3 Excellent Indie Games to Play This Month (August 2025)

Isn’t your backlog long enough? Fortunately, because we have three other independent games to add to your library. This month, we have a driving game inspired by retro inspiration, a relaxed but dark city manufacturer, and the best new survival crafter in recent years.

1

Smoke

Released in early access on July 29, Smoke is a solo vehicle combat game which is shamelessly retro. It is the kind of game that has not been really done anymore, since the genre has fallen into disgrace at the end of the 90s and the early 2000s. The game looks like a relic of the past with a handling of retro inspiration, a physics and the kindplay loop that you associate with titles like Dredge Or Dave the diver.

In SmokeYou must explore the wasteland, fight its rivals and collect upgrades to make your car even better so that you can start again. The gameplay is to balance driving and shooting, with a complete personalization system in place that allows you to choose a load depending on how you like to play. Small cars are light and agile, while larger trucks have better durability at the cost of handling and speed.

In addition to browsing the waste and continuing upgrades, there are boss battles, delivery missions and more challenges to get stuck. The world itself is generated procedurally, so you can technically drive forever (or at least until you are wasted by a giant wheel ship).

Despite his obvious references to the Mad Universe, the game that immediately came to mind was 1997 Interstate 76 and his suite Interstate ’82. Whoever appreciated Vigilante 8THE Carmageddon series, or Twisted metal Will also take a kick. There are NIFTY integrated retro filters with CRT and VHS modes, or the option of deactivating them and playing instead.

Since the game is currently in early access, it costs only $ 15 (although there is a 10% discount at the moment if you are fast). The game is the product of a small team of four developers, and already has an ambitious roadmap that offers more activities, a mixture of melee, an appropriate story, more varied environments and a good game game and steam bridge. The developers also want to introduce MOD support and the online cooperative, although the team admits that they are not promises. Better yet, there is a demo to get stuck so that you can try the game for yourself.

I played it on the steam game, with the official arrangement of the default controller, and I broke out. The game works incredibly gently, the only drawback being the need to maintain the Steam button and use the right trackpad or the joystick as a mouse cursor in the break menu and the personalization screens.

2

Abiotic factor

Abiotic factor is a survival craft game for PC, Xbox and PlayStation. The game comes from its release 1.0 on July 23, leaving early access and finally heading for consoles (and it is even playable via Xbox Game Pass). After gaining momentum and won a loyal audience since he landed on steam in May 2024, he is finally ready to take advantage of his “finished” state.

The game takes many signs of Half-lifeIn particular the Black Mesa Research Facility (called Gate) in which the first game takes place. You play as a scientist taken in a disaster inspired by “Cascade resonance”, which triggers an incalculable horror. But you are not the action hero; You are a Boffin who must use your intellect to overcome the “abnormal entities” which now roam the corridors of your workplace.

You will therefore do a lot to survive (grilling sets from automatic distributors) and making (building makeshift crossbows from everything you find) while you plan your escape. Like any survival craftsman, you will also have to set up a base of operations. This will become your home for the duration of your quarter of work, a place that you can build and upgrade with the help of your university colleagues.

Visually, the game shares a lot in common with the first adventure of Gordon Freeman. Half-life Fans will spot scientists who seem very familiar and the monorail of the opening sequence, but you will also explore the extraterrestrial worlds and reject the armies of the robots.

The game is full of systems on systems, with mini-games for simple actions like sleeping and buffs in Gogo for things like sitting or consuming a hot drink. The characters have positive and negative features that make them feel well balanced and add personality to your game. And venture into the unknown through the different gates of the game feels both dangerous, exciting and gratifying.

You can play this one with up to six of your friends, and you will want because it presents some of the most rewarding cooperative gameplay of recent memory.

Abiotic factor

Released

July 22, 2025

ESRB

Mature 17+ / Blood and blood, raw humor, violence

Developer (s)

Deep field games

Publisher (s)

Backstanding

3

Dystopika

Dystopika is a city construction tank that focuses on creativity and promotion of the atmosphere, rather than the management of resources and the population. The torsion here is that you create the types of dark, futuristic and dystopian urban landscapes that you would see in films like Blade runner And Ghost in the shell. It’s like a cyberpunk version of Peasant Or Tiny iceWithout end play or “victory” state.

Your canvas is a low height city spread, on which you can drop more catchy buildings, holograms, advertisements and garnishes such as cables and infrastructure. Once you have abandoned a building, you can adjust its rotation and its height, and the lack of restrictions in terms of where these buildings can go and how they meet you to fully kiss your vision.

Although there is no objective to achieve or balanced books, you make progressive “progress” in the game by unlocking new articles when you build your city. The protruding facts include a “light brush” which allows you to paint neon trails through your urban landscape, the possibility of personalizing the panels and advertisements with your own text and the traffic generated in a procedural manner in the form of flying cars which give the environment a feeling of living.

You can adjust the time of day (although the game takes place mainly in darkness, as you can imagine), the weather (including snow and dust storms), and choose to engage in specific lift sets to obtain a specific look (or simply choose from everything for a more organic city). You can then go into photo mode and make the game generate a high -resolution snapshot of your creation, which you can share with the developer as part of a monthly community challenge on Steam.

I first discovered Dystopika Because I spotted the soundtrack on Bandcamp while browsing new ambient music. This has been added in the June 1.5 update, adding an essential atmosphere that is intended for gender pillars as Vangelis And Deus ex of producer Sonic Mayhem (Sascha Dikiciyan). I also played a little on Steam Deck, and while it is GOODIt really requires an appropriate mouse configuration and a beautiful screen (preferably OLED).

Dystopika

Systems

Released

June 21, 2024

Developer (s)

Empty inside

Publisher (s)

Empty inside

Engine

Unit engine

Number of players

1

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Smoke Not older enough for you? Discover retro runners that are still worth playing. If you prefer to build bases than dystopian cities, we also have a list of large basic manufacturers.