5 indies not to miss in 2025
An endless, fantastic emotional rollercoaster
It’s moments like this, when only huge productions are talked about, that make me love having the opportunity to show new indie works. Today, thanks to Xbox, I will tell you about no less than five.
Last week, we were fortunate in IGN Spain to assist to the Xbox EMEA Developer Session, an event where I could see the latest advances in the Developer Acceleration Program. This ID@Xbox initiative has been promoting indie studios for years, providing information, visibility and technical support so that they can keep doing what they’re best at: surprising us.
If we’re talking about emotions (and intrusive thoughts), during this session I’ve been through all kinds of phases: all the way from wondering how many of me does it take to change a ligh-… i mean, organize my day, to considering if I would truly be happier if I was a mouse in a camper. Some of these projects have blown my mind more than others; but, as expected, each of them has its unique qualities that make it stand out.
I can assure you that, if you consider yourself a curious person just like me, their names will be living rent-free in your head until their release.
Winter Burrow: In the woods, in your cabin, for you and because of you.
The first production of this session, Winter Burrow, is brought to us by Pine Creek Games. A surprisingly cozy survival game where you are a mouse who must find resources in order to get through winter inside of the burrow you grew up in. At the same time, you must search for your aunt, who was supposed to take care of you but mysteriously vanished.
Its artistic style, based on David Petersen’s Mouse Guard comic series, inmediately teleports you to a fabulous atmosphere. Though it may look pretty, it is certainly not a friendly environment for a mouse, quite the opposite.
When playing this game, you will have to pay attention to your main stats: hunger, warmth and health. The three of them are codependent: you’ll need to burn more calories if you’re freezing, and your health will decline if you’re starving. To survive, you’re left with only one choice: exploring your surroundings and getting the necessary materials to stay warm and fed, as you keep looking for your aunt and getting to know the other forest inhabitants.
Obtaining these materials is no easy task though. In Winter Burrow, there are three main factors to consider: finding your way back to the burrow, not dying to enemies and carrying the right tools. The weather won’t always stay the same, sometimes storms will make it difficult for you to orientate, so be on the lookout for objects that mark your way home. You’ll have to face, and sometimes fight, bugs and other hostile creatures. You won’t always be able to fight threats or find resources though, such as when you don’t have enough materials to craft tools like a shovel.
Speaking of this last part, in Winter Burrow you’ll find different original and logical crafting methods: if you’re cold, you can knit something. In order to survive, your main focus will be on getting enough materials to craft warmer sweaters that will allow you to be outside longer. And of course, if you’re hungry, go cook some tasty meals on the fire. The crafting moments shown by the developers look so peaceful, and they offer a great contrast to the tension caused when exploring outside the burrow.
All in all,I think this is a promising project that will attract many fans of cozy games and, why not, fans of series such as Over the Garden Wall.
Outbound: A game for when you’re fed up with the city.
Have you ever thought about abandoning all your worries and going to a far away place, only to then realize that a looooot of money is required to be able to do that? I know I have. And it seems that a lot of us have too, since Square Glade has created this game as a way of offering us a escape from our home.
In Outbound, you leave the city behind in your humble RV and go on a journey through a beautiful open world where you can enjoy the landscape while you change your vehicle into your dream house.
Explore mountains, lakes and forests while you look for resources that make life easier in your new motorized home. These resources can be natural (medicinal herbs and food) or manmade. You will find cabins and surveillance posts filled with valuable objects such as appliances, construction materials or storage modules.
This is where things get complicated: even if you have appliances, if you wish for true independence, your vehicle must be self-sufficient. You’ll have to manage the clean energy used for running your home, be it solar, hydraulic, eolic… Besides, being dependent on these sources means being dependent on the weather, so you must have some alternatives not to run out of energy.
When it comes to construction, what we’ve seen is a super relaxing game that allows you to create your dream home with countless functionalities. You’ll be able to build a house on your RV’s roof, and the funniest part is you can just fold it when traveling, pure magic.
Just being able to enjoy all of this is so relaxing, but on top of that, you can share it! Outbound has a multiplayer mode where you can share your RV with your friends. There’s only two possibilities after this: you might spend some pleasant moments while conversing, or you’ll get caught up in arguments worse than those of a couple shopping in Ikea.
Either way, Outbound looks like an amazing experience, perfect to relax after a hard day.
Hela: I definitely want to be a mouse with a magical-froggy-backpack
Windup Games brings us from the hands of some of the creators of the Unravel saga a wonderful exploration game with an open-world concept where you are, once again, a mouse. But not just any mouse. In Hela you are the attendant of a witch, who due to being sick can’t keep doing her job, which is helping the villagers in the area. You’ll have to take over her tasks while you look for a cure for her illness, always with the help of your super amazing magical-froggy-backpack, that will allow you to be much more than a simple field mouse.
This game looks captivating, with magical lighting and an ambiance heavily based on Scandinavian culture. Furthermore, exploring through the eyes of a mouse is definitely a plus: its design makes simple stuff like a button or cutlery take on a completely different scale.The sound and music are also with mentioning: the general atmosphere is magical, medieval and fun, I feel like it perfectly suits the fun movements of the main character that we’ve seen on the gameplay.
