Welcome to our latest roundup of what’s happening in the indie game space. As always, we have a bunch of neat games to tell you about. Maybe I’ll let myself play as Chappell Roan Fortnite or Jetpack Cat on Be careful long enough to explore more of them.

Thanks to the people of completionI learned about a short, text-based game from Woe Industries from a while back called You Have Billions Invested In Generative AI. Oddly enough, you take on the role of a venture capitalist who has plowed a lot of money into genAI technology and may be starting to have doubts about that investment. Some characters warn you about the dangers of tech and real-life headlines that show the effect of genAI hallucinations pop up. It’s tagged as a horror game, for what it’s worth.

It’s both satirical and all true, and it’s pretty funny. Also, any game that allows me to scream Noam Chomsky is A-OK in my book. You can play You Have Billions Invested In Generative AI is free of Itch.io.

New releases

Dealing with Loss has a very appropriate arrival this week, ahead of a big, real-life game. This is a football themed game of action heavy, top-down games like Hotline in Miami. Developer Indifferent Penguin also took inspiration from the Taken film series – you take on the role of a former football player afflicted with CTE who seeks to rescue his kidnapped daughter.

The battle looks interesting here. You have to eliminate all the bad guys on each floor of a multi-story building before you can progress, but you only have four offensive actions at a time (this takes from the four lower football format). You need to plan things before you go on the attack, especially since your character and the enemies will all die in one hit.

Dealing with Loss out now steam. It would normally run you $11, but it’s 15 percent off until February 12.

Trust Me, I Nailed It is an exciting turn-based strategy game from Team Afternoon and publisher Jungle Game Lab. A ruthless warrior hires you as a video editor to make them look like a real hero who can kill any animal.

Enemy attacks and other actions appear in the editing timeline as pre-recorded footage, and the idea is to plan the fighter’s movements around it. You have post-processing visual effects tricks at your disposal, so you can let the warrior teleport and convert low-power strikes into critical hits.

It’s a fun idea, and a reminder (as we need one in today’s climate) to not always take videos at face value. Trust Me, I Nailed It is in steam now and it’s free-to-play.

Tomb of the Bloodletter a spin on the roguelike deckbuilder genre that I’ve never seen before. Your deck consists of the magical powers used by the letters of the alphabet. Spelling words with these Magicks can result in powerful combinations, especially if you use the same letter multiple times. That’s right, it’s a typing game – a roguelike deckbuilder at will Wordle players may be interested.

It’s really about making words that put the right letters in a certain order. For example, some letters are more effective if you put them at the end of a word. So, it should blow your mind.

Tomb of the Bloodletter — from Ethan’s Secretions and indie.io — debuted during the Steam Typing Fest. It normally costs $8, but is 20 percent off until February 19.

FUTURE

Shadowstone is the upcoming turn-based tactical co-op roguelike for four players from developer Secret Door and Dreamhaven (Blizzard co-founder and ex-CEO Mike Morhaime’s company). It is set in the same universe as Secret Door’s Healthy people.

The action takes place on a hexagonal board with random rooms and enemies. Positioning is key, and finding synergies between the abilities of playable characters will stand you in good stead.

Shadowstone hit steam in early access later this year for $15. It also comes to Epic Games Store.

Meanwhile, a major update for Healthy people is set to go live on March 10. It will introduce a new tank-style character and two new sets of missions. Secret Door will also add two highly requested features to the PC versions: online multiplayer and — so you don’t have to use your phone to play the game — mouse and keyboard controls.

I’m really in love Planet of Oil and the sequel is one of my most anticipated games this year. There is now a release date for the upcoming puzzle platformer. It is brought to you by Wishfully and Thunderful Publishing steam, Xbox, PlayStation and Nintendo Switch on March 5. It will also be available on Game Pass on day one.

A Planet of Oil II: Children of the Leaves the demo will hit Steam, Xbox and PlayStation on February 11. It will come to Switch later.

the Sticker/Ball the first Ball x Pit– like? I’m not entirely sure. However, it is now firmly on my radar. Instead of firing balls at a horde of ever-advancing enemies, here you shoot them with dice to earn points. You can unlock stickers that can be applied to said dice and they also interact with each other. For example, spiders can make webs and they can catch flies that are attracted to poop stickers.

The trailer depicts another interaction, “a frog jumps and triggers a cigarette pack.” Frogs can also hijack spaceships, apparently, and have a bouncing DVD (well, “VID”) logo. There are more than 100 types of stickers and dozens of different enemies.

I don’t really understand what happened in the trailer, but somehow it made my brain happy, so it’s on my wishlist. Solo dev Bilge is behind Sticker/Ballwhich comes to steam coming soon with the help of publisher Future Friends Games. There’s a demo available today, so that’s my weekend.

Skate City has long been one of the best games on Apple Arcade. Its creator, Daniel Zeller, (Zellah Games) revealed a new project. Skate Style billed as a “next-gen skateboarding game with high-end graphics.” You can take to the virtual streets of Barcelona and Prague to show off your best moves.

What can help Skate Style Very unique from the package is the animation editor, which enables you to create new tricks. The game is set to have an “advanced” character creation tool as well as mod support, so there is a high level of customization available.

A Skate Style The demo is available at steam today. The full game should land on PC later this year. Here’s hoping the soundtrack can match that from Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater series.

Crimson Capes billed as a 2D Soulslike action RPG with four playable characters, elemental magic, over 25 bosses, swordfighting, many secrets, co-op, optional hunting with random dungeons and invasions from other players. That all sounds neat enough, but the most exciting for me here is the pixel-art, rotoscoped animation work. It looks modern and retro at the same time, and I’d like to see this kind of style in more games. I also dig that you get a PDF instruction manual and game guide as well as a printable world map when you buy the game.

You (and I) won’t have to wait long to play Crimson Capeswhich is from Poor Locke. Coming to steam on February 12 for $15, though you’ll get a 10 percent discount if you pick it up within the first nine days. Console versions are also in the pipeline.