Summer Game Fest is one of the most overwhelming weeks in the games industry calendar. Dozens of showcases, hundreds of games, hours upon hours of video across the official streams. But since this is my job — I am a freelance writer and consultant in the games industry — I have watched every showcase and picked out the indie games I think are worth adding to your wishlists.
I’m not going to focus on the big boys (State of Play, Xbox Games Showcase, Summer Game Fest Ft. Geoff Keighley & Tupac Shakur, etc.) since most people already watch those, and they skew toward AAA. I’m also not going to include the Future Games Show because, full disclosure, I work on it as a scriptwriter and scout. So if you want to know what was in it, I’ve already written an Everything Announced article.
Anyway, interest conflicts squashed, here’s how this is going to work: I’ll drop the trailer, give you a few paras on why I think it looks cool, link out to the Steam page, and then we move on. If you found something you liked, consider suporting Postmode!
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Here’s every showcase I watched to curate this list: The Mix Summer Game Showcase, Shacknews E4 Indie Showcase 2026, Black Voices In Gaming 2026, Latin American Games Showcase 2026, Access-Ability Summer Showcase 2026, Women Led Games Showcase 2026, Day of the Devs 2026, Southeast Asian Games Showcase 2026, Wholesome Direct 2026, Story Rich Showcase 2026, Green Games Showcase 2026, Gayming Pride Parade 2026, Frost Games Fest 2026, PC Gaming Show 2026, Deutsche Indie Showcase 2026
Bathory – Heritage of Blood
I was blown away by the paintings used in the trailer for this clearly Castlevania-inspired game. I can’t find the artist’s name, unfortunately, but they’re managing to evoke Yoshitaka Amano while retaining a unique, targeted sense of art direction that fits the game’s grimdark vampire plot.
Elsewhere, the gameplay seems solid, even if the animations and pixel art are a little unremarkable in the shadow of the paintings. Either way, super cool concept, and it seems like the devs have put a lot of work into the story too, which, per some googling, is grounded in a patch of interesting Hungarian history.
Wishlist Bathory – Heritage of Blood on Steam
Oh My Doug
We got Ren and Stimpy Hollow Knight before GTA VI. No, but seriously, look at this game! It is nailing the art style of that halcyon era of handcrafted cartoons, the ones full of Gross-Ups — a technical term for those memorably yucky close-ups seen in Spumco toons, Cow & Chicken, & Courage the Cowardly Dog.
I grew up in this era, so maybe there’s some bias here, but beyond visuals, the platforming looks tight; I like the idea of character-swapping between two avatars that are diametrically opposed, and having the whole thing take place inside the body of a dude called Doug who is trying to get healthy will allow for plenty of clever comedy. My only question is the combat, as the gun-toting clips looked a little rigid. I hope this does well so we get a Go! Go! Hypergrind remake…
Inkblood
I played an early slice of Inkblood at Bitsummit in Kyoto earlier this year, and then it popped up in the Women-Led Games Showcase to cement its position on my wishlist. This is a detective game with an inimitable gothic art style, where you play as an inquisitor siloed in a musty carriage, using the driver’s back as a map. You interact with eerie, crosshatched characters to unravel the tale, and from what I can tell, you can see them, but they can’t see you, which creates all sorts of unsettling scenarios.
There’s plenty of room for more Ad-libventure games after the Golden Idol series made them popular, especially if they’re going to look this eye-popping and offer such a unique, attention-grabbing premise.
Bub
The mixed-media art style put forward by Paperfrog speaks for itself, but I was really moved by the raw, to-camera pitch for this game. One member of its two-person team, Case Jernigan, was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis during development and ended up losing some of his dexterity and vision as a result. Of course, that disrupted the project’s course, but the two-person team adapted, allowing Jernigan’s emotions and healing process to bleed into the game, making it a more personal and textured record of the time spent making it.
The idea of ‘turning your memories into art while you still can’ is such a powerful motif for a game. And to be indulgent for a second, it’s something I thought about a lot when I first lost a chunk of my hearing a few years ago, and it’s something I still think about regularly as it continues to degrade, given the attachment between hearing loss and dementia. I’m always wary of what I have heard, what I can no longer hear, what I won’t hear in the future, and how that sonic cache is going to work in my brain going forward. Anyway, let’s just say I will be playing this one!
Lazy River
I was onboard with Lazy River as soon as I heard the ludicrously hard thwap of that pool noodle, which connects at the very start of the trailer. Before this, I was not familiar with the lead developer’s pedigree in early indie games, but clearly the team is full of clever people, because this is the most compelling, design-led effort I’ve seen in a genre saturated with market-reactive friendslop.
You and your friends are building a physically simulated makeshift raft on a lazy river in an intergalactic waterpark overrun by zombies — because somebody peed in the pool. Evocative premise, made more interesting by the need to step off and get back on the raft constantly to scavenge for junk food and get past robot-manned security blockades. That feeling of ‘missing the boat’ or having to jump onto a moving target has always been an interesting friction point in multiplayer games, so cool to see some devs hone in on it.