And, speaking of gameplay, the first thing I should mention is how fun it looks. You can do everything an elusive mouse can: jump, run, sprint, climb all kinds of surfaces… But, in addition to this, you may use your magical-froggy-backpack’s tongue as a hook to get to places you wouldn’t normally be able to reach, and swing from side to side. This backpack is also inflatable, allowing you to glide through the air after jumping. The magical-froggy-backpack will protect you from many dangers and help you in your journey. Besides, along the way you will find friendly creatures that will allow you to advance faster or help you solve some puzzles.
In regards to the challenges the game presents you, Hela offers the best solution when something feels out of reach: company. You’ll be able to play with friends in order to solve different puzzles, and all of you will be magical-froggy-backpack-carrying-mice, if that’s not enough to convince you then I fear nothing is. Oh! And if you prefer playing on your own, you will be able to create a temporary copy of yourself to get help in puzzles that require multiple mice.
Hela most definitely has my attention, never before had I wanted to be a mouse until now. But, considering how fun it looks, I’m not sure I’ll leave home a lot when this game comes out.
The Alters: How many alter egos does it take to blow your mind?
I always picture the developers 11 Bits Studios only ever starting conversations with ‘What would happen if…?’. They must have spent YEARS talking about hypothetical scenarios and I can’t wrap my head around how they could come up with all the necessary narrative iterations for a game of this caliber.
The Alters is a survival game with RPG touches that tells the story of a regular working man, Jan, who is sent in an outer space mission and suffers an emergency landing on a lifeless and hostile planet. This planet is constantly rampaged by electric storms and all kinds of atmospheric phenomena that make exploring and finding resources difficult. Jan essentially lives in a constant struggle to keep his spaceship working to be able to get out of there. But he soon discovers a substance called Rapidium that, along with the available technology in the spaceship, allows him to build copies of his biggest ally and enemy: himself.
The best part of this story is that we’re not facing a typical doppelganger situation where having the same identity is the point of conflict: The problem here are all of their differences. Each Jan answers differently to a ‘What if…?’. This is the result of all those moments when we’ve wanted to change something we did in the past just to see how our life would differ. There is a Jan that rebelled against his father, another that pursued a childhood dream, another that was scarred by more than one person… Taking all of these differences into account, we have a game where you’ll meet up to eleven Jans with different personalities and knowledge: scientist, technician, miner, botanist, etc. Their only common ground is that neither of them is completely satisfied with who he is.
You will be the captain here, therefore having to mediate and manage the Jans so you can get the spaceship in working condition. You’ll have to administer time between looking for resources for the ship and managing the emotions and necessities of your Alters. The key is finding the balance between what you need as a group and the little things that make them happier to accompany you, like, for example, building rooms dedicated to their passion or compromise with their aspirations in this new world. But the more tasks there are to manage, the more Alters you’ll have to create and the more fights will start when the promises you made to one of them are incompatible with what you promised another one. All of this will, inevitably, affect your survival.
But, aside from how interesting it may be managing your ship, the developers made something clear: this is a game to explore all possibilities. Some relationships won’t make any sense, they’re just simply funny. This is like mixing different sodas when you were in a birthday party as a kid, something will come out of it. There’ll be times when you might need a technician, but what you truly want is talking to a botanist to understand why he did what he did in the past. Talking among Jans seems to be a form of therapy as complex as it is entertaining, and it will undoubtedly offer some amazing moments.
This game completely blows my mind, I can’t wait to submerge myself in all of this narrative. It hasn’t come out yet, but I’m already thinking about what would happen if I was the Alex that has already played The Alters.
Moonlighter 2: The Endless Vault : What amazing developers we have in Spain!
Coming from the spanish studio Digital Sun and the aforementioned 11 Bits Studio, we get the sequel to this game about dungeon exploration, RPG combat and commerce, which will surely consume most of my hours when it finally comes out this year.
Its game design starts from the same basis: enter new dungeons, fight creatures and obtain relics; then, sell them in your store to keep improving your equipment and continuing the cycle. All of this will take place in Tresna, a small village where, besides still getting help from characters like Andrei the Smtih and Eris the Witch, you’ll discover new faces.
Moonlighter 2 comes full of novelties, starting from the style: we go from 2D to 3D, a great choice. The environments and animation have gained a lot of details and fluidity with this adaptation. Everything contributes to how ambitious this project is compared to its predecessor, since the world presented in this game is much bigger, full of new dungeons to explore, more objects to sell and more stories to get swallowed in.
This change to 3D has also greatly enhanced the combat. In Moonlighter 2 you’ll find new long distance weapons that will help you to face the dungeons and engage the boss fights in a different way. These have changed a lot, and the variety of them slightly remind me of boss fights in games such as Super Mario Odyssey. Another notable difference in the gameplay are the relics effects: depending on where you place them they will generate different effects throughout the run, so each session will be completely different.
With all of this, along with new zones, mechanics and relics, having a fun time is guaranteed. It’s the perfect mix to let Moonlighter 2: The Endless Vault surpass the fans’ expectations and get its deserved recognition.
In conclusion, this Developers Session has been filled with games that will leave their mark this year with lots of fun, action and captivating stories. It’s truly been an absolutely amazing session that has put all of these works in my pending calendar, and I hope that they can be put on yours too.