20 Extraordinary Indie Games To Wishlist This Black Friday

Quickly! They’re so full of turkey and grits (that sounds like American food, right?) that the editors can’t even move, let alone stop me filling up the front page of Kotaku yet again with a massive pile of unknown indie games you’re going to love. So, after an epic 20 games yesterday, let’s discover 20 more!

Do you like how I got “Black Friday” into the headline. I’m excellent at SEO. And now they’ve been tricked into reading this post by their all-consuming need for bargains, we bait and switch! Forget the five percent savings on toasters, and instead have a look through a wonderful mix of games you’ve never heard of before, but will almost certainly want to add to your wishlist.

Once again, these all came in via an appeal on BlueSky for indies to suggest their unknown games that are coming soon, or that have recently released to not enough attention. I then pick at random from the couple of hundred submissions, curate based on common sense, and present them for you here. I haven’t played them (unless I say otherwise), so I’m not endorsing their quality—just alerting you to the existence of such a glorious range of fascinating-looking games. And if you would like to help me do this sort of thing all year round, you can always support Buried Treasure!

Developer: Pracy Studios
Release Date: Jun 30, 2026
Store Page

I read the words “rhythm RPG” like that was perfectly normal, before realizing what I’d just glossed over. This is a full-length, gorgeously animated RPG, set in a digital afterlife that’s falling apart, with combat driven by Guitar Hero-like timing. Then, add on top of all that, the music for boss fights has been recorded by the Slovak National Symphony Orchestra! Check out the video above to see the scale of this! And if you want to get a glimpse, there’s a demo too.

Developer: Flatline Studios
Release Date: Out now
Store Page

Released into Early Access just a couple of weeks back, Into The Grid is a cyberpunk roguelite about hacking and deckbuilding. There’s megacorp infiltration via tactical map exploration, alongside what look like superbly detailed card-based battles, and a bunch of resource management thrown in too. It’s planning on about a year in EA, but already has two of the four characters and enough in there to let you finish runs.

Developer: Weatherfused
Release Date: Out now
Store Page

Another game launched into Early Access earlier this month is Skyformer, an automation sim about teraforming planets and building factories controlled by drones. Things get a lot deeper than that, with systems to allow you to control the climate, then deal with the consequences of the resulting weather, making up an integral part of the game. The EA build has a fully working single-player mode, with plans for co-op coming later.

Developer: Magitales Team
Release Date: TBA
Store Page

What if sokoban could save the world? That’s the rather adorable premise of Temple of Revi, here pushing blocks around the gorgeous pixel puzzles helps the world around them bloom back into colorful life. It also looks like there are a lot of interesting and innovative features that could elevate this above the usual block-shoving antics of the genre. There’s a demo to check out now.

Developer: Proud Turkeys
Release Date: TBA (playtest open)
Store Page

As I put these features together, I am very conscious of how many times I could end up typing “roguelite,” “tower defense” and “deckbuilder,” and when I saw Tower Petroleum was all three I did hesitate. And then I watched the trailer. I’m just in love with the art style, but perhaps more importantly, how differently it appears to be approaching the hoary genre of tower defense. There’s a branching storyline, too, and it all just looks so satisfying! There’s no release date yet, but there is an open playtest program going on which I’m told is “always open and always public.”

Developer: The Root Studios
Release Date: Out now
Store Page

You know what most auto-battlers aren’t? Cute. Shard Squad looks like it’s fixed that issue, combining the genre with a Pokémon-esque creatures to unlock. It came out earlier this month, but seems to have gone under the radar. Vampire Survivors but cuddly is enough for me to be already downloading the game.

Developer: 1TK
Release Date: TBA
Store Page

I love that inventory management has become its own genre. And I love that Turnbound has taken this idea and expanded it into an asynchronous PvP auto-battler played on a haunted board game. “It’s a game of competitive inventory management, where every tile you place in your grid has a strategic cause-and-effect loop that ripples through battles and rewards those with foresight and creativity,” says the description, as you battle against the trapped souls of former players. It looks stunningly original, and beautifully presented.

Developer: unbreaded
Release Date: Out now
Store Page

You know the problem with tic-tac-toe (or “naughts and crosses” as we call it in the motherland)? Between two intelligent people it can only end in a draw. It’s just a fundamentally badly designed game. So step in Tic Tactic, which uses the game as its basis, and then builds an entire roguelite deckbuilder around it! Also, you get to avenge ducks. The game came out in September, but went rather unnoticed, so notice it now!

