Sony Showed Off a Bunch of Cool Games during Today’s PlayStation Indies Showcase

PlayStation is launching a new initiative called “PlayStation Indies,” where the company is promoting upcoming games from independent development teams for PlayStation systems.

To kick things off Wednesday morning, head of PlayStation Indies Shuhei Yoshida highlighted nine upcoming titles coming to PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5. Each game’s lead developer also got to write about the game for PlayStation’s blog, sharing neat tidbits and screenshots surrounding the game’s development.

Here’s what they showed:

F.I.S.T.: Forged in Shadow Torch

Publisher: TiGames
Release window: “Within the next few months” (Fall 2020?)
Platform: PlayStation 4

F.I.S.T.: Forged in Shadow Torch is, as business developer Yang Xiang describes it, a “dieselpunk-style action adventure featuring an anthropomorphic bunny wielding a huge, weaponized metal fist.”

It’s part of the exploration platformer genre, commonly referred to as “Metroid-vanias,” and features detailed 3D environments even though the player navigates them through a 2D plain. F.I.S.T. seems to be going for a darker tone despite the cute anthropomorphic animals, as a machine menace threatens to overtake their society.

Maquette

Publisher: Annapurna Interactive
Release window: TBA
Platforms: PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, PC

Maquette is a first-person puzzle game by Graceful Decay in which you manipulate objects in a tiny model of your own world, which then impacts the structure of the world itself.

This is what Graceful Decay calls “recursive gameplay,” in which any change in one copy of the world will directly impact every other copy. The demonstration starts by simply moving a cube, but then shows how putting a key across a gap in the model creates a large bridge in the real world, allowing the player to progress. It’s a clever premise, and it looks like things could get complicated fast.

Recompile

Publisher: Dear Villagers
Release window: 2020
Platforms: PlayStation 5, PC

Recompile is an abstract third-person adventure game where you play as a computer virus attempting to hack a complex mainframe. The trailer is full of brightly colored platforms and enemies attempting to stop you, with gorgeous environments set within this computerized world.

You’re given three main ways of dealing with threats: direct combat, hacking or evasion. Each method, along with other choices made along the way, will have an effect on the artificial intelligence created by the game’s end, resulting in different endings.

Carto

Publishers: Humble Games
Release window: Fall 2020
Platforms: PlayStation 4, PC

Carto was shown off during last month’s PC Gaming Show, and now it’s coming to PlayStation 4. Here’s what we had to say about it then:

“Carto is a charming puzzle game from Sunhead Games which features an adorable kid helping out various people and animals by getting them where they need to go. The titular character does this through shifting the environment like a jigsaw puzzle, and the whole thing looks adorable and relaxing, which is really what we need right now.”

Where the Heart Is

Publisher: Armature Studio
Release window: Winter 2020
Platform: PlayStation 4

This game travels between mundane life and the relationships between the main character and his family throughout, while also having bizarre, ethereal environments shaped by the player’s decisions. It’s a weird, cool premise and shows promise to deliver an emotional story about the choices ordinary people make throughout their lifetimes.

Creaks

Publisher: Amanita Design
Release window: July 2020
Platforms: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, PC, Mac

Creaks features a slightly creepy yet endearing hand-drawn art style, as the player character navigates a mansion haunted by household objects turned to life. This phenomenon of seeing things such as faces or bodies in inanimate objects is known as pareidolia, and it informed a lot of the game’s enemy design.

Lead designer Radim Jurda started by sketching all the game’s environments by hand, then using an old scanner to capture the imperfect nature of his drawings. It’s a project eight years in the making, and seems to have lots of care put into it.

Haven

Publisher: The Game Bakers
Release window: 2020
Platforms: PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Switch, PC

Another game shown off during the PC Gaming Show, creative director Emeric Thoa wrote about the team’s desire to create as easygoing an experience as possible after the action-packed Furi. Here’s what we said about the game:

”Haven is an ‘RPG adventure about love and freedom,’ starring a power couple that fights together, instead of one saving the other. It’s an uncommon thing for games to give equal control and power to both members of a romantic relationship after so many instances of the hero saving the princess, so Haven is definitely a nice change of pace. Add to that a gorgeous cel-shaded art-style and intriguing turn-based gameplay, and this is definitely a game to keep an eye on.”

Worms Rumble

Publisher:Team17
Release window: 2020
Platforms: PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, PC

From the 25-year-old turn-based Worms franchise comes its first fully real-time installment, Worms Rumble. It’s a 2D battle royale game in which up to 32 players can wriggle to victory through three modes: Deathmatch, Last Worm Standing and Last Squad Standing.

The first is a free-for-all in which each worm tries to get as many kills as possible within a time limit, whereas the second and third see individuals or teams of three, respectively, take out the others until they’re the last ones left. It’s a tried and true format that people seem to love, and it’s no wonder Worms would want in on the action.

Heavenly Bodies

Publisher: 2pt Interactive
Release window: 2021
Platforms: PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, PC, Mac

The final game shown off as part of PlayStation Indies, Heavenly Bodies sees you and an optional co-op companion living and completing tasks on a space station-like vessel, using ragdoll and zero-gravity physics to hilarious results.

Director Alexander Perrin also details how the DualSense controller will be used with the PlayStation 5 version, which aims to give more realistic sensations to the actions portrayed, even including the ability to “feel the dreadful loss of all sensation as your body is swept into the endless void.” Sounds like some pretty cool tech.