- 6 indie games
- 5 free demos
- 7 Oct first launch
- 1 solo dev
Tokyo Game Show is a lot. Five days, a convention centre the size of a small country, and approximately one million trailers competing for your attention at once. So here are six indie games from this year’s show that stood out, with the facts sorted and the hype filtered, so you can decide what deserves a wishlist click without doing a sensory endurance event in Chiba.
Best news first: five of these six have free demos on Steam right now, so you can find out what actually clicks with your brain before you commit to anything. Most of them come via UAE publisher Red Dunes Games, which brought a hefty lineup to Hall 7. The odd one out is Delve Survivors, published by Japan’s NGJ Corporation.
Side Quest What Do All These Genre Words Mean?
Games people love a genre label. Here’s what the ones in this list actually mean:
- Roguelite: you play in runs. When you die, you start again, but you keep some upgrades, so every attempt gets you a little further.
- Survivors-like: named after Vampire Survivors (2022). Huge swarms of enemies, your weapons mostly fire automatically, and the fun is in how powerful your build gets.
- Metroidvania: a mash-up of Metroid and Castlevania, the two series that defined it. One big interconnected map where new abilities unlock areas you couldn’t reach before. Lots of exploring and backtracking.
- Soulslike: tough, deliberate combat in the style of FromSoftware’s Dark Souls. Expect to die a lot and learn from it.
- Boss rush: the game is mostly boss fights, back to back, with little in between.
Nightmare Circus
You play a puppeteer trapped in the Nightmare Realm, trying to find your wandering circus troupe and escape, which is already a sentence that makes me want to sleep with the light on. Thai studio FairPlay Studios (Fallen Knight, The Land Beneath Us) calls it creepy-cute, and the key art nails that: adorable, but you would not want to meet it in a dark corridor.
The combat is the clever bit. Your weapon is the puppeteer’s control bar and strings, so you can latch onto enemies, drag them around and use them against each other. There are three different control bars to switch between (light and fast, long reach, or heavy and bashing), a combo system for mixing them, and physics-based collisions that make every hit feel chunky. Between fights, you’re solving puzzles and platforming through a twisted circus that’s both strange and oddly familiar.
For you if: you like your horror more whimsical than gory, and you enjoy experimenting with combat instead of button-mashing.
- Cosy Creepy
- Chill Chaos
- Developer: FairPlay Studios · Publisher: Red Dunes Games
- Genre: Action-adventure with puzzles and platforming
- Out: 7 October 2026 on PC, with PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and Nintendo Switch 2 planned
- Play it now: free demo on Steam · wishlist on Steam
HellHeart Breaker
From BattleBrew Productions, the studio behind the cooking roguelite Cuisineer. You’re locked at the very bottom of the Underworld, and you have to fight your way out through an Asian-inspired hell.
Here’s the twist that sold me: HellHeart Breaker is a dungeon-crawling roguelite and a dating sim, and the two feed into each other. The monster girls you date grant you new powers. The ones you don’t date? They’re the bosses you fight. Rejection has never been this literal, and I respect it enormously.
Rejection has never been this literal.
HellHeart Breaker
For you if: you want your relationship choices to actually matter, and you like a roguelite with personality.
- Wholesome Unhinged
- Chill Chaos
- Developer: BattleBrew Productions · Publisher: Red Dunes Games
- Genre: Action roguelite dungeon crawler with dating sim
- Out: PC and consoles, with Steam listing the second quarter of 2027
- Play it now: free demo on Steam · wishlist on Steam
Katuba’s Poacher
This one is made by a single person, solo developer Joe Yu (as Joe Yu Studio), which always gets extra points from me. It’s a choreographed boss-rush action roguelite in a hand-drawn cartoon style, where there are huge bounties on the monsters, and on you.
The standout detail: every boss’s attack patterns play out to its own original swing jazz theme, so each fight is basically a dance with a brass section. Between runs you collect traits, craft new weapons, then head back out on the hunt.
For you if: you’re a rhythm person. Learning attack patterns to music is a very satisfying way to get good at something.
