RUNTIME

• Developer: Ahren
• Publisher: BeckByte
• Release Date: Out Now
• Platforms: PC

Keep moving and stay out of the Glitch’s reach in RUNTIME, a 2D pixel art precision platformer set inside a computer.

Chain together dashes, flip gravity, and navigate obstacles like moving platforms and lasers to find your line and make it to the end, or at least the next checkpoint. As you play, you’ll unlock a mixture of appearances, hats, and companions to customise your runner, and keep an eye out for hidden secrets and harder movement challenges as you go.

Beat your own times to set new records, or race your friends in 2-player split-screen or have 4 of you racing at the same time on the one screen. You can even build your own challenges with RUNTIME’s level editor, and share them with the community through the Steam Workshop. This is definitely one for speedrunners, but only if they’re happy to do a glitchless run!

A demo is available on PC.

The Dream of a Cockspur

• Developer: roccay
• Publisher: PLAYISM
• Release Date: Out Now
• Platforms: PC

It’s hard to describe The Dream of a Cockspur. One, because I don’t want to spoil anything, and two, because it’s just unrepentantly weird. In gameplay terms, it’s a point-and-click adventure game with a ton of inventory management and environmental puzzles. Visually, it’s an eldritch fever dream full of giant spiders, severed hands, and slices of bread covered in a thinly scraped layer of peanut butter. 

The demo is short, allowing you to play through the first day of a seven-day story, and it’s the perfect taster for a surreal and terrifying experience.

A demo is available on PC.

Copy Cats

• Developer & Publisher: Adventure Islands
• Release Date: Out Now
• Platforms: PC

Trapped inside a strange dimension after an unfortunate lab accident, a little kitty must help herself to reach portals in order to escape. How does she do that? With clones, of course!

Use the power of the mysterious cloning machine to create copies of yourself, and use them to help you solve challenging puzzles. But remember: your clones copy your movements. Create a kitty tower or jump several times, use the level layout to move your clones around, and make sure kitty prime escapes this bizarre dimension!

A demo is available on PC.

RACCOIN: Coin Pusher Roguelike

• Developer: Doraccoon
• Publisher: Playstack
• Release Date: Out Now (November 10th)
• Platforms: PC (PlayStation 5, XBOX Series X/S, Switch 2)

Ready for your next fix of dopamine-pumping, number-go-up, just-one-more-run gaming? RACCOIN: Coin Pusher Roguelike turns your granny’s favourite arcade game into score-chasing, coin-pushing madness!

Drop coins from the top of the machine and time their fall to push the coins at the bottom down into the prize trough below, fueling your run with more coins. Unlock and enhance special coins with various effects, from duplicating other coins they touch to creating sucking in all surrounding cash into a mini black hole. Play as 6 different characters with their own special coins, purchase over 150 power-up items between stages, and give the machine a good shake if it starts to empty!

With 8 difficulty levels to master and an endless run mode for replayability, you’ll never need another coin-pushing video game ever again!

A demo is available on PC, PlayStation5, and Nintendo Switch 2.

HYPNOS

• Developer & Publisher: Redlock Studio
• Release Date: Out Now (2026)
• Platforms: PC (PlayStation 5, XBOX Series X/S)

Enter the Nameless City at the edge of Dreams.

HYPNOS is a first-person exploration game where you wander through vast, surreal megastructures, meeting the strange creatures and spirits that inhabit these spaces and learning your place in this world of causality.

Explore semi-open-world environments, choosing where to transform the fabric of this dreamscape and what to say to the enigmatic figures you meet. Your choices have consequences and will influence the destinies of those you meet as well as your own, leading to one of several endings. Lift the veil that conceals reality, and embrace your destiny.

Check out our HYPNOS Early Access Review to get our initial thoughts on the game.

A demo is available on PC.

Pocket Legend

• Developer: Shading Box
• Publisher: Paras Games
• Release Date: November 10th
• Platforms: PC

I first played Pocket Legend at the LGF, New Games Plus event back in 2025. Over a year and a half later, I’m absolutely delighted to be able to feature it in the Demo Disc – hopefully encouraging all you inventory management, deckbuilding fans to try it out before its November 10th release. 

Pocket Legend is an inventory management, deckbuilding roguelite, where you find yourself transported to the land of Lumensia – a land of magica, sentient weapons, overrun with monsters trying to absorb the souls of the people who end up there. You arrange your weapons and defenses on a grid, Backpack Battles style, with positioning and order of activation allowing for super-powerful synergies and fun combos. If you’re looking for a cool new strategy roguelite to sink your teeth into, it’s definitely worth a look.

A demo is available on PC.

TANUKI: Pon’s Summer

• Developer: Denkiworks
• Publisher: CRITICAL REFLEX
• Release Date: November 10th
• Platforms: PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, XBOX Series X/S, Nintendo Switch, Switch 2

Have you ever seen a Tanuki deliver post? How about riding a BMX? Well, you will see these and a lot more in TANUKI: Pon’s Summer!

As the titular tanuki Pon, it is up to you as the shrine guardian to repair and decorate the town’s shrine in time for the big Tanuki Matsuri Festival. But with no money in the shrine’s coffers, you’ll need to take your BMX out into town and get a job working at the post office. Deliver post to the locals and help them with their queries to earn yourself some money and help this little community.

Fill each day leading up to the festival with delivering parcels, completing mini games, finding collectibles like fish and insects, decorating the shrine, and taking on BMX challenges dotted around the island town. As charming and funny as its furry protagonist, TANUKI: Pon’s Summer is a small package that promises great things.

A demo is available on PC.

