With just one month until we open the doors to Develop:Brighton 2026, we’re really excited to announce this year’s shortlisted games for our ever-popular Indie Showcase. We had a record number of entries this year, and the competition was tough, so huge congratulations to everyone who entered and especially to those who made it through to this final stage.
You’ll be able to play all these games within the Expo at Develop:Brighton and then vote for your favourite in the People’s Choice Award. The winners will be announced at the end of the conference.
Check out the Indie Showcase 2026 finalists below:
- An Elaborate History of Chess by Iteration Games (PC)
Become a castle building, turnip farming, dungeon explorer in this silly blend of RTS and turn-based strategy. Expand your Kingdom, survive the night, and challenge bosses to upgrade your pieces in a world where pigs fly, trees fight back, and the rules of chess are completely reimagined.
View Trailer - An Elaborate History of Chess Demo Available Now!
- Creatures Like Us by Circle-A Studios (PC, Steam Deck)
A radical narrative sim about squatting, mutual aid, and queer revolution. Balance your crew's individual needs vs the needs of your community as you expose shady landlords, squabble over the dishes, and smash capitalism along the way!
View Trailer - CircleA_CLU_Trailer.mp4 - Google Drive
- Crimson Rain by Square Zero (PC)
Crimson Rain is an experimental and stylized noir-detective style puzzle narrative game, where every character looks identical. Players are tasked to deduce the game’s narrative solely through the characters’ actions, through the manipulation of time on individual characters’ timelines of events. To solve the game, players must observe every characters’ timeline, with the goal of uncovering the tragedy that occurred amongst the events they witnessed.
View Trailer - Crimson Rain Prototype Trailer
- Crunda by Soweli Digital (PC)
Crunda is a physics platformer set in a dying asteroid belt, abandoned by humans and inherited by the robots they left behind. You play as an orphan jumping between rocks under simulated gravity, each landing creating a wobble on the asteroid's surface.
With the orphan's own memory faded, they interpret the world in a thought bubble monologue trained on human data. Every level tracks your completion time, and advanced players can race ghosts of their past attempts for rewards.
View Trailer - Crunda - Develop Brighton Trailer
- Dance Dance Detective by Blue Tango Street (PC)
Dance Dance Detective, a comedy x puzzle x rhythm game where you solve a murder mystery by making suspects dance! Players will go undercover as a ballroom dance teacher on a cruise ship full of wacky murder suspects. Create dance routines to uncover their dark secrets, follow the leads, and combine clues to find who killed the head scientist of the Bolero Chocolate Company.
View Trailer - Dance Dance Detective - Demo Trailer
- i love me, i love me not by Malgow (Android / iOS / PC)
A mental-health focused game! play as a withered sunflower tasked with the challenge of pulling/growing yourself back together again by learning new healthy habits!
View Trailer - a new "i love me, i love me not" TRAILER
- Pearls of Wisdom by Light Up Research (PC / Linux)
A deep, relaxing card game with real-world side quests. Match inspiring and reflective quotes, combine special effect emblems, do out of game side quests in the real world and build your deck to get high scores. Reflect, relax, and walk away feeling good after you've finished playing.
View Trailer - Rogue-like mindfulness deck-builder - Pearls of Wisdom gameplay trailer
- Spycraft by State of Play (Board)
Take control of a physical handheld Spy Kit and use it to unravel an international mystery. Set in the 1960s, you play a secret agent equipped with the Spy Kit, an incredible device which can be physically fitted together in a hundred ways to create new gadgets. Build a laser to crack your way into a building, put together a listening device or build a handheld radar to sneak around the streets of downtown Tokyo.
You're going to need your wits, and you're going to need to get very hands on.
View Trailer - Spycraft Game Trailer | New Exclusive Game for Board
- The Restricted Index by Ursa Minus (PC)
Read between the lies in this first-person mystery puzzle game. You are the last librarian in Britain. Identify books. Recommend them. Ban them. Burn them.
Uncover a catalogue of secrets and lost stories buried between the pages.
View Trailer - The Restricted Index Teaser
- Zombie Dog by Brickmouse (PC)
Zombie Dog is a zombie herding sheepdog game set in Yorkshire. Its unique herd ’em up mechanic combines strategic coordination and timing with puzzle solving and comedic physics-based mayhem!
View Trailer - ZDog Teaser August '25
