Our favourite indie games from the 2024 summer games showcases

gamesindustry.biz:

A number of headlines on other sites have declared this year's array of showcases as 'The Year of the Indie' – and they're not wrong.

The titles seen across the likes of Guerrilla Collective, Wholesome Direct, and Day of the Devs were superb, with indie titles even turning up during Summer Game Fest and Xbox Games Showcase. Across the week, there were dozens if not hundreds of titles from smaller or solo developers bringing original and innovative ideas to the table, or telling stories from underrepresented cultures, or simply tapping into a sense of fun and imagination that few AAA titles manage with their push for realism or intense action.

As with last year, the GamesIndustry.biz team wanted to highlight some of the titles we believe deserve more time in the spotlight given that most of the attention typically goes on the latest outing from established developers and franchises. Below are our picks from the summer games showcases of 2024.

I was very privileged to be out in LA during the period of summer games showcases, so I couldn't watch every one of the seemingly endless announcement videos that were put on. Apparently there were over 700 games shown, with 70+ games announced in a few of the events... There's the games industry's discoverability problem represented in a single weekend.

But while I couldn't watch all the videos, I was able to play a couple of the games. And there were two that I want to call out.

First is Fear the Spotlight by Cozy Game Pals, and being released under the new Blumhouse Games label. It's a game that looks like it was made in the late 1990s, with flat faces and low polygons, but doesn't play like one (thankfully). The demo portrays two friends, Vivian and Amy, as they sneak into a school to grab a Ouija board from the library and conduct a séance. Things go wrong, Amy disappears, and the world goes all Silent Hill.

The opening segment we played involved dodging school security cameras, finding a key to a locked door (Resident