5 Games From The MIX Summer Showcase We Keep Coming Back To

The MIX Summer Game Showcase opened Summer Game Fest week with over sixty indie titles. The full showcase is right here. Five games made the shortlist, ranging from a hand-drawn social RPG from Kolkata to a Viking tavern co-op backed by the founders of Arrowhead.

Meadgard

Psst! Click this image to get a TL;DR

• Release date: TBA (demo August 2026)
• Developer: Oddiko
• Publisher: Oddiko
• Platforms: Steam
• Genres: Co-op, Action-Adventure, Cooking, Management

I have a soft spot for any game that makes me feel like a functional Viking despite the fact that I would absolutely buckle under the pressure of running a real tavern. Meadgard, the debut title from Göteborg studio Oddiko, sends up to four players into the Norse wilds each morning to hunt monsters and loot ingredients, then shoves them behind a bar each night to serve increasingly impatient patrons, and the chaos of that daily loop already feels genuinely funny in motion.

The game has been in development for a few years now, but the backing of Arrowhead Game Studios founders through their holding company Shpel AB has clearly changed its trajectory. A new, more polished trailer premiered at the MIX, and a playable demo arrives in August. Wishlist it now so you do not forget it exists.

SHADE Protocol

Psst! Click this image to get a TL;DR

• Release date: TBA (Kickstarter live June 4, 2026)
• Developer: Little Legendary
• Publisher: Little Legendary
• Platforms: Steam
• Genres: Metroidvania, Action Platformer, RPG

Little Legendary, a debut studio, built a cyber-fantasy world where every weapon is a musical instrument and the protagonist can literally rewrite the code of reality, and somehow that premise reads as coherent rather than chaotic, which is harder to pull off than it sounds.

Their Kickstarter launched this week, timed to the MIX showcase, and it includes goals for bringing in the CrossCode composer SHIRAKUMO Nagi for the full soundtrack, which is an extremely good idea for a game whose entire identity is built on music. This one has been building momentum quietly for over a year and it shows.

Zozo and the Lost Dreams

Psst! Click this image to get a TL;DR

• Release date: Q3/Q4 2026
• Developer: Agate
• Publisher: Red Dunes Games
• Platforms: Steam, Nintendo Switch
• Genres: Metroidvania, Action Platformer

Agate, one of Indonesia’s largest game studios, is behind this one, and the ambition shows in the structure: Zozo and the Lost Dreams delivers seven self-contained dream episodes, each with its own genre, rules, and visual identity, all strung together with the kind of Saturday-morning cartoon energy that feels increasingly rare in a genre that tends toward the gothic. The demo offers over an hour of that world, including a sequence where a defeated enemy freezes in place and becomes a platform, which is the kind of thing that makes me extremely happy.

It just confirmed Nintendo Switch support, and a free demo is live on Steam right now for Steam Next Fest. The Q3/Q4 2026 window is close enough that this one deserves your attention today rather than in three months when you’ve forgotten about it.

Well Dweller

Psst! Click this image to get a TL;DR

• Release date: 2026
• Developer: Kyle Thompson
• Publisher: Top Hat Studios
• Platforms: Steam, Nintendo Switch
• Genres: Metroidvania, Action-Adventure

Kyle Thompson has released four games in six years, which is a pace that requires mentioning every single time because most solo developers release one game in six years and then take a long break. Well Dweller is his fourth, and it is the one where he leans hardest into atmosphere: a hand-drawn dark fairy tale where you play a tiny bird named Glimmer, armed with nothing but a matchstick, on a mission to burn the wicked queen and free your kidnapped family.

The demo, which revealed a new trailer at the MIX this week, shows a map that is genuinely enormous, with color-coded regions that suggest a level of world-building ambition that sits comfortably above his previous work. The combat is fast, and the trinket system gives the build variety that Islets players wanted more of. This is the one I am most likely to finish in a single weekend.

Sonzai

Psst! Click this image to get a TL;DR

• Release date: TBA (playtest open)
• Developer: 2 Odd Diodes
• Publisher: Top Hat Studios, Shochiku, Game Bridge
• Platforms: Steam
• Genres: Action RPG, Social Sim

Sonzai has been in development for a while now, and I will be honest: I have been trying to figure out how to write about it without sounding like I’m overselling it. 2 Odd Diodes, a two-person studio from Kolkata, built a social link RPG set in Kumotoshi, the only town in the world where magic exists, and animated every single frame by hand. The result looks like nothing else on Steam, which is either a tremendous advantage or a very slow path to an audience, and so far it appears to be both.

The MIX trailer this week announced a playtest, which is the clearest sign yet that this one is approaching the finish line. Sign up, because a game this handmade deserves to be tested by people who understand what they are looking at.

About the Author

Cande Maldonado

Editor

Cande’s calling in life is to annoy NPCS, smash virtual pottery, and complete every side quest available in RPGs. Her passion for games dates to 2006, when she mounted a Chocobo for the first time, but she has been writing professionally for the past four years. Under Nintendo and Square Enix’s chokehold, she willingly pours hours upon hours into reaching 100% completion in the longest roleplaying games ever made. But hey, who needs fresh air and sunlight when you can just live in Ivalice?

View All Posts