While events like Nintendo Directs, PlayStation States of Play, and Xbox Showcases get all the headlines and coverage, often many of the best games are hiding just out of sight as indie games. These are innovative, clever, or otherwise different affairs than what we see from most of the big budget studios, but produce standout hits like Blue Prince, and Stardew Valley. Last year, some studios banded together for the Triple I Initiative, to create their own showcase event, and it was back today.
Fast paced, and without any of the clutter that you see from a lot of showcases (no Day-9 PC Gaming show shenanigans here), the Triple I Initiative shows off some of the most promising indie games coming. While I firmly believe you should watch the whole showcase, I’ve picked out 5 announcements that I think you need to know about.
Honorable Mention: I’m not a huge fan of it, but I know many people are, so here’s a brief shout out to Poncle’s Vampire Survivors, which had a delightfully weird trailer to announce their new free DLC available today that is a crossover with the SaGa series called Emerald Diorama. There’s also a general update with more goodies, so plenty of new content for Vampire Survivors fans.
The Alters release date
11 Bit Studios for the past decade has made their name with thought provoking and intriguing titles that push players to think while including deep game play mechanics in games like This War of Mine and Frostpunk 1 and 2. Their next major title, The Alters, is one that I’ve been watching and really want to see as it seems to continue that lineage, with a new approach, as they seem to do each time.
Following a delay earlier this year, we now have a new The Alters release date, as we can expect to all become Jan on June 13th, and explore the differences between nurture and nature, as well as questions of identity.
Duskfade Announced
3D Action Adventure Platformers are a genre that came into being in the era of the PlayStation 1 and N64, and only a couple generations later it seemed to fade out for the grittier tones that the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 wanted. While we’ve seen the return of Spyro, and Crash Bandicoot in recent years, as well as the emergence of titles like A Hat In Time, there seems to be plenty of room for developers here in the larger indie space to fill, and that’s right where Duskfade fits in.
A gorgeous looking game being published by Fireshine Games, it is described as an action platformer set in a clockpunk world. Hop on and off walls, go around, and slash things as Zirian in what was, in my opinion, a real coming out party for developer Weird Beluga, and has my eyes peeled to see more in 2026.
Moonlighter 2 Release Date
Digital Sun emerged onto the indie scene with the first Moonlighter, and only gained more attention with last year’s Cataclismo. Now, they’ve returned to their roots, with a sequel that promises to once again mix action and shop keeping in Moonlighter 2: The Endless Vault.
While not quite my favorite of the odd genre of shopkeeping/action RPG (Racettear still holds number 1 in my heart), the first Moonlighter focus on combat led to a smooth, fast playing action roguelite that was a ton of fun, with great visuals in a relatively uncovered area of the gaming space. Now it’s sequel promises to take us to a new town, and be even bigger and better, including new features regarding shopkeeping the first game could have used.
Moonlighter 2: The Endless Vault is coming this summer, so strap on your backpacks and get ready to roll, slash, and sell later this year.
Endless Legend 2 Release Date
The first game I ever did a game review for was the original Endless Legend, and so I admittedly have a soft spot for it. I also have a soft spot for 4x games in general, and Endless Legend was an innovative title in a genre that had been stagnant in the area for a while, often swallowed by the influence of Civilization.
Now, more than a decade later, we get Endless Legend 2, in an era when the genre’s title bearer has been taking more challengers to the throne. None of them have managed to really reach it’s heights, so there’s space for the great people at Amplitude to do what everyone else has failed to quite hit, and give us a proper Civilization killer, in their first game after leaving Sega. Engless Legend 2 is hitting early access this summer.
Frostrail Announced
I don’t know what it is about trains and snow that seems to have gotten to everyone, myself included. For some reason, the idea of a train in a world covered in a winter apocalypse seems to have become an image that we all are interested in exploring, perhaps ever since we first saw Snowpiercer. Whether it’s in the original french graphic novel form, the movie, the tv show, or just in works taking inspiration from it, for over a decade it has been an ongoing thing.
It was perhaps inevitable that it would come to video games as well, though Frostrail isn’t an official Snowpiercer game. Instead, it’s a co-op survival crafting style game from the creators of Barotrauma, and published by Shiro (Wartales, Evoland 2, Northgard, and more). Gather resources, fight off enemies in FPS battles, and try to survive a world that wants to kill you. Well, wants to kill you even more than our current world does.
Frostrail looks like a lot of fun, and while I’m not a longterm player of these games, I can see myself plugging in a decent amount of time into this with friends when it releases in early access in 2026.
Overall, the Triple I Initiative had a great event and I strongly encourage you to watch it all if you want to know about games coming out in the next 18 months that aren’t from the biggest publishers. In fact, you can watch it right here:
