1980s" - Sweeney on why your RAM costs what it does: AI data centres "can outbid the entire entertainment industry for all the components," and he expects a supply crisis for three more years.
2. ​gamescom has apologised for how it handled the booth thefts - "That criticism is justified. Our first response did not strike the right tone... We are sorry." They've promised a security review scoped to indie exhibitors and a roundtable with the shared-booth organisers. No word on compensation.
3. ​Don't Nod is cutting up to 90 jobs in France - Oof
4. ​Bit Reactor furloughed most of its staff weeks before Star Wars Zero Company launched - The game was top seller on Steam while the team that made it went unpaid. One dev who spoke to around twelve colleagues: "Everybody has essentially the same story, which is, 'Yeah, I got furloughed three weeks ago.'" - Timeless​
5. ​SteamDB has been sold to the owners of Nexus Mods - After 13 years, founder xPaw: "After COVID and with the rise of AI, the internet we once loved is gone, and with it my passion." New owners say it keeps its name and identity, with a funded team behind it instead of one person.
6. ​Aggro Crab is turning Peak money into a publishing label - Up to $500,000 a project, one or two signings a year, and notably no requirement for full recoup. Their first two signed games are Rebounder (see above) and Subway Midnight.
7. ​Xbox is capping Game Pass cloud gaming hours from November - 15 hours a month on Ultimate, 10 on Premium, 5 on Essential. Microsoft says it'll affect 4% of subscribers. Extra hours are purchasable. - Very weird given the apparent Cloud Gaming push
8. ​Fortune's Run is cancelled because its developer says she can't get control of the Steam page - She says $9,000 is being held payable only to the person Valve considers the owner, and she's being taxed on money she never received.
9. ​Double Fine's Amnesia Fortnight Kickstarter cleared its goal in two days - Currently sitting near $500,000 against a $400,000 goal. The Brütal Legend 2 stretch goal is set at $100,000,000, which is not a joke.

Indie Game of the Week

​TUNIC - One of the BEST Zelda-style action adventure games is on sale! Play as a tiny fox with a sword in an isometric world that throws you right in, leaving it up to you to figure it out. Collect pages of the in-game instruction manual written almost entirely in a language you can't read, so part puzzle game and part action game but is wholly great. Grab it at 50% off!

Poll!

My name is Clement and I love indie games! As such, I make videos on indie games big and small, highlighting my favorites & supporting developers so that they can make more cool stuff.

Support my work on Patreon!

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