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Six indie highlights from the MIX Summer Game Showcase

  • Writer: Nate Hermanson
    Nate Hermanson
  • Jun 3
  • 7 min read
The MIX Summer Game Showcase key art. Four video game consoles with bodies descend on a city landscape.

Summer Game Fest season is officially here! As usual, we welcomed in the week of summer gaming showcases with the help of Justin Woodward and the Gueril— oh wait. Not the Guerrilla Collective, but the rebranded and reloaded Media Indie Exchange Summer Game Showcase. The MIX has been behind producing the Guerrilla Collective digital showcase since 2020 and has decided to rebrand the event, likely to align it better with the in-person events they've been running for even longer now.


New name, same dedication to games, the MIX Summer Game Showcase was jam-packed with exactly 60 unique announcements to get us excited about the future of the games industry and the people making games.


Because that's a lot to parse through, we've picked out six games from The MIX Summer Game Showcase that we thought deserving of a deeper look — and most of them have demos you can play today.


The key art of Army Moves Overdrive. The name of the game is embossed in a metallic sheet. Underneath, in vibrant orange text, is the subtitle Overdrive. It floats over the smoke clouds of an explosion.

Developer: Dunwich Studio

Publisher: Dunwich Studio

Genre: 1986 Commodore 64 remake and silly action game

Release Date: TBA


Army Moves Overdrive is a fascinating remake from Dunwich Studio with some powerful representation resonance. The Spain studio's embarked on remaking this 1986 classic because of its importance to the region. Army Moves originally came from Dinamic Software, one of the studios that helped Spain rise to prominence in the game development scene — becoming the second-largest 8-bit software producers in Europe — in the '80s and '90s in an era known as the "Golden Age of Spanish Software."


We've seen and enjoyed remakes of '80s classics with Alex Kidd in Miracle World DX, a game the presenting developer Ramon Nafria must have some affinity for, as he introduced Army Moves with Kidd's box pointedly placed on the couch behind him — and we love to see that era celebrated all these years later.


Stories like these — seeing a studio honor its nation's legacy and, generally, gaming history through the art of game development — are what make the games industry so beautiful.


A look at the original Army Moves on Commodore 64 (right) and Dunwich Studio's remake (left).


Beyond all that, Army Moves Overdrive just looks like incredibly silly fun. It's over the top chaos where army jeeps go jumping over barriers and where soldiers fire rifles that seem to be actively breaking their backs. We're curious to see how much has changed from the original and how much Dunwich Studio has stamped their creativity on the project. It's one we're keeping an eye on, no doubt.


The key art of MechAnimals. Four heroic animals charge forward in the sky from within mech suits. In a red mech with giant fists, a bear smiles. In a clawed robot, a blue cat grits her teeth. In a robot with giant ball hands, a yellow bird raises his fist and yells maniacally. And in a giant pink and white robot an adorable penguin screams.

Developer: BouncyBrain

Publisher: BouncyBrain

Genre: Mech beat-em-up roguelike

Release Date: TBA


The MIX Summer Game Showcase is full of fascinating stories. MechAnimals is a game that's being prominently broadcast as coming from the world of feature animation, with team members whose works include Kung Fu Panda, Mario Movie, and Minions. Talk about some incredible animation pedigree to put behind a brand new game.


MechAnimals is a game about adorably tiny lil' animal dudes fighting back against an evil, AI-driven and diesel-powered megacorporation, with the help of their steam-powered giant mech suits. You've got an adorable bear, penguin, cat, and bird who waddle across the battlefield to take their giant hammers, katanas, and wrenches to these evil robots before eventually calling down a giant mech suit to really do some damage.


An in-game screenshot of MechAnimals. In a meadow, various small cute animals do battle with robots. In the center, a bear hops into a giant mech suit. To its left, a small bird does a forward flip and a small penguin approaches a robot with a giant hammer. To its right, a cat smashes down on a robot from within a mech suit.

It's a classic sidescrolling beat-em-up but with some interesting roguelike mechanics. For one, as you clear each screen and wipe out waves of enemies, you get randomized shops that can net you items or weapons for your tiny fighter or random upgrades for your mech's abilities. But the more interesting manifestation of randomness comes in the game's near-constant 90-second timer that, when depleted, adds a random effect to your current run. It might add more of a certain enemy type, modify enemy abilities, or just about anything that makes your life a little bit harder.


It's fun bashin' action with some surprising innovation in how it randomizes your runs — and it's one with a demo out today.


The key art of Captain Wayne: Vacation Desperation. A group of enemies stand in wait against a checkerboard floor. A dinner table with a healing fish and shots of whiskey stands to the side. The game's logo is broken up with a golden skull wearing shades.

Developer: Ciaran Games

Publisher: Silver Lining Interactive

Genre: Badass retro shooter

Release Date: 2025


I feel like I've been through a retro shooter renaissance. The genre always felt a little too dated when I was younger and it kept me away from the classics. But seeing how the community continues to innovate on the decades-old engine, and finally playing some of the remasters that have come out in recent years, I've become a bit of a convert.


It's easy to find yourself changed from within when indies deliver games as elaborate and undeniable as like Ciaran Games' Captain Wayne, dressing it up with incredible cartoon aesthetics and putting you in the shoes of a hero with a shotgun for an arm.


An in-game screenshot of Captain Wayne: Vacation Desperation. From the first person perspective, the player uppercuts incoming boxing enemies. One goes flying in the air and the other flinches in reaction. They fight in some sort of factory setting.

Captain Wayne's current demo offers a few different looks at the experience with a wave-based challenge mode, a sample of the game's campaign, and an endless mode that allows you to mow down endless grunts with your metal gun arm.


