Day of the Devs 2023 has come and gone, with roughly a dozen new trailers and announcements for upcoming video games. There’s nearly something for everyone, whether you prefer emotional, narrative-driven games, fast cars, working at a hotline where you tell people their homes are haunted, or living in a house haunted by a witch who demands rent every month without fixing the roof in return. While most of these indie games are still in development or won’t launch until 2024, some of them have demos available now or will have in the near future.
We’ve rounded up all the Day of the Devs 2023 announcements below.
Militsioner
Tallboys, makers of the zombie shooter Pandemic Express, are cooking up a new horror game: Militsioner. The team describes it as a “Kafka-esque” escape game, where you play as a small human falsely accused of wrongdoing who’s trying to outrun and outwit a gigantic police officer. This policeman might literally have his head in the clouds, but he’s almost always watching your every move and listening to any noise you make.
You aren’t alone in Militsioner’s prison town. Other people follow their own schedules and have their own lives to live – or get wrecked, by you – and there’s a Tamagotchi-like system that tracks your relationship with them and the policeman. You can make friends, make enemies, steal people’s stuff, and keep the policeman awake at night with your antics. That last one is a pretty good idea, since a sleepy cop is less likely to track you during the day.
Militsioner is “deep in development” and has no release date yet.
Nirvana Noir
Feral Cat Den, the team behind Genesis Noir, is back with Nirvana Noir, a new, super-stylish, jazz-infused adventure. Nirvana Noir unfolds in a “cosmic city” and follows watchmaker Norman, a seemingly average person who hides a big secret: He lives two lives. Norman gets caught in a conspiracy that brings his two lives together in a splash of color and crime, and what that means for you is doing some dialogue-based detective work where you use deduction and emotional intelligence to try and find the truth between the lines.
Feral Cat worked closely with Skillbard and Vincent Oliver on Nirvana Noir’s soundtrack and developed a parallel world infused with toxic psychedelia inspired by the likes of the Velvet Underground.
Thank Goodness You’re Here
Thank Goodness You’re Here is a comedy “slapformer” from Cold Supper, where you play as a lil’ guy on a sales trip to the north of England who gets stuck helping people out in dozens of odd situations. You’ll lend a hand at the local fishmonger’s shop, help someone garden, find lost items – it’s almost like Untitled Goose Game, except you’re resolving chaos instead of causing it. Mostly.
Cold Supper said they created true-to-life regional dialects drawn from local communities. Think Creature Comforts, but video game dialogue.
Thank Goodness You’re Here is set to launch sometime in 2024.
Flock
Hollow Ponds and Richard Hogg are making Flock, a cozy game that mixes Pokemon-like creature cataloguing with a naturalist’s attention to detail and preservation. You play as a lone researcher flying around a series of surreal environments on a lovely bird, the latter of whom has a knack for charming nearby creatures.
These charmed critters follow you around, though not all of them are easy to find. You’ll rely on knowledge of different species and environmental cues to find some of the more elusive creatures, and once you do, you need to classify and log them.
Flock launches sometime in spring 2024.
Kind Words 2: Lo-fi city pop
Being kind caught on so well in Popcannibal’s Kind Words that the team decided to make another one. Kind Words 2: Lo-fi City Pop keeps the original’s core structure and makes everything else bigger. You can leave your room now, visit a coffee shop, say hi to strangers – or “friends,” as Kind Words 2 calls everyone. The team envisions Kind Words 2 as a safe place for everyone to feel heard and unload their burdens. They even went so far as to add a void where you can type anything to get it out there, and the void forgets it immediately.
Hermit and Pig
Sometimes, you just want to get away from the world and maybe live with a pig in the woods and hunt for mushrooms. If that highly specific fantasy sounds like your kind of thing, Heavy Lunch Studio is working on a project for you. Hermit and Pig stars a hermit and his pig friend, two loners who enjoy the peace and quiet of the wilderness, along with a good ‘shroom or three. They reluctantly agree to help a hungry villager find a legendary mushroom and get caught up in an adventure that’s bigger than they bargained for.
Hermit and Pig uses a unique hybrid combat system that’s part Earthbound and part Street Fighter. You input command combinations – up, down, left, A, for example – to pull off skills in turn-based combat, and your repertoire expands as you progress through Hermit and Pig’s journey. Some social segments even use a Pokemon-style system where you combat cringe by picking super-effective responses.
Dome-King Cabbage
If we’re being honest, we still don’t really know what Dome-King Cabbage is about. It’s a visual novel-slash-Pokemon-like-slash surrealist exercise in existentialism, where you’re training to become the next Dome King, which seems to be like a Pokemon Champion. Some creepy-looking blobs sometimes take up the screen and say horrible things to you as well. It’s all based on the developer’s experiences and a challenging time they spent in Japan teaching English to schoolchildren, and there’s no release frame yet.
Ultros
Hadoque and El Huervo are doing something different in the Metroidvania space with Ultros, a game that blends gardening and food management with the usual battles and exploration. You use an extractor to interact with the environment in several ways, including jumping and tending the crops you plant.
Plant life that you care for helps you learn new abilities and find paths forward, and the food you eat unlocks memories that help you learn even more abilities. The goal in Ultros is finding balance and respecting nature, though that doesn’t preclude tearing some dangerous enemies up as you explore the psychedelic Sarcophagus where Ultros takes place.
Ultros launches on Feb. 13, 2024.
Loose Leaf
🍵Introducing Loose Leaf: A Tea Witch Simulator🍵
Manage a tea room between worlds with the most in-depth tea brewing simulation ever. Developed by us!
