September's Mechanic of the Month is Silksong's Swift Step. Unlocking Swift Step transforms the game into an acrobatic dance of dodges and air dashes. Honestly some of the best movement mechanics I can remember playing in a 2D game
#Silksong

This kind of thing is bad news for game design. 'Summoning a character and letting it fight another' is far too broad a concept and should never have been taken seriously in court, but it shouldn't be possible to patent game mechanics anyway gamesfray.com/last-week-ni... #gamedesign

Now it's been confirmed we're getting Hades 2 and Silksong in the same month, I'm more relieved than ever Slay the Spire 2 pushed their release back today. Love all 3 games, but there's only so many sequels we can squeeze into the back half of 2025!
#indiegame
www.eurogamer.net/slay-the-spi...

Nintendo kicking off their Direct with theme parks, museums and movie tie-ins feels significant. Nintendo have always been sitting on some very valuable IP, but haven't always capitalized on it like many other companies would. This definitely feels like it's started to shift now

Cryptmaster (@thecryptmaster.bsky.social) is a wonderfully weird game. It feels like what might have happened if the Typing of the Dead games had continued to evolve in surprising ways, and eventually became a whole new genre. Love that Fighting Fantasy / OSR art style too

#indiegame

Caught up with The Royal Writ (@theroyalwrit.bsky.social‬) over the weekend, which is an exceptionally charming roguelike deckbuilder. The animation team really deserve to take a bow on this one

#indiegames #animation

As excited as I am for Silksong, their surprise September release date must have been scary news for the other devs releasing this month. It might be harder for other indie devs to get press attention this month, so it's a great time to shout out any other new releases you're enjoying

#indiegames

Mechanic of the Month! Each month I'll be highlighting an exceptional game mechanic from a recent game. For August's mechanic I'm choosing the bombs from Öoo by @namataka.bsky.social, which has to be one of the most elegantly designed games I've played all year

#indiegame #gamedesign

Finally got my hands on the Sable book by the folks at @lostincult.co.uk. When playing Sable it always felt like it was a real passion project for everyone involved, so it's great to see the whole creative process captured so well here

#indiegame #indiedev

I know I'm a sucker for a sandbox strategy game with a ton of DLC, so for my own safety I've been trying to stay far away from Age of Wonders 4.

I finally caved in this week. It's time for bird pirates.

Very excited to play this incredibly weird skate boarding game soon

Good in-depth game genre analysis like this is surprisingly rare, and Doc's stuff is always worth a read. Hopefully going to be followed by a part 2!

Good to see that UFO 50 is starting to come to consoles! One of the most ambitious collections of game design ideas you'll ever play.

I'll forever be impressed they decided to create 50(!) games when I think people would have been just as impressed with a collection half that number

#UFO50

Actually quite excited about my 3 hour train journey today as it means I have an excuse to take my Switch 2 somewhere. In other news, I am finally trying to complete Tears of the Kingdom. This game is BIG

As much as Rare's 40th anniversary deserves to be celebrated, this all feels a bit in poor taste just a month after Microsoft hit Rare with layoffs and cancelled their next big game news.xbox.com/en-us/2025/0...

Watching ever more Silksong memes appear as we get closer to the Nintendo Direct (I assume we won't see anything today). As OTT as some of the Silksong discourse has become, there is something nice about the most anticipated game in the world being a project made by a team of around 10(?) people

Given the sheer quantity of games releasing each month, getting discovered is one of the biggest challenges facing indie developers. Lots of people are doing good work in this field, but its good to see somebody attempt such a playful solution to the problem with Ludocene

www.ludocene.com