Unique Upcoming Games Spotted At Indie Live Expo Winter 2025
You know you’re approaching the end of the year when it’s time for another Indie Live Expo Winter Edition. For the uninitiated, Indie Live Expo is a program that broadcasts the hottest indie game news from Japan and around the world. Unlike other showcases, Indie Live Expo is comprehensive and provides lots of information about each game. The broadcast is also available in Japanese, Chinese, English and Korean, making it a lot more accessible to fans from East Asia. Hundreds of games were highlighted at Indie Live Expo Winter 2025, let’s take a look at some of our favourites!
Pain Pain Go Away!
Does talking and sometimes writing down your feelings help you get over your sadness? Pain Pain Go Away! seems to think so, as it is a therapeutic typing adventure. Players take on the role of a counselor at a small clinic which utilises a special therapy device called P2GA. With this device, you can dive deep into your patients’ subconscious and heal emotional wounds by typing their trauma away. This is a really interesting twist on the typing genre that also has a rich story expanding on mental health themes.
We, Junk Artists
Multiplayer games are all the rage these days, so we’re proud to highlight one that puts your creativity to the test. We, Junk Artists is a collage-and-guess game for up to six players where “junk” is used instead of pen, paper and paints. It’s the perfect game for those who can’t draw as you can use junk pieces like wheels, spoons and scissors to create the image you have in mind. Build out adorable animals, go full abstract or even animate your materials — this is your art after all! Just make sure your teammates can correctly guess what you’re making.
XX Fulfillment Center
Packing games are usually associated with cosy vibes, but what about a packing game that turns the pressure on? This is XX Fulfillment Center, where players are hired as temp staff at a, well, fulfillment center, and must pack as many boxes as possible to maintain their job. These packages contain the happiness of your customers, so make sure you tape them up properly and double-check for defects. As the game continues, the center evolves and employs faster conveyor belts, more damaged goods and new regulations to keep pace with. The job itself might be mundane but the game does offer exploration points which encourages the player to find their own happiness and shape their own future beyond the assembly line.
Deck of Harvest
Farming games and deck building mechanics have also been increasingly popular over the past few years, so it’s exciting to see a game like Deck of Harvest which combines the genres together. As an earnest farmer, players must meticulously look after their farmland by building out an optimal farm deck and maximising their harvest. With a variety of crops and tools, plus a finite space of nine plots of land, budding farmers must cast a strategic lens over the game to ensure a bountiful harvest in each season.
Furikake☆Spacey OVA: Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Philippines Edition
There are a lot of visual novel fans on our team, and yet we still don’t know how we would explain Furikake☆Spacey OVA: Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Philippines Edition. The game revolves around Saatan and her friends, who have had to evacuate a sinking Japan and end up living their lives as refugees in Southeast Asia. Along the way, they eat delicious Southeast Asian food, embark on a variety of mini-games like shooters and quizzes and one of the girls named Kagami turns into a tuk-tuk (a Thai-style three-wheeled motorbike). The plot is extremely wild and zany, but there’s truly no game out there like this, which is why we had to include it.
Furikake☆Spacey OVA: Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Philippines Edition is a sequel to a Neo-Showa comedy visual novel named Furikake Spacey produced by Yonton Tomachin.
Her Trees: Puzzle Dream
A game that’s sure to intrigue and unwind a tired brain is Her Trees: Puzzle Dream. This is a cosy black-and-white puzzle game where players must move and combine objects to solve puzzles. This is a short and sweet game that features over 40 unique puzzles that can be solved purely through intuition and observation. There’s little to no text and no puzzles that rely on sound. Combined with the monochromatic nature of the game, it seems to be quite accessible to most players.
