When buying a game in Early Access, we always take a certain risk. Some interesting data has just emerged about what that actually looks like on Steam.
The blogger Gamer of Passion calculated that there are still 12,320 games in Early Access, and 6,898 of them have a Steam warning indicating that they haven't been updated in over 12 months. This represents nearly 7,000 projects that appear to be frozen or abandoned.
The other side of the coin is more optimistic. Of the over 10,000 games that entered Early Access between 2013 and 2023 and have at least 10 reviews, 61% have left Early Access, and mostly within three years. However, players point out that the "version 1.0" is sometimes just the last patch before the project is abandoned. Furthermore, one-third of these games stopped being updated or were removed from sale even earlier.
Here are a few numbers that surprised me: only 21 games that have been in Early Access for at least 10 years are still being developed (including Project Zomboid and BeamNG.drive). A game that doesn't leave Early Access after three years has approximately a 1-in-5 chance of eventually being fully released within the next five years.
An important caveat: this analysis is based solely on what Steam shows. Some developers update their games elsewhere. An example is the Polish RPG Dungeons of the Amber Griffin, which hasn't received updates on Steam for over a year, while the project team has been publishing smaller patches and new screenshots on Discord.
The author of the analysis calls Early Access "a blessing and a curse for the industry" and advises doing your research before buying. I completely agree: before buying a game in Early Access, it's worth checking the date of the last update and whether the developers are even responsive.
Full details:
https://gamerofpassion.com/steam-early-access-study/
Source: GRYOnline.pl
I've been playing indie games for years, but 2025 genuinely felt different. Watching The Game Awards this year, more than half of the Game of the Year nominees were indie titles, and the winner — Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 — walked away with the top prize plus eight more awards. A near clean sweep at the biggest show of the year, from a game made outside the big-budget machine.
The numbers back it up too. Indie games pulled in around 25 percent of Steam's total revenue last year, roughly $4.5 billion out of $17.7 billion. That's massive when you consider how many huge AAA releases dropped in the same window. Half of the best-performing games on the platform were indies.
The moment that stuck with me was Hollow Knight: Silksong's launch. It hit nearly 600,000 concurrent players on Steam, and the sheer volume of people buying at once actually crashed the storefronts — pre-orders weren't available, so everyone piled in at the same second. Expedition 33, Dispatch, Megabonk, and Schedule I also posted huge launch numbers.
What I love most is that these small teams won by leaning into creativity and community instead of budget. That's the kind of energy that keeps this hobby interesting. Here's hoping 2026 keeps the momentum going.
Source: Into Indie Games
A game about taking apart broken phones and old consoles immediately caught my curiosity. Gamereactor Germany tested ReStory, a simulation from Mandragora published by Tiny Build. It came out on August 6, 2026 for PC.
You run a small electronics repair shop in Tokyo in the mid-2000s. You buy broken devices, take them apart, clean components, replace damaged parts and sell everything on. The game leans into the nostalgia of the turn of the millennium, with flip phones, portable music players, cameras and older consoles.
According to tester Emily-Maisy Milburn, the repairs are the strongest part. Every job demands careful disassembly, piece by piece. You order spare parts through an online hub and take on customer requests. With licenses and upgrades you build up your shop and reputation, and this loop is described as quite addictive. The colorful, cozy visuals are praised.
The rest is weaker. The soundtrack feels uninspired and at times repetitive, so the tester recommends putting on your own music. The branching story promises consequences for your decisions but stays superficial. Customer dialogue usually offers only one or two lines per option, and some characters and situations come across as plain or uneven in tone.
The score is 6 out of 10, and the network average of 21 Gamereactor reviews is also 6.0. The tester's conclusion is the part I agree with: it is a nice collection of ideas that are not always developed as far as they could be. To me, it sounds like a game for relaxed evenings, where you enjoy the atmosphere and the craft and forgive the story generously.
