In Tax-Force, players confront morality-based policies and economic strategy as they tackle themes of government actions and corporate accountability. The game’s backdrop is a galaxy in financial crisis. To rescue the planet and save Farset13’s Solar Shield from shutdown, you’ll lead Tax-Force, a squad of armed Treasurers with emergency powers. Their mission: track down billionaire mutant tax evaders.

With only 7 days to spare, you’ll battle defenses, negotiate repayments, and clear the debt directly, all while deciding whether to reinvest in the city’s economy or tackle the crisis head-on. The clock is ticking, and the planet’s fate hangs in the balance.

Stephen Downey, CEO of Outsider Games, shared his excitement:

“We’ve poured years of effort into crafting Tax-Force, our ultimate creation that fuses our love for 90s comic books with our stance against tax-avoiding billionaires. Revealing the game at the Indie Arena booth at Gamescom is a moment we eagerly anticipate after all the hard work.”

Don’t miss the chance to be part of the unveiling of Tax-Force, a game that combines action, narrative depth, and tough decisions in an exhilarating rogue-lite adventure.

Features of Tax-Force

• Melee Combat – a focus on tough, close-range combat, with hand-drawn, rogue-lite biomes that remix with every run.

• Mutant Powers – Specials inspired by superhero mutant powers. Astral Projection! Metal Man! Optical Blasts!

• Strategy and Morality – Negotiate with targets to affect the economy, narrative and gameplay on each run. Every decision challenges players to choose between sci-fi metaphors for socialist vs capitalist economic policies.

• Rebuild – As you reinvest in society, the gameplay reacts. Price and potency of healing responds to public or private investment in healthcare. Weapons and criminal activity adjust as you increase defence spend, while new bridges and paths appear as you invest in infrastructure.

• Branching Narrative – Every decision leads to narrative consequences for the Farset13 citizens, as their stories are guided by your choices, and the city organically grows and changes around them.

• Timeloop – Death activates your time-travelling mutant power, sending you back to Day 1, armed with knowledge of your enemies and the consequences of your actions.

• Stunning Visuals – Gorgeous, hand-drawn comic book art style inspired by Jim Lee and 90’s X-men comics.

For more information, head over to their official website here.

Here’s the little teaser trailer that was released for Tax-Force:

RIN: The Last Child tells the story of Rin, the sixth child of the Creator whose mission is to restore balance to a world filled with grim tales and discordant hearts. Besides saving the world, she’ll also have to battle five former siblings who are now powerful bosses, each carrying a piece of the Creator’s magical power. Furthermore, the game features ethereal landscapes, along with a wide range of challenges, each more challenging than the last.

Players will require to think critically and strategically to overcome obstacles and progress through the immersive narrative while exploring and solving problems. Deadly volcanic plains, distorted deserts, and dangerous jungles full of deadly creatures are just a few of the mythical lands included in the game. The story offers three possible endings based on the choices made.

The game revolves around the concept of “Aspects,” which allows players to harness Rin’s magical abilities. With these Aspects, uncover the secrets of a mythical world while empowering them to restore balance to a realm in danger of destabilizing. Interestingly, players can create their playstyle using aspect shards and runes to create spells and or enchantments.

RIN: The Last Child offers a “quick slot”, where three spells can assign at once, and can switch to a new set of spells quickly. Considering the variant of Lesser Runes, Great Runes, and Upgrades, a total of 7776 spells variants can be created.

RIN: The Last Child is slated to release on 22 September 2023 for PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series, X/S, Nintendo Switch, and PC. You can wishlist the game now on Steam.

Players can embark on a journey of flavours and friendship. The game promises endless customization of your Fruitbus, create new dishes, forage fresh fruits and vegetables, feed animal friends, and unlock memories, and stories with your recipe. You can also upgrade your bus and implement bright colours or cheerful music to attract new customers. Moreover, Fruitbus also offers all sorts of in-game activities to experience its unique open world to the fullest: fishing, playing frisbee, basketball and so much more.

Tobias, CEO of Krillbite Studios shared a message on the upcoming cozy cooking game:

“It’s a berry cool feeling to be a fruitbus owner. I’m working on pear-fecting my smoothies and can’t wait to see what players create when Fruitbus launches next year.”

