"Since last November, we've been running a weekly picks of our favorite recent indie game releases. These games are usually pretty cheap and range from old-school boomer shooters to golf course design sims. They're often created by very small teams, maybe even just one or two people. It could be the first in a transformative career of making games or the only ones they ever ship."
"While we still regularly review lots of games, whether from big publishers or small indie studios, these weekly picks are a way of sharing some bonus personal recommendations from the staff for really neat stuff that's not already getting tons of attention. The algorithm has no sway here. Neither do Steam charts. Only the souls of the people writing the recommendations and what's speaking to them."
"Survive long enough, and you'll earn tokens which can be spent in various ways. I spent most of mine at a slot machine inside a large arcade in the hub world. That slot machine spit out tickets if I got lucky, and I could use those to buy other pieces of gear. There's actually a lot going on in Oddcore, and after just an hour or so of playing, I could feel it start to pull me into its web. I wanted to do just one more run...earn just a few more tokens...play just a little bit more."
New Steam releases increase each year, and console backwards compatibility keeps older games competing with new weekly releases. The resulting abundance of options can cause paralysis when deciding what to download and play. Weekly indie recommendations offer personal picks of recent low-cost games, often made by very small teams, including one- or two-person studios. These selections are presented as bonus staff recommendations rather than algorithm-driven or chart-driven choices. The list includes early 2026 indie picks, such as Oddcore, where earning tokens through runs leads to spending them on gear via an arcade slot machine, creating a pull to keep playing. Another pick involves repetitive coin flipping and building large amounts of money.
Read at Kotaku
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