PlayStation Unveils Indie Games Initiative

PlayStation is expanding its interest in the independent gaming space with a new initiative.

On Wednesday, Shuhei Yoshida, who was appointed head of Indies Initiative for the company last November, published a blog post introducing PlayStation Indies, an effort to “spotlight and support the best of the best indie games being published on PlayStation and the entire indie community as a whole.” His goal is to “make PlayStation the best place to develop, find and play great indie games.”

While details are forthcoming, he confirmed that a new indie title will join the PlayStation Now service every month, starting with Hello Neighbor in July. In addition, nine new indie games coming to PS4 and PS5 were unveiled in separate blog posts on Wednesday morning.

Among them is an exploration platformer called F.I.S.T. Forged in Shadow Torch, described by Yang Xiang of TiGames as an “dieselpunk-style action-adventure featuring an anthropomorphic bunny wielding a huge, weaponized metal fist.” The game is TiGames’ debut into the exploration platformer genre and will launch on PS4.

From Annapurna Interactive and developer Graceful Decay is the magical first-person puzzle game Maquette, which is set to drop on PS4, PS5 and PC. Graceful Decay’s creative director Hanford Lemoore wrote in the blog that, through story-driven puzzles, players will “uncover memories of a young couple in love.”

Armature Studio’s narrative adventure Where the Heart Is, Amanita Design’s imaginative monster game Creaks, 2pt Interactive’s physics-based space puzzle game Heavenly Bodies, hacking-themed platformer Recompile from Phigames, and puzzle adventure Carto from Humble Games were also revealed throughout the morning.

“The indie community is increasingly important for the future of the gaming industry, as AAA game development has grown so financially demanding that big companies are finding it harder to take risks to invest in new concepts that may or may not work,” Yoshida wrote in the blog. “We trust indie developers with strong vision will continue to bring ideas that have never been tried before, creating whole new genres of games advancing the art and meaning of video games.”

He referenced several well-known indie titles that embraced new concepts from recent years, such as puzzle platform series LittleBigPlanet and adventure game Journey, and expressed excitement for the innovative ideas that will come next.

View a gameplay walkthrough of Maquette here.