It's the Debut Festival 2026 this week which focuses on new devs/studios! I am unfortunately under the weather and won't have a lot of time to dig into demos, so I'll be recc'ing games I've already played and love as well as demos I'll check out when I'm feeling better so I give them a fair shake!
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DEVIL'S LIMINAL is a beautifully written story with gorgeous art to boot. The horror builds slow enough that you have time to learn about the cast while a sense of unease grows! The art complements the horror writing beautifully, leaving enough unknown to let that dread grow. There's a demo out too!
Raccoons to Riches is a fantastic roguelike shop management sim and deckbuilder. There's so much variety to fine-tune, like trying to get customers who only buy potions (or trash) or customers that influence others to buy bread not to mention all the tactics that change gameplay in the moment!
Trading Card Inspector is a papers-please-like where you're inspecting cards at the manufacturer to find flaws, banned cards, all while the rules keep changing and maybe the whole building starts to shake. There's lots of accessibility options and there's a demo too to see if it's your thing!
BOREWORKS is the one demo I actually was able to play! It's a really relaxing mining game that you can eventually automate, but it feels good before you get there! There's plenty to do in the demo, and you even get a little gif of your progress throughout! I'm excited to see where this goes!!
The demo for this was SO GOOD and I'm excited to eventually check out the full game! I feel like a lot of numbers-go-up games feel really tedious at the beginning, but this one has so many different ways to build up your numbers that it consistently felt good starting new! It's a real treat!
I've been following the development of this one for a while and I'm excited to see what's been updated! When I originally played it, it focussed a lot on packing efficiently with no timers and just having a nice little time, and I'm interested to see what's been added!
Cave Oasis at Shylake is a really inclusive farming life sim where you move to a colony of humans and aliens to tend a farm. The character creator is truly amazing, and world-building takes into consideration the large variety of aliens and their different needs. It's truly fantastic!!
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Silver Pines is a horror game I think I got 20min into and was like "no I need to lock in for this one" and haven't had the time to pick it up again. The world building is great, the art is amazing, and I'm looking forward to digging in. I'm scared I won't be into the combat, but I'm excited to try!
Delverium is a great sandbox game that I'm looking forward to seeing the development of! It was pretty quick getting started, and I feel like with co-op it'll be even smoother! I'm hoping to test this one out with someone soon, it looks great!!
The Regreening!!!! I haven't tried this yet!!!!! It looks so good, I'm excited to check it out when I'm in better shape!!
Soup's Tale looks like a really fun narrative experience!! I honestly need a break from playing games about grief (or anything about grief, and I'd love to not be grieving at all), so it'll be a little while before I get the chance to play this, but I'm looking forward to when I do!