Fruitbus is set to make its first appearance at the Indie Arena Booth at Gamescom on August 2023. The game is set to launch on unspecified consoles and PC via Steam in 2024. No specific release date announced yet so stay tuned for the next update on Kakuchopurei.

In the meantime, check out the adorable announcement trailer below.

We had the opportunity to talk to Alex about his game development journey, and his advice on making narrative games like Roki and the upcoming Mythwrecked.

Tell us who you are!

Hi everyone, my name is Alex and I’m the co-founder and Lead Developer at Polygon Treehouse, a small indie developer from the United Kingdom. I’ve been making video games professionally for over twenty years now (yes, I am old) and my background is in character art and animation, although now I work across all aspects of indie game development.

Outside of video games I enjoy cooking new recipes, watching weird movies and hiking in the hills! We recently moved to Dundee in Scotland and we’re loving being close to the mountains.

How did you get into game development?

I was studying computer animation at university, when in our final year Sony visited to set us a special project. The brief was to design, build, rig and animate a character to PlayStation 2 budgets (this was in 2002 so I’m showing my age!). The folks from PlayStation were impressed by my work and offered me a position as a Junior Character Artist/Animator at their Cambridge studio. Growing up, I’d always played video games so it was a real thrill to be able to do it professionally.

I worked at Sony for over 14 years across a number of different art disciplines, eventually becoming an Art Director before going indie and founding Polygon Treehouse in 2017.

What have been some of the highlights of your game development career so far?

During my time at Sony I worked with, and learnt from, some super-talented people and got the chance to work on games like MediEvil: Resurrection and the Killzone series. However, making our own indie games as Polygon Treehouse undoubtedly surpasses this.

There is something about making a game that is your own concept that makes it more rewarding. The games you make might be smaller but they’re a greater personal reflection on you, your views and the message you want to send out into the world which I personally find more satisfying from a creative point of view. The ultimate highlight so far was being nominated for two BAFTA Game Awards for our debut indie game, Röki.

Tell us a bit about Polygon Treehouse!

When we founded the studio we wanted it to have a strong focus, so you could look at one of our games and go ‘That’s a Polygon Treehouse game’. To that end we decided to focus on art-led narrative games that pack an emotional punch. We’d worked for long periods at PlayStation on violent games and seeing the numerous conflicts and wars around the world made us want to send some non-violent games out into the world.

We started this with Röki, a game about rescuing your brother and befriending monsters in the Scandinavian wilderness and are now continuing with Mythwrecked, in which you help the long-lost Greek Gods recover their memories. Both games have an undercurrent of kindness at their core and are welcoming to all types of players.

How big is the development team?

People are always surprised at how tiny our team is. In fact I’m the only full-time member we have at present, but we do collaborate with a number of talented folks over the course of a game’s development. The team size will change over the course of a project but at our largest we’ll have six or so people working on our games, from writers, composers, illustrators and designers.

We really like having a small team as you can clearly see the fingerprints of each person in the final game. It does mean you have to work in a smart way to create stories that still feel epic, but we very much enjoy that challenge.

What was it like developing Roki?

It was very exciting and a little terrifying at the same time! We’ve had the experience of working on many games before, but never one that we’d designed from the ground-up ourselves. It’s super rewarding as you feel more connected with the game on an emotional level, but also scary as all those support structures that were there at a larger company are suddenly gone.

However, the overriding emotion was definitely one of excitement, there is something really magical about breathing life into a game-world and seeing characters you’ve designed on paper running around and going off on adventures!

Tell us a bit about Mythwrecked!

Mythwrecked is a 3D exploration and cozy adventure game. You play as Alex, a backpacker taking a much-needed break from modern life when their Mediterranean holiday is interrupted by a mysterious storm. She wakes up shipwrecked on a mysterious island and you, the player, need to help her find a way home. Fortunately, there are some islanders that might be able to help you, the long-lost gods of Greek mythology!

However there’s a problem: they’ve all lost their memories and have shut themselves away in their own corners of the island. It’s up to you to explore the dynamic island and its story sandbox to build new friendships, solve the mystery and save the gods.

