Indie Monthly: February 2025

February was a booming month for A-tier games, with the likes of Civilization 7, Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii, and Avowed burning up the charts. At the same time, the first wave of new content sent both fresh and established live service titles to new heights. With all that action, it would be easy to overlook what's going on at the edges of the industry - but that's why I'm here, digging up hidden gems for your consideration.

This month's offerings are an eclectic mix, with genres ranging from old-school RPGs to experimental deckbuilders, with themes ranging from restoring a shattered world to ruling it from the shadows as the living dead.

As always, you can check out the Find the Fabulist YouTube channel to see footage of the games in action.

Cabernet

Cabernet is a narrative-driven RPG set in an Eastern Europe-inspired fantasy world inhabited by vampires and other magical beings from Slavic folklore. The player's goal is to survive to the end of the story while investigating the secrets of underworld society.

Liza, a young 19th-century doctor, awakens alone in a cellar with no memory of where she is or how she got there. She emerges into a party held by the Higher Society, a clique of vampires that secretly runs the city, and soon deduces that she has been inducted into their ranks. Adjusting to her new existence as the living dead and learning the rules of the local hierarchy would all be hard enough were it not for the strange supernatural entity that's stalking her through the night. All of this is tied into the mystery of Liza's own death, the memories of which are slowly returning to her.

The mechanics of Cabernet are built entirely around its story, setting, and especially its characters. Liza possesses many of the gifts traditionally attributed to vampires - including shapeshifting, hypnosis, and invisibility - along with vulnerability to sunlight and restrictions on entering buildings without invitation. As a woman of letters, she also has access to more worldly knowledge. All of these talents offer different avenues by which she can complete quests.

Liza also needs to feed regularly to survive, and this fuels the game's morality system. Many actions affect Liza's disposition, either preserving her humanity or pushing her deeper into a nihilistic urge to survive at all costs. Even a player striving to maintain Liza's humanity is going to have to attack a human at some point, and feeding on random humans isn't an option - Liza can only bite someone with whom she has a trusting relationship, risking their death every time.

This essential cruelty is essential to the story of Cabernet, which leans heavily into the depictions of vampires as an aristocracy of the night. The Higher Society serves as an anal0gue of the gentry class of the late colonial period, with the humans standing in place of the serfs. Most of the side quests have Liza meddling in the sad affairs of individual humans, either for her own benefit and amusement or in the benign role of a humanitarian, but either way, it's clear that she's doing so as a person in a position of superiority. Ultimately, the player gets to choose who gets a happy ending and who continues to spiral down into despair.

Overall, Cabernet offers a fresh take on a traditional vampire story, and fans of traditional horror and dark fiction will likely find something to appreciate.

Cabernet is available for PC via Steam. A copy was provided for this review.

Dawnfolk

Dawnfolk is a base-building game meant as an easy entry point into the world of strategy games. With levels lasting anywhere from fifteen minutes to two hours depending on the mode, it's designed to offer a more casual experience for people without the time for heavier strategy.

At heart, Dawnfolk is a game about managing resources. Buildings produce and consume four major resources based on their positioning. Most buildings have an adjacency bonus based on either other buildings or terrain types - haphazardly plopping buildings anywhere is likely to yield inadequate results. There are also one-time opportunities to gain resources by gathering them from certain tiles, with the player gaining bonuses by doing well in simple minigames.

The core loop is, by design, simple compared to other similar games. The learning curve comes from figuring out what all the buildings and resources d0 - after that, figuring out a strategy isn't too daunting. The player can destroy buildings at will and eventually gain upgrades to alter terrain types, making it quite a bit easier to figure out building placements than in some other strategy games based on adjacency.

The actual objectives in Dawnfolk vary based on the mode, and there are plenty of those. Initially, the only choice is a brief story campaign lasting around 3-5 hours. In this mode, the player is tasked with completing preset objectives while holding out against attacks by dark forces that get more aggressive the longer the level takes. It's a moderately challenging mode meant mainly to introduce the player to different mechanics, building, and tile types.

