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Daily Mirror
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mirror
10 best indie games releases in May 2025 – smaller gems worth checking out
In the mood for something smaller between huge, tentpole video game releases? Here's the best we played from this past month. A whistlestop tour through some of the very best indie games released throughout the month of May, judging by what we played. There's a strong argument to say that May might have been the best month of 2025 yet for indie games. It's no secret that Steam releases are becoming more frequent (and therefore harder to stay on top of) by the year, hence why we take our mission to highlight and talk about the best from what we played incredibly seriously. But while April's selection of indie hits featured potential GOTY winner Blue Prince, the month of May had variety and creativity in spades – as we'll soon discover. From multiple isometric GTA throwbacks looking to bring something new to the format to the latest entry in the burgeoning 'first-person booter' format, these are the 10 best indie games releases in May 2025. Between big AAA release like Doom: The Dark Ages and Blades of Fire, these are the indie treats we enjoyed playing most. Aureole – Wings of Hope A seriously fast-paced 2D platformer clearly intended as a modern tribute to the era of old-school Sonic the Hedgehog, Aureole – Wings of Hope does a great job at balancing serious speed with satisfying level design that is rarely frustrating to regularly bump up against. Barrelling through heavenly and hellish stages as an angel's halo in order to reclaim your home from demonic forces (yes, you read that correctly), true diehards will want to run through stages repeatedly in the hopes of securing the best time. If you're in the mood for a contender to classic Sonic, then Aureole – Wings of Hope will sure scratch that itch in its own charming way. Deliver at All Costs Destructive environments in games – indie or otherwise – are never not fun. Proving this once again are the sandbox driving delights of Deliver at All Costs. Because while most of your time is indeed spent transporting items by vehicle as the game's title suggests, you'll spent an equal amount ploughing through buildings, people, and more all in the name of on-time delivery. Surrounding this chaos is a so-so narrative about trying to rise up the ranks of 1950s industry, but really Deliver at All Costs is at its best when routinely challenging you to get from one location to the other with all cargo intact while battling some seriously slippery driving physics. It results in a surprisingly chaotic top-down GTA spin. Empyreal A lot more than just a Soulslike copycat, Empyreal is a hardcore third-person action RPG made by a small team that boasts plenty of ideas of its own. Most of them centre on gaining better, more powerful loot that means being able to hit harder and take on harder challenges, yet it's backed up by a surprisingly interesting story that sees you continuously exploring a planet to unearth the revelations that once belonged to an ancient civilisation. Obviously, you can totally ignore these lore elements if you so wish, where you'll still find some seriously satisfying combat and a generous number of aggressive and passive abilities that renders builds surprisingly flexible. If you're seeking a tight and focussed action game that keeps on giving, Empyreal is it. Monster Train 2 Just in case you thought the original Monster Train wasn't as moreish as roguelike deckbuilders could come, its sequel arrived this month as a bigger, better package that proves even harder to put down. Crucially, developer Shiny Shoe hasn't completely overhauled the addictive formula that worked so well before. You'll still battle against waves of invading monsters protecting the pyre at the top of your three-tiered train. Now, however, new clans introduce fresh ways to play offensively and defensively, alongside new daily challenges, card types, and new unlockable pyres with unique perks able to make or break your run. Simply put, Monster Train 2 is the pinnacle of what a roguelike deckbuilder can be and a perfect follow-up to the 2020 original. To a T Katamari creator Keita Takahashi has a habit of making games that are a bit more, shall we say, 'off-kilter' compared to most others. It worked for Katamari Damacy, and it works again here in To a T, a colourful slice-of-life adventure about a schoolkid who is forever trapped in a T-pose. Determined not to let this unusual predicament get them down, however, To a T sees you control them throughout daily life in their hometown where you gradually learn the lesson that 'you're the perfect shape' because every shape is, in fact, perfect. Complete with madcap musical sequences, wholesome characters, and oddball minigames aplenty, To a T is a very special time for the brief period it lasts. Glum Against all odds, the 'first-person booter' is becoming a bit of a movement all its own thanks to the indie scene. First there was Anger Foot, then Mullet MadJack kicked its way into our hearts, and now it's the turn of Glum to do much the same. True, it's currently in early access as opposed to full release, yet already to appreciate the bombastic, boot-driven action it provides with its frantic and fast-paced first-person gameplay. It feels wildly distinct to its forebears thanks to its uniquely medieval setting, where player stake on the role of a deranged goblin reading primed to kick enemy arses into haybales, wagons, and a whole lot more. The more creative your kick-fuelled kills the better in this madcap FPS driven by your own magical boot. Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo What if your auntie was the CEO of a tech empire who one day had her soul transferred into a magical yoyo? As barmy a premise for an old-school action-adventure game as it might be, this is the core question at the centre of Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo. Unusual narrative setups aside, it makes for a lovingly made top-down 2D throwback that pays excellent tribute to the GBA era in both its visual style, puzzles, and structure. You'll explore a whole city trying to take down four crime bosses, wielding the power of your yoyo as both a weapon and puzzle-solving tool. As if it was ever in doubt, this very first 'yoyovania' ever is an undeniably charming journey. The Precinct Having already tackled the reprehensible side of the law with top-down criminal simulator, American Fugitive, a few years ago, developer Fallen Tree Games is back at it again with The Precinct. As its title suggests this time you play the part of police officer, solving crimes within a New York style city in the 1980s with surprisingly accurate (and often meticulous) detail. The story has its heart in the right place but can often get in the way of what The Precinct does best, which is present a classic GTA style world from the opposite perspective of what Rockstar's titles typically portray. From high-speed chases to issuing parking tickets, The Precinct achieves its goal of letting you roleplay as a cop within a tightly detailed isometric sandbox. The Siege and the Sandfox With indie Metroidvania games being a dime a dozen these days, The Siege and the Sandfox definitely surfaces as a diamond in the rough by focussing on stealth over direct combat. You play as the titular sneaky thief thrown down into the pits of an underground city, gaining increasingly more complex parkour abilities such as pole-swinging and wall-running that helps give this pixelated explore-a-thon a uniquely different flavour than most. Enhancing this stealth-fuelled story of revenge is narration provided by Baldur's Gate 3 's Amelia Taylor, who does an equally excellent job providing additional texture to this beautiful world and narrative. Special mention: Sea of Stars – Throes of the Watchmaker Easily one of the best indie games to recapture the magic of vintage Final Fantasy in recent years, the original Sea of Stars mixed beautiful pixel art with great characters and combat to be a standout indie title of 2023. This month offered an excellent reason to return to it in the from of the new Throes of the Watchmaker DLC. It sees heroes Valere and Zale shrunken down into a clockwork world, where they must battle twisted versions of themselves while using all-new class skills themed after the funfair. Throes of the Watchmaker is not only a reminder of what made Sea of Stars great, but is equally ace in its own right.
Metro
08-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Metro
Empyreal review – more than just Dark Souls with guns
Empyreal – not all Soulslikes are alike (Secret Mode) A new indie Soulslike is no mere imitation, as Empyreal offers a clever mixture of guns, melee combat, and a very unusual role-playing system. Genres can be a slippery thing. Given how many years it takes to make modern video games, summing them up in a couple of words ought to be harder, but in most cases you can tell a driving game from a first person shooter within seconds. Deciding whether something's an action role-player or an action adventure can take a little longer but, at least in previous generations, most games were fairly clear cut. Empyreal is at heart an action role-player but with a number of very specific influences. It has fast-paced battles yielding loot, which you use to increase your power, as well as a strong Soulslike influence in its complex architectural level design and the occasional boss that can be a nasty surprise. It's also got a few roguelite hallmarks, getting you to repeat levels over and over again with differing configurations of loot and enemies. The game's plot involves you as part of a skeleton crew visiting a desolate alien world, where a vast black monolith has been discovered. Soldiers sent inside never return and the odd person that manages to escape is so traumatised by the experience they refuse to talk about it. When you arrive on the scene nobody knows what's going on. What's the monolith for? And why is there absolutely no sign of the civilisation that built it? Entering via a massive circular portal, your first trip into the towering structure reveals dilapidated brick ruins populated by groups of armed robots who immediately attack you. When you fight your way through them all and get to the exit, you find out from fellow expedition members that what you've seen is just a small taster. The monolith is actually immensely bigger on the inside than even its colossal exterior would imply. Divided into four quadrants, your job is to explore each, attempting to get an idea of its layout and above all its purpose. Rumours around the camp suggest it could be an elaborately designed prison for a murderous entity, and that exploring it is a very bad idea. Naturally you're unmoved by that sort of gossip, continuing the process of uncovering the monolith's labyrinthine interior. Your starter weapon is decided by the background you choose for your character during customisation. On subsequent forays through the portal, you can choose to be equipped with the nimble, bladed glaive; the heavy mace and shield; or a portable cannon. The latter, in particular, proves highly unusual in its mechanics. Rather than choosing a gun type and picking up ammunition for it, you equip the cannon with shotgun shells, gatling rounds or sniper bullets simply by timing your reload differently, effectively changing the kind of gun you're using as situations dictate. Added to that, if you time it perfectly and hit the sweet spot while reloading the whole magazine comes with higher powered rounds, a process you can repeat two more times for supercharged ammo. It makes combat varied and flexible, and means you're no longer subject to the game designer's whim when it comes to which weapon you