Hello and welcome to our roundup of this past weekend’s Tokyo Indie Games Summit 2025! This two-day event featured talks, presentations, and a ton of indie games on display. The 2024 event drew over 9,000 visitors, and the show seems to only be growing each year, with 2025 being its third year. While we at RPGFan were not able to attend in person, I wanted to highlight several promising titles that were on display for attendees or made some form of appearance in the event’s streamed footage.
From pixel art to hand-drawn, RPGs to visual novels, and plenty else, here are ten titles from Tokyo Indie Games Summit 2025 that caught my eye — and are sure to be of interest to many of you! I included links to our own coverage, Steam, official websites, and more where applicable to learn more or wishlist.
Algolemeth
To answer your first question, yes, this game’s title starts with “A-L” and not “A-I” as you’d imagine. Looking at battle screens, maps, and stats, Algolemeth looks like a retro-styled dungeon crawler RPG, but the battles are fully automated. As the player, your job is to learn enemy patterns and strategies and configure the AI of your golems to reach victory. While these days we have gotten used to AI use taking the form of “let someone else handle the details,” I appreciate that Algolemeth is really more about empowering you as a programmer to create strategies and optimize your methods.
Of course, dungeon diving wouldn’t be as rewarding without loot, and you’ll be able to find enhancement parts to boost your golems’ abilities, and modules that open up new action logic, giving you more options. It’s a creative take on the genre, and I can imagine players into programming or fine-tuning NPC AI — Final Fantasy XII‘s Gambit system comes to mind — could find something to sink their teeth into here.
Developer Medium-Rare Games is aiming to bring Algolemeth to Windows via Steam sometime in 2025.
BatteryNote
BatteryNote is a short-session upcoming visual novel with a delightful Game Boy Color-esque presentation. But despite the cute packaging, developer 72studio summaries the game as:
BatteryNote is a multi-ending sci-fi adventure visual novel game. You can recharge three robots with limited lifespans, bringing them back to life. Interact with them through conversations or experiment by applying high voltage. How they spend their final moments is entirely up to you.
So, you know, no pressure! You play a mechanic who has recharged these three unique robots — waitress J.S.C.A., combat robot Devind R7, and security robot Surverry. The gameplay is fully about conversing with these three how you choose, leading to multiple endings. A given session is only about 15 minutes, so it seems like BatteryNote will lend itself well to quick pick-up-and-play sessions even if you have limited time available.
BatteryNote is coming to Windows and macOS via Steam in 2025, and there’s a demo available now.
Cassette Boy
Cassette Boy caught my eye awhile ago due to its interesting visuals that are both charming and odd, the more you look at them, and the lovely presentation on the game’s website. While it’s easy to think the developers are going for a Game Boy aesthetic here, don’t mistake the presentation for simplistic gameplay, which is influenced by quantum mechanics and Einstein’s quote, “Do you really believe the moon isn’t there when you’re not looking at it?”
The game uses a system fittingly called “The Schrödinger System,” in which things only exist if you’re observing them. Like Fez (visually, anyway), Cassette Boy has a 2D appearance but is actually 3D, allowing you to twist and turn the map, affecting what you can see — and therefore, what “exists” — to solve puzzles. Beyond perspective puzzles, there are weapons to find and enemies and bosses to face as well.
Cassette Boy is planned for a 2025 release on Windows via Steam, and has a demo available as well!
Coffee Talk Tokyo
As someone who doesn’t often play visual novels, I found myself completely entranced by Coffee Talk in 2020. Whether it was because it was pure comfort in the early pandemic or just the absolute cozy vibes of a café, a favorite place of mine — let’s face it, it was both — the characters and setting found their way into my heart and never left. 2023’s Coffee Talk Episode 2 expanded on the first in the same Seattle location, with some new faces. Like the first game, it’s featured several times on our Rhythm Encounter podcast, most recently in our Lo-Fi episode.
And now, after two games in Seattle, Toge Productions is working on Coffee Talk Tokyo, bringing its charming visual novel and drink-making gameplay to a brand-new Tokyo café, frequented by humans and yokai alike (and maybe a familiar face or two as well). Beyond a new cast, including kappa salaryman Kenji, “happy-go-lucky but recently deceased It girl” Ayame, and the Barista’s assistant Vin, Coffee Talk Tokyo ups your drink making options with stencils to enhance your latte art.
Coffee Talk Tokyo is planned for a 2025 release on Windows via Steam (and presumably consoles in time, like the other games). And yes, thankfully, composer Andrew Jeremy is returning again to compose the soundtrack. My ears are ready.
Dungeon Antiqua
Sometimes retro games have mostly clear inspiration, and other times you get developers like Shiromofu Factory, who straight-up describe Dungeon Antiqua as “a simple RPG inspired by the Wizardry and Final Fantasy games of the 1980s and 1990s, in which players traverse dungeons by repeatedly exploring and developing their characters.”
But hey, no shade here — the game perfectly captures the aesthetic of the earliest Final Fantasy games, and it looks like it would feel right at home alongside those classics. That said, Dungeon Antiqua isn’t replicating the linear experience of those titles, instead focusing on the dungeon crawl through auto-generated maps, a wide variety of jobs, er… “professions,” and exploration. While the developer doesn’t directly make this connection, I could see this appealing greatly to fans of romhacks like FFIV: Free Enterprise if there proves to be enough variety and builds to hack your way through different scenarios. Maybe I’m totally off-base with that one, but I’m still here for the look, and any RPG with a range of job classes and the ability to have a Robert in your party are A-OK with me.