Completing story levels and earning achievements gradually unlocks additional modes. These include expeditions, a challenge mode featuring one-off levels with variant rule sets; puzzle mode, where the player is tasked with maximizing the production of a certain resource on a preset map; endless mode, an open-ended game in which the player holds out against the darkness for as long as possible; and sandbox, which is the same minus the dark forces for a more easygoing experience. Between the five modes, there's a lot of variety in both the style and difficulty, and there's bound to be at least one that will appeal to most people.

Overall, Dawnfolk is a pretty mellow game that's designed for beginners, but with enough advanced challenges to give more seasoned strategy game enthusiasts something to sink their teeth into. Well worth a shot if you dabble in strategy.

Dawnfolk is available for PC via itch.io and Steam. A copy was provided for this review.

Seed of Pandora: Legend of the Gaia Tree

Seed of Pandora is a throwback JRPG, one of many in a recent revival of 16-bit-styled role-playing games. It takes a pretty straightforward approach to the style, aiming to recreate the gameplay of that era.

Bastien is a youth living on a farm in the Kingdom of Garda, a realm built around the legendary Gaia Tree from which all life springs. Recently, Bastien has been haunted by a recurring dream - a vision of a strange world outside of Garda, and the voice of a woman calling his name, beseeching him for help. But there are clues suggesting that these are more than mere dreams, and Bastien soon finds himself launched into a quest that concerns his own connection to an ancient, banished order that has put the world in jeopardy.

Mechanically, Seed of Pandora is a turn-based RPG bearing many similarities to other recent throwback games. Aside from the standard RPG actions, most characters possess two sets of skills: Psi, which consumes a non-renewing resource and is mainly for healing; and techniques, combat skills drawing on a different resource that increases as characters inflict and receive damage. As regular attacks are generally ineffective, managing that second resource is necessary to win even standard fights in a reasonable amount of time.

One small divergence from the usual JRPG of the time is a lack of random encounters in dungeons. While the party is still subject to random attacks in the overworld, enemies are visible inside closed areas and the party can generally avoid them with a bit of caution. This is recommended, as encounters can be somewhat protracted even with good strategy.

All of this is pretty standard, which is a good way to describe Seed of Pandora in general. The overall execution is competent to good, but there aren't a lot of risks taken in either the mechanics or the narrative. It is simply a recreation of an older style of game. Hardcore fans of '90s RPGs may still enjoy the experience, but if you're looking for something novel, you're unlikely to find it here.

Seed of Pandora: Legend of the Gaia Tree is available for PC via Steam. A copy was provided for this review.

SPELLHACK!!

SPELLHACK!! is a strategy deck-builder with some tower defense mechanics and an aesthetic inspired by computer games of the late 80s. The core gameplay, with some similarities to other titles, is just far enough removed from genre standards to break it out from the pack.

The game is divided into day and night phases. The day is reserved for deckbuilding and preparing defenses for the evening attack. The player has a limited amount of time to explore different areas of the city for new spells, upgrades, side quests, and temporary enhancements. Advancing through the story gradually unlocks new areas, and scanning those areas reveals additional information.

The daytime portion offers a little bit more control over deck design than most deckbuilders offer. While the events are still random, each location features a predetermined set of possible events and the player gets a few choices along the way. It doesn't guarantee that anyone can get a specific build, but it does feel less frustrating when you can angle for events that, for example, remove or upgrade cards.

During the night, the player must protect a portal from waves of summoned monsters, using spells to damage enemies and deploying walls to slow them down. The gameplay is semi-real time, as turns come at regular intervals, with the player getting a fresh hand and renewed energy about every 15 seconds. Enemies have various innate traits, though aside from the ones that move around the field when damaged or temporarily become invincible, they don't have a huge impact.

The controls and interface are simple and there's not too much to figure out here. Energy is the major limiting factor - most spells are relatively costly, and some require a non-renewing resource that must be gained from destroying certain enemies. Energy management ends up being the bulk of the tactical consideration, as most viable builds pretty much play themselves. Combat is won between fights, with quick decision-making tipping the scales once the fight starts.

Overall, SPELLHACK!! is an interesting variation on the deckbuilder formula that might be a little too different for some. If you're willing to deal with a slight learning curve, it has a lot to offer.

SPELLHACK!! is available for PC via Steam. A copy was provided for this review.

That wraps up our look at all the indie games that caught our attention in February, be sure to come back each month for more of those sweet, sweet indie games you need to know about!