What are some of the lessons from Roki’s development that you’re bringing into Mythwrecked?

There are many things we’re taking forward into Mythwrecked from Röki, everything from the art style to the voice emotes system, so it’ll be very clear they share a common DNA. In terms of lessons, I think the most important is the confidence that we can tell a captivating story that will impact people in an emotional way. Röki was the first time we’d crafted a game’s narrative from scratch and we worked really hard on it, but were still unsure how that aspect of the game would be received.

It’s safe to say that when it launched the response to the game’s story surpassed our wildest expectations. We received many messages saying how much players loved the characters and that the game had reduced them to tears. We also won awards for the game’s narrative so that was a clear message that we should trust our instincts as interactive storytellers and that’s something we definitely take forward to our next game, Mythwrecked

What can players expect from Mythwrecked?

One of the key mechanics in Mythwrecked is finding lost memento items to help restore the lost memories of the Greek gods. You do this with your Ambrosidex device’s radar as you explore the island. The radar will ping and vibrate as you get closer to one of these lost treasures and you can follow the signal to discover the item’s hiding place.

Once recovered, you have to work out who the lost item belongs to and make sure they are returned to the correct owner. If you’re successful then the mementos will remind the god of a pivotal moment from their past and trigger a flashback sequence, telling you more of their story and taking one step further to recovering their identity so they can help Alex get home. This is just one element of the game, but one we’re particularly proud of.

Any advice for game development newcomers who would like to make narrative games like the ones from Polygon Treehouse?

There are two pieces of advice I’d give; The first is to find your voice, work out what type of games you want to make and play to your own strengths. I like it when studios have an underlying vision that underpins their titles. There are so many possibilities when you start making a game, so spending some time before you begin thinking about the DNA of your studio will save you a great deal of time in the long run and make your output feel much more cohesive.

The second bit of advice is to work smart and look at ‘creative limitations’. For example, you can still make a seemingly epic story with lots of locations and characters if you work in a non-traditional art style, as we did with Mythwrecked and Röki. Looking at the creative limitation of ‘team size’ in this case meant that we knew we’d never be able to make a photo-realistic game and so we explored different art styles and finally distilled one that was not only much quicker to work with, but also became a signature of the studio. Looking at creative limitations in this way and turning them into strengths can be applied to all aspects of development and we find it a really powerful tool.

Any final words?

We’d just like to say a big thanks to everyone for reading and if you’re intrigued by our work then go wishlist and follow Mythwrecked on Steam and you can also follow our indie adventure on Twitter and Discord.

LISA: The Painful lets you embark on a world of nightmares called Olathe. You will have to make tough gnarly choices that have permanent consequences and sacrifices. As you navigate this brutal, twisted land, you will either be dragged into chaos or you will save humanity. The game description even emphasises its unique gameplay and storyline:

Make sacrifices to keep your party members alive, whether it’s taking a beating for them, losing limbs, or some other inhuman torture. In this world, you will learn that being selfish and heartless is the only way to survive…

The newly-released edition also offers the ultimate LISA experience with:

• HD graphics and pixel-perfect integer scaling.
• 120 FPS mode for PC and current-gen consoles.
• New campfire conversations for deeper mourning of party members’ permanent deaths.
• New enemies and tough bosses will push your skills to the limit.
• New quests showcase never-before-seen battles and dialogue.
• Fresh perspectives on LISA’s intricate world with new stories and multiple endings.
• Updated battle systems introducing new “Warlord Skills,” updated timed attacks and UI overhauls.
• New border art overlays for wide-screen viewing.
• New music player to listen to your favourite tracks and 20+ new Definitive Edition-exclusive songs.
• Painless (story) mode for a more accessible and narrative-focused playthrough.
• Controller features utilizing Nintendo Switch HD Rumble, PlayStation DualSense haptics, light bar, adaptive triggers and DualShock 4/DualSense speaker audio.
• Many secrets and hidden surprises waiting to be found.

To celebrate the game’s release, publisher Serenity Forge uploaded a launch trailer. The video evokes an uneasy vibe with its bleak graphic tone and eery soundtrack. Scenes of a man adventuring through weird places and stumbling on unexpected foes and allies.