Developer: Thogli Studios
Release Date: TBA (playtest open)
Store Page

Horses of Hoofprint Bay is essentially a stables simulator, in which you will raise and look after horses, manage your barns and business, and then enter competitions and compete for prize money. It also looks packed with educational material on horsies, all presented in lovely, hand-drawn 2D graphics. There’s a playtest going on for the game if you want to get in early and check it out.

Developer: Ultimo Disco
Release Date: Out now
Store Page

Competitive sheep herding might sound like maverick madness to anyone not from the UK, old enough to remember that it was genuinely a televised event called One Man And His Dog. However, it wasn’t competitive quite like the fabulous-looking Sheepherds! (exclamation mark their own). This is a party game for up to four players, where everyone plays a dog trying to get sheep into paddocks and barns, but also able to sabotage the attempts of their competitors. Which would have made for incredibly 1970s British television too. The game came out just last week, and looks adorable.

Developer: Michael Mato
Release Date: Out now
Store Page

If you had to guess what a game called Torso Tennis might look like, I reckon it’d be pretty close to the batshit reality. After watching the trailer, I was so delightedly clueless about what on Earth was going on, but really wanting to join in. It came out a couple of months back, is super-cheap, and looks like the content of my ADHD-riddled mind.

Developer: Pawsmonaut Games
Release Date: Q1 2026
Store Page

AETHUS is giving me real Subnautic but on dry land vibes, with its survival-led craft-me-do basis, driven by narrative and emphasizing exploration. Apparently there’s even a dystopian corporate conspiracy in there too. I suspect this one could go pretty big if it plays as good as it looks. There’s a demo out now.

Developer: Team Artichoke
Release Date: TBA
Store Page

I love that so many of the games we’re seeing in this list are enormous embellishments on multiple genres. Mythmatch takes match-3 and merger games, and develops the concept into a story-driven puzzle RPG in which you battle the Greek gods, with a hardcore anti-capitalist message at its core. And what better genre to deliver that in than a merger, the scourge of microtransaction-riddled exploitation on mobile, but delivered here as a proper, premium game. I played a demo of this a while back, and it went straight to the top end of my wishlist.

Developer: Potion of Mini
Release Date: TBA
Store Page

Timing in comedy games is notoriously tough, so I want to give maximum kudos to the trailer for Nova Forever. Those are some difficult gags to make work, and it nails them! This is a forthcoming point-and-click adventure with a really distinctive art style, all set in a giant space mall.

Developer: AtypicalCroqueta
Release Date: 2026
Store Page

Based on a Rubik’s Cube, but legally distinct (I hope), this novel-looking roguelite has you rotate the cube to align tiles that combine or open up new tactics, conduct battles, and unlock new cubes with which to play. It looks fascinating, and I adore the art.

Developer: mardt
Release Date: 2026
Store Page

I am very here for this recent spate of super-grungy looking arcades that contain bizarre, secret-packed classic style games. Unshine Arcade, so named after the ‘S’ fell off the sign of this dilapidated building, has you playing games to earn tickets so you can try to free a sentient virtual pet stuck inside a claw machine. Honestly, if you need more than that to want to play a game, I don’t know how to help you. There’s a demo coming December 10.

Developer:
Release Date: 2025
Store Page

“Flow like a storm,” says the trailer for arcade game Towerbolt, where you must climb ever higher as a deadly laser pursues you from below. Movement looks fantastic, seemingly based on a lot of wall-jumps and frantic athletics, as you—a half-human, half-robot prisoner—attempt to escape from the Megatower prison.

Developer: Two and a Half Studios
Release Date: TBA
Store Page

You have just moved to the sleepy town of Willowmist, I’m here to inform you, and you’re running a charming little antiques store in this visual novel-meets-shop sim about fascinating trinkets and falling in love. You need to price the items in your store, haggle with customers, and then choose which of the five hotties you’re going to romantically pursue.

Developer: Lightmancer Studio
Release Date: Out now
Store Page

I do love auto-battlers, but at the same time I’m sad that so many games have recently drifted away from twin-stick combat as a result. BloodRush: Undying Wish therefore warms my heart, with its hack-n-slash fighting combined with VS-like upgrades. This came out into Early Access in July, and at first I wasn’t sure how I missed it. But given it’s already in my Steam account I clearly didn’t, but instead forgot to play it. Looking to put that right now.

Developer: Eye Blink Twice
Release Date: 2026
Store Page

Oh gosh I love how creepy this is. You’re trapped in a dream, and each time you blink the world around you dramatically twists and transforms. There’s a voice in your head, and it’s not at all clear who’s side he’s on, as you try to navigate the constantly changing corridors and rooms of what looks like a wildly broken school.