London's indie gaming dev scene is buzzing: Here's three new must-play games to prove it
London gaming in the faraway towns…
Amid the big gaming noise of bland triple-A bluster, big-publisher mergers and even bigger mass layoffs, you can sometimes forget that there’s thousands of small creative teams around the world slaving away on some really interesting things for you to play, see and do.
Which is why the Convergence Games Showcase was launched, running must-see events three times a year that spotlight the best new indie games currently in the pipeline, broadcast live on Twitch and YouTube and hosted and commentated on by expert game streamers.
Their latest event was yesterday (16th July), which showed off 70 games either out now or in development across two-and-half hours of live gameplay, exclusive trailers and unseen demos. And of the games shown from 29 different countries, three of the best were from the English capital.
Here are some must-play titles with London backing to subtly drop into your next Steam binge or pub convo…
1. The Mermaid Mask by SFB Games
London-based developer and publisher SFB Games, founded by brothers Tom and Adam Vian, have been pulling up virtual trees since the Flash and browser-game days. With notable wins such as Nintendo collab ‘Snipperclips: Cut It Out, Together!’ for the Switch launch and the critically acclaimed survival horror ‘Crow Country’ under their belts, though, they’ve established their own distinctive style of hand-drawn artwork, quirky humour and inventive puzzles.
The latest in their point-and-click Detective Grimoire mystery series is The Mermaid Mask, which launched yesterday as part of the Convergence showcase, alongside news that it will soon be coming to Switch and PlayStation platforms as well as the humble PC.
A locked-room mystery in the world’s strangest submarine, it has all of the brothers’ trademarks as well as the kind of heady-scratching problem-solving reminiscent of Lucasarts’ finest. A credit to the capital.
2. MAVRIX by Cascade Interactive
There’s nothing more British than pedalling as fast as you can over mud bumps till you fall flat on your face. Headquartered in London, publisher Cascade Interactive’s latest game, MAVRIX, lets you do just that, and more besides. The new high-speed downhill mountain-bike sim sandbox, created in partnership with Leamington Spa dev Third Kind Games and Milton Keynes-born pro MTB rider and Red Bull athlete Matt Jones, is as rad as rides get.
Launching out of Early Access yesterday, too, as part of the Convergence showcase, the 1.0 update of the multiplayer open-world biking behemoth showed off new features such as jump trails, custom frames and (very 2026) sponsors. It was one of the key titles handed the live demo treatment, with bike-gaming expert and Twitch/YouTube creator SamTaborGaming giving it a one-hour test drive after the show. If Tony Hawk was training to be a Deliveroo driver, this would be his go-to.
3. Remote Control by Weekend Games
If you’ve ever daydreamed about the mundanity of your office job, this one’s for you. Our third capital craic of note is from Weekend Games, part of London-based marketing and publishing agency Secret Sauce, and it’s pure City boy hell. Control remote workers from the comfort of your desk in a dark mix of old-school dungeon crawling and psychological horror through the truly British terror of typing efficiently.
Weekend champions games from a lot of British devs (including Echobreaker from Surrey’s Upstream Arcade) but Remote Control, from Brighton developer Canteen Games, looks the business, somehow both mundanely familiar and unsettlingly dystopian. It’s launching in autumn, so best add it to your To-Do list now.
Catch up on the rest of the Convergence Games Showcase on-demand at their website or on their YouTube page. For the full list of wishlistable games from the show, visit their Steam hub.
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