John Wick as a DVD store operator, a roguelike take on Armored Core and other new indie games worth checking out

Welcome to our latest roundup of what's going on in the indie game space. There are a whole bunch of new games you can dive into this weekend that don't involve a certain gruff Marvel hero. We'll take a look at some of those, as well as several others that are on the way.

I recently checked out the first hour or so of Emberville from Cygnus Cross, a studio co-owned by Twitch streamer Ben "CohhCarnage" Cassel. This is a top-down action RPG that blends the dungeon crawling and looting of Diablo with the life-sim aspects of Stardew Valley .

I've made several attempts to play Diablo IV and thought Outriders was fine , but I've never been able to bring myself to care about hunting for weapons and gear with slightly better stats than what I already have. However, Emberville is more compelling than many loot-based games for several reasons.

It's downright beautiful, for one thing. The lush pixel art and dense environments drew me in, while the animations look slick. There's a stellar voice cast that includes Baldur's Gate 3 narrator Amelia Tyler, BAFTA and Game Awards winner Jennifer English (who earned those honors for her portrayal of Maelle in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 ), Abubakar Salim, Matt Mercer and Ben Starr.

Combat feels good too. I switched between a sword, bow and fists — which can have a stun effect that was useful for the preview's main boss — and all were strong options. There's a nifty combo system too. I do not like having to manage stamina in any game and I'm glad I didn't encounter that here, even if the hero's dash is on a (thankfully short) cooldown.

The world that Cygnus Cross is building is captivating. It leans into the trope of your character waking up in a mysterious place with no memories and having to figure out what's happening. Since it's written on the Steam page, it's not too much of a spoiler to say you're in a large underground prison and your goal is to escape it. Along the way, you'll help out NPCs and rebuild a ruined town.

I encountered a ton of gameplay systems in my short time with Emberville , from the swappable classes, weapon and armor mastery, crafting, cooking, mining and so on. I didn't even get to the farming or base-building aspects. That's already overwhelming to me, but it might feel great to someone who really loves building out their own character and having a boatload of different things to do.

I don't know that Emberville is a game I'll play much more of, especially with such a stacked game release calendar over the next couple of months, but I enjoyed my time with it so far. It's coming to Steam in early access on October 27.