This game is just pure unadulterated fun powered by goofy machismo and old-school vibes. It's one we can easily recommend wishlisting and testing out for yourself.


The key art for A Gentlemen's Dispute. A variety of men in various colored suits are in combat. A blue-suited man hangs from the bottom of an old-school airplane that descends toward a yellow-suited man. The yellow-suited man is firing a rocket forward at a pink-suited man. The pink-suited man has finished a baseball bat swing that has sent a red-suited man flying into a bush. They fight in a beautiful garden setting.

Developer: Blast Furnace Games

Publisher: Blast Furnace Game

Genre: Chaotic physics-based fisticuffs simulator

Release Date: 2025


Speaking of goofy violence, let me introduce you to A Gentlemen's Dispute, a physics-based brawler with an emphasis on fisticuffs and monocles. In an era where even the silliest of games can become sweaty (ahem, Party Animals), it's kind of fun to see a game embrace its absurdity in the way A Gentlemen's Dispute has.


It's a proper frivolous brawler where players pick up randomly summoned weapons to unleash hell on their fellow gentlemen, trying to be the last one standing — and in between rounds of chaos, draw a card that gives them a special ability for the rest of the match. Those abilities range from dropping bombs when hit to gaining a second jump to having a random chance to instantly win.


An in-game screenshot of A Gentlemen's Dispute. A purple suit- and top hat-clad man swings a large baseball bat at a blue-suited man. They stand on a beach with various umbrellas posted in the sand and warning signs mentioning sharks waiting in the waters.

A Gentlemen's Dispute is reminiscent of the party games of old, emphasizing being fun and frothy above all else. My favorite part of playing the demo was the gentlemanly jump ability, in which the players toss their body forward at the heavily destructible environments or at the newly spawned items in the world. You lose all control of your character's ragdoll in the process before gracefully picking yourself back up, and you can even hurt your opponents with the leap. It's a great time, and I can already envision game nights centered around this dandy little game. This, too, has a demo out now!


The key art for Troublemaker 2: Beyond Dream. A collage of characters stand and pose with various emotions. Notably, they surround a masked man wielding a knife. At the bottom of the collage, two men stand prominently. A black-haired young man with a red jacket and light skin stands in a fighter's pose. The other young man has white hair and pumps one fist up with a wristwatch on.

Developer: Gamecom Team

Publisher: indie.io

Genre: Open world comedy action

Release Date: TBA


It's always exciting when we get to see a follow-up to a game we previously covered because it means, 1) the indie team that made the first game has found some sort of groove they're passionate enough to continue exploring, and 2) we get even more of what we liked the first time.


And that's what made me smile about seeing Troublemaker 2: Beyond Dream during the MIX Showcase. Gamecom Team had a ton of great ideas in their attempt at recreating the Yakuza experience with an Indonesian flair, and this sequel is only showing how much they've grown since then. It's bigger, it's bolder, it's so impressive.


An in-game screenshot of Troublemaker 2: Beyond Dream. A group of friends sit in a music studio around an electric keyboard. In the back, a guitar and a drum kit are set up against the wall. In the foreground, an animated portrait of a woman wearing a hijab smiles and claps her hands as she says: "Alright, we can do it, we're just getting started!"

Troublemaker 2: Beyond Dream continues the story of lifelong fighter Budi and his group of friends surviving day to day in the fictionalized Indonesian city of South Jayakarta, but it also introduces a whole new batch of characters through the game's second protagonist: Jordan. Jordan is a member of the band Beyond Dream and he and his friends are doing all they can to make it big as musicians, performing on the streets and going live with their phone for audiences worldwide.


Troublemaker 2 seems to be everything we liked about their Yakuza-like recreations in the first game, but amped up to 11. The combat is tighter, and the world is bigger, branching out from a school and its surroundings to an entire city. It's worth a look for fans of the Like a Dragon series and has a demo out that you can play right now.


The key art for Billie Bust Up. A long-eared goat smiles while riding on a flying broom. An excited orange fox screams from the goat's shoulder while a nervous axolotl wearing a necklace hangs on from below with a panicked expression. They all fly through the clouds.

Developer: Giddy Goat Games

Publisher: Humble Games

Genre: Musical 3D platformer

Release Date: TBA


After seeing this game make the rounds on social media numerous times, I've been looking for an excuse to spotlight this musical platformer. With their MIX appearance and updated demo, I found the opportunity I was waiting for.


Billie Bust Up is a 3D platformer made up of giant level-wide setpieces and boss fights that are set to entirely original tracks — each one reminiscent of animated classics where villains monologue and gleefully toy with the timid hero, pushing them into a dark corner before going in for the kill. Their first demo featured a chase sequence where an evil shadow sang about all the ways the adorable long-eared Billie goat hero could die; the current one features a lonely puppeteer who wants to control Billie and make them stay as their friend forever.


An in-game screenshot of Billie Bust Up. A long-eared goat flips through the air to dodge incoming magical mops that are flying across a stage made up to look like the deck of a ship. A puppet character dressed like a pirate floats in the background, manipulating these things, while singing: "You'll swab the deck and play your part for me."

It's sneaky difficult, but the way the music directly influences the boss and level design (and vice versa) is so genius. The tracks they've released so far are so infectious that I am already asking for a soundtrack vinyl before the game's even released.


Disney fans and musical fans alike would do well to keep this on their radar and give the demo a try.

I'm so excited to say that Summer Game Fest is finally here, and we have a whole lot more coverage coming: See the schedule. As always, we remind you to wishlist any of the games that catch your fancy during this week, because that goes a long way toward supporting these (usually) smaller teams. Stay tuned! It's only beginning.

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