✨Wishlist now: https://t.co/bjNt6Q5exr pic.twitter.com/cBa5AcAegr
— Kitfox Games 🦊 (@KitfoxGames) December 6, 2023
Kitfox, makers of Boyfriend Dungeon, are working on Loose Leaf, a game the team describes as a tea witch simulator. It’s a bit like Strange Horticulture, but without the murder and eldritch horrors. You play as a witch who runs a tea shop, and you’re responsible for every aspect of tea making – sorting ingredients, learning recipes, putting it all together, and hopefully not breaking your teapot in the process. When you’re not brewing tea to your customers’ exact specifications and learning new recipes, you’ll tell their fortunes through tarot readings and help them make sense of their lives.
There’s no anticipated release date for Loose Leaf yet.
Holstin
We’ve seen Holstin before, most recently at the PC Gaming Show, but developer Sonka showed it off again during Day of the Devs. Holstin is a psychological horror game set in 1990s Poland amid a swirl of what Sonka calls post-communism religious influences and all the nasty skeletons in the closet people didn’t want coming out.
Holstin switches between an isometric view during exploration and an over-the-shoulder perspective when you initiate combat, blending classic survival horror with a Resident Evil 4-style approach, and there’s even a dismemberment system similar to Dead Space’s.
Sonka plans to release a third Holstin demo in 2024.
Oddada
Oddada is a music-based roguelike where you use a randomized set of tools to make whatever music you can come up with. Each stage features a range of musical machines you can customize to make unique sounds, and you can adjust everything, including the tempo, key, and melodies. The available tools change every time you play through again, and you unlock new levels and sounds the more you play. You can even collect and combine snippets of your creations and save them on mixtapes.
Oddada is expected to launch sometime in 2024.
Cryptmaster
Cryptmaster blends dungeon crawlers with Scrabble in a word-based adventure through the underworld’s depths. You’ll bestow names on items, solve word-based puzzles, and chat up some pretty weird NPCs who may become your best friends – or your worst nightmares. Your combat skills grow from the words you learn and the items you name, so expect to face hellish monsters with tools at your disposal such as “hit” or “salmon slap.”
Cryptmaster is set to launch sometime in 2024.
Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story
Digital Eclipse is continuing its work in games history and preservation with Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story. Llamasoft is an interactive documentary delving into, well, Jeff Minter’s story and how he brought Llamasoft to life. It explores his creative process and even includes 42 playable Llamasoft games from eight platforms, including Minter’s unreleased Attack of the Mutant Camels.
Drag Her!
Mortal Kombat and drag queens have more in common than you think, or they do now, at least. Fighting Chance Games is making Drag Her!, a 2D fighting game starring some of the biggest names in drag and inspired by some of the biggest names in fighting games. It mixes cinematic specials with all the camp drama you’d expect from a drag show, and Fighting Chance sees Drag Her as a forgiving game that’s approachable for everyone, even genre newbies.
Drag Her doesn’t have a release date yet.
Open Roads
Open Roads from Annapurna and the Open Roads Team had a troubled road of its own after the development team split a few years ago, but it seems to be back on track. This narrative-driven adventure follows Opal and Tess, a mother and daughter who hit the road in the hopes of uncovering their family’s shocking secrets. The team emphasized the importance of the mother-daughter bond in story segments, but Open Roads also features interactive moments where you search for clues and and look for the right path forward.
Open Roads launches for PC and consoles on Feb. 22, 2024.
Resistor
Resistor drops you behind the wheel of a sick, fast futuristic car in a series of high-stakes races, which sounds pretty cool until you realize you’ll probably die if you lose. Deathraces are all the rage in Resistor’s world, and they’re protagonist Astor’s only hope if they want to save their sick and dying mother. While developer Long Way Home says retro arcade racers inspired Resistor, it’s a “carPG” at heart. You’ll make friends and influence people outside of races, customize your car, complete missions, and then see how the consequences of your actions unfold on and off the track.
Resistors is still in development and has no release date yet.
Home Safety Hotline
If your dream job is working in a ‘90s call center and telling people they probably have a demon in their basements, then Home Safety Hotline from Night Signal is for you. You’re an operator who logs in for their daily shift armed with all the advanced technology a ‘90s computer has to offer and a knack for guessing right answers. People call you, describe their problems, and expect you to tell them what’s happening. Your task is researching the issue and coming up with a response – or getting fired if you get it wrong too many times.
Home Safety Hotline includes phobia toggles that remove images of things like giant spiders and other common terrors. Expect this one to launch sometime in 2024.
Janet DeMornay is a Slumlord (and a Witch)
Fuzzy Ghosts is hitting pretty close to home with Janet DeMornay is a Slumord (and a Witch), a game about the horrors of renting. You play as Andrew, an average guy just trying to get by and running into countless problems with his landlady – black mold, broken appliances, sagging roofs, evil magic. Okay so that last one isn’t something most of us have to deal with, but Janet DeMornay actually is a witch. Her spells hold the house together, and you have to learn more about her past and how she operates to solve the puzzles she sets you.
Fuzzy Ghosts based their game on renting experiences they had in the past –presumably without actual witches – and also leaned heavily into found family themes and queer storytelling to bring Andrew’s tale to life. Janet DeMornay launches sometime in 2024
The Mermaid's Tongue
SFB Games, makers of Snipperclips, are back with a follow-up to the hit iOS game Tangle Tower with another detective adventure, The Mermaid’s Tongue. Sleuthing duo Grimoire and Sally take on a sinister case and uncover the secrets behind a submarine captain’s untimely demise. What starts as a locked room mystery – the captain was alone in a locked room, yet his death wasn’t self-inflicted – gradually turns into something darker, as you piece together clues, solve puzzles, and interrogate a cast of quirky suspects to see which of them is lying (spoiler: they all are, in their own way.
The Mermaid’s Tongue launches sometime in 2024, and you can check out a free demo of it on Steam now.
Written by Josh Broadwell on behalf of GLHF
