Desperation
Nominated for the Tabletop Design Award
Description: Desperation is two small roleplaying games of gothic storytelling experiences steeped in actual history. Dead House and The Isabel are dark, lyrical games about people pushed far past their limits.
Multiplayer
Platform: itch.io, roll20.net
Status: Released
Puckish
Nominated for the Live Action Award
Description: In Puckish, Billiard Balls Are People. They have complex hidden relationships, inspired by the emotional tension in 19th Century British literature.
Single Player
Platform: TiltFive, the Mixed Reality tabletop interface. (A reduced-quality version may eventually be available on WebGL/Windows/Mac,)
Status: Unreleased
WORLD OF HORROR
Nominated for the Visual Design and Audio Design Awards
Description: Experience the quiet terror of this 1-bit love letter to Junji Ito and H.P. Lovecraft. Navigate a hellish roguelite reality with turn-based combat and unforgiving choices. The inevitable awaits…
Single Player
Platforms: PC, Nintendo Switch, Playstation 4.
Status: Unreleased
(val)iant: or, val’s guide to having a broken vag
Nominated for the Impact Award
Description: (val)iant is a single-player narrative game about “vagina problems”, such as vaginismus. Play as Val, a nonbinary student struggling with their relationship to their body and struggling with sex.
Single Player
Platforms: This is a browser-based game that’s free and publicly available on itch.io! There is a PC build also available for free to download from Steam.
Status: Released
Unknown Number: A First Person Talker
Nominated for the Systemic Design and Audio Design Awards
Description: ‘Unknown Number’: A First Person Talker’ is an innovative voice-controlled adventure – told through interactive ‘phone calls’. Can you save the world… using nothing but your voice?
Single Player
Platforms: Steam (Windows & MacOS)
Status: Released
Hollyhock
Nominated for the Tabletop Design Award
Description: Hollyhock is a TTRPG set in the theatrical Fae Realm during the Hollyhock Festival! Pull pranks, dive into political machinations, and play your hand well in the biggest celebration of the Fae world.
Multiplayer
Platforms: Digital (physical planned as well)
Status: Unreleased
Rebels of the Outlaw Wastes
Nominated for the Tabletop Design Award
Description: Misfit outlaws fight against the Powers That Be in a weird retro-dystopia. A ttrpg that includes cinematic road combat rules, collaborative world-building, and sticker-based character advancement.
Multiplayer
Platforms: itch.io, indiepressrevolution.com, drivethrurpg.com
Status: Unreleased
Gerda: A Flame in Winter
Nominated for the Narrative Award
Description: This game is an intimate narrative RPG-lite experience set during WW2 and German occupation of Denmark. Walk the path of a nurse who must try to save her loved ones while staying true to herself.
Single Player
Platform: PC Steam and Nintendo Switch
Status: Released
BlueSuburbia
Nominated for the Visual Design Award
Description: Wander through the world of poetry, face an impending darkness, confront your demons, and delve deeper into a dream that promises to finally set you free. BlueSuburbia is a beautiful horror.
Single Player
Platforms: the demo is available on steam and itch
Status: Released
Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical
Nominated for the Performance and Narrative Awards
Description: Gods. Romance. Murder. Musical Numbers?! Change fate with your choices in this beautifully hand-illustrated interactive roleplaying musical.
Single Player
Platforms: Steam, GOG, Humble Store, Epic, Xbox 1 / S|X, Playstation 4 / 5, Nintendo Switch
Status: Released
Wayward Strand
Nominated for the Performance Narrative Awards
Description: Play as Casey, teenage journalist, and visit an airborne hospital, where life goes on around you as you play. Uncover the airship’s mysteries, and explore the lives of its inhabitants.
Single Player
Platforms: Steam (PC), PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch
Status: Released
México, 1921: A Deep Slumber
Nominated for the Impact Award
Description: An intriguing narrative adventure in post revolutionary Mexico City. You play as a journalist to try and solve a hundred-year-old mystery: who planned the assassination of President Álvaro Obregón?
Single Player
Platforms: Steam, Xbox Series, Xbox One
Status: Unreleased
Ecosystem
Nominated for the Systemic Design Award
Description: Grow and modify an ecosystem, with an in-depth simulation creating the lifeforms that inhabit it. All the creatures in the trailer evolved on their own in the game. None were hand-edited!
Single Player
Platforms: Steam and Epic Game Store
Status: Released
Price of Flight
Nominated for the Systemic Design Award
Description: Fight, flight, and steal to survive in PRICE OF FLIGHT, the bird-based bloodsport of tomorrow. Aid the failing Avian Resistance, save yourself, or die on live TV in this board game-inspired RPG.