Along with today’s announcement, the publisher unveiled that its series originator, Lisa: The First, will be revitalized through a comic book retelling of its events. With bold and expressive illustrations in compact, manga-style dimensions, this comic sheds new light on the enigmatic events of the original game. More details will be announced at a later date.

You can purchase LISA: Definitive Edition now for US$24.99/RM113.52 at Serenity Forge’s official website for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC via Steam.

The brainchild of Alex Seropian, Jay Pecho, Patrick Moran, Kyle Marks, Aaron Marroquin, and Prashant Patil, Look North World is set to make waves in the gaming community. Of course, Seropian needs no introduction as one of the founders of Bungie, the renowned studio responsible for the epic Halo and Destiny franchises.

Taking on key roles within Look North World, Jay Pecho assumes the position of Chief Technology Officer, Aaron Marroquin brings his artistic prowess as the principal artist, Prashant Patil takes the reins as art director, and Kyle Marks leads the creative direction.

The team’s maiden venture, titled Outlaw Corral, is currently in development using Unreal Engine specifically tailored for Fortnite. This exciting game transports players to a wild west island where they engage in skill-based shootouts. But what’s intriguing is that Look North World stands to profit from the number of players who partake in their Fortnite “island” creations built with Unreal Engine.

“Venturing into Unreal Engine for Fortnite opens up a world of untapped possibilities, and we’re diving into uncharted waters,” Seropian revealed. “By embracing experimentation, we’ll gauge player preferences and actively involve them in decision-making processes.”

“We’re wholeheartedly embracing a ‘the virtual sky is the limit’ mentality,” he continued. “As we nurture creative concepts, we’ll learn how these platforms foster engagement, entertainment, and social interactions, allowing us to iterate accordingly.”

Players eager to contribute their ideas and shape future Look North World games can actively participate by joining the company’s Discord community. To sweeten the deal, the first 1,000 Discord members will gain exclusive access to the company’s Beta Test channel, offering them the chance to test new games before they hit the market.

Metavoidal tells a story of a drummer who has failed his audition to join a metal band. Somehow, the drummer realizes his senses and discovers that everything has been controlled and corrupted by this evil metal band. To end the “disgusting cursed”, players will have to defeat the band members and overcome countless rabid fans such as zombies, slimes, tentacle monsters and more that terrorize the town.

In terms of gameplay, every stage will have a music record hidden, that acts as a treasure and a key. After placing it on the record player at the end of the level, players will be able to absorb the musical powers it contains, bestowed from the dark trinity. The powers will then be imbued on the drumsticks and players will be given the option to choose which magical ability they would like to unlock: oil or fire? Lightening or holy light? The choice is yours to make!

With each accumulated record, these powers are gathered and called a “battle playlist”, your playlist will greatly enhance your abilities and skills as a drummer and escape from corrupted catacombs, deserted graveyards and sinister churches. Aside from escaping, you must battle these evil band members who have their own unique and over-the-top fighting styles and abilities. This is the ultimate duel showdown in which you have to defeat the vocalist, the keyboardist, the guitarist and the bassist in order to gain freedom from the curse.

Moreover, players can power up by collecting guitar picks throughout the levels. The guitar picks can be used inside a trade shop in upgrading certain abilities and passive skills to their fullest potential such as carrying more drumsticks, faster running speed, and many more.

Metavoidal will launch in Early Access for PC via Steam sometime in 2023. The game is confirmed to be published on unspecified consoles and PC around 2024.

Stay tuned on Kakuchopurei for more Metavoidal updates. In the meantime, check out this badass rocking gameplay trailer.

From starting out as a joke, to becoming a fully fleshed-out world to explore, Clam Man is out to steal your heart, and make you laugh while it happens. We had the opportunity to speak with Canada- based solo developer Martin Hanses, on his design philosophy, and Clam Man’s funny origins. 

Who are you?

Hello there! My name’s Martin Hanses, and I’m a writer, narrative designer, and game developer! I’m originally Finnish, but moved to Canada a few years ago and am currently based in Vancouver.

