An editorial guide from The Gaming Nest to indie games from Europe, the Americas, Asia, Africa, MENA and Oceania — each with original notes and a link to its store page.
These are editorial pages. The developers and publishers are not affiliated with The Gaming Nest unless explicitly stated.
The Binding of Isaac is a roguelike action-adventure in which young Isaac escapes into a basement full of monsters after his mother hears a message from God demanding his life. Players guide him, or one of six unlockable characters, through procedurally generated rooms modelled on The Legend of Zelda, fighting in real time and collecting items and power-ups for boss battles. American developers Edmund McMillen and Florian Himsl made it in Adobe Flash after a week-long game jam, releasing it in 2011.
The Bonfire 2: Uncharted Shores is a city-building strategy game with survival elements. Players design a settlement, organise workers and resource chains, dispatch ships on expeditions, trade with other cities, and explore mysterious dungeons that hide secrets left by the ancients. It was developed and published by Xigma Games, a studio from India, and released for Windows and Mac in August 2020.
The Bonfire: Forsaken Lands is a settlement-building survival strategy game set in a snowy encampment. Players gather and manage resources, craft, and expand their camp while fending off monster attacks and working to uncover secrets of an ancient past. It was created and self-published by Indian studio Xigma Games and released for Windows and Mac in March 2018, with Steam also tagging it as an RPG and simulation.
The Case of the Golden Idol is a deduction puzzle game in which players gather clues and assemble ideas, people and evidence to make sense of what happened. Its cases trace a story that stretches across four decades of the 18th century. It was made in Latvia by brothers Ernests and Andrejs Klavins of Color Gray Games, built in Godot and released in 2022 through Playstack, and it was recognized with awards among the year's best games.
A dark graphic adventure, The Cat Lady comes from Polish developer Harvester Games and was first released in 2012. It forms the second chapter of the Devil Came Through Here trilogy, following Downfall from 2009 and preceding Lorelai, which closed the series in 2019. The game was built with Adventure Game Studio and published by Screen 7, and it holds a Metacritic score of 81.
The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood is a narrative adventure starring a witch living in exile. Its central mechanic has players design a personal tarot deck and then use it to perform divinations for fellow witches, so the cards they create shape the readings they give. It was developed by Deconstructeam, a studio from Spain, and published by Devolver Digital, releasing on Windows in August 2023.
The Darkside Detective is a point-and-click adventure with a detective theme, focused on investigating cases through classic adventure-game interaction. It was developed by Spooky Doorway, a studio in Ireland, and published by Akupara Games, launching on July 27, 2017 for Windows, macOS and Linux before reaching consoles. It was later followed in 2021 by a sequel titled A Fumble in the Dark.
The Drifter is a point-and-click adventure with a pulp flavor, in which players explore scenes, interact with characters and objects, and push the story forward through classic adventure-game interaction. It was developed and published by Powerhoof, a studio from Australia, working with Dave Lloyd. The game came out for Windows, macOS and Linux in July 2025, with Nintendo Switch versions following later.
The Escapists is a strategy game from UK developer Mouldy Toof Studios, published by Team17, in which you play an inmate trying to break out of progressively tougher prisons. Reviewers liked the freedom to tackle each escape your own way, though some found learning its systems through trial and error frustrating. After debuting in Steam Early Access in 2014, it launched fully in 2015 on PC and consoles, and a sequel followed in 2017.
The Escapists 2 is a strategy role-playing game from UK developer Mouldy Toof Studios, published by Team17 as the sequel to 2015's The Escapists. It launched in August 2017 for Windows, macOS, Linux and consoles, with Nintendo Switch and mobile versions following in later years. Its store listing leans on simulation and strategy, while its genre listings also include role-playing.
By Leonard Menchiari, Daniele Vicinanzo, Giulio Perrone · Italy
The Eternal Castle Remastered is a cinematic platformer and adventure presented as a remaster of a 1987 game that never actually existed. Set in a distant future, it follows a colonist whose ship goes down on Earth while trying to escape the planet. Leonard Menchiari led development alongside Daniele Vicinanzo and Giulio Perrone in Italy, and it was released in 2019. It holds a Metacritic score of 73.
The Exit 8 is a horror walking simulator set in an underground passage of a Japanese metro station, where players must watch for anomalies, subtle changes in the corridor, to find their way out. It drew on the eerie feel of liminal spaces and on the anomaly hunting of I'm on Observation Duty. Developed in nine months by Kotake Create in Japan, it launched on Steam in November 2023 and won at the Japan Game Awards and CEDEC Awards.
