Indie Selects for October 2026: Discover and Progress Through Unforgettable Worlds

Each Wednesday, dive into the Indie Choose Hub — your gateway to a recent, curated indie assortment plus 4 themed spotlights that rotate weekly! You may at all times discover this assortment hub within the XBOX Retailer and on XBOX.com/IndieSelects.

Halloween has by no means been nearly scares. Positive, there’s loads of room for heart-pounding frights, nevertheless it’s additionally a season that celebrates creativeness, creativity, and getting into worlds past the abnormal. This month, indie builders embraced that spirit in unforgettable methods.

For October, the ID@XBOX staff has curated six standout Indie Selects that invite you to find mysterious realms, conquer new challenges, and uncover tales ready to be informed. From epic battles and eldritch horrors to cozy puzzles and island adventures, every recreation gives a richly crafted world crammed with surprises round each nook.

So, whether or not you’re in search of thrills, thriller, or a brand new journey to get misplaced in, listed here are this month’s Indie Selects (in no specific order):

Mortal Shell II remains to be unapologetically difficult, however fight feels sooner and extra aggressive this time round. The elimination of the normal stamina gauge means encounters aren’t merely about ready for a bar to refill. You may keep within the struggle, combining melee weapons, sidearms, skills and brutal executions. It makes fight really feel significantly extra fluid than earlier than.

The world has grown too. Relatively than merely pushing you down a predetermined path, Mortal Shell II encourages exploration throughout a compact, interconnected open world crammed with hidden areas, dungeons, weapons, upgrades and, naturally, loads of horrible issues ready to smash your afternoon.

What I significantly take pleasure in is that exploration feels related to development. Discovering one other Shell isn’t simply one other collectible checked off an inventory. It could actually utterly change the way you strategy the sport. Weapons provide intensive improve paths as nicely, supplying you with loads of room to form your individual strategy to fight.

Mortal Shell II actually isn’t keen on making life simple for you, however there’s one thing satisfying about progressively turning the tables. You go from cautiously approaching each new enemy to changing into the nightmare wandering by way of their world.

Should you take pleasure in darkish fantasy, exploration, difficult fight and the satisfaction of mastering a recreation that originally appears decided to destroy you, Mortal Shell II is completely price having in your radar.

– Steven Allen

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Should you’ve ever questioned what it could be prefer to assemble your dream staff of benders and settle legendary rivalries your self, Avatar Legends: The Preventing Recreation is able to make that occur. This 2D tag-team fighter brings collectively iconic characters from “Avatar: The Final Airbender” and “The Legend of Korra,” combining elemental bending, flashy particular strikes, and fast-paced staff fight into an expertise that’s simple to leap into and rewarding to grasp.

As a longtime fan of the Avatar universe, this recreation instantly grabbed my consideration. There’s one thing extremely satisfying about watching beloved characters leap from the display screen right into a preventing recreation that feels so true to the world they arrive from. From the primary match, I discovered myself grinning at acquainted skills, character interactions, and bending types delivered to life in thrilling new methods.

What impressed me most is how distinct each fighter feels. Experimenting with totally different staff mixtures saved me coming again for “only one extra match” as I found new methods and synergies. Followers of video games like Dragon Ball FighterZ, Marvel vs. Capcom, and Energy Rangers: Battle for the Grid will acknowledge the fun of constructing a staff and studying how every character enhances the others.

There’s loads to study with its tag mechanics and assists, however the journey of bettering feels rewarding and retains each victory thrilling. Whether or not you grew up with “Avatar: The Final Airbender,” fell in love with “The Legend of Korra,” or just take pleasure in energetic team-based preventing video games, Avatar Legends: The Preventing Recreation captures the guts of the franchise whereas delivering a enjoyable and action-packed expertise that’s laborious to place down.

– Jessica Ronnell

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From the second I began enjoying Mewgenics, I knew I used to be in for a wild journey. From Edmund McMillen, the developer behind The Binding of Isaac, Tremendous Meat Boy, and The Finish is Nigh, Mewgenics is a roguelike tactical turn-based RPG offered in a singular and cartoonish macabre artwork type, crammed with darkish humor and intelligent references.

Mewgenics gives a staggering quantity of content material that simply calls for over 100 hours of playtime, full with deep technique and a generational breeding system (sure, you breed mutant cats).

The sport hooks you immediately with its chaotic setup, you’re managing a home stuffed with mutated cats and sending them out on tactical, grid-based runs. Each merchandise, ability, and attribute is randomized, which means no two runs ever play out the identical method. When your cats survive a brutal dungeon crawl, they carry again scars and mutations which you can cross right down to future generations. Breeding the last word mutant cat squad and attempting to steadiness their bizarre genetic traits turned an obsession.

