Spoiler Alert: Indie Games Continue To Be Cool - PAX East 2026
- Kyle Stephenson
- 13 hours ago
- 9 min read
After spending the last 4 days in Boston, Massachusetts, for the yearly installment of getting together with friends, peers, and the eager gaming public to check out what the future of indie games will have in store for us, I'm ready to talk about every single game that I got to check out and play on the show floor.
PAX East continues to be incredibly important to the gaming space for indies both big and small, so please take this as your reminder to check out everyone's coverage who has gone to PAX East and wishlist any games that you think sound up your alley. I'll have links to our friends and peers who were at PAX East that you should definitely check out to get a full sense of all the games that were available to demo.
Let's get to the exciting stuff! Here is a brief rundown of the 10 games that I got to play on the show floor:
When I found out that Kyle Thompson's next game was going to be playable on the show floor, I knew that it was priority number one for me. If you played either of Kyle's previous titles, Islets and Crypt Custodian, you know the general gist of what you are getting into with this metroidvania follow-up, where you play as Glimmer - a tiny bird armed with a matchstick who has to save all of bird kind.
Combat is snappy, the art is nothing short of immaculate, and the platforming feels fluid and fun. The final boss of this demo was an intimidating spider-like creature that kept me on my toes throughout the lengthy fight, with multiple attack patterns. The fight was tough, but each attack was telegraphed in the perfect amount of time for me to prepare where to go and how to avoid them.
The new healing mechanic is the only thing that didn't feel the most intuitive. To heal in this one, you must press and hold the heal button and let go of it when the target enters the range for the heal to happen. The issue with this one is that it leaves you open for attacks pretty easily, and there was just a tiny little bit of lag to the release of the button that caused a couple of deaths in the boss.
Well Dweller is scheduled to release at some point in 2026 for PC via Steam and Nintendo Switch and remains my most anticipated indie of the year.
What would happen if you took the style and mission of catching them all of Pokémon, poker-inspired hand combat, and the ARG mystery of Inscryption? That combo leads you to Mad MOJO.
This debut title from Ceed Studio in PAX Rising has players collect MOJO cards by defeating them and catching them in combat. In order to maximize your attacks in these combat encounters, you can either play poker hands such as four of a kind, pairs, or full houses to maximize damage. Or you can choose to attack by selecting cards that have the same element or color, in case a poker hand is not there for you to use.
Eventually, you can upgrade cards to add tokens to them that then add additional damage and buffs to your MOJOs. When enemy MOJOs attack, you also must parry the attacks by clicking in time anywhere on the screen. These battles are tough, so parrying will not only keep you in the battle with your health but will also grant you energy to play your combination of cards in the next round.
After I lost in battle, I got kicked to a virtual PC desktop with its own version of Microsoft Word's Clippy character. In this desktop mode, you can access the game files, emails, art, music, and more as you continue your quest to collect them all as a playtester of the MOJO game.
Mad MOJO is planning to release sometime in 2026 on PC via Steam.
Tails of Fate caught my eye on the show floor with its beautiful pixel art and general visual aesthetic. This action RPG / Metroidvania / platformer felt great to play. The world-building was also such a nice surprise, hearing the initial tales of the fantasy lands of Fauna.
I played as the pig knight, Varken, with their big sword as I took on giant ants, ranged snails, and figured out some environmental puzzle platforming to continue the journey to the souls-like boss at the end. There is a lot of promise here, and I got some of the same vibes from the characters and world as one of my favorites of last year, Absolum.
Tails of Fate is scheduled to launch sometime in 2026 for PC via Steam and Nintendo Switch.
I got to become an aspiring Grim Reaper in the action roguelite Grim Trials. You take control of your Reaper as you explore the Academy, where each Reaper learns the skills needed to do the job. In the Academy, you will forge weapons, make potions, and learn from your mentors.
The combat is a wonderful mix of Cult of the Lamb and Hades. The map presents itself with choices of where to go next, and by defeating enemies, you gather materials to help you craft and create in the Academy after each run. You will also receive a random choice of boons to make your Reaper extra powerful during the runs themselves, and once your run is over, you will also use your earned Soul Runes from combat (very similar to experience points) and unlock skills in an expansive skill tree.
Grim Trials does not have a launch date or window yet.
From the creators of the super-fast, one-hit one-kill first-person action game IP Ghostrunner, comes their take on the soulslike formula, and it feels fantastic.
Playing as a former soldier from Napoleon's army that has risen from death, I started the demo by learning the traditional hooks of a soulslike game of parrying, dodging, managing stamina, and building up stagger meters with standard and charged attacks as I fight remnants of soldiers who have turned into horrifying monsters. There are even some cool additional non-traditional powers and abilities, such as using your pistol for range combat and targeting weak spots, as well as spewing flames from your hand that can set enemies on fire or unlock previously inaccessible areas of the map.