There’s already lots of cool details, too: you can slide across the floor, snipe with waterguns and have the innertubes explode on the raft. Given the Original Sin (of piss) premise, at first I thought one of the resources to manage would be each party member’s need to pee, offset by sparingly placed facilities on the route that ratchet the tension. The game already seems hard enough, though — maybe that’s a modifier for an extreme difficulty setting…
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Slap Out Of It
We’re seeing a lot of VR developers pivot to flatscreen (Arizona Sunshine, The 7th Guest) to weather what seems to be a devastating industrial storm. One of the benefits of this turmoil is that Turbo Button is adapting its brilliant comedy VR series, Floor Plan, for PC and consoles. Now called Slap Out Of It!, this is a point-and-slap adventure game where you whap everything — it’s an American Thank Goodness You’re Here, if you will.
I’m not entirely sure how much of Floor Plan 1 & 2 is in Slap Out Of It!, which would be my one caveat of excitement if you’ve played them already, but regardless, they are heavily inspired by classic adventure game franchises like Sam & Max and Monkey Island. I am a card-carrying sucker for a bit of nostalgic lateral thinking, so I will be checking this out.
Wishlit Slap Out Of It! on Steam
n00b’s guide
From Just4Friends, n00b’s guide feels like an incisive reaction to Davey Wreden’s The Beginner’s Guide, but here the creators are focalising the introspection on an old YouTube playlist full of silly videos the protagonist made with their friends many moons ago. Anyone who grew up in the orbit of early YouTube will likely find its subject matter easy to connect with. I’d struggle to name a close friend who didn’t post some gaming videos or vlogs back in the day, famously without the millstone of monetisation hanging around their necks.
We’re still barely scratching the surface when it comes to thinking reflexively about this incredibly important era of the internet, so I’m excited to see a crew of developers take the art of posting cringe seriously.
Wishlist n00b’s guide on Steam
A Pocket Full of Slagford
Out of 15 showcases and hundreds upon hundreds of indie games, this is my absolute favourite from Summer Game Fest. It’s a gorgeous pre-rendered 2.5D adventure game set in an alt-history Northern England which never recovered from the bootstrap politics of Maggie Thatcher (imagine that!). All made by one Australian Blender wizard, as far as I can tell.
A Pocket Full Of Slagford seems to be tapping up the art style of the GrimE games specifically — Grim Fandango, Escape from Monkey Island — which is quite rare as adventure game revivals go, and makes this project laser-focused to my palate as a 30-year-old who A) grew up in a working class town in the North-East of England and B) got massively into adventure games even though they were technically before my time. Music sounds great, the dialogue is funny, and I like the imprints mechanic, where you can reshape the world with quotidian items — very late Telltale Sam & Max.
Wishlist A Pocket Full of Slagford on Steam
Putrid/Sharp
I lived in Brisbane for a year and attended a bunch of industry events, so I know the scene is ace and may be a little biased, but god damn man, the indie output down under is just unmatched at the minute. Frosty Games Fest was a bloodbath for my poor, seemingly endless Steam wishlist, and Putrid / Sharp was one of the games that went straight on there.
From a solo developer who goes by the moniker unseconds, this is a psych-horror romance RPG about the stages of decay after a body dies. Oh, and the combat is inspired by Picross puzzles! Say no more. Or, do, actually, cos I want to hear it. The trailer is a sugar-rush mixed-media mood piece full of lucid, dreamlike, Ville Kallio-esque visuals. What else can I say — this looks amazing, I can’t wait to play it.
Wishlist Putrid / Sharp on Steam
Carcass Clad
The next game from the team behind Mouthwashing is a three-player co-op game where you graft divine roadkill onto a fully diegetic and intentionally lumbering tank, then try to navigate through the doomed city of Vhorgorod. Sounds like an absolutely nightmarishly tense way to spend an evening, but perfectly on-brand for Wrong Organ, who appear to be self-publishing this one.
I’m drawn to the Commander position, firstly by the pincushion map, but also by the opportunity to range targets for my friends, which seems like a frictionful responsibility. But what really strikes me is that each character has an actual personality! They’re not just vessels; the gunner is a witty, lackadaisical bloke, while the driver, Taisto, is a country boy getting accustomed to 70 tons of steel.
Wishlist Carcass Clad on Steam
Cassette Beasts 2002
I live in Tokyo at the moment, and it’s the 30th Anniversary, so I am surrounded by all things Pokémon. This has me itching to play a good Pokémon game, but there’s a problem there, isn’t there? I tried to play Pokémon Violet on my Switch 2 the other day out of desperation, and it just felt so lethargic, rigid and patronising. I respect that it’s not for me anymore (I am 30) — I just can’t bring myself to push through all the exposition and fluff to get to the good bit, or whatever remains of it.
Thankfully, Bytten Studio has me covered. Cassette Beasts 2002 is, per the trailer, a delightfully British and meaningfully evolved creature collector with a bit of Persona DNA in there for good measure: 250+ fusable beasts, co-op, romanceable companions, and the ability to import your save game from the original Cassette Beasts. Monster designs are great, the dialogue is funny, and the accents are thick. Love it. No release date yet, but I think we can all whack this on our wish lists and wait patiently (or just play the first one in the meantime!).
Wishlist Cassette Beasts 2002 on Steam