Huge fan of games in general, even bigger fan of making games, and other than that I enjoy playing the banjo, playing tabletop RPGs, and making/solving puzzles and crosswords. Big nerd, and I’m currently working on Clam Man 2: Headliner, a narrative RPG where you quit your job because you hate it.

Tell us a bit about the titular Clam Man.

The original Clam Man was a joke – my brother was making a platforming game and asked me to draw some sprites for him, and I sent him back a picture of a clam in an astronaut suit. We ended up really liking that drawing, so a while later we worked together to make Clam Man, which is a comedy point-and-click adventure game. 

In Clam 1, he plays the role of the straight man in a funny world – he’s an everyman who can never really catch a break, and for some reason, I always imagined his voice to sound like Jason Bateman. Clam 2 is a different story, and since it’s an RPG, it’s really up to the player to define who he is in that game!

(the original, low-quality Clam Man)

What can players expect in Clam Man 2?

The short answer is jokes, choices, and spectacular failures. That might just sound like life in general, though, so I’ll try to be more specific.

Firstly, a weirdly huge hand-drawn world full of strange characters to explore and interact with! The game takes place in Snacky Bay, an underwater city (SpongeBob rules!) and your only real main quest at the beginning is to escape your boring office job as a mayonnaise salesman. You end up becoming a stand-up comedian, and everything you do in the game results in gaining a joke, which you can then tell on stage during live shows!

Mechanically, the game is all about choices – even more so since the game has an RPG stat system, which lets you customize your own personal clam man. Every interaction and every quest can change wildly depending on what kind of character you’re playing; tons of dialogue and quest options only appear if you have high (or low) enough stats, and there are also dice rolls that decide the outcome of a conversation or a quest, to make sure the game is extra replayable! The game isn’t nearly done yet, but is already the length of two full-size novels. That doesn’t mean you’re going to be reading all of it – due to how many variations there are in each conversation, you’ll probably end up seeing about 25% of everything in the game on a single playthrough. 

Finally, one thing I’m having a great time with is making sure that failure never locks you out of content – in fact, there are a bunch of quests you can only get if you fail a dice roll! One of my favourites is a quest you can get between in-game days, if you attempt to dream: if you roll a natural 1 (A critical failure), you end up having a nightmare that urges you to test your mettle in mortal combat against a creature called the dream snail. An incredibly small percentage of players will ever get that quest, but I think that’s what’s so appealing to me – if even one person plays Clam 2 twice and ends up being shocked at the amount of new things they saw in the second playthrough, I’ll be very happy.

The game features no combat (save for when you slap a guy in the face), and bombing a joke leads to other people perceiving you differently. Where did the ideas for these design decisions come from?

The design philosophy behind the first Clam Man was to make a point-and-click without any tedious moon logic puzzles, so it was all about narrative; if I were to remake it today, I’d probably add in a bunch of new ones! 

In a very similar way, the design philosophy behind Clam 2 was to make an RPG where choices and roleplaying matters, but without any combat whatsoever! It mostly doesn’t make much sense with the style of art and writing in my games, but it’s also a really fun exercise in designing an RPG system where every stat correlates to a social skill, rather than a martial one.

A lot of RPGs tend to have only one or two stats that affect social encounters, with the other ones being more combat-focused, so I think there’s plenty of room for an RPG that does things a little differently, and a little weirder. I think the clear sign of this being possible was Disco Elysium coming out, which sort of showed that there’s an audience for people that don’t really care all that much about combat in role-playing games!

How long has Clam Man 2 been in development so far, and with how big of a team?

I started work on Clam 2 back in January 2019, with Open Mic coming out a few months later – after that, I started pitching the game to publishers in order to fund the full development. There was certainly some interest, but the timing was never right and I kept working on other projects as a writer or freelancer for a while.

I eventually ended up joining Eggnut, writing and directing Tails: The Backbone Preludes, which took almost two years to make. During that time I barely had time to work on Clam 2, so saying it’s been in development since 2019 is only technically true!

Once Tails was done, I got introduced to Fig, who were interested in funding the development of the game, and since early 2023 the game’s been back in full-time development!

I’m solo developing Clam 2, which is both really fun and really challenging, but I luckily have been able to work with some amazing people that have helped elevating the game – voice actors, composers, and UI artists have all lent their touch to the project to make it so much better.

