1 week Ago By Kevin Purdy
"No ads, no hosts, no sponsors, just games." The Triple-i Initiative 's pitch for its now-annual showcase of games, crafted by studios working somewhere between "Solo dev or very small team" and "Investor-minded conglomerate with international offices," promises a lot of peeks at games without a lot of chatter, and once again it delivered. Last year's showcase debuted titles like Norland , Slay the Spire 2 , and The Rogue Prince of Persia , along with updates from Darkest Dungeon 2 , Palworld , and Vampire Survivors .
This year featured looks at titles from the Deep Rock universe, the cloning-yourself-to-survive curiosity The Alters , an Endless Legend 2 that continues tweaking the 4X formula, and more. Below are five selected highlights for the Ars crowd, along with some notable other announcements. The full list is not yet up on the Triple-i site , but you can see what jumped out from the full showcase .
Deep Rock Galactic: Rogue Core Ghost Ship Games and its publishing arm advanced two of its Deep Rock Galactic (DRG) spin-offs at the showcase, one of them with real gameplay. DRG: Rogue Core , the run-based, shoot-ier game set in the same dwarven universe as DRG, showed off a new trailer with actual play and announced a closed alpha test, accessible on the game's Steam page . DRG: Survivor , a fine entry into the burgeoning "Survivor-like" genre (it still needs a name ), now has a 1.
0 date set for September 17. The trailer shows off some of the new content updates, biomes, systems, and quirky little "overclocks" and artifacts that make the number of run variations nearly incalculable. Endless Legend 2 The sequel to the game that expertly incorporated randomness into a 4X strategy framework is getting a sequel, and it hits early access this summer.
The game will add more factions as the summer approaches, and the sequel promises more disasters and strategy options to come. You can sign up for early access through Amplitude Studios' Insider Program . Heroes of Might & Magic: Olden Era It's been a minute since a turn-based game set in the Might & Magic world of Enroth came around—about 10 years, actually, not counting spiritual successors .
Olden Era takes players to the continent of Jadame, never before explored in the game universe. Woodland spirits fight medieval armies, zombies spawn from the battlefield, demons get into the mix—there's a lot going on. You can sign up for a playtest at the game's Steam page , and its due out in early access in Q2 2025.
The Alters (i.e. the “alternate version clone team survival strategy game”) You contain multitudes, so put those multitudes to work to survive this cryptic space exploration quest.
I'm not just being a lazy writer when I say you have to watch the trailer to really get what The Alters is going for. You can see some of 11bit Studios' Frostpunk -style moments and decisions in this game, along with the brutal choices and psychological struggle of This War of Mine . And then some wholly new third-person exploration, rendered cinematics, and all of it wrapped into a plot that looks intriguingly hard to explain.
The game is due out June 13, 2025. Neverway Stop me if you've heard this one before: a younger person, feeling deeply unfulfilled by their corporate job, moves to a farm to reboot their life. But instead of becoming the agricultural scion of Stardew Valley , Fiona in Neverway becomes "the immortal herald of a dead god.
" It's billed as "a nightmarish life sim RPG," the visuals look lovely and wild, and the developer, Coldblood Inc., includes the artist from Celeste and TowerFall and the musician Disasterpeace. There's no release date yet.
A few other neat-looking games and updates Katana Zero is getting its long-awaited DLC , and it remains free. Void/Breaker ( 2025, playtest now ) looks like a relentless FPS in which you shoot the heck out of robots Frostrail (2026) is an intriguing mix of fighting demons, crafting, staying alive in the frost, and keeping a train running, which you can do with up to three others in co-op. Rematch (June 19) is from the Sifu team, and it looks to take the same compelling human movement and apply it to a stylized soccer game.
X4: Foundations is getting a diplomacy update in summer 2025. CloverPit ( 2025 ), touting itself as "the demonic lovechild of Balatro and Buckshot Roulette ," does not appear to be kidding. There is a free demo to prove this.
No, I'm Not a Human (fall 2025) makes you decide who is human, who is just a body-snatching pretender, and how you or your brain will survive..