Successful parries and follow-up attacks feel phenomenal and become extra cool and gory in this first-person perspective. The setting and story beats that I experienced in this demo also have me super intrigued by the fate of this alternate reality, where Europe is seemingly taken over by a weird plague.
Valor Mortis is slated to launch in 2026 for PC via Steam, Xbox Series X|S, and PlayStation 5.
With their debut title, Team Crescendo aims to take inspiration from Tunic and Death's Door with their version of a soulslike action adventure game about Nilo surviving a waking nightmare.
The art direction is top-notch, and I loved the painterly, dreamlike look of the world and the enemies. There were some instances where some of the dialogue and button prompts would be drowned out in the bright light, but the combat felt very much like the games that inspired them. As I continued through this world, I would uncover rooms that seemed to come straight out of Nilo's dreams and would in turn affect the world around me.
I am very intrigued about this one, and if you want to give it a shot, a demo is available on Steam right now.
In real life, I have zero desire to go fishing and despise seafood of all kinds, but when it comes to games, I'm all for a creepy fishing game ala Dredge.
The Dreadmoor demo that I played was a very early alpha build, so while the game was a bit buggy, the vibes were immaculate. It is all in first person, so navigating your boat through this flooded world offers a new perspective. Gameplay also takes the form of various kinds of mini-games where you have to nail the prompts in order to be successful.
I had to craft my own bait and lures at safe ports, had to manage the gas of the engine to ensure that I didn't run out of it in the dangerous waters, fix the ham radio, hop off the boat to open gates through puzzles, and grab lost cargo floating in the nearby waters that included valuable scraps.
The game is eying a Q4 2026 launch for PC via Steam.
Another fantastic demo that I played in the PAX Rising section of the show floor had my interest instantly when it was announced 5 months ago. The vibrant art style mixed with my favorite genre of metroidvanias, with a playable dino, is all you need to know to get it on your radar.
Once you take out enemies, you can eat the meat and other goodies that they drop. They don't heal you instantly, but rather fill a meter. Once you are full, you can hold down the button to heal, which then makes your dino hungry again, which supports the cycle of eating the spoils to make sure you have health when you need it.
The boss fight in the demo was also a ton of fun in a Mega Man style room and bosses that had a special ability. Once defeated, I then got the ability that I could use in my continued adventure until the demo ended.
GNAW has no timetable to launch but is planning to come to PC via Steam, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S. There is a demo available to download right now to check it out for yourselves.
I guess you can guess the pattern of me being attracted to strong visual aesthetics while at PAX because the trend continues in this hand-drawn black and white dungeon crawler RPG that is inspired by Dungeons and Dragons of the 80s.
As I was exploring the castle walls, I was blown away by how much it felt like I was playing a D&D campaign. Each door I walked up to didn't just open, but gave me options to listen and try to get a sense of what was waiting for me on the other side, or even hack it down.
I had a crew of 6 people that you can choose from in the opening scene (I could only pick a set in stone 6 specific characters, but there were many more that I could choose from). I wandered into a bathroom that the narrator told me stunk to high heaven. I inspected toilets anyway, and the last one made the sound of rushing water underneath. So I chose to send one of my characters down to investigate, which turned out to be a big mistake because he died from the fall. But that didn't end there.
Because that character died, he gave me the ability to see the layout of the map and the layout of nearby rooms. Each character has these special abilities upon death, just like they have their own traditional classes, such as Cleric or Thief in life. Combat used dice to roll to hit, and for the damage dealt, and if it didn't beat the enemy's armor class, I missed completely. Remember those locked doors? Well, because I had a dead party member, I could use the body to ram open previously locked doors.
This game is a D&D fan's dream, and it is planned for a release sometime in 2026 for PC via Steam. A demo is available right now.
The last game I want to shout out is one that I have played every day since PAX. The game is called Golfle, and you can download it for free right now on iOS and Android.
The premise is simple. Each day, a brand new 9 holes will be available for you to try and get the lowest score possible, and like the name suggests, like a popular daily word game, you then can share your score with your friends to see who did better that day. There is also an endless mode available. It's a ton of fun.
Those are the 10 games that I got to check out during PAX East, but there were so many other games that I just did not have time to play, so I want to shout out my friends and peers who played many other amazing games at the convention and maybe you can learn a little bit more of any of the games I wrote about above!
Go and check out these fine folks' PAX East coverage in the days to come when you can:
Adam Gumby on YouTube and Game Sandwich
Tales From The Backlog on YouTube and Fireside.fm