Single Player
Platforms: Steam, Itch (Windows/Mac/Linux)
Status: Unreleased
Against the Storm
Nominated for the Systemic Design Award
Description: Become the Scorched Queen’s Viceroy and reclaim the wilderness in a roguelite city builder where humans, beavers, lizards, harpies, and foxes stand united against apocalyptic rains.
Single Player
Platforms: Steam, GOG, Epic Games Store
Status: Released
Wylde Flowers
Nominated for the Narrative Award
Description: Join Tara on her journey to become a witch. Farm by day, and cast spells by night as you craft your magical life, bond with your coven and get to know the fully voice acted characters of Fairhaven.
Single Player
Platforms: Apple Arcade, Nintendo Switch, Steam
Status: Released
Secret Shuffle
Nominated for the Live Action Award
Description: Secret Shuffle is a music party game for 4 or more players in the same room wearing headphones. Try to catch the player who doesn’t hear any music but pretends like they do!!
Multiplayer
Platforms: App Store, Google Play, Steam
Status: Released
Report on the Death of Robert Evergreen
Nominated for the Live Action Award
Description: Robert Evergreen is dead! This could be the story your newspaper needs. Boot up the company computer and listen to some interviews. What kind of story will you write? What will be the consequences?
Single Player
Platforms: Itch.io (Demo Available), Steam Early Access, Analog with a Cassette Player, Tapes and more physical materials.
Status: Unreleased
Beecarbonize
Nominated for the Impact Award
Description: Do you have what it takes to save the planet? Beecarbonize is an environmental card strategy game with climate change as your opponent. Developed with climate experts.
Single Player
Platforms: Steam (PC, Mac), iOS App Store, Google Play (Android), Mac App Store, Itch.io (PC)
Status: Released
Tack
Nominated for the Tabletop Design Award
Description: Out on the open sea, a small boat navigates the temperamental winds. Move dice, block your opponent, and summon a powerful gust of wind to push your sails to victory in this two player strategy game.
Multiplayer
Platforms: Dice game
Status: Coming to Kickstarter summer 2024
Torn Away
Nominated for the Performance Award
Description: Torn Away is an interactive story about the tragedy of World War II through the eyes of a child and how to survive without losing your humanity in this war-torn world where only the strongest wins.
Single Player
Platforms: Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo switch, PlayStation 4/5, Steam
Status: Released
Mother, Player
Nominated for the Visual Design Award
Description: In this experimental narrative game, players explore the maternal healthcare industry and parenting culture as a burnt-out pansexual artist who becomes pregnant at the onset of a global pandemic.
Single Player
Platforms: PC and Mac
Status: Unreleased
We Are OFK
Nominated for the Audio Design, Performance, and Impact Awards
Description: Start a band in this dreamy musical journey from indiepop band OFK. Cry, skate, date, & run for your life in 5 interactive music videos, across a heartfelt story of what you risk to chase your dreams
Single Player
Platform: Steam, Epic Games Store, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4
Status: Released
Dead Pets Unleashed
Nominated for the Impact Award
Description: Punk rock band, Dead Pets, are looking for their big break. Play rhythm games at band practice, work a diner shift, and converse with characters in this management-lite, minigame-heavy, narrative game.
Single Player
Platforms: Steam, Itch, Epic, Xbox, Playstation, Nintendo Switch
Status: Demo out on Steam
The Forest Quartet
Nominated for the Impact Award
Description: The Forest Quartet is a musical meditation. You play as Nina, the deceased singer of the quartet, who must re-motivate her former band members in preparation for a final farewell concert.
Single Player
Platforms: Steam, Epic Store, PlayStation 4-5, coming to Nintendo Switch very soon!
Status: Released
He Fucked The Girl Out of Me
Nominated for the Narrative Award
Description: He Fucked The Girl Out Of Me is a semi-autobiographical narrative visual novel about trauma and sex work made for the gameboy.
Single Player
Platforms: The game runs on many android phones through the itch page, most web browsers, and also on any devices that can run gameboy games.
Status: Released
Get Off My Lawn
Nominated for the Live Action Award
Description: Get Off My Lawn is an alt. controller FPS defense game where your goal is to keep your chair rocking while aiming your hose to spray away neighborhood kids trying to destroy your pristine lawn!
Single Player
Platforms: This is an alternate controller game. The software is run on a PC, and the hardware is the controller that we built.
