The "wonderfully simple" winning recipe of Wholesome Direct
The fifth edition of Wholesome Direct took place on Saturday, presenting over 70 indie games.
Originating as a Twitter account by founder Matthew Taylor in 2019, Wholesome Games evolved to become not only a yearly digital showcase from 2020, but also a monthly newsletter, and a large community of like-minded people gathered around the best and brightest cosy games.
This year's Direct saw new trailers for highly awaited titles like Tiny Bookshop, Dungeons of Hinterberg, and Été, a highlight of last year's showcase that is out this July. But it also presented a wealth of new titles, most of them debut games from small indie studios, like Mythmatch, Caravan SandWitch, Littlelands, and many more. A platform for leftfield ideas and silly concepts, the event also delighted us by showcasing Optillusion's While Waiting.
Wholesome Direct feels like a safe space for an entire fringe of the games community and industry that's often been underserved. It gives a platform to underrepresented games, genres, creators, and cultures. This year, for instance, it showcased Niku Games' The Palace on the Hill, a coming-of-age story set in 90s rural India, and Sticky Brain Studios' Rooster, which celebrates ancient Chinese culture. In previous years, the showcase had been giving space to Visai Games' now multi-award winning narrative cooking title Venba as well.
Giving a platform to marginalised voices has always been part of the show's vision, Taylor tells GamesIndustry.biz.
"I think as soon as I realised we had a platform of any meaning whatsoever, I wanted to integrate that into it because that's just another component of changing the industry in a good way that will hopefully outlast Wholesome as a label," he says. "That's a positive impact we can make that literally changes people's lives."
This vision is further exemplified by Wholesome Direct being the only show last week acknowledging the situation in Gaza and showing solidarity to Palestine, with sales of its merch going to the
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