Source: Gamereactor Germany
I came across an article on Al Jazeera Net by writer Ahmed Hassan Ismail, published in March 2026 under the title "5 Indie Games Worth Trying in 2026." I wanted to share it with you because it mixes some fun ideas. Since the piece was written in the first quarter of the year, some of these games were still waiting to be released when it was published.
The first is At Fate End, a 2D side-scroller about sibling relationships and the challenges they bring. It runs on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox. It belongs to the Metroidvania genre but doesn't stick strictly to its rules, with the story leading the experience. Polygon described it as a fantasy version of the series Succession, and that description made me want to learn more about it.
The second is Mina the Hollower from Yacht Club Games, the studio behind Shovel Knight. It draws on the style of classic Game Boy games and centers on exploration and searching for secrets. The Verge considers its combat unique. The third, Shutter Story, is a horror game in which the player searches for ghosts inside photos of a friend's family through a computer app. It was funded on Kickstarter and runs on Windows.
The fourth, Dead as Disco, is a fast, fluid combat game against huge numbers of enemies. Polygon compared it to a mix of Batman: Arkham and Hi-Fi Rush, and it lets the player choose the music that plays in the background. Finally, Super Meat Boy 3D is the 3D version of the 2010 game, built on Unreal Engine 5, and it promises stronger graphics than its predecessor.
What I like about this list is that it covers different tastes, from family stories to horror and rhythm play. If you've tried any of these since release, let us know your thoughts in the comments.
Source: Al Jazeera Net
Rusty Lake has long been one of my favorite names when it comes to small, strange puzzle games, so I was glad when Gamereactor Sweden wrote about Servant of the Lake. It is a new PC game from Rusty Lake itself, which both develops and publishes it, and it came out on August 13, 2026. The genre is puzzles with a healthy dose of horror.
The premise is simple and unsettling. You become a servant in the Vanderboom family's house in the 1800s, and the tasks begin mundanely: cleaning, serving, hanging paintings. But the further you get, the bloodier and more surreal the chores become. The story takes place several decades before Rusty Lake: Roots, at a time when the brothers Aldous and William are still just experimenting with alchemy, which makes the game a kind of prequel for anyone who already knows the series.
Reviewer Joel Pettersson thinks the puzzles are at a comfortable level. There are enough clues to solve them yourself, but sometimes you need a bit of that odd Rusty Lake logic that makes you stop and think. The atmosphere, the hand-painted environments, the music and the dry humor are highlighted as strengths, and the story is described as clearer and more coherent than in many of the older games, though it is still enigmatic.
The drawbacks are that the playtime is short, about five hours for the reviewer, and that the game does not really reinvent the formula. The verdict is that it does not revolutionize the series, but it is a very good Rusty Lake game that suits both longtime fans and anyone who wants to jump in for the first time.
For me, it is exactly this kind of short, clearly shaped indie game that is the charm. You don't need forty hours, just an evening, a dark room and a bit of curiosity about what is really going on in that kitchen.
Source: Gamereactor Sverige
Among August's games, Duskfade caught my eye, as covered by Gamereactor Italia. It is developed by Weird Beluga Studio, published by Fireshine Games, and came out on August 13, 2026 for PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X. It is an action platformer, and the review calls it a charismatic, impactful adventure inspired by the great names of platforming.
The hero, Zirian, sets out with Cuckoo, a mechanical cuckoo bird, to rescue his sister from the clock tower that has cast a shadow over Tick Town. The story is predictable and linear, but the bond between the two travel companions works well. The reviewer also notes a strong resemblance in look and animation to Sora from Kingdom Hearts, and the combat recalls a simplified version of that series.
The weak point is precisely the fighting: in the later areas it becomes chaotic, with too many enemies at once, and the upgrade shop helps only in part. The strong point, on the other hand, is the bosses, two for each of the four areas, with the final one singled out as the best moment of the game.
Zirian's movement is described as floaty and takes some getting used to, but difficulty is introduced gradually. There are grappling hooks, rail sections, precision jumps and switches, with a comparison to Sonic Lost World. Every world hides secret areas with collectibles: the reviewer reached 63% completion after about ten hours of campaign. The fantasy style is lively, although the bloom is excessive in some lava sections of the first area.
