Welcome to GTOGG’s December 2023 edition of Promising Indie Game Releases, where we highlight indie and non-mainstream titles that we believe deserve your attention – in other words, “look at all this potentially cool stuff you might’ve missed otherwise”.
Set in a reimagined version of the Pacific Northwest, players will venture into the so-called Olympic Exclusion Zone, an area filled with danger, anomalies and secrets just waiting to be uncovered.
Players will take control of a warrior with cybernetic enhancements and a trusty sword, and will be expected to master the game’s intricate melee combat in order to prevail, relying on well-timed slashes, counter-attacks and parries, among other things.
Developer Armonica has revealed Detective Instinct: Farewell, My Beloved, an investigation-centric adventure game that kicks its story off with a pretty sizeable mystery – following the murder of a man at a certain hotel, a woman goes missing, but here’s the thing: only you seem to remember that she even existed in the first place.
Its concept is fairly simple – you and your crew work for the mysterious Company, and your job is to explore desolate moons and scavenge for junk in order to meet your employer’s quota. Sounds easy, right?
If you were gaming back in the late 90s, you may remember a somewhat underrated gem called Outcast – a game that, back in 1999 when it first came out, felt like a genuine glimpse into the future.
Set in Australia during the 1980s, the game will feature pretty much everything you may associate with the phrase “classic survival horror” – tank controls, fixed camera angles, limited ammo, cheesy voice acting and, uh... bad haircuts?
Described as an “occult-inspired cyberpunk metroidvania”, Blade Chimera takes place in a semi-near future where demons and monsters have become commonplace, and where humanity continues to wage a bloody, decades-long war against them.
Digital Happiness is an indie developer that fans of Indonesian horror will no doubt be familiar with as the team behind the Fatal Frame-inspired DreadOut series.
If you’re into Korean cinema, chances are you’ve seen some of the classics, especially if they’re crime dramas centered around revenge and moral dilemmas – although there are multiple titles one could bring up, 2003’s Oldboy is probably one of the most well-known of the bunch.