While audiences were excited for The Game Awards 2025, Day of the Devs 2025 shone a spotlight on upcoming indie video games. While TGA’s may present the award for Best Indie Game in the pre-show, showcases like Day of the Devs help inform audiences about what exciting titles are coming soon.
Established in 2012 by Double Fine Productions and iam8bit as a way to give back to their supportive communities, Day of the Devs is a 501(c)(3) non-profit that celebrates the creativity, diversity, and magic of video games.
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In over 10 years, the non-profit has evolved into a fully independent organization, with the help of various collaborators, organizers, and partners, to give a voice to emerging or underrepresented talent through platforms that connect players with developers and their games. In addition to Day of the Devs, The Game Awards Edition 2025, the organization hosts showcases and events around GDC and Summer Game Fest.
Remember, wishlisting games you’re interested in that you see in the Day of the Devs SGF Edition, and anytime, helps! So start playing a demo, wishlist a game, and pick up something that’s already been released. Just play indie games!
Day of the Devs 2025: The Game Awards Edition Digital Showcase
Astromine
Developer & Publisher: Alientrap
Synopsis: Astromine is a co-op survival game about scavenging fully destructible voxel planets. Land on planets and gather enough materials to fight off alien creatures, build structures and spaceships, and conquer the solar system.
Awaysis
Developer: 17-BIT
Publisher: Cult Games
Synopsis: AWAYSIS is the ultimate dungeon brawler! A revolutionary, physics-fueled throwdown where you’ll jump, slide, and collide on your adventure to restore peace to the Awaysis – an ancient floating relic under attack by forces of great darkness!
Beastro
Developer: Timberline
Studio Publisher: Kepler
Synopsis: Gather ingredients and resources, care for animals and grow your own fruit and veg to build up your very own cozy town to table restaurant.
Big Hops
Developer & Publisher: Luckshot Games
Synopsis: Big Hops is a fresh and froggy action platformer where you’ll tongue-swing, free climb, and plant veggies to build paths forward. You play as Hop, a young frog kidnapped from his home by a mysterious spirit named Diss. To get back to your family, you’ll need to gather Airship Parts scattered across the Red Desert, Open Ocean, and Shattered Mountain—all while getting roped into Diss’s strange, important job.
CorgiSpace – World Premiere
Developer: Adam Atomic (Adam Saltsman)
Publisher: Finji
Synopsis: You are now entering CorgiSpace, where all the games have short legs on purpose. This collection by Adam ‘Atomic’ Saltsman includes more than a dozen action, adventure, arcade, and puzzle games, and each can be thoroughly explored in under an hour.
Demon Tides
Developer & Publisher: Fabraz
Synopsis: Explore the open seas and uncover the kingdom’s dark secrets as you platform your way across dozens of locales, upgrading your gear every step of the way!
Dogpile
Developer: Studio Folly, Toot Games
Foot Publisher: WINGS
Synopsis: Dogpile is a roguelike deck builder about merging cute dogs into bigger dogs. Play dogs, get money, customize your dogs with special Traits, refine your deck, PLAY MORE DOGS! DOGS!
Find Your Words
Developer & Publisher: Capybara Games
Synopsis: Find your community at summer camp, one friendship at a time. Take a beat, enjoy a breath of fresh air – all while playing at the beach, strolling in the woods, and dancing with friends. This short cozy game was created by two dads, celebrating their kids’ journeys to find their voices.
Frog Sqwad – World Premiere
Developer: Panic Stations
Publisher: Skeleton Crew
Synopsis: Frog Sqwad is a slapstick, physics-based multiplayer game in which you storm the sewers in the name of the Swamp King with up to 7 of your froggy friends. Use your sticky tongue to swing from pipes, solve physics puzzles, drag giant food through winding tunnels, catapult your friends, and grow as you consume food.
Every mission is an unpredictable adventure through ever-changing sewers full of hazards, weird creatures, and opportunities for creative problem-solving using physics!
Into the Fire
Developer & Publisher: Starward Industries
Synopsis: Face nature’s wrath and fire spirits by an erupting volcano. Use extinguishing weapons and retro-punk gadgets. Expand your base, collect relics, uncover legends, and rescue people and animals in a cataclysm extraction survival.
Lucid Falls – World Premiere
Developer & Publisher: Eldamar Studio
Synopsis: Trapped inside a lucid dream, the protagonist must fight to survive in surreal, horrifying worlds, uncovering the dark secrets of Lucid Falls. Facing terrifying creatures, shifting gravity to navigate impossible spaces, and solving challenges that bend reality, every moment reveals more of the dark truth behind Lucid Falls.
