Hello Indie Game Fan Reader!

Mimic | Ryan Laley @RyanLaley My #gamescom cut short. Our equipment was stolen last night from the booth. Police reports have been filed. At a loss for words to describe the feeling. Just defeated. Gonna do my best with what's left of the week. But a huge blow financially and mentally 10:12 AM • Aug 28, 2026 2016 Retweets 23602 Likes Read 756 replies

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Indie developer Ryan Laley turned up to his gamescom booth on Friday morning and his laptops were gone.

He was in the business area, which is closed to the public. He wasn't alone either. iam8bit lost two laptops the same night from a booth nearby, with unreleased builds of Petal Runner and Escape Academy 2 on them. Spanish studio Tessera Studios had its cabinet forced open in the Indie Area and lost two laptops and a Steam Deck.

Utterly abhorrent behavior from the thieves, and the organizers have been kind of tone deaf.

gamescom's response, in full here. Notably, "Uniformed guards provide general security across the venue. Individual stand security can be booked separately, and exhibitors are advised to insure equipment against theft. This is noted in the terms and conditions of participation and the technical guidelines." They did also say it "makes us very sad," and that "at an event of this size, however, there will always be individuals attempting to take advantage of the situation."

Not great, and there have been concerns that the provided security themselves have not been vetted.

Terrible look for what is essentially the biggest gaming convention right now

Have you ever bought a game purely to support the dev after something went wrong for them? If so, which one? (you can reply directly to this email)

​Upcoming Games of 2026

PS: The Best Indie Games Fall Showcase 2026 premieres this Tuesday, 1 September, 8AM Pacific, see you there!

Indie games of interest

1. ​My Time at Evershine - You're the Governor this time, building the settlement of Evershine either from prefabs or DIY, recruiting settlers and taming the wilds. The third game in the My Time series, coming in 2027.
2. ​Rise of the Merchants - Medieval city builder in a persistent online world, where you create production chains and send trade caravans out to other players, factoring in distance, terrain and bandits!
3. ​DUST: Origins - An isometric horror shooter on a collapsing orbital prison from the people who made Darksiders and Battle Chasers. Ammo is scarce, and anyone you meet can live or die depending on whether you help them.
4. ​Cassette Beasts 2002 - Record monsters onto cassettes and play them back to become them. Any two beasts fuse into one of over 57,000 fully animated forms, release window confirmed for March 2027.
5. ​ONTOS - The new game from the SOMA team, set in the repurposed moon hotel that your estranged father left you in. Scavenge materials, calibrate analogue machinery by hand, and find that even the right moral choice can go badly.
6. ​JOIN US - Start a doomsday cult, where the resource you're farming is people. Spread propaganda, recruit anyone in the world, then play as them or send them on missions.
7. ​Holstin - This pixel art horror game is set in a Polish town in 1992, and has interesting uses of the camera, and has been confirmed for 2027.
8. ​INFERIUS - First-person horror deckbuilder played on a card table, where you descend the nine circles of Hell. You carry no weapon, and your lantern burns soul essence, and when the fuel runs out it burns your sanity instead. Demo and playtest both live.
9. ​Barkour - You are a dog spy. Wall-run, grind rails and sneak through gothic castles and creepy amusement parks with 30+ gadgets, or forget subtlety entirely. Demo is live.
10. ​DarkSwarm - This co-op top-down shooter looks like Alien Swarm meets Helldivers, where you fight your way through procedurally generated, semi-destructible levels as synthetic mercenaries.
11. ​Diplomacy is Not an Option - Major update to this strategy city builder, changing starting Bonuses, adding Morgana the Chicken Wizard and reworked the zombies and corpses in the game.

​God Tier Indie Games​

My videos this week

1. ​Top 25 BEST Action Adventure Indie Games (like Zelda) - For the Zelda-shaped hole in your life.
2. ​Indie Gaming This Week: 24 – 30 August 2026 - The weekly roundup.
3. ​Top 25 Upcoming NEW Indie Games of September 2026 - Everything landing next month.
4. ​100 New and Upcoming Indie Games - 2026 & beyond! - A hundred of them.

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Best Indie Games @clemmygames This indie developer is making a combat-oriented metroidvania steeped in Mexican folklore, with an updated release date of April 27, 2027. The game is Mariachi Legends. How good does this look? 5:0 PM • Aug 26, 2026 2962 Retweets 23597 Likes Read 163 replies

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News & Articles

1. ​Rockstar finally broke silence on the GTA 6 leaks - "It would be an understatement to say this has been heartbreaking for our team... this is obviously not how we intended for you to see the game after all this time." The Netflix reveal went ahead on the 27th and crashed Netflix. People generally seem to be impressed
2. ​The GTA 6 leaker appears to have rug-pulled their own audience - Somewhere around $200-270k out of the memecoin they'd been using to let viewers vote on the next leak. Yikes
3. ​"It's just not our money to keep" - Panic is refunding the 19% tariff surcharge to every Playdate buyer now the Supreme Court struck the tariffs down. Well done
4. ​The Long Dark is getting new DLC because the sequel can wait - Hinterland is moving devs off Blackfrost and back onto the nine-year-old original. Their reasoning is worth reading in full, and includes "the amount of time and money players spend on new games has declined as everyone turns to the comfort and security of games they already know."
5. ​thatgamecompany has started a publishing arm - Predictably, it's named Thatgamepublisher. Jenova Chen on why indies keep doing this: "successful indie games usually are on a shoestring, and if the game becomes very successful, suddenly you have an overflow of cash... you don't want to suddenly become a thousand-people company."
6. ​Godot's commercial arm took $18m from Tencent - A lot of people came to Godot fleeing Unity, so this might land oddly.
7. ​Schell Games has had its first ever layoffs - Around 14 people. Their principal engineering manager: "This has happened not because of anything you did or did not do. Our industry (and beyond) right now is hemorrhaging."
8. ​Twitch and Amazon are facing a class action over training AI on streams - From the complaint: "Twitch sent no email, displayed no pop-up notification, and made no announcement before enabling the setting for every account."
9. ​Sony is arguing in court that nobody could reasonably think they own a digital game - "Because if you owned it, nobody else could have a copy." - Sigh

Indie Game of the Week

​Disco Elysium - The Final Cut - You are a detective with no memory, no gun and twenty-four voices in your head that all disagree with each other. A narrative CRPG like no other. Grab it at 75% off!

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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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