9 Upcoming Indie Games on PC, December 2026

In Hela you play a small mouse helping a sick witch keep her forest in balance. The open world takes its look from the nature of northern Sweden, and you explore it on foot, gathering ingredients, brewing potions and solving physics puzzles with the help of your backpack.

The big draw is co-op. A friend can join online or in local split screen, which is rare for an adventure like this. Most of what you do is help the animals and people you meet, which slowly heals the land. It launches on PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S and Nintendo Switch 2 on the same day.

Blind Descent is a survival game set deep under the surface of Mars. You go down to look for a missing team, scan the alien life around you, gather resources, craft tools and build a base, while the cave slowly tries to take your buildings back.

Up to four players can play together. The unusual part is a choice that runs through the game: lean on science to stay human, or let yourself mutate to fit into the ecosystem. It enters Early Access on December 2, and Game Rant reports a story of 10 to 15 hours.

Apple Crumble comes from the team behind Duck Detective. It's your grandma's 84th birthday, and someone at the party wants her dead. You walk around your childhood home, talk to a messy family and a strange man who has turned up in your bedroom, and work out who to trust before tea.

It's a short game, 60 to 90 minutes by the developer's count, and every character is voiced. The Steam page calls it creepy-cosy, which fits: a murder plot told with plenty of jokes. If Duck Detective's mix of comedy and clues worked for you, this is the one to watch.

Aeterna Lucis is the sequel to Aeterna Noctis, a metroidvania with a reputation for very demanding platforming. You play the Queen of Light and explore a large, hand-drawn world where every area connects, gaining powers that open new paths and fighting bosses along the way.

This time there are two modes. Aeterna Mode balances exploring and fighting, and Lucis Mode turns the platforming and the bosses up for experienced players. You don't need to have played the first game, and Gematsu lists the price at $24.99.

The Road of Dust and Sorrow is a side-scrolling pixel art horror game inspired by '90s survival horror. A crop that was meant to end famine has turned people into feral creatures called Dusters, and you play Katherine, trying to get her daughter Ava somewhere safe.

You move through empty streets, offices and houses, solve puzzles to open new paths and survive run-ins with the Dusters. A cult leader known as the Pastor is also after you. The Steam page calls it a cozy horror adventure, which is not a mix you see often.

Guns of Eschaton is a soulslike first-person shooter set in a burning, occult version of the American West. It was designed around the vision of art director Viktor Antonov, known for Half-Life 2 and Dishonored, who worked on it before his death in 2025.

This is not a fast shooter. You study each monster's weakness, switch between bullet types, time your parries and count every shot, because ammunition and mistakes both cost you. You can play alone or in co-op, and it launches the same day on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S.

Wonderfall takes place in Paris in 1920, while the city slowly turns to sand. You play Léon, an orphan who can shape that sand, and you use it to open paths, slip past corrupted creatures and solve puzzles in the ruins.

Most of the game is about exploring, from métro tunnels to the sandy rooftops of Notre-Dame, and finding out what the force called Entropy really is. Gematsu puts it at six to eight hours, so it fits into a weekend.

Hexrite is a stylized action platformer that openly looks back at the PS2 years. You play a sorcerer working through a ritual to summon a dead god, and you fight by casting domes of magic that change the ground around you: paper creatures, poison clouds or a slippery floor of bubbles.

Between fights you platform through haunted cities and floating towers, bouncing on jellyfish and gliding over fire. Along the way you meet shadowy gods who offer power for a price, and the deals you make can change how the story ends.

There Are No Ghosts at the Grand is part house flipper, part ghost hunt and part musical. You inherit a crumbling English hotel and have 30 days and nights to fix it. By day you sandblast, paint and fire furniture into place with talking power tools.

At night the same tools turn into weapons against the spirits in the building: you vacuum up ghosts and spray paint to reveal the invisible ones. The village outside has shops to fix up too, from a fish and chip shop to a florist. It opens in Early Access on December 16.