- Cosy Creepy
- Chill Chaos
- Developer: Joe Yu · Publisher: Red Dunes Games
- Genre: Boss-rush action roguelite
- Out: Early 2027 on PC (Windows, Mac and Linux, according to Steam)
- Play it now: no demo yet, so wishlist it on Steam to hear when there is one
Delve Survivors
From developer iDiOSLAB, Delve Survivors mixes classic turn-based roguelike dungeon crawling with the swarms-of-enemies intensity of survivors games. You work through multiple dungeons, gather loot, tweak your build and try to survive the Delve.
Why it’s interesting: survivors games are usually real-time chaos, which can be a lot for brains that get overwhelmed. Here, you set the pace with every step. Nothing moves until you do, so you get all the fun of a screen full of enemies with time to actually think.
Nothing moves until you do.
Delve Survivors
For you if: you love the idea of survivors games but find real-time ones too frantic.
- Chill Chaos
- Cosy Creepy
- Developer: iDiOSLAB · Publisher: NGJ Corporation
- Genre: Turn-based tactical survivors-like with pixel art
- Out on Steam: 12 November 2026 in the US, which Steam lists as Friday 13 November in Australia (US$12.98)
- Out on Nintendo Switch and Switch 2: Thursday 21 January 2027
- Play it now: free demo on Steam · wishlist on Steam
Zozo and the Lost Dreams
A casual, cartoon-inspired Metroidvania platformer from Indonesian studio Agate. You help Zozo find his way home through the landscapes of his dreams, which apparently involve pillow-fighting sentient pastries, training under an octopus master, and braving a cybernetic jungle. Honestly, that’s just what my dreams look like too.
Zozo isn’t brand new, either. He first appeared in The Adventures of Zozo, from Emirati studio HelloSir Games, whose founder Mohamed Al Jneibi went on to co-found Red Dunes.
For you if: you want a Metroidvania that’s cosy rather than punishing. It’s billed as casual, so exploring matters more than reflexes.
- Cosy Creepy
- Chill Chaos
- Developer: Agate, with Red Dunes Games · Publisher: Red Dunes Games
- Genre: Casual Metroidvania platformer
- Out: 2027, according to Steam
- Play it now: free demo on Steam · wishlist on Steam
Blades of Mirage
Also from Agate: an action-adventure Soulslike set in a world inspired by Southeast Asia. You build your playstyle by combining weapons and runes, then explore an ancient realm called the Brightlands, face corrupted guardians and solve puzzles to uncover what happened.
It’s refreshing to see a big fantasy action game drawing on somewhere other than the usual medieval Europe starter kit, and the art is gorgeous.
For you if: you like a challenge. Soulslikes are built to be hard, so give the demo a proper go to see whether the difficulty works for you before you wishlist.
- Easy Punishing
- Chill Chaos
- Developer: Agate · Publisher: Red Dunes Games
- Genre: Action-adventure Soulslike RPG
- Out: PC and consoles, no date yet
- Play it now: free demo on Steam · wishlist on Steam
Accessibility Snapshot
Accessibility checked: 26 September 2026
Everything here comes from each game’s Steam page, not hands-on testing. None of the six lists specific accessibility features on Steam yet, so the free demos are the best way to check what matters to you. I’ll update this if more info becomes available.
Nightmare Circus
Reported
Xbox and PlayStation controller support. Interface text and subtitles in ten languages, with no spoken audio listed. Free demo out now.
HellHeart Breaker
Reported
Xbox controller support. English only, for both the interface and subtitles. Free demo out now.
Katuba’s Poacher
Reported
Xbox and PlayStation controller support, plus interface text and subtitles in nine languages. There’s no demo yet, so you can’t try it before you buy.
Delve Survivors
Reported
Xbox controller support. Interface text and subtitles in eleven languages. Free demo out now.
Zozo and the Lost Dreams
Reported
Xbox and DualSense controller support. Spoken English, with interface text and subtitles in eleven languages. Free demo out now.
Blades of Mirage
Reported
Xbox and DualSense controller support. The interface is English only, and Steam doesn’t list subtitles at all, so check the demo if you rely on them.
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So, Which One First?
Five free demos is a very cheap way to find your next hyperfixation. If you want spooky, start with Nightmare Circus. If real-time games overwhelm you, try Delve Survivors. And if you want chaos with feelings, HellHeart Breaker is right there. Then come and tell us which one got its hooks in you.
Stay unruly.
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