Studio head Alx Preston announced it on LinkedIn: "without this key income, any other immediate prospects or other funds, nearly everyone at the studio had to be laid off. It's devastating." He is not saying the studio is dead yet, but he is not saying it is alive either. "I'm not sure yet what's next for Heart Machine to survive. However, we'll keep pushing to build a path while we are still here."
They had a hit with HLD (19k Steam reviews, Very Positive), then scaled the team up to take on more ambitious projects, with Hyper Light Breaker (3.9k Steam reviews, Mixed) and Possessor(s) (800 Steam reviews, Mostly Positive) which did not hit the way their earlier titles did, at least on Steam.
Wishing all the developers affected the best
Which indie studio closing hit you hardest? (you can reply directly to this email)
Moylo - A hand-drawn melee action game animated frame by frame in 1930s rubber-hose cartoon style, set in a death-shadowed cartoon realm and built around close-quarters boss fights, and is one of the best Cuphead style games that I have seen.
Kingmakers - We got a deep dive into the gameplay of this time-travel action strategy sandbox, where a modern mercenary drops into the 1400s with an assault rifle, and you toggle between third-person shooter and top-down RTS in massive battles. No date yet (after being delayed from October 2025) but you can Request Access to their playtest.
Miniopolis - A city builder with no economy, no budget and no way to lose, being an interactive diorama builder similar to Townscaper but with a different look which is awesome.
SYSTEM INTRUDER - A deliberately PS1-looking retro-cyberpunk survival horror title where you explore the ASGARD-04 research complex. Looks sick as well.
The Last Gas Station - A cozy horror management sim about running a lonely highway gas station for increasingly strange customers, getting two-player online co-op support in its latest update.
Humblets - A cozy 1-4 player co-op adventure in a procedurally generated world where you camp, craft, decorate and befriend magical creatures, and challenges are resolved through a card-based magic system. Kickstarter is live.
Don't Pick Up - A job-sim horror game where you are a telephone technician repairing handsets and switchboards for a client who insists you follow procedure and do not listen in, but will you?
BountySisters - A fully voiced vertical shmup with three playable sisters, each flying a different aircraft with its own weapons, with characters designed by Shuzilow.HA who is known for his work on Metal Slug.
Dungeon Automata - A JRPG dungeon crawler where you program your party beforehand with node-based logic, then watch it execute in the dungeon. Demo is live.
The Crab is Walking - The next game from the developer of The King is Watching is also a rogue-lite city builder with a twist, where your capital sits on the back of a giant walking crab hauling it across a wasteland. You merge and upgrade buildings on the shell, raise armies off it, and pick which road to go on.
Hull Rupture - A base-management tower defence rogue-lite on a spaceship, where you are defending your production line, and every rupture affects your economy. From the developer of Despotism 3K, Despot's Game and Slime 3K.
9 Kings - A rogue-lite kingdom defence game on a 3x3 grid where you place building cards, sign decrees that warp the rules, and watch armies auto-battle your layout. A new patch added and tweaked more stuff, with 1.0 slated for 12 November.
Drako: Blood Heist - You are a small vampire cat in this action rogue-lite, who got sent to jail for freeing the city's blood supply, and now have the opportunity at the heist of a lifetime!
Hack into each blood bank's mainframe security, where successfully doing so makes the bank bots malfunction, helping you in the intense bullet hell action!
Collect and use a variety of weapons mods, equipped in your loadout at the hideout prior to a run, offering many possibilities for combinations as you take on the guards. You can also find seeds to grow back at base between runs, which result in little demon sidekicks to take with you on your next attempt, with rogue-lite procedural generation keeping things fresh!
The demo is out now, so give that a try, wishlist the game and look forward to the release on 27 November 2026.
Valve says the memory crisis has not derailed the Steam Deck 2 - Asked directly, Valve's Pierre-Loup Griffais said "not really. We've talked before about how we want to make sure there's a very delineated performance improvement for something like a future Steam Deck, and I think we're still looking at it in the same way." Still no specs, no price and no window, and Valve has said there is no end in sight to the memory crunch. The 1TB original Steam Deck is now $949.
Polyarc has shut down after twelve years - The studio who made Moss has shut down, announced via a short LinkedIn post: "Thank you to everyone at Polyarc, our work is now finished." It lands in the same week Valve opened reservations on a $1,059 VR headset and 2025 was the worst year for VR releases on Steam in a decade.
Ziff Davis cut IGN staff two months before GTA 6 - Some LONG tenured staff were let go. I'm not the biggest follower of IGN's stuff via their podcasts and coverage, but I've definitely seen the names of these people on the internet. Looks like the Kinda Funny guys made the right move back then
Build a Rocket Boy appears to be winding down - Leslie Benzies' studio scaled up hard, from 200 staff to 550, then cut around 300 shortly after MindsEye launched in June 2025. This week's round looks like the rest of them. Oof
Bungie has abandoned Marathon's seasonal schedule - Moving away from a strict season cadence "to give the team more flexibility," which pushes this month's refresh to December. Curiouser and curiouser.
Indie Game of the Week
Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector - You are an escaped android contractor on a hostile frontier, taking on freelance jobs to keep a failing body running and a ship's crew fed.
Every turn you assign dice to tasks, and stress permanently damages the dice themselves, with great writing, taking TTRPG design and making it work as a video game. Grab it at 50% off!
Do you have any feedback or comments? You can reply directly to this email and I'll see it! Let me know your thoughts on the news and games above, as well an anything you would like to see!
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.
Best Indie Games Newsletter By Clement • 13 September 2026 Hello Indie Game Fan Reader! Xbox transfers Rare and Halo franchise to Activision, proposes closure of Ninja Theory, and confirms another 268 roles cut amid studio restructure. Changes in a nutshell: 268 roles have been lost across Halo Studios, other first-party studios, and Xbox Game Studios management and central functions. Rare and Age of Empires studio World's Edge are now under Activision, who will also be developing the next...
Best Indie Games Newsletter By Clement • 13 September 2026 Hello Indie Game Fan Reader! Hideo Kojima's Physint has moved from PlayStation to Xbox, but the fallout could be huge. rat king 🐀 @MikeIsaac goddamn. sony kills the kojima relationship, likely bc sales flagged on last exclusive, tries to say “don’t worry we still love each other” kojima posts tweet that basically all but says “fuck yall” xbox says “we love kojima san!” thank christ his new game still gets made 3:53 AM • Sep 10, 2026...
Best Indie Games Newsletter By Clement • 06 September 2026 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...
