I’m so incredibly pleased to welcome you to the fifth—fifth!—annual celebration of unknown or under-known indie games, Indie-Penance Day. It’s the day Kotaku completes the sacrament of forgiveness for AAA coverage by dedicating large amounts of space to smaller games. It’s also a good pun.
How is this difference to Thanksgaming, you ask? Shush. It’s a good pun. Unlike “Thanksgaming.”
As ever, I solicited submissions from independent developers via social media, which has resulted in hundreds of emails (239 as I start writing this), from which I will choose entirely at random. And then use a level of discretion. I implore you to look through them all, and wishlist anything that grabs your interest—doing so makes a massive difference for the developers, because it affects the mysterious algorithms running under Steam, and helps these games get more attention. Also, it’ll remind you to buy the game when it’s out!
Given most of these will be unreleased games, I obviously haven’t played them, so inclusion here is not an indication of their quality—we’re going on vibes, folks. But anything that can help get eyes on any of the approximately 20,000 games that will be released on Steam this year makes a big difference.
Last bit of business: I’ve compiled this as a slideshow, and you have to just suck that up. It pays the bills, and it’s how I can get this on the site. (But top tip: if you’re browsing on desktop, just narrow your browser window to a portrait width and it’ll unfurl into one long article.)