Dungeon Antiqua released on October 9th, 2024 for Windows and macOS via Steam (and runs on Steam Deck), iOS, and Android. While there is no Steam demo available, you can try a browser-based demo version on the game’s website. Despite already being available, I’m glad the game appeared at the Tokyo Indie Games Summit to get more eyes on it.
Elemasta
On the surface, Elemasta looks like a classic retro RPG, with throwback visuals of the 16-bit era. But you may be as surprised as I was to learn it’s an open-world RPG, which was much more of a rarity back in the day! Elemasta‘s Steam page as fairly light on details, but notably mentions the game’s 350+ characters (surely this includes playable and non-playable) and over 3000 types of gear. It sounds ambitious for sure, but I welcome ambitious indies, even if they didn’t feature 16-bit visuals that specifically make me think of Quintet titles like Soul Blazer and Illusion of Gaia. Yes please!
Elemasta is planned for release in 2025 for Windows via Steam, where you can grab a 15-minute demo to try it for yourself.
Guns Undarkness
Announced in 2021 by Persona and Shin Megami Tensei composer Shoji Meguro, Guns Undarkness recently graced our news section when it had a demo available for Steam Next Fest before being featured at Tokyo Indie Games Summit 2025. Sadly, while the demo is no longer available, the game is still looking cool! Described as a turn-based tactical JRPG inspired by the likes of Persona and Metal Gear Solid, I… I don’t really know why I’d have to say anything more to get your attention than that, really. But if you want more, our previous news article thoroughly summarizes the game’s setting and gameplay, so check that out!
Guns Undarkness is slated for an Early Access release on Steam sometime this spring, and the game is meant to be a roughly 10-hour affair. As you can imagine, this is one we will be keeping an eye on as development progresses.
Indomitable Blade
Tactical/strategy RPGs have been trying to hard to make a comeback, with the likes of recent Fire Emblem titles and 2024’s award-winning Unicorn Overlord making strong cases for the genre. Developer Nanbu Works, meanwhile, is working on Indomitable Blade, a game that is certainly less colorful than those other titles (and in fact, than many games at the Tokyo Indie Games Summit), but that’s by design, going off part of the official summary:
This game offers no exhilarating comebacks or legendary swords to change the tide of battle. All that remains is the desolate land and the people crushed by despair. Even if the world and pride they believe in are lost, do we still have the strength to move forward?
The strategic battle system allows you to attack any of an opposing unit’s parameters; attack their defense stat to lower it, or mitigate future damage by attacking their strength. Despite the harshness of the game’s setting, Indomitable Blade is busy-life-friendly, with battles designed to only require 5–10 minutes to complete, with roguelike elements that change the maps and characters you meet for each playthrough.
Indomitable Blade is coming to Windows via Steam sometime in 2025, and you can learn more on the game’s official website as well.
Project Solaris
Project Solaris simply oozes charm. From the character and world designs to the sublime animations (check out some of them on the game’s Steam page), it seems like an ambitious endeavor. Protagonist Solaris wants to embark on a quest to become a full-fledged mage, and part of that means bonding and battling with the little gray fella you see above, named Homu. Battles feature QTE and timed button presses, there’s a shopkeeping system to earn money and make equipment, the story seemingly plays out differently over the course of 100 days based on the card you draw each day (which affects objectives, who you meet, and even what ending you will see).
It really seems like the game has a lot going for it, but if all these systems and gameplay prove to be fun, Project Solaris could be something special. There’s a demo available now on Steam, with the game planned to release this September for Windows. You can also learn more about Project Solaris‘ world and cast on its official website.
Type-NOISE: Shonen Shojo
Another title we covered here somewhat recently, Type-NOISE: Shonen Shojo is a gorgeous visual novel coming from developer DankHearts (I honestly don’t know if I love the game’s visuals or this dev’s name more). You’ll explore the labyrinthine Scramble City, solving puzzles and seeking out “Noise Shards” to awaken peoples’ memories. The colorful and eclectic cast is matched by the visuals themselves, presenting a fascinating environment that seems to fluctuate often, between dialogue, jigsaw-like puzzles, and sometimes a… Street Fighter-esque battle?
I don’t know what all is going on, but you can come one step closer than me by trying the game’s demo on Steam. Type-NOISE: Shonen Shojo is coming to Windows via Steam later in 2025, and you can learn more about the gameplay and cast on the game’s official website.
And that does it for this round of indie highlights! I still encourage you to visit the Tokyo Indie Games Summit website where you can see the full lineup of titles that were featured at the show. I focused where I could on games with at least some English language support on display, but there were a ton of other titles across several genres that may catch your eye beyond what’s here, so don’t miss out. Also, most of the games featured at the event can be found on the Tokyo Indie Games Summit Steam event page.
We appreciate the opportunity to work with the organizers and cover Tokyo Indie Games Summit 2025 remotely, and as always, will continue keeping you up to date on these and many other RPG and adventure games — big and small — so stay awhile, won’t ya?
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