The darkish and typically graphic humor and the relentless problem won’t be for everybody, however for me, it hit the appropriate buttons. Mewgenics simply eats dozens of hours, holding you hooked on attempting only one extra run. Mewgenics creates one thing totally recent, endlessly repayable, and splendidly grotesque, fur-real!.

– Oscar Polanco

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The Sinking Metropolis 2 takes the sequence in a daring new course, delivering a third-person Lovecraftian survival horror expertise set in a flooded 1929 Arkham. The story follows Calvin Rafferty as he searches for a method to save his fiancée, Faye, who has been trapped in a supernatural slumber after a ritual gone fallacious.

From the second I stepped into Arkham’s flooded streets armed with little greater than a flashlight and a pistol, the sport nailed its horror environment. Touring between districts by boat offers the town an open really feel, whereas interconnected environments, puzzle-solving, investigation mechanics, and scarce assets hold the strain excessive.

What actually units The Sinking Metropolis 2 aside, nevertheless, is its enemy design. Acquainted Lovecraftian creatures present loads of frantic encounters, however the true stars are the Slither: parasitic worms that survive after their host dies. If ignored, they will crawl into close by corpses, reanimate them, and drive you to struggle the identical enemies over again. This straightforward however sensible mechanic remodeled each multi-enemy encounter right into a determined scramble and created a continuing sense of dread.

I don’t suppose I sat down as soon as whereas enjoying The Sinking Metropolis 2. Between its unsettling environment, intriguing thriller, satisfying survival horror gameplay, and genuinely scary enemies, it stands out as one of many style’s most memorable experiences and a must-play for horror followers.

– Raymond Estrada

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Woodo is that takes the comfortable puzzle style and turns it into one thing nearer to a baby’s toy field coming to life because it tells you a narrative. The puzzles put you within the place of assembling handcrafted picket dioramas piece by piece, watching every empty, colorless scene slowly fill with element, animation, and life as you click on objects into their right spots. It’s a small, tactile premise, nevertheless it’s executed with a degree of care that makes each placement really feel terribly satisfying.

The narrative on the coronary heart of Woodo is a narrative about Cunning, a metropolis lady despatched to the countryside for the summer season, and her rising friendship with a neighborhood villager, who occurs to be a frog named, nicely, Ben the Frog. The narrative unfolds throughout a sequence of interconnected dioramas, every one capturing a special second from their shared journey, guided by a heat, pleasant narrator’s voice that makes the entire expertise really feel much less like a puzzle recreation and extra like a heat, cuddly bedtime story. And whereas the gameplay is usually fairly easy, there’s some complexity to it. The meeting of the picket items isn’t essentially linear – you must rotate and discover the 3D area to uncover hidden items, whereas watching the world react and rework with playful animations as you place every one. This instills within the gameplay an nearly toy-like sense of discovery.

That nostalgic pull is basically the entire level. Woodo doesn’t exist to make you wrack your mind or lose 100 hours in layer after layer of puzzle mechanics. As a substitute, it elicits the actual sort of childlike surprise that comes from sparking an journey out of the best object. It’s a recreation that adapts to your tempo, providing assist if you want it with out breaking the spell, and by the point you’ve stuffed in its final diorama, it’s laborious to not really feel like a child once more.

– Glenn Gregory

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I actually didn’t count on to dig into this one as laborious as I’ve, however right here we’re. Lou’s Lagoon is a comfy exploration-and-crafting journey the place you play as an “up for no matter” helping-hand-style character who’s simply seeking to lend some resourcefulness within the restoration efforts to reunite a sequence of tropical storm-hit islands by way of amassing, constructing, and useful resource gathering… And I could even uncover the place my lacking Uncle Lou (a legend among the many island denizens) went? Depend me in!

To do all of the issues wanted, you’ll wield all the things from a two-way vacuum-like device to a fishing rod (accumulate these fish scales!) and particularly a helpful glider to journey gusty currents. Roam the islands on foot whereas uncovering chests, befriend some in-need beach-faring people, and full quests that in flip allow you to improve your arsenal of devices to proceed your journey. However the principle hook for me is having the ability to pilot a little bit seaplane throughout the totally different archipelagos that dot your recreation world – the sense of discovery gave me that Skies of Arcadia really feel (Dreamcast hive, stand up!). Add in busting by way of swag-filled air balloon loot drops and in search of out damaged radio towers to restore to get comms techniques up and working to fast-travel if you don’t need to fly – all of it feels gratifying in a method that hoovered up hours of my time and saved me up previous my bedtime with no complaints.

Positive, among the steerage and techniques really feel a little bit opaque or DIY at occasions, and man, the forex can typically be a bear to amass for buying new items… however actually, the enjoyment in finishing a aim or upgrading your “Swirler” (your two-way vacuum device) to gather wool off of a grumpy island llama-like creature…completely price it.