Image: Day of the Devs / Kotaku
We used to only get a Day of the Devs showcase once a year during the summer. Now we get an encore during the holidays as well. This year’s Day of the Devs: Game Awards 2024 Edition didn’t disappoint either. Every time I think the heavily curated, very personal, extremely intimate showcase can’t possibly top the last one, somehow it still does.
As the video game industry ping-pongs from one big-budget sequel and live-service disaster to the next, with seemingly ever less room for creativity, experimentation, and risk-taking, Day of the Devs reminds us that wild, wonderful things are being made all around us as long as you know where to look. And the organization, which started as a collaboration between DoubleFine and iam8bit before becoming a donation-supported non-profit, does indeed know where to look.
This year’s event featured 19 rad-looking games from all sorts of genres, sporting a wonderful assortment of visual styles and coming from devs around the world, and I can’t wait to try them all. Especially TankHead, which seems like what you’d get if you set Shadow of the Colossus in the world of Wall-E.
A successor to the 2009 cult hit Eliss, Faraway is about a shooting star charting the cosmos while chasing high scores and vibing out to a soundtrack that reminds me of FTL: Faster Than Light. The whole game is operated with a single button input as you use gravity wells to slingshot your way around celestial bodies. “Let me teach you something about infinity,” says the game’s creator. It’s meant to be infinitely replayable like Tetris: simple on the surface but full of lasting depth.
Developer and publisher: Little Eyes / Steph Thirion
Platform: PC
Release date: 2025
Ultimate Sheep Raccoon follows in the footsteps of its predecessor, Ultimate Chicken Horse, with lo-fi pastel art and chaotic antics. It’s a bike-racing party game in which up to eight players locally or online come together to build obstacle courses and then compete to see who can navigate through them first without completely losing their minds.
Developer and publisher: Clever Endeavour Games / Richard Atlas and Tia Young
Platform: PC and consoles (TBD)
Release date: 2025
Sleight of Hand teases the atmosphere of a Dishonored with the decision-making process of a turn-based tactics game. It’s a stealth action deckbuilder set in an occult noir world where you can scout, teleport, set traps, blind enemies, and use other abilities to get through levels unscathed and discover what strange magic is haunting Steeple City. “It’s a little bit like if you took Metal Gear Solid and replaced the guns and tools with cards,” director Joshua Boggs said.
Developer and publisher: RiffRaff Games
Platform: Xbox Series X/S (Game Pass), PC
Release date: TBD
The developers are billing this one as an expressive platformer. It’s a 3D tropical colorfest that looks like a Dreamcast game got a major glow-up. You parkour through dilapidated ruins swallowed by warm seas in an open world full of time trail challenges, collectibles, and cinematic set pieces. You can even tag buildings during your travels for players online to find in their own games.
Developer and publisher: Fabraz
Platform: PC
Release date: TBD
You might have seen a glimpse of Kingmakers when footage from it went viral earlier this year. It’s a game about saving the future by traveling back into the past and uniting medieval England by battling massive armies using modern-day weapons of carnage. The action game also has a city builder system, everything is destructible, and you can drive tanks through 10,000 units all attacking simultaneously running with individualized AI. At least that’s the promise!
Developer and publisher: Redemption Road / Tinybuild
Platform: PC
Release date: Q1 2025 (Early Access)
Recur looks like Braid set in a more sprawling 2D environment with beautiful 3D backgrounds. It’s a puzzle-platformer in which you manipulate time to make things run forward or backward, uncovering new ways to overcome obstacles or unlock secrets.
Developer and publisher: kaleidoscube / Astra Logical
Platform: PC
Release date: TBD
This one seems maximally designed to blow people’s minds. Blue Prince is a first-person exploration game about uncovering the secrets of a house in which all the rooms are constructed as you go. “The deeper you go, the more you’ll discover; the more you discover, the even deeper you’ll go,” its creator cryptically explained. It’s been in the making for eight years and includes 45 rooms total and a 46th mystery room for the hardcore puzzle sickos to uncover.
Developer and publisher: Dogubomb / Raw Fury
Platform: PC
Release date: Spring 2025
It’s not even out yet and Incolatus: Don’t Stop, Girlypop! is already threatening to melt my brain. It’s a Y2K “girly pop” arena shooter in which the faster you go, the more damage you deal and the more you heal. The guns grow longer barrels, new scopes, and other accessories as you speed up. What are you doing exactly? Saving fairies from a mining company that’s draining all the love from the world. Sign me up.
Developer and publisher: Funny Fintan Softworks
Platform: PC
Release date: “Soon”
LOK Digital is an adaptation of the puzzle book LOK which has you learning a made-up language to solve puzzles. You discover words in order to block out all tiles in a puzzle and progress to the next one, unlocking new invented phrases in the process. The devs promise a “carefully crafted campaign” to guide you through the puzzle adventure.
