IndieLoot

Outcast Tales: Darkest Dungeon, but your heroes are idiots and it's free

2026-10-28T00:00:00Z

Picture a post-apocalyptic tactics roguelite where the real enemy is your own party. Outcast Tales hands you a crew of flawed heroes who all think they're in charge, and you mix classes and personalities (a Preacher Mercenary isn't an Antihero Mercenary) before sending them to fight robots, mutants and raiders. Along the way they might become best friends, fall in love or end up at each other's throats. Streamers can even let Twitch chat vote on decisions.

The turn-based combat will feel familiar to Darkest Dungeon fans but is much easier to pick up, and planning a team between runs is half the fun. It's funny, well polished and packed with content, and it's completely free with no microtransactions and no pay-to-win. Plenty of people were ready to pay for it.

The small print: it only came out on Oct 26, so it's literally a couple of days old and early impressions could still change. RNG sometimes decides a fight, difficulty scaling is a little uneven, it's simpler than Darkest Dungeon (some people find the combat repetitive), and pets die very quickly.

Verdict: A funny, polished tactics roguelite that costs nothing. Just remember it's brand new.

Big Dig: an incremental game that actually has something to say

2026-10-28T00:00:00Z

Mayor Dog is building a highway across the Animal Republic, and all those pesky historical artifacts have to go, so you start digging. Big Dig is a short incremental game where you unearth everything from tennis balls to dinosaurs, upgrade your tools, hire helpers, get an excavator and grow a museum to show off your finds. It has no endless prestige loops and no time-gated idling, just a complete story with an actual ending.

That story is the surprise. It's charming and funny, with sly commentary on government and animal rights built right into your progression, and the upgrade loop feels great while it lasts. The whole thing has the energy of a really high-effort Flash game, which is a big compliment.

It's short by design, around 3 to 4 hours, which is about one afternoon and enough to collect every achievement. Some people will think that's a bit short for $5.99. The third act also drags a little: upgrades run out before the dig requirements stop rising, so you'll end up sitting on lots of unused skill points. Beyond a second ending, there's not much reason to replay.

Verdict: A cozy, funny incremental you can finish in one afternoon, with more heart than the genre usually has.

Doomed Otaku: $5,000, 14 days and one very online disaster

2026-10-28T00:00:00Z

Jin Da-yeon is a broke, anxious idol-game superfan who blew a group order's money on herself, and now she has 14 days to come up with $5,000. Your days split between a grey real world, where you manage an apartment, rummage around a suspicious village and work shifts at a logistics center, and a bright, noisy internet where you date idols, settle petty fan drama and farm game gold for cash. Social Points limit how often a shut-in can face the outside, so every day takes some planning.

It's funny and heartfelt, with moments that are properly unsettling, and it's the kind of game that sneaks up on you emotionally. The mini-games, judgment choices and time management mesh surprisingly well for a visual novel, and the cast is memorable (Kitae is a fan favourite). If Omori's mix of quirky and dark worked for you, you'll probably like this. With over 20 endings and lots of secrets, it's easy to sink 15+ hours into replays. Go in as blind as you can.

There were a few launch bumps, like missing control remapping, thin sound effects at first, and an ending-related bug, but the solo dev has been patching fast. Sound effects and Steam Deck UI fixes are already in. Be ready for some psychological horror under all the cute.

Verdict: A sharp, strange, surprisingly touching dark comedy that rewards replays. Play it blind.

Legion Was Here: build a fake face, then bluff for your life

2026-10-28T00:00:00Z

You're Legion, a spy who can change his face, and every job means becoming someone's husband, brother or son convincingly enough not to get caught. First you pore over a dossier (yes, even the chocolate bar wrapper matters) and rebuild the right face in the operating room. Then you walk into the conversation and hope you studied. It's basically cramming for an exam and then sitting it, only funnier and with more danger.

If you loved Golden Idol or Obra Dinn, this scratches that itch while doing its own strange thing. The deductions are logical and fair, just hard enough to frustrate you in a good way. It's all wrapped in dark humor, odd art and a great soundtrack, and stay for the end-credits music video. It feels handmade, like one person's very specific brain, because it is: a solo-dev project.

The catch is length. It's about 3 to 4 hours and 6 cases, and you'll probably wish there were more. The later missions lean more on quiz-style interrogation and lose a bit of the early absurdity, you may want to keep your own notes on the side, and the English gets a little clunky in spots.

Verdict: One clever, funny, very original evening of spycraft. Short, but it doesn't waste a minute.

