20 Cool Indie Games You Won’t See At The Game Awards

We are now blessed with not one but two annual Day of the Devs indie game showcases, and the latest one lives up to the event’s reputation. A roughly 90-minute stream yesterday highlighted some awesome-looking games from developers around the world, and I want to play all of them right this minute.

Produced by DoubleFine and iam8bit, Day of the Devs: The Game Awards edition is an end-of-year counterpart to the one hosted in June as part of Geoff Keighley’s Summer Game Fest. Like that showcase (which was great this year), this week’s event spotlighted a ton of indie games, from ones we already knew about like the psychedelic metroidvania Ultros to newly revealed ones like the jazz-punk detective thriller Nirvana Noir. It’s hard to go a few weeks now without running into another new gaming showcase, but the curation and presentation of the Day of the Devs stuff remains second to none.

It’s also nice to have another annual antidote to all of the blockbuster gaming hype to cap off the year. The Game Awards is packed full of big names and new trailers, mostly backed by big publishers all chasing the same new trends and previous GOTY hits. Everything shown in Day of the Devs is accompanied by brief stories from the creators themselves, highlighting not only the unique styles and mechanics of their projects, but also the highly personal histories motivating their creation.

Anytime I start to feel a little down about the capital-G Game Industry, showcases like this remind me of all the terrific developers out there working to pursue their intimate and original creations. You can click through the slideshow above to see each game highlighted in the presentation, or watch the entire livestream below, complete with a beautiful and haunting lo-fi intro from the Oxenfree II: Lost Signals soundtrack and bookended by a mini-cozy showcase from the Wholesome Games group. Enjoy!