Happy New Year! 2026 has arrived, and the indie game releases are not slowing down. Not one bit. We hope you’ve all had a good rest during the holiday season, because January is already hurling a handful of promising indie titles at us – so strap in and enjoy our list of personal picks from the first week of the month!
Pathologic 3
The latest installment in developer Ice-Pick Lodge’s delightfully dreary psychological horror series is here to once again force you into tough moral dilemmas as you explore a town ravaged by a deadly plague – more specifically, you take on the role of a doctor, and you only have 12 days to save the city. So make them count.
Death Machine
Death Machine is a marriage of two worlds, and is described as a metroidvania with a roguelite-inspired item system. In it, players are cast down into the dark depth after rejecting “the machine”, and must rise up again, wreaking havoc as they explore every dangerous nook and cranny of a vast mechanical citadel.
Dungeon Antiqua 2
A retro-style dungeon crawler inspired by the SNES era, Dungeon Antiqua 2 builds upon its predecessor with two additional jobs (Monk and Archer) added to the roster, along with six dungeons to explore and a story set hundreds of years after the first game.
StarRupture
An open-world base builder/survival game with oodles of exploration, all set on a mysterious planet teeming with danger. Needless to say, it’s not just the extreme weather conditions and the environment you’ll have to watch out for – the monstrous residents of the planet aren’t exactly the welcoming kind, either, so when the horde comes knocking, you’ll want to be ready for them.
DuneCrawl
Okay, so listen to this: you have a giant crab equipped with cannons, and you pilot it to explore a vast open desert in search of adventure and loot. Sold? We know we are. What’s more, DuneCrawl lets you do all this with friends at your side – if solo play isn’t your thing, you can grab up to three buddies for some capital-s Shenanigans.
