Indie Showcase

The Indie Showcase is an opportunity for indie game developers to get their unpublished game seen & experienced by one of the biggest game dev audiences in the UK.

After an initial judging process, based on the games’ innovation & originality, the 10 finalists showcased their games within the Develop:Brighton Expo, giving thousands of attendees the chance to play, discover & champion their work.

Two awards are up for grabs – the Indie Showcase Award, judged by a panel of industry experts – and the People’s Choice Award, as voted for by Develop attendees.

A huge congratulations to the 2026 Indie Showcase winners:

Indie Showcase Winner: The Restricted Index, by Ursa Minus
People’s Choice Winner: Zombie Dog, by Brickmouse

“We were delighted to be part of the Indie Showcase alongside so many cool and diverse games. Winning this award is especially exciting as a brand new studio attending Develop for the first time. What a great week by the sea!”

Joel Green, Ursa Minus

The full details of all Indie Showcase finalists can be found below.

Indie Showcase Winner

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

People's Choice Winner

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

Finalist

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

Finalist

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

Finalist

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

Finalist

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

Finalist

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

Finalist

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

Finalist

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

Finalist

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

The Indie Showcase is a face to face opportunity for Indie Devs to show off their game to Develop:Brighton attendees.

If you have any questions about the Indie Showcase please contact Andy Lane at:
T: +44 (0)20 39276440
E: [email protected]k

Indie Showcase

Headline Sponsor

Sponsors

Partners