It feels all too often that we don’t have enough time to celebrate the little guy in the gaming industry, what with the usual suspects absolutely dominating the end-of-year charts every year in recent memory.

Without our small creators, we wouldn’t have anywhere for these devs to start before potentially moving on to bigger and better things, with many in equal measure looking to stick to their roots and turn out a minor modern classic.

It’s celebrating these creators that INDIE Live Expo has dedicated itself to, and as we now reflect on their Summer Spotlight conference, we can see that there’s plenty to look forward to. Here’s everything you missed at the Summer Showcase.

Title Pick Up

Kicking off the event is Title Pick Up, a segment of the show that shows off a couple of games that the INDIE Expo team is particularly excited about. First up is a new look at the cast of characters starring in The Great Villainess: Strategy of Lily. The story appears to have a focus on streaming, and streamers aiming to be the first to go live after a period of the internet being wiped out. The game is set to launch in 2024.

• Check out our Secret Shelf entry for Patch Quest

Boyhood’s End is up next, a charming fantasy RPG with a boisterous and swinging soundtrack. The game follows a world that ranks its inhabitants by "human score" (think that one Black Mirror episode), and it focuses on the boy with the worst human score in the world. It’s a serialised pentalogy of a game, and it’ll kick off with its first instalment in Fall 2023 after a short delay.

INDIE Waves

The first Indie Waves segment focuses on a series of titles that players can jump into right away. Among the titles revealed are voxel-style train-based city builder Station to Station, Shadow of the Colossus-adjacent Chasing the Unseen, and the sliding puzzle game Animal Planner.

Following this is pixel-style mining title Gluck, chaotic bullet hel Terra Flame, and adorable adventurer A Street Cat’s Tale 2. A first for the event is Battle Bows, the VR tower defence title that looks bonkers.

The third wave of indies reveals TikTok banger Bread & Fred, a mountain climber where you play as two penguins roped together. Along with this is One Hell of an Office, the lightning-fast parkour game, a trippy platformer called El Panadero that is filled with a world of horrifying baked goods, and a new roguelike in the shape of Touhou: Lost Branch of Legend.

• Check out our Secret Shelf entry for Tales & Tactics

Wave four offers a new look at Piggy Gambit, a chess-themed puzzle game (with pigs, obviously), chibi Soulslike Explore, and Romancelvania, a Metroidvania with a focus on fighting for love and Borderlands-style visuals.

Cyber NINJA that Climbs the City is next, a bright platformer that sees you clamber up a giant skyscraper ducking lasers and shattering robots. Along with this is the puppy-based puzzler Stick to the Plan, the underwater 3D bullet hell game Marine Hearts, and the visual novel Mystery Lover.

Each of the games is advertised for its appearance on Steam, with some even being yet to launch, despite the purpose of the segment. Even so, there are some real treats buried in here and are well worth keeping up with.

INDIE Live Expo Steam Sale

The next segment reveals the INDIE Live Expo Steam sale, drastically reducing the prices of hundreds of previously-revealed indie titles.

Among those being discounted are Rogue Legacy 2, Frogun, Gas Station Simulator and Button City. Here’s the full list of games that the showcase boasted for sale:

• Rogue Legacy 2
• Sephonie
• Meg’s Monster
• Get To The Orange Door
• Cats Organised Neatly
• Dinkum
• Booth: A Dystopian Adventure
• Frogun
• Paradise Killer
• Rain on Your Parade
• Discolored
• Pocket Mirror - GoldenerTraum
• Gas Station Simulator
• My Memory of Us
• Button City
• madono nakano sakini arumono
• SANABI
• Alice Escaped!
• Hexagroove European Festival
• Move or Die
• Severed Steel

This only scratches the surface, and the full list of games is now live on Steam. If you want an exciting new indie to take for a spin, there’s no better time to explore the platform and find some new favourites.

That’s everything that the showcase revealed and wraps up the last showcase from INDIE Live Expo until the Winter. There are plenty of bangers here, and there’s no doubt it’s going to keep us busy until then. If you need us, we’ll be pairing up as penguins climbing a mountain. Don’t wait up.