They are bringing the vaulted Destiny 2 campaigns, destinations and raids back into the game for everybody. "We cannot change the decision we made, but we can acknowledge its impact and do the work to make it right." Restoring some content "is not as simple as restoring old files" and will take time, but they are doing it anyway.
Bungie says Marathon launched to strong critical reception but did not reach as many players as they had hoped. The studio said it will “anchor on what makes Marathon special but evolve it beyond the genre constraints we placed on it”, by expanding the game to “a deeper survival experience”.
Halo Studios only exists because Bungie walked away from Microsoft back in 2007, and 343 Industries was built from scratch to take the franchise on. Nineteen years later, that studio has been gutted and Halo has been handed to the Call of Duty people. Strange how the dominoes fall.
CLAWSTROPHOBIA - A claw machine rogue-lite deckbuilder where you are trapped in a pit beneath a Japanese subway station, and the only way out is by paying off an insurmountable debt.
Every prize you catch is money toward the next target, which increases in subsequent rounds. The machine is physics-driven and controlled in first-person, so you are lining up the claw yourself and hoping that it successfully catches the prize.
Buy specialty drinks from a vending machine to create your build, adding multipliers to your score or changing how the claw behaves, so find optimal combinations to break the game!
There is a meta-progression system between runs as you continue to unlock new stuff, with a well-crafted horror escape room atmosphere.
SLAM TANK - Control a tank and swing the cannon barrel like a sword and ram through a machine army. Such a silly fun idea.
No Such Place - A top-down extraction shooter where you take contracts from a research consortium, drop into a dimensional zone, loot relics and get to an extraction point before something kills you. Demo is live, and Early Access is 14 October.
WonderPaws - A cozy life sim in a city run by anthropomorphic animals, where you move in as the only human, decorate a shared house, run shops and pick a career as a star, a mayor or a designer.
Alpha Nomos - A rhythm action rogue-lite where you slice through rogue puppets, and hits landed on the beat do more damage and chain into longer combos. Out 12 October, demo is live.
Core Keeper - The 1.3 update, Riders of the Underground, adds a Saddle that lets you mount any cattle and rename it, a Hookshot that latches onto walls and pulls you over pits, a new Moss sub-biome in the Forgotten Ruins with a new docile species called the Orex, and three new pets from Pet Eggs.
Vignus - A top-down action RPG where you purify corrupted alien creatures and then chain them into production lines that feed your base and it has a pretty cool art style.
Wizordum - This shooter is in the vein of Heretic and Hexen, getting a new update that adds seven weapon upgrades plus a shop!
Permafrost - A story-driven survival sandbox in a world locked in permanent winter after the moon shattered. You scavenge frozen ruins, hunt, and build a network of shelters, solo or in co-op for up to four.
Breachway - A rogue-lite deckbuilder that can be described as Slay the Spire X FTL, where every card is tied to a physical ship component. The Tactician update reworks the Ion Cannon, and adds new cards and more features.
Theos: Cities Of Myth - "Developer Triskell Interactive has been chipping away at the classic city builder for years, from Lethis - Path of Progress to Pharaoh: A New Era. This one is Greek mythology, and it is essentially the spiritual successor to Zeus: Master of Olympus. Out 4 November.
A crowdfunded JRPG has been cancelled by its publisher, and the news broke in an annual report - Armed Fantasia, the Wild Arms spiritual successor from a team including longtime Wild Arms producer Akifumi Kaneko, was discontinued by 505 Games parent Digital Bros. The Kickstarter raised about $2.4 million from roughly 18,000 backers, and Wild Bunch delivered a vertical slice for approval as recently as March. Oof
French publisher Dear Villagers confirms layoffs - Dear Villagers laid off around 15 people (out of 20). Owner Plug In Digital calls it "a reorganization of its operations in an industry that has been particularly challenging for several years."
Dead Cells - A rogue-lite action platformer where you are a blob of goo animating a corpse, fighting through a castle that rearranges itself every run. You pick up weapons and mutations as you go, die, lose nearly everything, and start again with a slightly wider pool of gear to find.
Nine years of free updates means that this is an enormous game, and still has some of the best feeling combat, 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! Heart Machine has laid off nearly everyone at the studio after a publishing deal fell through. That is the developer of Hyper Light Drifter, Solar Ash, Hyper Light Breaker and Possessor(s). 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...
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...