The score is 7/10, in line with the network average of 7.0. The verdict is that the game hits more often than it misses, and it is recommended to anyone looking for a new 3D platformer. I like that a review admits its flaws without losing its enthusiasm.
Source: Gamereactor Italia
Among this summer's independent releases, Theropods caught my attention after reading the review from Gamereactor France. It is a pixel-art point-and-click adventure about friendship and dinosaurs, available on PC via Steam since August 20, 2026, and published by Dionous Games.
What struck me most is the story of how it was made. The game is the work of Lost Token, a team of three people who spent more than ten years on it. Its creators, Kostas Skiftas and Sarah Duffield-Harding, come from animation rather than game design, and that shows in the care given to the hand-drawn animations.
The story takes place in prehistoric times, when humans and dinosaurs coexist. After a meteorite falls, the village of a red-haired huntress is attacked by a bloodthirsty tribe. At the same moment, an astronaut crashes into this world and looks for a way to get home. The two characters team up to save the villagers, and all of this is told without any dialogue or text.
In terms of gameplay, you collect objects to use them alone or combine them. The inventory rarely holds more than three or four items, and most puzzles fit on a single screen. Pressing H reveals all the points of interaction, and there is neither survival nor fail states. The reviewer says they were rarely stuck.
The strengths mentioned are the pixel art, the music, the story and the creativity of the solutions. The weaknesses: the game is short, two to three hours, rather easy, and the gameplay seems to take a back seat, perhaps deliberately. Gamereactor France gives it 8/10. Personally, I like the idea of a small, unhurried adventure that takes the time to tell a friendship without a single word.
Source: Gamereactor France
I love games that are hard to describe, and Unshine Arcade, a $10 indie from mardt, is one of them. You are stuck in an abandoned arcade, playing what is basically a creepy take on Pac-Man that turns into an isometric shooter, all to win tickets that might free some kind of sentient computer.
Each round has two stages. As a little alien in a UFO-like ship, you move through maze rooms avoiding enemies and grabbing gacha balls, bonuses and coins. Reach the weapon at the end and the game flips into a shooter where you hunt the enemies you were just running from, earning tickets for each one. Clear a round and you open your gacha balls and pick a new ability, then choose your next step on a Slay the Spire-style map: another round, more gacha balls, a shop, or upgrades.
Failing is softened because you keep every ticket, and there are a surprising number of things to spend them on: that needy AI, a claw machine, a battery vending machine that powers up other machines, a Pong knock-off, a slot machine. The real meta-game is finding codes that open new rooms, discs that change the core game, and even cheat codes. The more you explore, the weirder the story gets.
Visually it sits close to CloverPit, with the same dark, crunchy pixel look, though Kotaku notes Unshine was in development long before CloverPit came out. The advice I liked: don't try to beat it in a day. Leave it running and play a few rounds here and there.
It is out now on Steam, and there is a demo that covers a good chunk of the game, so I'm definitely trying it.
Source: Kotaku
Forever Ago, the long-delayed debut from developer Third Shift, published by Annapurna Interactive, comes out today (October 8) on Switch 2, PS5, PC and Xbox Series X. It was first announced back in 2020, so it has been a long wait, and I read Polygon's review with interest.
You play Alfred, a white-haired grouch driving an empty RV on a grief-stricken road trip. The game opens with two young lovers, Alfred and Audrey, snapping photos of each other on a hike, and then jumps decades ahead. Alfred is now revisiting their old date spots to recreate those memories, with flashbacks between pit stops filling in a long life full of foiled plans.
In practice that means walking around a handful of neatly designed locations, taking optional photos for your journal, and rebuilding the odd memory by collecting scattered flower petals. There is a little puzzling, but it mostly follows the cinematic style of Mixtape, and it is a tight three hours. The review wishes the camera or the RV had been used in cleverer ways.
