I was a judge in the Independent Games Festival again this year - here are some of my highlights from 2026. Not a "who I think's going to win" prediction, just "here's some games I think are cool!" https://cdrom.ca/games/2025/11/19/igf2026.html
Looks like kevin's PLAYING in berlin has been more fully announced since I hit publish, so I've gone in and added a link to the Steam page. https://store.steampowered.com/app/3982990/kevins_PLAYING_in_berlin/
Steam:kevin's PLAYING in berlin

Release the author, who is nothing but the player. Release the player, and restore the freedom once taken away. A three-game experiment in what it means to play.

@misty Thanks for sharing the link! For a second I thought that the author didn't want to be on Steam
@alejandro No problem! No, it was just unannounced when I started writing the post. I got permission to write about it, but the Steam page wasn’t up yet when I hit publish.
@misty looking forward to a serious close-the-schools snowstorm to dig in to Perfect Tides
@misty I am so excited to finally play Demonschool, which came out today!

I started playing the demo and
stopped because I wanted to save it for the full release.
@aud I got the chance to play a couple of hours pre-release - it's good stuff!
@misty my dream of Personalike becoming a genre tag is finally coming true 😭
@misty rad picks, thanks for the rundown! I missed a lot of these so I appreciate it
@farawaythyer Thanks! Yeah, there's always so much more than any one person can see huh?

@misty I felt the most uncomplicated warmth for Öoo and Time Flies, love games with humble ambitions that 100% nail everything they set out to do. Can't wait to spend more time with CorgiSpace too, prolly waiting for the release on that one.

I've know Melos too long so I stayed away from Angeline Era, very very excited to jump into that one when it comes out.

@farawaythyer I *loved* Time Flies! Seems like it's been getting enough love I ended up focusing on some lesser-known stuff. I need to put more time into Öoo and didn't get around to CorgiSpace; definitely need to try that properly now judging's over.
@misty I loved Öoo so much I went back and played Elechead and loved that one too, also discovered I played one of the dev's free games in like 2018. Takahashi's the new-to-me dev I'm like "I will play anything you put out next"
@misty I was surprised and pleased to see Time Flies get so much affection, it's such a little unpretentious thing I didn't expect it to resonate with everyone as much. People seemed to click with it though!
@misty Perfect Tide is in my wishlist for a long time