Blubber Busters is a combat platformer about venturing inside space whales to cure their illnesses. Seriously. You lead a crew of intergalactic infection fighters, and you can swap between and upgrade them. It comes from devs who worked on League of Legends, Darksiders 2, and Enter The Gungeon. It’s on Kickstarter.

Far From Noise is a game about experiencing nature... while teetering over the edge of a cliff in a car that could fall at any second. It’s narrative-driven, and “dramatic events”—as well as your decisions—change the story each playthrough. Also I guess you end up talking to a deer??? It’ll be out soon.

Life Unfolds crams an entire lifetime into 30 minutes. You go from the womb to the grave, experiencing everything from childhood friendships, to your first kiss, to marriage, to raising a kid of your own. It looks cute, but your time is painfully limited. Every choice counts. It’s on Steam Greenlight right now, and…

German independent developer Roman Uhlig recently had his excellent local multiplayer game 12 Orbits added to Steam Greenlight. He’s posted a lengthy, bro-packed conversation demonstrating the sort of attention such a move brings.

Columnae is an adventure game in which your choices determine the order of its chapters. Your decisions influence the future and the past. It takes place in a world devastated by environmental catastrophe. Also I guess some kind of calamity turned everybody into silhouettes? The game is currently on Kickstarter.

Morning Men is a story-driven RPG set in a desert world full of intrigue, lies, and junk. While it might look like a riff on Mad-Max-style post-apocalyptica, its developers cite movies like The Fifth Element as their primary influences. It’s currently on Steam Greenlight, but it already looks and sounds great.

Dad Quest is a game about hurling your child at all of your problems. See an enemy? Aim and throw. Kids have classes like scholar and jock and, like real children, can be upgraded with elemental powers. If you die, your kid grows up to be The Next Dad. Dad Quest is on Steam Greenlight, and it looks hilarious.

Ilios is a sidescrolling action-adventure that mixes Castlevania and Bayonetta. I imagine there’s a little God of War in there, too. It’s based on Homeric epics, and it’s got impressively robust counter-based combat. If it makes it through Kickstarter and Steam Greenlight, it’ll be out next year.

Fabular is an open-universe medieval space folktale set in a surreal galaxy. It’s got a techno-classical vibe, randomly generated text-based elements with strange characters, and a spaceship that can PUNCH other spaceships. Assuming it does well on Steam Greenlight and Kickstarter, it’ll be out next year.

The Last Leviathan is one of the more ambitious Steam Greenlight games I’ve seen. It’s about building a physics-based ship and sailing the open seas of ancient Middenhir. You’ll encounter everything from rival ships to mythical monsters to physics puzzles to secrets. It’ll be out later this year.

Great Cascade is an open world game where characters remember and react to your decisions. It’s not like in, say, Mass Effect or The Witcher, where things are scripted. Everybody has their own traits, memories, and goals, all of which are randomized. It’s on Steam Greenlight right now, and it looks really cool.

Midair sure does look familiar. It looks exactly like Tribes. I’m not complaining! Tribes 2 is one of my favorite games ever. Between this (assuming it gets through Greenlight and Kickstarter) and the miraculous return of Tribes Ascend, things are looking up for those of us who love dishing out blue plate specials.

The Mind’s Eclipse is a visual novel in which a mysterious AI leads you through a fallen utopia. System Shock overtones, anyone? The game’s visual style and atmosphere look excellent, though, and the story seems like it’s very much its own thing. It’s on Steam Greenlight right now, and it’ll be out later this year.

Can’t Drive This is a multiplayer driving game where one player putters along in their car while the other furiously scrambles to finish the road their arch-frenemy is driving on. In real time. Those are some grade-A ingredients for a batch of chaos-and-yelling soup.

Games have applied survival mechanics to everything from dinosaurs to zombies to aliens. Once relegated to childhood sandboxes, we can now explore these topics in... video game sandboxes! But there have been more grounded takes on survival as well. This War of Mine kicked off the trend, and HomeBehind looks to…

The Wild Eight is a co-op survival game with a story, quests, and established characters. It’s pretty atypical for the genre, and it makes for an enticing idea stew when paired with a deathly cold setting (ala The Long Dark). The game is on Kickstarter and Steam Greenlight right now. It might also be a prequel to The…

On April Fools Day, indie-focused PC gaming storefront itch.io posted a listing to Steam Greenlight. Everyone assumed it was a joke, and a pretty solid one at that. Turns out, they were deadly serious.

Snakes and Ladders is an ancient Indian board game that you might know better by its Milton-Bradley-ized name, Chutes and Ladders. Somebody is turning it into a first-person shooter, because of course they are.

Managing a city is hard. Managing a city that could topple off a teetering platform and into the hungry sea below at any moment is harder.

Supernatural crimes? Turn-based tactics? A detective main character who sounds like when he says he wants a whiskey on the rocks, he means jagged shards of gravel? Gee, Witch House, it seems an awful lot like you’re trying to get my attention.