Mirria – World Premiere
Developer: Carl Burton
Publisher: Mografi
Synopsis: Mirria is an atmospheric casual puzzle game. Players navigate a strange cryptic world that blurs the line between dream and reality. Using inspection and memory, players will uncover hidden anomalies between mirrored worlds.
Moomintroll: Winter’s Warmth
Developer & Publisher: Hyper Games
From the creators of Snufkin: Melody of Moominvalley comes a heartwarming new adventure inspired by the beloved Moomin stories by Tove Jansson. This time, join Moomintroll himself on a charming but cold winter journey.
ROCKBEASTS
Developer: Lichthund
Publisher: Team17
Synopsis: Lead a band of misfits on a roller-coaster ride to stardom in the age of MTV, rock anthems, and bad haircuts. ROCKBEASTS is a story-driven, role-playing management game that puts you in the shoes of a manager of an up-and-coming rock band. Your job – take them to the top.
Scramble Knights Royale – World Premiere
Developer & Publisher: Funktronic Labs
Synopsis: Scramble Knights Royale is battle royale inspired by classic adventure games like Legend of Zelda. 32 players enter an arena made up of islands with towns, dungeons, and quests oozing with a retro feel.
SOUNDGRASS
Developer & Publisher: Soundgrass Studio
Synopsis: Explore a planet where plants emit sound. Solve puzzles, survive, and discover the meaning of consciousness in a game where your core gameplay mechanic is sound.
Stretchmancer
Developer & Publisher: Triangle Wave
Synopsis: STRETCH THE WORLD! In this comedic first-person puzzle adventure, you are The Stretchmancer. Squash and stretch everything around you to solve fiendish puzzles, defeat the Claustro Empire, and save the galaxy!
The Dungeon Experience
Developer: BONE Assembly
Publisher: Devolver
Synopsis: The Dungeon Experience is a comedy first-person adventure about a low-level mudcrab chasing his dream of helping YOU experience the true bliss of Financial Freedom.
Un:Me – World Premiere
Developer: Historia
Publisher: Shueisha Games
Synopsis: UN:Me is an adventure game where you guide a girl harboring multiple souls within her body through an unsettling mental labyrinth, engaging in dialogue with each soul while making the harrowing choice of which to keep and which to erase in your escape attempt.
Unshine Arcade
Developer & Publisher: mardt
Synopsis: Unshine Arcade fuses action-roguelite stealth-shooter gameplay with a story-driven psychological-horror mystery. In an abandoned arcade, you play at its lone arcade machine to earn the tickets you need to free a mysterious virtual pet trapped in the prize cabinet.
Virtue and a Sledgehammer – World Premiere
Developer: Deconstructeam and Selkie Harbour
Publisher: Devolver
Synopsis: Most people resort to therapy. But you chose the brave option. A sledgehammer.
In Virtue and a Sledgehammer, explore the remains of your hometown haunted by the android ghosts of your digitized neighbors. There won’t always be a clear path, so create your own by knocking down any structures that stand in your way.
It will be a painful journey, not only because of the assault from the robots that have taken over life in the mountains, but because of the memories you’ll unearth—sometimes warm, but often traumatic—as you destroy the remnants of your childhood.
A game about family, traditions, and being a misfit.
Xcavator 2025 NES Cartridge – World Premiere
Developer: Incredible Technologies (1991) and Mega Cat Studios (2025)
Publisher: iam8bit and Video Game History Foundation
The Video Game History Foundation, iam8bit and Mega Cat Studios are collaborating to bring a long-lost NES prototype to life as a fundraiser to promote video game preservation. Working with source code from the original developer, Incredible Technologies (of Golden Tee Golf fame), fans can get their hands on the first-ever premium physical release and NES cartridge of Xcavator 2025.
The release includes a 14-page manual exploring the game’s history and the legacy of the late programmer and original creator, Chris Oberth, who died in 2012, leaving a treasure trove of behind-the-scenes game development material, more than 30 years after he last worked on the project. 100 percent of the profits from Xcavator 2025 will go to supporting the Video Game History Foundation’s mission to preserve, celebrate, and teach the history of video games.
Pre-orders will be available for $100 from iam8bit.com starting now and will close on Monday, January 10, with expected shipping in Q2 2026.