Echo Weaver: the upgrades were in your head all along

2026-10-28T00:00:00Z

Echo Weaver is a time-loop metroidvania with a twist on the usual formula: you start with every power you'll ever have, and you just don't know how to use them yet. Each loop teaches you a little more about your alien glaive, a new shortcut or a smarter route, until you can string together one perfect run. There's barely any combat and no bosses. It's all movement, platforming and that lovely moment when something finally makes sense.

It belongs on the same shelf as Outer Wilds, Tunic and Animal Well. The world is beautiful, the level design keeps tempting you to poke around, and sequence-breaking is wide open if you're the type to try. It comes from Moonlight Kids (The Wild at Heart), and the team has been patching fast since launch, smoothing out hard sections and adding a high-contrast mode.

It's not flawless. The early dialogue can be a bit cringe, and there were launch bugs like getting stuck in terrain or falling out of bounds. Forced resets and time consumables can feel stressful, it's more guided than Outer Wilds, and you can't skip cutscenes you've already watched. Even so, the core idea is strong enough to carry all of that.

Verdict: A gorgeous, brainy metroidvania built on knowledge instead of combat, and Outer Wilds fans should take note.

Deleted Wiki: tidy up 10,324 items, end up with feelings

2026-10-28T00:00:00Z

Somebody nuked every item page on a 2007 fan wiki for an old MMO, and congratulations, you're the new Moderator. That's Deleted Wiki: Clean Up the Lost Files, a 2D incremental sorting game where you drag 10,324 lost items back into their categories, folders and rows, then buy userscripts that do more and more of the drudgery for you. It's smooth and soothing, and since it's all 2D, there's no running around a 3D map.

The sneaky part is the story. It plays out on your talk page through wiki news, guild drama and some messages you won't see coming, and it's the kind of thing that leaves a surprising number of people misty-eyed at the end. If you remember fan wikis, forums and MMO guilds from the early 2000s, the nostalgia hits hard. And at $3.99 it feels like it should cost more.

Fair warning: it's on the short side, somewhere around 2 to 14 hours depending on how you play. It's mostly sorting plus reading, so if you skip story text, you'll miss the whole point. It's a mouse-only game, so don't count on a controller, though text resizing arrived in a patch.

Verdict: Cheap, cozy and quietly moving. Sorting has never been this emotional.

Dicevaders: roll the dice, invade the Earth, actually outthink the RNG

2026-10-28T00:00:00Z

Of all the games trying to be the next Balatro, Dicevaders is one with real personality. You're leading an alien invasion from the StarVaders universe: draft units off a dice row, reroll with Chrono, nudge the dice with budge, line up pairs and triples, and watch your score go off while legendary pilots try to ruin your day. Each commander plays very differently, so no two runs feel the same.

The best thing about it is how rarely luck decides a run. Leveling relics and an HP buffer cushion bad rolls, and the game rewards changing plans midway and building wide instead of piling everything onto one synergy. It's also really polished, with juicy effects, great music and a UI that shows you exactly how things interact. Expect to lose evenings to it, since 15 to 60 hours isn't unusual.

A few warnings: the art style can take a minute to grow on you, and it's less obvious than Balatro at first, so the fun builds up gradually. A couple of strategies (swarmers, for example) are strong enough to win almost every time, which will either delight you or bore you.

Verdict: A deeper, more tactical dice roguelike for anyone who's tired of Balatro clones.

Dog in the Machine: Into the Breach, but a very good boy

2026-10-28T00:00:00Z

Your AutoDog needs to escape a dystopian mecha-city and find its humans again, and the way out runs through small grids stuffed with conveyor belts, buttons, explosive obstacles and reactive robots. It's telegraph-and-push tactics in the Into the Breach mold, but more playful, with lots more environmental chaos to turn into domino-style chain reactions.

The star feature is the unlimited rewind with real-time previews: you can try a move, see exactly how it plays out, undo it and try again until the combo is just right. Getting punished for experimenting simply isn't a thing here. After each fight your dog learns a new Trick, and you can fuse two Tricks into a new one. There are 8 breeds that play very differently (yes, a boxing poodle), all in colourful, quirky art.

Complaints are hard to come by. Chain reactions can occasionally be tricky to predict, but rewind covers that. Keep in mind it's sitting at 100% on just 53 reviews, so that perfect score is a small sample and could slip. There's no official controller support either, so on Steam Deck you'll want mouse or touch. It runs on Linux through Proton.

Verdict: A clever, low-stress tactics roguelite that almost nobody's playing yet. Go give that dog some attention.