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[mild sriracha]

Former Dawn (NES + MXM1 mapper)

I was ready to call this a hoax because the screenshots were ignoring some of the very obvious limitations of NES (e.g. maximum 4 colors for every 16x16 pixel area of BG). But the creators are talking about an advanced mapper chip (MXM-1) that circumvents many of the limits of the original hardware, so color me impressed.

 

[Holammer]

Final Formation is a sequel to Jaleco's 1984 arcade Formation Z.
Developed by Happymeal Inc, a small'ish Japanese company doing mostly mobile games but seems to be increasingly dipping its toes in console development.
In the game player can transform between different forms (tank/mecha/aircraft) and explore an open world type environment. The story is presented with a digital comic by mangaka Watari Yuu
Image grabbed from the Steam page, I can't find any video.

Releases October 2025 on Nintendo Switch and Steam 2026.

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Death by Scrolling is an action roguelike by Terrible Toybox, Ron Gilbert's company (the guy behind Secret of Monkey Island and many other games).
It's an auto scroller where the players needs to collect 10k gold to pay the ferryman and escape purgatory.
Coming Soon for PC.

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Aggelos 2, a metroidvania by French developer Wonderboy BOBI unsurprisingly draws a lot of inspiration from later Wonderboy games. The dev seems to be enamored with 8 & 16-bit games and also sells Mystic Valley, an 8bit style Zelda clone on Itch and he's got an unofficial fangame sequel to Golvellius on his homepage.

Coming soon for Xbox, Switch, PC & Playstation.

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Demon Crush is a promising beat 'em up by indie studio Revering Castles. It had a failed Kickstarter, but remains in active development and the team include some veterans.
Release date TBA for Playstation Switch, PC & Xbox.

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Windswept is a oldskool platformer by Australian indie dev Weatherfell is the product of a successful Kickstarter. Lead by a small Twitch Streamer using GameMaker.
Releases 2025 on all consoles + PC.

 

[Holammer]

Threads of Time is an upcoming JRPG beating Square-Enix at their own HD-2D game. Developed by Canada based Riyu Games and it looks like it's being developed by a fairly large team. Clearly a love letter to Chrono Trigger & old SNES era Final Fantasy games.
PC version announced with release date TBA, also comes on Xbox.

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This indie SHMUP was just released. Pretty ambitious for a solo developer. "Shinu Real Arts" is already prototyping the next game and has a previous horizontally scrolling shooter on Steam. Character portraits are so-so, but Zun made lots of beer money with Touhou and he can't draw for shit.

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Panic in Puzzle World by US based indie dev Iced Lizard Games, despite the name is an action platformer.
Comes to PC in 2026. Their previous games saw release on consoles so Xbox/PS/Switch down the line seems likely.

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Aurascope by German developer Nick Oztok has been in development for five years and it saw a successful Kickstarter (I'd call it a soft pre-order) earlier this year. Release date PC version "coming soon" with a Switch version planned.

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Wall World 2 by Russian developer Alawar. The game is roguelike with mining and tower defense. It expands on the first game with new enemies, features and upgrades for the spidertank. Unfortunately a lot of world building with exposition dialogue, in the demo anyway.
Releases November 11th this year on PC.

 

[Holammer]

Halloween 1985 releases just in time for Halloween on Consoles & PC.
By Spanish indie dev Spoonbox Studio.

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Action platformer Cosmo Knight Zion by Mexican indie dev Zeichi Games was just released. Not only does it ape the look and feel of a Gameboy Color game, it runs on actual hardware.
Its kickstarter failed to reach console stretch goals, but it's available on PC now. The GBC rom should be on their Itch page.

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Pipkin by US based developer Gregdude is a suitably Halloween themed JRPG with heavy influences from Earthbound with its combat and style, features creature collection from Pokemon. Successfully funded in a modest kickstarter. Looks great, but I'll point out there's some style clashes in the art.
Out now on PC.

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The Crazy HyperDungeon Chronicles by Italian developer Fix-a-Bug released a week ago. An RPG with an overhead perspective and turn-based combat. Came on my radar because of a funny mishap with its Japanese demo localization. The Japanese title became Kuso Danjon, "Kuso" means literally shit, and it's used like an expletive like shit/fuck in Japanese. They should have gone with the name, it's short and funny.

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Here's Skigill, another Action-roguelike by solo developer Achromi. The twist in this one is how the player field is the skill tree and you run around activating the nodes.
An experienced developer with a previous Link's Awakening style game with the same B/W style.
Releases very soon on Steam Early Access.

 

[Omnipunctual Godot]

Halloween 1985 releases just in time for Halloween on Consoles & PC.
By Spanish indie dev Spoonbox Studio.

Nice. Reminds me of Donut Dodo, which was great.