Indie Jam 2026 Recap

This year's Indie Jam has come to an end, and I want to share my thoughts on the event and the games I had the pleasure of playing!

Indie Jam is celebration of ASEAN indie game development that’s taken place annually since 2022. I'm lucky enough to support the event as a content creator for my second year in a row! Indie Jam kicks off with the Indie Jam Direct, this year showcasing the 60+ games and demos participating from eight different countries, making it the biggest indie game showcase in Malaysia!

The Direct is a build up to a two day in-person event in Malaysia, which I'm sure was an incredible time! Then, between April 6 to 12, was After Jam where both local and international creators (like myself) got to dig into the games and share them with the world. I really love this aspect of gaming events where there's some sort of Direct or showcase followed by a week or two of a ton of different content creators playing those games because for me it builds a lot of hype getting to watch the trailers and teaser with you and then actually check out those games immediately after.

I'd like to take you through the games that stood out to me this year, and hopefully introduce you to something you'll enjoy playing too!

Right from the trailer Everdeep Aurora had me hooked! What first stood out to me was the overall game aesthetic, it's a pixel game with a limited colour palette and the colours change throughout the areas. There's soft green natural springs, dark purple and cyan dungeons, and loud yellow-orange speakeasy, each evoking a different mood as you explore.

You play a young cat who was separated from her mother, and quickly find out there's a meteor that is going to hit your planet and the entire surface level is being evacuated underground. This ties in with the core game mechanic that is drilling layers and layers down below to search for her. You meet a ton of different characters along your way, the first of which is a frog who becomes a bit of a companion for you, which also made me really happy (yay fwog!).

I only gave myself an hour and a half to check out the start of the game, but I felt that even within that small timeframe I was able to pick up on the controls and general gameplay despite not being all that good at platformers. I did switch from controller to keyboard, I'm sure the game is actually better with a controller, but I am eternally tethered to my keyboard. I'm looking forward to finishing the game on future streams!

I've been craving this game for a very long time. The premise of TCG Card Shop Simulator is pretty simple--you run a card shop. You sell single packs, boxes, card sleeves, and even deodorant for the stinkies who enter your store (and they will enter your store). You have card tables where folks come to play, and sometimes never want to leave. People make you offers for cards, and you get to rip open packs yourself to find rare ones, get them graded and sell them. As someone who has been watching the whole Pokemon craze from the sidelines and loves to watch series like Should I Open It or Should I Keep It Sealed?, this game fills the void I have from not opening packs IRL. I can't wait to level up enough to start selling slabs!

I'm always a little scared of management simulators, they look so overwhelming and who wants to get thrown into a crazy job in a video game when you already have one in real life? But surprisingly, I found TCG Card Shop Simulator's gameplay to be pretty relaxing within the first 5 in-game days that I played. Usually these games feel harder at the start because you have less cash to put towards automations, but even being the solo cashier/stock girl/card trade haggler, I was never totally overwhelmed. I want to give the game devs a huge shout out for including different currencies in the game because nothing made it easier for my former retail worker brain than being able to use Canadian dollars (I need those toonies!).

One thing I really liked about streaming TCG Card Shop Simulator specifically is that it's an easy game to play while chatting. It feels great when others show up and share 'Hey! I've been playing this game too!' and 'Oh, I'm gonna play this right now while watching you' or even just the fact that we all started to reflect on our previous retail experiences, and all this could happen because the game isn't so focused on making things stressful to the point you can't get a minute to think or yap. Out of all the games I covered this Indie Jam, this one left me with the deepest need to open it up again and play asap, which I hope I’ll get to do soon!

Like Everdeep Aurora, I picked up the demo for I NEED SPACE with no previous exposure. What can I say, I was drawn in by the cute little celestial cat! The game reminds me of The Little Prince with how we start off alone on our own little planet and we make friends with a cute lonely kitty who becomes our travel companion.

We use our spaceship to fly around and pick up items lost in space debris, visit other planets, and find stars for our kitty to munch on. Feeding kitty helps you unlock new areas, a little bit like bringing logs to the fire in Cozy Grove, one of my all-time favourite games. In the demo we could see hints of many more areas to unlock, exciting!!

You're not alone in space. There are folks on other planets with stories to tell and quests for you to complete. I'm not sure I really made it to the end of the demo in the hour and a half I played, but I'm not too worried about that because I'm absolutely going to play the full game when it comes out!

One of the games that, judging by reactions in chat, stood out the most to you all was definitely RAD: Repeat After Death. The trailer showcases it as a challenging platforming game where every time you die you respawn, but your past selves are there to haunt you. My first thought was, "I'm awful at platformers there's no way I can play this." However, the devs were kind enough to reach out to me and encourage me to play the demo, and I thought “sure, people love to see me suffer!”

After diving into the game, I'm so glad the devs gave me that extra push. What surprised me the most was the quaint little world that the game created, with beautiful pixel art and curious characters who inhabit the place you now find yourself in. There’s also some early hints at deeper lore that I’d love to get to the bottom of.

The platforming is definitely challenging, but I found it to be a lot of fun, and there are also items and opportunities for you to get special buffs to make things easier. I'm reminded that when platformers first came to popularity most folks could only afford to buy a few games a year and would spend hours honing their skills. RAD is one game I could see myself doing that in, because no matter how many times I died, it was still fun to try again.

While I only checked out the demo, the full game released on April 17, and is available for you to play right now!!

That takes me to the end of the games I really connected with this year, but there are also a couple of games I didn't play as part of the event that piqued my interest:

• Isekat: Crushed by a Computer, My Beloved Kitten is Transported to a Fantasy World where its Typing Skills Save the Kingdom!I played this as part of the SEAGO 2025 event, and it really struck me as a fun and addictive little typing game. I'd love the chance to continue it and work through the story! (The little Prince is so cute!)
• AfterGlow Bytes The demo really stood out to me as being potentially similar to Coffee Talk, which I loved, so I'd like to give it a try.
• Once Again This looks like a sentimental game about loss that is sure to make me cry, and has been unfortunately stuck in my backlog for a while.
• Sunset Drive Another cute and potentially introspective narrative game trapped in my backlog.

This was my first time sharing my thoughts on games and gaming related events in this format, I hope you found it helpful or at least interesting. Remember you can still check out the Indie Jam 2026 Steam Sale which features many of the games and demos until April 30, and you can also check out their itch.io page for anything not on Steam!

As for me, you can find me on Twitter and Bluesky, and streaming on Twitch every Thursday! If you have any thoughts or feedback, I'd love to hear them (feel free to also drop them in my guestbook).

- Elerii💜