Yesterday on the 7th of July 2022, Sony revealed on PlayStation Indies some exciting new indie games coming in the next 12 months. The variety of games headed to the PlayStation 4 & PlayStation 5 has everything from action to strategy RPG as well as horror and golf?!
Here are all the games that were announced at yesterday’s PlayStation Indies.
Cult Of The Lamb by Massive Monster
Release Date: 11th August 2022
Managing a cult can be a messy business in Cult of the Lamb. Take on the role of the Lamb, a cutesy cult leader and adorable harbinger of doom, saved from death to serve The One Who Waits. Embark on crusades through randomly generated dungeons in this action roguelike dungeon crawler.
The dungeons are filled with hordes of monsters and false prophets and you’ll need to go through them to find new followers and resources to bring back to your cult.
Life isn’t all hacking and slashing, however. Back home at cult HQ, you must indoctrinate any new followers. You can customise them, build new structures, and perform great sermons in your temple – letting you draw power from your followers to grow stronger for your next crusade.
To run a successful and productive cult you must keep your followers healthy and their faith in you high. They have needs that must be met otherwise they will become unhappy – and eventually turn against you. Build homes so they have somewhere to sleep at night, grow crops and cook meals to keep them fed.
Cursed to Golf by Chuhai Labs
Release Date: 18th August 2022
Cursed to Golf is a side-scrolling golf roguelike game where players must swing their way out of Golf Purgatory by playing through 18 randomly generated dungeon-like courses while collecting power-ups and upgrades.
In Cursed to Golf, you play as a would-be golf champion who tragically dies just as he’s about to win a tournament. Instead of making it to heaven (or hell), you find yourself in Golf Purgatory. But it’s not all bad, if you can golf your way through the ever-changing 18-hole course, you’ll be able to ascend back to life.
In the grand tradition of every adventure story, no one’s ever made it through before, but hey, things might be different this time. If you fail a hole, prepare for your pesky curse to whisk you all the way back to the beginning of the course so you can start over again.
Golf in the land of the dead is very different from what we know. For starters each time you tee off, the holes will be randomly selected from over 70 hand-designed ones to create a fresh course. The holes are dungeon-like, often with multiple paths to the flag, going in different directions, complete with all manner of traps and hazards. Some, like water and bunkers you have probably seen before, but there are also Grave Grabbers, deadly spikes, explosive TNT boxes and more to stop you in your tracks.
The Tomorrow Children: Phoenix Edition by Q-Games, Japan Studio
Release Date: 7th September 2022
The Tomorrow Children: Phoenix Edition takes place within an alternate future following a failed experiment to unite the minds of all humanity. The return of civilisation now lies in the hands of Projection Clones; life forms capable of venturing deep into the Void in search of preserved human survivors.
Originally released in 2016 on PS4 as a free-to-play game, The Tomorrow Children is a resource management and town-building simulator where players must rebuild society and explore a Soviet-inspired post-apocalyptic dystopian world known as the Void.
SIGNALIS by rose-engine
Release Date: 27th October 2022
Signalis is a love letter to the classic PS1-era survival horror games such as Resident Evil and Silent Hill. Set in a dystopian sci-fi world where players must scavenge the corners of an abandoned off-world facility, battle terrifying creatures, and unravel a cosmic horror mystery.
You are Elster, a technician Replika, who wakes up from stasis to find that her spaceship has crash-landed and that the pilot is missing. Elster soon finds something hidden below the planet’s icy surface that should not be there and receives a mysterious radio signal that changes everything.
The world of Signalis is a stark and desolate place of concrete walls and humming CRT screens. A world in which the totalitarian regime is ever-present through surveillance, bureaucracy, and propaganda.
As Elster journeys into the mysterious government facility, she must find creative ways to get through its many bureaucratic safeguards.
Resources like ammunition and health items are scarce, and what you can carry is limited, though a storage box allows you to swap items as needed. To preserve resources you will have to decide when it’s best to fight or run.
SCHIM by Ewoud van der Werf
Release Date: 2023
SCHiM is a stylish 3D platforming game where players control a shadow creature as they traverse a modern cityscape by jumping from shadow to shadow. The shadow creature, schim is trying to get back to the shadow of their person. You’ll travel through ordinary Dutch-inspired locations where you’ll meet other schim and characters you can help and interact with.
The world of SCHiM is exploratory, interactive and experimental. You can interact with the various objects around the world and their shadows. Some of these activatable shadows will be little visual or sound-based elements to discover, while others will be part of the flow of the world and will actually change the situation of the player and the characters in the world.
There are multiple paths, interactions, and ways to finish a level.
Sea Of Stars by Sabotage Studio
Release Date: 2023
Sea of Stars is a turn-based RPG inspired by classic games like Final Fantasy but with a modern spin. Players take on the role of two “Children of the Solstice”. Who combine their respective sun and moon-based powers to perform deadly Eclipse Magic to vanquish the monstrous creations of an evil alchemist known as The Fleshmancer.
In Sabotage Studio’s PlayStation Blog article, they talk a bit more about the gameplay.
Sea of Stars will follow a pure turn-based combat system without any time bars. Each of the six playable characters comes with a small kit of four spells/skills with differing damage types and patterns, which can be combined with other characters’ moves. There would be seamless transitions from navigation to combat, no random encounters, and no grinding.
Inscryption by Daniel Mullins
Inscryption was 2021’s dark horse of games and if you haven’t played it you really should. A unique blend of interactive storytelling, found footage, card game mechanics, and escape room puzzle-solving, the PlayStation release of Daniel Mullins’ roguelike deck-building horror game will include atmospheric lighting and audio, and haptic feedback.
Inscryption is an inky black card-based odyssey that’s part deck-building roguelike, part escape-room puzzler and part psychological horror. As video game genres go, it’s a pretty potent concoction. What starts out as a devilish deck-builder soon becomes something altogether different, but I’ll leave you to discover its darkest secrets for yourself.