Vice: Magic City Mayhem

• Developer & Publisher: Jurassic Sunset Games
• Release Date: November 18th
• Platforms: PC, PlayStation 5, XBOX Series X/S, Nintendo Switch, Switch 2

Your one true love, Sophie, has been kidnapped, and you, Dutch, one of Magic City’s most feared enforcers, must wade into the neon-soaked chaos to rescue her.

Vice: Magic City Mayhem is a top-down 8-bit action-adventure game in the vein of titles like Retro City Rampage and Shakedown: Hawaii. It blends the dungeon delving and exploration of the Zelda series with the hectic action and over-the-top worldbuilding of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City to create an 80s-infused romp through a bizarre world of outlandish characters and even stranger enemies (like raptors on a yacht!)

Tackle intricately designed dungeons packed with environmental puzzles, traps, and enemies, with epic boss fights waiting at the end of each. Pick up a vast array of weapons and items, from Molotov cocktails and shurikens to Kevlar vests and dash boots, and check every nook and cranny of Magic City’s nightclubs, beaches, and streets to uncover numerous secrets and easter eggs.

A demo is available on PC.

Waltz and Jam

• Developer & Publisher: Flyway Games, Inc.
• Release Date: December 3rd
• Platforms: PC, PlayStation 5, Switch 2

Who knew that a journey through the Afterlife could be so wacky?!

Waltz and Jam is a weird and wonderful action-adventure game about the pure-hearted soul Waltz and their lovable shapeshifting companion Jam on a journey through an afterlife made up of several realms inspired by the Seven Deadly Sins.

From the haunted halls of the Shadow Castle to Paradise’s soothing cloudscape, our diminutive duo must gather the seven stamps needed to gain entry to Uptown, Waltz’s original destination, before being disrupted by unknown forces. What are Waltz and Jam involved in? Who are all these shadowy groups, and what did the angel want with Waltz in the first place?

Collect and upgrade numerous toy weapons, from a sword to a slingshot, to defeat a menagerie of menacing meanies and solve environmental puzzles, and have your buddy Jam transform to help you traverse each region. Find and equip powerful Holymoly Stones to unlock powerful passives and abilities, take on side quests for many a kooky character, and discover arcade cabinets that whisk you to digital challenge rooms.

It’s up to you to help Waltz and Jam make it to Uptown!

A demo is available on PC.

4 A.M.

• Developer & Publisher: Dark Zone Studios
• Release Date: December 10th
• Platforms: PC

It’s 4 A.M., and Aila is ready to escape the suffocating ruins of a near-future dystopia, a world now consumed by a substance known as the Yellow.

In this cinematic puzzle platformer, you guide Aila, a lab rat used by those in power to experiment on with the pervasive Yellow, on her quest to free herself and anyone else she can from this miserable existence. As you navigate the crumbling remains of your surroundings, it will be up to you to decide how to handle each situation. Will you sneak past the patrolling robot guard, distract them, or try something riskier? The choice is yours, as are the consequences.

But you are not doing this empty-handed. With the power of N.O.D.E., you can make copies of objects around you, like wooden crates and metal girders, to solve environmental puzzles and create your way forward. Place down crates to create cover for you to hide behind, complete electrical circuits to power on machinery, or burn down barriers, but be careful. Enemies react to sound, movement, and disruption, and a moment of hesitation could lead to your demise.

Keep your wits about you and escape the Yellow.

A demo is available on PC.

HAE Stack

• Developer & Publisher: Jake Rabinowitz
• Release Date: 2026
• Platforms: PC

HAE Stack is a job simulation game where you play as a low-level employee at HAE Technologies, which perfectly combines the banality of corporate office work with the abject horror of a dystopian society where every aspect of your life is tracked, bought, and sold by corporations, under the guise of security and efficiency. 

You can exchange empty platitudes with your colleagues via web chat. Take on ambitious middle managers’ tasks so they can present the results to higher-ups without giving you proper credit. Track an entire town’s movements to help the police find a stolen car, determine if someone’s spouse is having an affair, or provide info to a psychic so she can better scam her clients. It’s deranged, it’s engrossing, and it’s horrifyingly prescient.

A demo is available on PC.

Encryptid

• Developer & Publisher: Autumn Knight
• Release Date: February 10th, 2027
• Platforms: PC

Blending Full Motion Video (FMV) recorded through a Game Boy Camera with old-school 8-bit monster-taming gameplay popularised in the 90s, Encryptid is a short horror game where you identify, locate, and capture cryptids while following the trail of a notable cryptozoologist via a strange camera.

Inspired by legends both urban and digital, and using visual aesthetics synonymous with found footage horror, it’s a game that feels like the start of a Creepypasta myth, with multiple endings to unlock based on your choices.

For those wanting full authenticity, Encryptid can be played on the original Game Boy, as well as any device capable of emulating GB titles.

A demo is available on PC.

At Fate’s End

• Developer & Publisher: Thunder Lotus
• Release Date: 2027
• Platforms: PC, PlayStation, XBOX Series X/S

Thunder Lotus always seems to be up to something interesting. Spiritfarer is a personal favourite of mine, and plenty of the team here at GSC had fun with 33 Immortals. Their next game, At Fate’s End, from the Spiritfarer team, looks to be no different. It’s an action-adventure game where you need to fight your family and claim their swords in order to fulfil your role as the prophesied ‘Princess of Swords’. 

In typical Thunder Lotus fashion, there’s a lot more going on here than a traditional action-adventure game. Certain pieces of dialogue are inscribed onto tarot cards, and how you slot them into narrative trees will affect your relationships with your family and your abilities in combat. It’s such an intriguing system, layered on top of an absolutely beautiful backdrop; I cannot wait to play more.

A demo is available on PC.