Status: Unreleased
Roman Sands RE:Build
Nominated for the Visual Design Award
Description: Explore themes of love, decay, toil, and reward in two parts. This delirium-charged journey into apocalypse collides through visual novel, adventure, puzzle solving, horror, and survival simulation.
Single Player
Platforms: PC, Xbox, Switch, PlayStation
Status: Unreleased
Slay the Princess
Nominated for the Narrative Award
Description: You’re on a path in the woods. And at the end of that path is a cabin. And in the basement of that cabin is a Princess. You’re here to slay her. If you don’t, it will mean the end of the world.
Single Player
Platform: Steam, itch, GOG
Status: Unreleased
Forgotten Chains
Nominated for the Tabletop Design Award
Description: Forgotten Chains is an intimate escape game for four brave wizards. Search through boxes to find artifacts of your memories. Work together to find out what happened to everyone and unchain yourselves.
Multiplayer
Platforms: Forgotten Chains is a facilitated tabletop escape game. It is currently only available by contacting the developer directly, reachable on their website funbi.games and Instagram @funbigames.
Status: Released
Night Games
IndieCade’s Night Games event is back as a live event for the first time in four years. Join us November 10th & 11th, from 6:00 pm – 11:00 pm. Pacific time for night of play and connection under the stars at the Jerry Moss Plaza The Music Center in Downtown Los Angeles. Night Games will feature a selection of both new and classic IndieCade games. For more information.
The Gentle Oraclebird
Festival 2019
Description: The Gentle Oraclebird is a narrative exploration of kindness, using ritual and storytelling, and a new divination mechanism inspired and derived from the Chinese tradition of “lottery sticks,” tarot decks, and carnival-based fortune telling mechanisms and games.
One-on-one with the performer
Platform: Interactive installation game.
We Are OFK
IndieCade Festival 2023
Nominated for the Audio Design, Performance, and Impact Awards
Description: Start a band in this dreamy musical journey from indiepop band OFK. Cry, skate, date, & run for your life in 5 interactive music videos, across a heartfelt story of what you risk to chase your dreams
Single Player
Platform: Steam, Epic Games Store, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4
Status: Released
Desperation
IndieCade Festival 2023
Nominated for the Tabletop Design Award
Description: Desperation is two small roleplaying games of gothic storytelling experiences steeped in actual history. Dead House and The Isabel are dark, lyrical games about people pushed far past their limits.
Multiplayer
Platform: itch.io, roll20.net
Status: Released
Secret Shuffle
IndieCade Festival 2023
Nominated for the Live Action Award
Description: Secret Shuffle is a music party game for 4 or more players in the same room wearing headphones. Try to catch the player who doesn’t hear any music but pretends like they do!!
Multiplayer
Platforms: App Store, Google Play, Steam
Status: Released
Artholomew Video’s Stream Challenge
Festival 2022
Description: An interactive performance from last year’s Performance Award winner! Join Alistair on the big screens as he makes art, poetry, songs and dances using the prompts that you send him from your phones!
Multiplayer in participation with the performer
Platforms: Interactive livestream
Stage Show
Downloadable game for Windows + Twitch
Get Off My Lawn
IndieCade Festival 2023
Nominated for the Live Action Award
Description: Get Off My Lawn is an alt. controller FPS defense game where your goal is to keep your chair rocking while aiming your hose to spray away neighborhood kids trying to destroy your pristine lawn!
Single Player
Platforms: This is an alternate controller game. The software is run on a PC, and the hardware is the controller that we built.
Status: Unreleased
Ultimate Chicken Horse
IndieCade East 2016
Description: Ultimate Chicken Horse is a party platformer game where you build the level as you play, placing traps and hazards to screw your friends over, but trying not to screw yourself.
Multiplayer
Platforms: Ultimate Chicken Horse fully supports crossplay!
– PC: Windows, Mac, Linux and Steam Deck
– Xbox One, Xbox Series S|X
– PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5
– Nintendo Switch
Status: Released
Puckish
Nominated for the Live Action Award
Description: In Puckish, Billiard Balls Are People. They have complex hidden relationships, inspired by the emotional tension in 19th Century British literature.
Single Player
Platform: TiltFive, the Mixed Reality tabletop interface. (A reduced-quality version may eventually be available on WebGL/Windows/Mac,)
Status: Unreleased
Peabody winner Nonny de la Peña is the founding director of ASU’s program on Emerging Media and Narrative, where she leads a best-in-class research and graduate program with a focus on new narratives developed using emerging media technologies in the areas of arts, culture and nonfiction. She is also CEO of Emblematic Group and is renowned for pioneering the use of virtual and augmented reality for what she called “immersive journalism.”
