Indie Monthly: July 2025
July is usually a slow month, and the indies are no exception. I only have two games for you this month, but take heart - I'm not leaving you high and dry. To compensate for the lack of reviews, I'm going to give you, the reader, a quick preview of the upcoming fifth State of Indie article, scheduled for November.
So let's skim the stats:
The first half of the year has been pretty slow for small developers, but that doesn't mean 2025 will be a bad year overall. The indie market is overwhelmingly hit-driven, with the vast majority of the money generated by a small number of games. Those mega-hits are seldom evenly distributed. If they all come out early, it can create the illusion of a strong year when it's actually quite typical. If they come out late, then it can look like a weak year when that might not be the case.
2024 was highly skewed by the release of Palworld in January. By contrast, 2025 has had two massive indie hits in R.E.P.O. and Schedule I, both of which have generated over $100 million in revenue (in comparison to your "typical" indie mega-hit, which generates revenue in the low eight figures). However, that's still peanuts compared to the half a billion dollars made by Palworld. Take that game out of the equation, and the two years are a lot closer than they appear.
On the whole, it looks like the indie market isn't really growing. It's been stuck at around 1-2% of the entire video game industry for the better part of a decade, and while there are some signs of growth, I doubt that these small developers will seriously threaten the AAA big dogs anytime soon. But that isn't to say that we can't still enjoy them, and the two games below are definitely worth a look.
Death Relives
Death Relives is a first-person survival horror game built around Mesoamerican cosmology. It's a familiar feeling game that stirs the pot by adding a single unstoppable foe and a novel gameplay cycle.
Adrian, a student, is returning home with his mother when they come across an injured man on the road. Stopping to check, the man suddenly rises, attacks the mother, and drags her away into the wilderness. Adrian follows the two of them to a mansion that contains dozens of flayed and dismembered corpses. But the building is also home to something even stranger: Xipe Totec, Aztec god of agriculture, as well as the disembodied souls of his priests and artifacts dedicated to his worship. If Adrian can't escape, he might be the next one to offer his heart on the altar.
Death Relives proceeds similarly to many survival horror games, save that there is only a single enemy in the area. Should Xipe Totec catch up to the player, Adrian will meet a gruesome death. Adrian has two tools to prevent this from happening: The God Seed, which tracks the location of both Xipe Totec and the current objective, and a sacred handgun that can be used to slay the deity.
Xipe Totec dies easily, but of course, that's not the end of the story. Aside from the very limited amount of ammunition available, there's an ugly side effect to Xipe Totec's defeat. The God Seed is a relic of Xipe Totec, so killing him causes the God Seed to rapidly wither. If the God Seed dies, Adrian dies as well. He can revive the Seed by feeding it sacrificial blood, harvested by ambushing and killing one of the Aztec priests spawned in the wake of the deity's death. Doing so also resummons Xipe Totec to the world of the living with greater health than he had before.
As a result, the gameplay of Death Relives follows a cycle. The player moves around the mansion, collecting items and solving puzzles while using the God Seed and hiding points to avoid Xipe Totec whenever possible. If forced to fight Xipe Totec, the player must quickly break off from the current objective and seek out a priest to revitalize the God Seed, which restarts the cycle.
Death Relives is not an inherently difficult title, but the gameplay cycle does demand both efficiency and speed. The former is standard for survival horror, but most of these games have a somewhat more leisurely pace. The risk of death by attrition and the growing strength of the game's adversary call for more aggressive play than you'd normally need in an old-school horror game.
Overall, Death Relives is a novel take on a well-worn genre, with a simple yet challenging gameplay loop and narrative that mixes things up.
Death Relives is available for PlayStation, XBox and for PC via Steam. A copy was provided for this review.
Kickback
Kickback is a shoot-em-up with roguelike elements and a novel means of movement. While it's not the easiest game to get a handle on, it's an interesting challenge for experienced fans of the style.
The player controls a damaged ship that only possesses the use of its armaments, and as such, the only way to move is via the recoil from the ship's weapons. The ship comes equipped with two weapons based on the pilot, at least one of which is used primarily as a mode of movement. This means that, unlike a typical twin-stick shooter, it's not possible to move and fire in different directions without some tricky maneuvers. The player will quickly unlock other ships that feature more conventional movement schemes, though they all have their own gimmicks.
After picking a ship and pilot, the player is dropped into one of three arenas. All three are open spaces with damage-causing areas in the corners to prevent the player from getting too comfortable, but the size of each arena and the enemies that appear differ greatly. The objective is to survive against waves of enemies for a set amount of time based on the difficulty level, after which a boss spawns.
Defeating enemies and collecting dropped items powers up the player's ship. At set levels, the player will gain either a bonus to one of five fixed stats, the choice of a random upgrade that can be equipped to either of the ship's weapons or the hull, or an active ability on a cooldown. Each ship also levels up between runs, unlocking new pilots and weapons.
Kickback has a definite learning curve. With the default ship, it can take a while to really get a handle on tight maneuvers, which becomes an issue when facing enemies that flood the screen with projectiles or larger enemies that are harder to dodge. On the other hand, the ship is durable and packs a punch, which really levels the playing field. There's also a lot of variety in the enemies, and few of them feel overpowered or frustrating to fight.
Overall, Kickback can take some getting used to, but a shoot-em-up fan willing to spend an hour getting a handle on it will probably find something to like.
Kickback is available for PC via Steam. A copy was provided for this review.
That wraps up our look at the indie games that caught our attention in July, and the preview of how indie games are doing overall. Be sure to come back each month for more of those sweet, sweet indie games you need to know about!