Developer and publisher: Letibus Design, Icedrop Games / Draknek and Friends
Platform: PC and mobile in early 2025
Release date: Out now
A follow-up to the 2020 run-and-gun roguelite that put a retro arcade sheen over the formula of Dead Cells, Neon Abyss 2 looks like it’ll build on the frenzied and colorful loot-chasing chaos of the first game and ratchet everything up to 11...million.
Developer and publisher: Veewo Games / Kepler Ghost
Platform: PC
Release date: Soon (Early Access)
Deliver packages, race on tricked-out broomsticks, and fall in love. Crescent County looks like a cross between Kiki’s Delivery Service and Grease. “Why this broom is automatic / It’s systematic / It’s hydromatic / Why it’s witch lightning!” The sci-fi fantasy takes place in a solarpunk world where you fix phone lines and upgrade your ride to heal the world and find your place in it.
Developer and publisher: Electric Saint
Platform: PC
Release date: TBD (Demo available now)
PBJ - The Musical transforms the invention of the beloved sandwich into a transcendent audiovisual journey. You interact with stop-motion collage art in the style of Monty Python as children recite corrupted Shakespeare quotes and musical numbers by Lorraine Bowen tell the story of forbidden foodmance.
Developer and publisher: Kamibox
Platform: PC
Release date: TBD
In Curiosmos you create a galaxy through nurturing discoveries and harmony. It’s a cozy sim in which you work with a robot friend, Curio, to create worlds, life, and the means to stave off doom at the hands of a nearby black hole. Instead of micro-managing human economies, you get to create the entire universe.
Developer and publisher: Céline & the Silly Stars
Platform: PC
Release date: TBD
Bionic Bay completely snuck up on me. It’s an atmospheric 2D side-scroller that looks like a mashup of Limbo and The Swapper, giving you a growing toolbox of weird abilities with which to navigate industrial death traps and the even more mysterious environments that lay beyond them. You can use gravity to flip the stage, teleportation, and other powers, with online races to compete with other players in once you’ve mastered the tricks.
Developer and publisher: Psychoflow Studio, Mureena Oyy / Kepler Interactive
Platform: PC and PS5
Release date: Mar 13, 2025
Inspired by convenience stores, inKONBINI: One Store. Many Stories is a retail sim with a heart. You stock shelves and interact with customers, but rather than just mastering the laborious routines of low-wage work you also get to interact with customers and learn about their lives through the products they choose and what it says about who they are. There are hidden stories to uncover in the store itself when you’re off the clock, and the whole thing is set to smooth Japanese pop hits from the ‘90s.
Developer and publisher: Nagai Industries
Platform: PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch, PC
Release date: TBD
Yoshi and Kirby no longer have a duopoly on cute, fabric-crafted games. Feltopia is a side-scrolling shoot ’em up in which, instead of killing stuff, your shots transform enemies back into their beautiful, original selves. The entire game is animated with wool needle felting done by hand. You play a sheepherder with magical powers fighting to save their flock fabric from evil monsters.
Developer and publisher: Wooly Games
Platform: PC
Release date: 2026
Equal parts home-sick-from-school-with-daytime-TV-on nostalgia and Videodrome-induced freakfest, Blippo+ is a tribute to broadcast media in a stripped-down 1-bit experience from the makers of Untitled Goose Game and Thank Goodness You’re Here. It’s public access TV spoon-fed through a Game Boy display for doomscrollers who miss old-school channel surfing. In the words of one of Blippo+’s characters, “This isn’t television, it’s poetry in motion.”
Developer and publisher: Blippo+ / Panic
Platform: PC
Release date: TBD
Hyper Light Beaker is a co-op, loot-based extraction roguelite in a procedural world that sees players trying to piece together the mysteries of a dying world by overcoming challenging boss fights. It was supposed to come out in Early Access in 2024 but got delayed. It’s now coming next month and I’m looking forward to finally going hands-on with the ambitious new genre mashup.
Developer and publisher: Heart Machine / Arc Games
Platform: PC
Release date: January 15, 2025 (Early Access)
You’ve heard of Thomas the Tank Engine, but he wouldn’t last a minute against the post-apocalyptic survival death machines in TankHead. The junk-crafting game lets you construct a custom robot out of the scrap you find in order to take on other giant robots. It looks like Shadow of the Colossuses by way of Wall-E meets Mad Max. The action takes place in an irradiated wasteland ravaged by warring factions and iron-fisted law enforcement. In addition to customizing your mech, the tank controls reward guarding your weak areas and trying to outmaneuver opponents. It could be really special if it plays half as well as it looks.
Developer and publisher: Alpha Channel
Platform: PC
Release date: Out now (Epic Games Store)
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