The art style has a certain style of warmth to it; it feels very friendly, but also very nostalgic. What were your inspirations for it?

Thank you! This is pretty much just how I have drawn things for the longest time, so I suppose it’s a very childish style that’s become very polished over the years. There’s definitely influences, though – “scott c” (Scott Campbell) is one of my favourite artists of all time, and I think his influence is very obvious once you start seeing it. Graham Annable is another, and I bet there’s a hundred other cartoon artists that over time have shaped how I draw things.

Additionally, the map and world design is heavily inspired by CRPGs of the 90s and early 00s – especially since the game is in an isometric perspective. I regularly play CRPGs for map design inspiration, and I particularly like the circular and asymmetrical worlds of Planescape: Torment. Fingers crossed people will enjoy the worlds they get to explore in Clam 2!

Any final words?

If any of this sounded interesting, the free prologue to Clam Man 2 is out on Steam right now, with an updated demo coming later this year to show the updates and changes that’ll be in the final game! I’m always checking reviews for feedback, and doing my best to polish and implement everything to make sure Clam 2 ends up being as good and weird as I want it to be.

Finally, thanks so much for reaching out to me! This is a weird game and most people don’t even know how to start unpacking it, so getting to talk about it with you has been great!

The game promises a rich story full of surprises, missions and rip-roaring races. At first glance of its announcement trailer, the game resembles Mad Max with a mix of dungeon crawler elements set in a 2.5D pixel graphic world. Players assumed the role of Claire, a mercenary for hire who survives by executing delivery, sabotage and murder contracts for local leaders. As the world was a result of a great cataclysm, now ruled by an A.I.

Not only that, but players will also take part in deadly races for glory, work for hire, thrash rival gangs, and explore The Dead Zone, a deserted land dominated by three rival factions: The Wasteheads, The SaibaKuran, and Order of the New Code. While surviving in The Dead Zone, Claire will have to uncover strange evidence that links her existence to the origin of the newly ruled A.I.

RoadOut is slated to launch for PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch, and PC in 2024. No specific release date has been confirmed yet. However, you can play the demo now on PC via Steam.

We had the chance to speak with Akbar from Pendopo Multi Creations (also known as Pendopo Studio), co-founder and CCO of the 4-person studio from Yogyakarta, Indonesia.

How did the idea of Rendezvous come around?

Akbar: The idea of Rendezvous came after a thought “How is it like a cyberpunk set in Southeast Asia, especially Indonesia”. It’s rare to see a story about cyberpunk in Southeast Asia. I watched a lot of cyberpunk movies from the 1995 Ghost in the Shell to Blade Runner 2049, I love every aspect of it! And that’s how Rendezvous came to mind.

How long has it taken for Rendezvous to make?

Akbar: The initial development started around the end of 2019, a 2D pixel-art game. Then back in mid-2020, we restarted the development and changed the game to 2.5D like what is today. 

When creating the setting of Neo-Surabaya, were there any elements of current-day Surabaya that you knew you wanted to include?

Akbar: Absolutely! I grew up in a city 1.5 hours drive from Surabaya, so I’m kinda familiar with the city. The street vendors, the kampung life, Surabaya graffiti, the iconic Surabaya statue, the preman (thugs), and many other things like how ordinary people live. That’s what we wanted to include in the setting. We want players who know Indonesia to feel familiar with the setting.

The art style really stands out, especially with the dynamic lighting and bloom effects! How did you land on this specific art style for the game?

Akbar: Our greatest inspiration for our current art style was a game called The Last Night; it’s a 2.5D pixel art cyberpunk game just like us. Back then it was just a 2D game, but then we realized after having a discussion with some local devs that it wasn’t really “standing-out”. So we took a huge leap to restart the game’s development back in mid-2020 during an incubation program, bringing the current style to the table.

Any final thoughts?

We want to thank everyone who supported us and played Rendezvous. It really means a lot to us since it’s our first shipped title. Critique and feedback are both appreciated; we want to make better games in the future! And thanks a lot for the interview opportunity! Hopefully, there’ll be more great games from Southeast Asia bringing local tales and stories.