Most of us play games to get away from work. Moonlighter 2: The Endless Vault hands you a new job instead, with brutal hours, and somehow that ends up feeling relaxing.
Digital Sun's sequel launched on September 2, 2026, published by 11 bit studios, on PlayStation, Xbox, Switch and PC. Joseph Hooper at The Indie Informer has spent time with it. His verdict? It's a familiar blanket with a new texture. Or, as he puts it, a shiny new tunic.
Two Jobs, One Loop
If you missed the first game, here's the pitch. By day you run a shop. By night you raid dungeons for loot to stock your shelves. It's part shopkeeper sim, part dungeon-crawling roguelite.
Bon Vivant: Plan the Perfect Party wants you to become the most talked-about host in 1920s Paris. It's a strategy game, but the battlefield is your living room. Your weapons are canapés, armchairs and a carefully picked guest list.
A playtest is now taking sign-ups, and I have to admit, the premise got me. Most strategy games ask you to conquer something. This one asks you to throw a good party.
One Hour, One Party, No Pressure (Okay, Some Pressure)
Each run in Bon Vivant is built around hosting a party that lasts about an hour. The developers make a point of saying that every choice matters, and that seems to be the core hook. You decide what food gets served, what furniture fills the room and, most importantly, who gets an invitation.
Some games want you to save the world. Littlehaven just wants you to make a small town a little nicer to live in. Honestly, that sounds like a pretty good deal to me.
The game was playable at Gamescom, the big annual games trade show in Germany. The folks over at Indie Games Plus got their hands on it there and came away charmed. It's a cozy builder about community, decoration and slowly turning a quiet village into somewhere people actually want to be.
The Town's Official Decorator
Here's the setup. You play as a very handy person who has just moved to a small town. Nobody hands you a crisis to fix or a deadline to beat. There's very little pressure on you at all. You spend your days wandering around and making the whole village better, bit by bit.
Garden of Love is a romance visual novel that swaps the usual flowers-and-chocolates cliché for something a little more literal. Every love interest is a plant. Not in a weird, sentient-houseplant way, but as a symbol of who they are and what kind of relationship might grow between them and the main character.
The beta is now taking sign-ups, and anyone curious can request access ahead of launch.
Starting Over, One Bus Ride at a Time
The heroine here is Blossom, a young woman still getting over a broken heart. That setup is refreshingly grounded. There's no magic academy or royal court. Instead, the game follows her through ordinary routines: shifts at work, classes at college, and the daily commute on the bus.
Some city builders want you sweating over traffic graphs at two in the morning. Cotton City looks like it would rather hand you a cup of tea and a ball of yarn.
This casual city builder has an alpha build out now for Windows. Its big hook is obvious the second you see it. Every house, road, tree and tiny car looks crocheted and stitched onto a fabric canvas. It's the kind of art style that makes you want to lean closer to the monitor.
Knitting Together a Town
Behind the soft textures sits a very familiar structure. Cotton City borrows heavily from the classic SimCity games, and it doesn't pretend otherwise.
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