The Falconeer is an aerial combat game in which players take to the air and duel enemies in dogfights. It pays tribute to the niche dogfighting genre with a strongly personal vision. It was created by Tomas Sala in the Netherlands and published by Wired Productions, releasing in November 2020 on Windows, and it was among the games available when the Xbox Series X/S launched. An enhanced Warrior Edition later came to other consoles.
The Final Station is a side-scrolling shooter that layers train simulation and exploration on top of its combat. It was developed by the Russian studio Do My Best Games, and brought to Steam by publisher tinyBuild in late August 2016. Critics praised its originality and world-building while pointing to its linear structure, and a DLC called The Only Traitor followed in 2017 with a new lead character whose story runs alongside the main one.
The Flock is an online-only survival horror game built around a shared, limited pool of player lives, meaning the game was designed to end once enough deaths had occurred. It was developed by Vogelsap in the Netherlands and launched for Windows in August 2015. Weak sales led the servers to be switched off before that death total was ever reached, making it an unusual experiment in finite multiplayer design.
The Forest is an open-world survival horror game in which players gather resources, craft weapons and traps, and build defences against cannibals and mutants whose unpredictable stalking behaviour keeps tension high. After a plane crash, Eric LeBlanc searches a peninsula's caves and hidden facilities for his abducted son. Canadian studio Endnight Games released it on Windows in April 2018 after four years of early access, and it had sold more than five million copies before 2019.
The Forest Quartet is a 2022 puzzle adventure by Mads Vadsholt, an independent Danish developer working as Mads and Friends, published by Bedtime Digital Games. Players control a spirit trying to bring her old band back together, drifting through three stages and interacting with objects to solve puzzles that light up the dark forest and extinguish fires. Its sound work earned the Excellence in Audio prize at the Independent Games Festival in 2023.
The House of Da Vinci is a 3D puzzle adventure from Blue Brain Games, an independent studio in Slovakia, first released in 2017. Players work through intricate mechanical contraptions, hunt for hidden objects and escape locked rooms while searching for their missing master. The fictional story takes place during the Renaissance, and the game went on to receive three follow-ups from the same studio, including a VR entry.
The House of Da Vinci 2 is a 3D puzzle adventure from Blue Brain Games, a studio in Slovakia, released in 2020. Players take the role of an apprentice to Leonardo da Vinci, solving handcrafted mechanical puzzles and uncovering hidden secrets across Italian Renaissance settings. Time travel is also part of the design, letting the player affect the environment around them as they work through each location.
The House of Da Vinci 3 concludes the puzzle adventure trilogy from Blue Brain Games, a studio based in Slovakia, and was released in December 2022. As in earlier entries, progress comes from solving a large number of fresh puzzles and brain teasers. Players also explore new, strikingly detailed locations with mysteries to uncover, continuing the series' puzzle-first approach on Windows and Mac.
This visual novel, The Hungry Lamb: Traveling in the Late Ming Dynasty, takes place in a famine-stricken China. It follows a bandit who deals in human lives as he escorts four girls, one of them mute and bent on revenge, and the story turns toward redemption as secrets surface. Chinese developer ZerocreationGame made it and co-published it with 2P Games in 2024. It holds a Metacritic score of 79.
The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing is an action RPG that casts players as the young son of Abraham Van Helsing, the famous vampire hunter from Bram Stoker's Dracula. The adventure unfolds in Borgovia, a gothic-noir take on 19th-century Eastern Europe where monsters and mad science collide, with deliberately anachronistic gadgets and humour. It was developed and self-published by Hungarian studio NeocoreGames and released in May 2013.
The King Is Watching puts the player in charge of a castle, placing buildings to gather resources, train units and repel invading enemies. It mixes real-time strategy and city-building with the randomized, run-based structure of a roguelike. It began at the Ludum Dare 54 jam in 2023 and was expanded by the Serbian indie studio Hypnohead before tinyBuild released it in July 2025, later becoming a D.I.C.E. Awards finalist.
The Last Campfire is a puzzle game from Hello Games, a studio based in the United Kingdom, which also published it. It first launched in August 2020 on iOS, Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Windows and macOS, with the Steam version dated October 2021. Store tags place it in the adventure genre alongside its puzzle focus, and it holds a Metacritic score of 80.