My Steam wishlist is bigger than ever thanks to the indie devs flooding social media with 15-second clips explaining their games

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Frantic shooters, top-down driving sims, and games I don't know how to explain are all going viral

Close up shot of an anime schoolgirl with a superhero mask over her eyes in a screenshot from Mightreya.
(Image credit: 505 Games)

A new online trend has indie developers posting 15-second clips that briefly (sometimes) explain their game, and my Steam wishlist is looking scarily big.

The trend was seemingly kicked off by developer quicktequila, who showed off their wildly stylish psychedelic shooter Tamashika and quickly garnered over 150k likes. It looks like you're rampaging through a twisty-turvy corridor that unfolds as you walk, murdering cartoony frogs, equipped with only a pistol for shooting and a knife for parrying and/or stabbing. It's gorgeous, trippy, and unlike anything else I've seen. You can wishlist it on Steam.

Next up is Mightreya, a spectacle fighter in the same vein as Hi-Fi Rush or Bayonetta where you're chaining sick combos and juggling foes in the pursuit of the validation of an S-rank. The twist here is that you're playing as an anime schoolgirl superhero who doubles as a content creator, so I'm guessing those S-ranks also lead to likes and follows and subscriptions. More validation, basically! See it's aerial combat below and check it out on Steam if you like.

Changing gears to something a little less frantic, we have Detective Dotson, a pixel art slice-of-life mystery game set in modern day India. I love how vibrant everything is. I love a good detective board. And, as a Yakuza sicko, I love the glimpses we get at all the mini-games in just 15 seconds. (What a cool trend!) This one's coming to Steam on April 3 - there's also a free demo.

This next one is slightly less wholesome. Car Park Capital looks like a chill, old school SimCity-like that has you connecting roads, building infrastructure, and helping your big-nose residents get around easier. It's actually a "satirical simulator" where the car industry has tasked you to "convert walkable cities into parking lots and use propaganda to convince everyone it's what they want." Truly evil! Sick, really. (It's also on my Steam wishlist, shh.)

Finally, we have Truckful, which seems like an initially chill sim about driving a truck through some of the most serene woods you've seen in-game. You'll soon be trying not to drift off a cliffside while unravelling a "small town mystery." It's also, of course, on Steam.

For more, keep an eye on the upcoming indie games of 2025 and beyond.

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Kaan Serin
Freelance contributor

Kaan freelances for various websites including Rock Paper Shotgun, Eurogamer, and this one, Gamesradar. He particularly enjoys writing about spooky indies, throwback RPGs, and anything that's vaguely silly. Also has an English Literature and Film Studies degree that he'll soon forget.