can use. Instead, you make your own choices and change your mind as you see fit. Since you'll be taking on diverse groups of enemy robots at a variety of ranges, that's a useful feature. With the cannon you can dodge incoming attacks, while using the glaive you can also parry. The mace is too heavy for dodging but does let you parry, giving each of the three armament set-ups their own unique feel. Unlike ammo, you can't change your weapons loadout on the fly and instead you need to visit one of the armament tables in the game's hub between runs. In the hub you can unlock artefacts you loot – like decoding engrams in Destiny – before equipping or selling them. You can also shop for consumables and, like Hades, chat to characters you meet. It's sparsely populated, so you get to know everybody reasonably early on: there's John the friendly Yorkshire blacksmith who likes his Newcastle Brown, Edmund your irascible commander, Raulin the war story-telling Scottish quartermaster, and a scattering of other misfits. The closest thing yet to a Soulslike shooter (Secret Mode) Intriguingly, each has their own quest line with potential fail states and multiple endings, so what you decide to say to them and which goals of theirs you fulfil, have a lasting effect on what happens at HQ. It also allows the game to drip feed plot and lore to you, because much like Souls games, not much is explicitly stated. Instead, you're left to infer almost everything from trial, error, and experience. Making progress involves two things. For your character, equipping higher level gear increases your power. There are no experience points, just an average level across every piece of kit you have equipped. The second is to install mods, which increase or add new bonuses to gear you own. It's another odd system, often bartering part of one stat to add to another, but like everything in Empyreal, you do eventually get the hang of it. Each of the four quadrants has a distinct biome and personality, although the enemies you meet, what elemental attacks they use, and the level and types of loot available, are governed by cartograms. You'll find those along with loot as you win fights, and each one gives discreet access to part of one of the quadrants, with its own unique mix of enemies and loot. The trick is that each cartogram comes a finite number of reset charges, which let you continue when you die. Use them up and you you're stuck with just one life, and cartograms themselves are destroyed when you complete them, defeating the final boss and extracting your gathered loot. Fortunately, they're in plentiful supply so you never run out, but if there's a particular area you're keen to see more of, it can take a while to find that specific cartogram again. It took us about 10 hours to get to the final boss, and a couple more to get back to it and see it off, but Empyreal is designed with New Game+ in mind, which lets you continue levelling and explore parts of each gargantuan quadrant that you had previously not seen, or were killed too quickly to fully appreciate. It's an excellent way to experience in-game systems created to change subtly as your powers increase. Inevitably a sense of repetition does set in. Despite their scale, levels are finite and handcrafted – no procedural generation here – and even though you'll be fighting different enemies and bosses, there does come a point where you feel as though you've seen all you need to. Fights are brutal and fast, with many attacks coming from offscreen, meaning you need to block or dodge as a matter of routine. For those used to FromSoftware's weightier, more measured combat, this may seem too scattershot, even if most of its encounters still manage to feel satisfying. The other minor concern is camera control. With no lock-on and multiple enemies having at you at any given time, it can be tough to know where to look, and the fast-moving manually controlled camera frequently adds to the sense of barely controlled chaos. The splashy special moves you constantly trigger only add to that. Still, the fights are intense and the exploration full of secrets and surprises. You'll often find a lengthy new path unexpectedly loops back to places you thought you knew well, a previously locked door in an empty room turning out to be the way back from your freshly discovered meander. It may be a bit rough around the edges, but Empyreal is loaded with good ideas and innovative thinking. It borrows from a range of popular sources but has plenty of entirely original ideas of its own. Given its open-ended structure, and levels created to hide secrets even after multiple visits, Empyreal is a refreshingly different experience that's reminiscent of multiple other games without ever copying any of them exactly. Empyreal review summary In Short: A complex interconnection of influences results in a game that's both familiar and interestingly unique, with a few rough edges compensated for by excellent combat and role-playing systems. Pros: A fascinating game world to explore, its four quadrants proving far larger and less predictable than anticipated. Great bosses and enemy variety, with an engaging role-playing meta game. Cons: Manual camera is not helpful, especially in a fight. Many attacks arrive unflagged from offscreen and the game does eventually get repetitive. Score: 7/10 Formats: PlayStation 5 (reviewed), Xbox Series X/S, and PC Price: TBA Publisher: Secret Mode Developer: Silent Games Release Date: 8th May 2025 Age Rating: 16 Unlike most Soulslikes, it's not that hard (Secret Mode) Email gamecentral@ leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter, and sign-up to our newsletter. To submit Inbox letters and Reader's Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here. For more stories like this, check our Gaming page. Arrow MORE: Games Inbox: Is GTA 6 the most anticipated video game ever? 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