She was named WSJ Technology Innovator of the Year and CNET’s 20 Most Influential Latinos in Tech. She was selected by Wired Magazine as #MakeTechHuman Agent of Change and Fast Company named her “One of the People Who Made the World More Creative” for her work in immersive storytelling. She was inducted into the SXSW Hall of Fame for her career efforts that include premiering the first virtual reality experiences at the Sundance Film Festival in 2012, the Tribeca Film Festival in 2014 and the World Economic Forum in 2014.
Under her leadership, Emblematic has built a critically acclaimed body of work using a range of technologies from 360 video, to VR, AR, and XR technologies, and AI and machine learning. Emblematic’s diverse roster of world class clients includes Cartier, Google, Lenovo, Italian fashion brand GCDS, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the World Economic Forum. Her latest breakthrough is Emblematic’s no code webXR platform REACH.Love which lets anyone use buttons to easily assemble and publish immersive 3D storytelling.
Nikita Mikros is the CEO of BumbleBear Games and a veteran game designer. He is a three-time IGF finalist as well as an Indiecade and Come Out and Play winner. In addition, he has worked on many games for clients, including Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, Adult Swim, LEGO, and others.
He is best known for Killer Queen, the world’s only ten-player arcade game, which he designed with Joshua DeBonis. The game is known for its simplicity, depth of strategy, and explosive outbursts of laughter and joy. The game has been featured in the New York Times, Polygon, Kotaku, and others. What might be most notable about Killer Queen is the competitive community that has grown around the game, with millions of sky miles logged by players in pursuit of tournament glory.
He has taught game design and programming at the School of Visual Arts since 1994. Nik is currently focused on creating new types of games for arcades and promoting modern arcade culture and work.
Joshua DeBonis is an award-winning game designer and President of BumbleBear, vanguards of the new arcade. He has taught game design and development at Parsons the New School for Design and the NYU Game Center. His design credits include Killer Queen, Meriwether, Dice Miner, and Kleptocrat.
BumbleBear makes games for smart people to play together in public spaces. Our “platform”, the New Arcade, is a blend of digital and physical worlds. Our mission is to be the leading source of revolutionary games that incite growth of new arcade culture. We’re based in Brooklyn, NY.
Josh has shown many games at Indiecade over the years and has won the Indiecade Developers Choice Award for Killer Queen in 2013, as well as the IndieCade Jury Prix Award in 2018 for Kleptocrat.
Kellee Santiago is a long-time creator, lover of game makers, and is passionate about sharing stories through play.
As former President and Co-Founder of thatgamecompany, Kellee Santiago developed one of the most prominent brands in independent and innovative game development. In 2013 she moved into Publishing and Developer Relations at OUYA, the Kickstarter Android console. She later joined Google to similarly build out the developer pipelines and content strategy for their VR and AR platforms. Last year she moved back into original game development – working on Ingress, which celebrated their 10th year as a live game, as well as Peridot, which launched in May.
Kellee has grown and supported the development community as a co-chair for the Independent Games Summit as GDC, co-founding the angel investment fund Indie Fund, and building the Black Developers Initiative at Niantic.
Founded in 2003, Amanita Design is a Czech indie development studio known for adventure games like Machinarium, Botanicula, Creaks, and the Samorost series. Their hallmark is creating immersive audiovisual worlds with a hand-crafted aesthetic, honoring Czech animation’s legacy.
Their journey began with Samorost (2003), Jakub Dvorsky’s diploma project at the Academy of Arts, Architecture, and Design in Prague. It was made available for free, and its online popularity paved the way for Samorost 2 (2005), Amanita’s first commercial venture.
2009’s Machinarium tells the tale of Josef, a robot striving to save his mechanical city and robotic friend Berta from the scheming Black Cap Brotherhood. Its acclaim ensured Amanita Design’s independence, allowing them to initiate more projects. This period saw Jaromír Plachý’s Botanicula (2012) and Jakub Dvorský’s Samorost 3 (2016).
CHUCHEL (2018), another brainchild of Plachý, emphasized humor and character. Subsequent games like Pilgrims (2019) and Creaks (2020) explored new gameplay styles, while Happy Game (2021) delved into the realm of psychedelic horror. Presently, Amanita Design is crafting three projects, including the unique, cardboard-constructed world of Phonopolis.