The weaker moments are the "back in my day" bits, like an argument with a vegan cashier saying "hashtag van life," or a spat at a diner turned sterile franchise where his favourite booth needs a membership. The stronger moments are about chance: a storm that spoils one big moment and creates a better one, a stray dog that becomes a companion, a breakdown that takes Alfred exactly where he needs to go.
The verdict: overly sentimental and predictable, but sincere enough that it still lands where it matters. As someone with a soft spot for this kind of game, that sounds like a fair trade.
Source: Polygon
Well Dweller wasn't on my radar, and from what I've read, I wasn't the only one. In this metroidvania we control Glimmer, a little black bird who lives with its family at the bottom of a well. When a cruel queen orders all the birds captured so she can make a dress out of their feathers, Glimmer grabs a giant match as a weapon and sets out to rescue its family across a kingdom on the brink of ruin. That premise alone won me over.
The review I read, played on PS5 Pro, highlights above all how fluid the controls are and the pace at which new abilities arrive: sticking the match into walls, sliding, climbing or jumping between walls. On top of that, free fast travel from the camps makes backtracking addictive rather than tedious.
The bosses are apparently the best part of the game, with a special mention for a fight that inverts the controls in its second phase and is handled with real mastery. The art direction, inspired by illustrated storybooks, and the soundtrack round out the package.
On the downside, the review points to little variety in basic combat and a very accessible difficulty. Even so, it scores 91/100 and is considered one of the big surprises of the year. And the most impressive part for me: it's the work of a single person, Kyle Thompson.
Source: La Razón
Order of the Sinking Star, the new puzzle game that Jonathan Blow, creator of Braid and The Witness, spent ten years making, has finally had its review embargo lifted. As a longtime fan, I checked the scores right away. The game launches on Steam, NS2 and PS5 on October 9.
As of publication, the PC version holds an average of 86 from 7 outlets on Metacritic, the NS2 version 85 from 5 outlets, and the PS5 version 83 from 7 outlets. Shacknews gave it a perfect score, calling it a masterpiece: the puzzles first make you feel stupid, then make you feel incredibly smart. That description really resonates with me.
Of course, quite a few reviews also mention its barrier to entry. GameSpot felt there are too many puzzles, which can occasionally be frustrating, but considered it an acceptable price for experiencing so many interesting ideas. PSX Brasil pointed out that the game, with official permission, weaves 4 other Sokoban-style games into 4 chapters, an unprecedented scale, though at times it feels sprawling and hard to follow. Nintenduo criticized the performance of the NS2 version as less than ideal.
The way I see it, this is a game for puzzle players willing to dig in for the long haul; even playing just part of the content could take dozens of hours. I'm already prepared to be "tortured" by it.
Source: 游民星空
I found a game that made me say "so cute!" out loud the moment I saw it: 'A Tiny Wander,' an exploration and puzzle-solving adventure in development by DOUKUTSU PENGUIN CLUB. Its defining feature is that the world and story themselves are the puzzle. Release is planned for Q2 2027, and a demo is playable on its Steam store page.
The setting is a forest of giant trees, feared as "the Forest of No Return" because people keep getting lost in it. You play as Buu, a traveling courier who carelessly agreed to make a delivery into this forest, camping at its edge as you push deeper inside.
Apparently, solving the problems of the residents—like a crybaby beastfolk and a mushroom angler—gives you clues that bring you closer to the forest's secrets. It's the kind of game where you affect the world through observation and conversation, such as lighting up dark signs with a lantern or hauling materials to build bridges. As your knowledge grows in the form of "memories," events that seemed separate start to connect, and depending on how you solve things, you can even jump straight from the early game to the ending—which is what makes it so interesting.
The laid-back atmosphere is another draw, from the sky slowly shifting into night to the moments spent chatting with residents around a campfire. I think a game with this kind of vibe is perfect for autumn nights.
Source: 電ファミニコゲーマー (Denfaminicogamer)
