In the eyes of most ordinary people choosing to visit Makuhari Messe in late September for "Tokyo Game Show 2026" (hereinafter referred to as TGS), the 2026 TGS had something somewhat special about it.
For ordinary local audiences, this TGS coincided with an eleven-year-rare extended holiday, giving them more leisure time to travel from farther regions; for the event organizer "CESA," this was also the most special TGS in history—thirty years ago, the first "Tokyo Game Show" was held at Tokyo International Exhibition Center, and thirty years later, it has transformed into one of the most watched game exhibitions in Asia and even globally.
The special milestone of the 30th anniversary and the rare extended holiday resulted in the longest 5-day schedule in TGS history—unfortunately, human plans cannot compete with fate, as the approach of a powerful typhoon completely disrupted the exhibition plans of both the organizers and exhibitors.
Players' holiday schedules were also thrown into disarray. The sudden disappearance of the fifth day forced them to temporarily compress or advance their plans,反而 making this year's TGS exhibit unprecedented popularity. Media from overseas and local Japanese players had to queue up at various booths, striving to seize the first-hand demo opportunities.
Following TGS conventions in recent years, Halls 05, 06, and 07, located in the center of the entire Makuhari Messe, remain the primary target for most players—major publishers like PlayStation, KONAMI, Bandai Namco, and CAPCOM have firmly held their ground here for years, refusing to budge.
This has led to some unspoken yet genuinely interesting phenomena: despite having prime locations, booths next to these major publishers are often less popular. Players are too easily drawn to the elaborately packaged stages of the big companies nearby, and smaller publishers fear losing traffic... For a long time, these booths have served, to varying degrees, as mere foils.
But at this year's unprecedentedly popular TGS, this phenomenon underwent some subtle changes due to the emergence of certain factors.
In Hall 07, the new "Onimusha" had been released just two days prior, and the latest "Monster Hunter Wilds: Overcome," "Dragon's Dogma 2: Dark Awakener," and "Mega Man: Double Overload" had fully sustained its momentum. Thanks to the deliberately semi-open demo station design, players who couldn't get in line were stretching their necks as long as possible, eager to catch a glimpse of something fresh.
But perhaps unimaginably, right opposite the crowded CAPCOM booth, a "small publisher" far smaller in scale managed to attract the attention of passing players in a simpler way—or rather, under the influence of a very conspicuous and iconic yellow color scheme, it was hard not to notice them.
They are PLAYISM, the indie game publisher I once visited in Osaka.
PLAYISM is Japan's most seasoned indie game publisher. In Japan, it's hard to find a publisher that understands indie games and the indie spirit better than they do—they don't show strong regional or cultural biases when selecting games, nor do they exclusively pick mature themes or genres. Because, rather than focusing on which games sell better, they prioritize which games embody the indie spirit more strongly. This selection method indirectly makes it difficult for PLAYISM to become a "wealthy" publisher.
You can see this from their booth design.
Unlike those big publishers with ample budgets, PLAYISM has always opted for the most basic booth setup—a striking yellow base, a large screen looping game trailers, and dozens of machines for demos constitute Everythinggj they need for their exhibition presence.
Yet this straightforward booth model is also PLAYISM's greatest advantage: players willing to stop at their booth often don't care about visual fidelity; rather than whether a game is "universal," they prefer to focus on "what makes this game special."
If you know enough about today's indie game market, you will realize: this is by no means a sufficiently safe approach.
At this year's PLAYISM booth, there was a game so full of "personality" that every player who experienced it wore a complex expression—this game is truly unique. Without concrete text or dramatic presentations, for the most part, players simply assume the role of a somewhat depressed man, wandering aimlessly through the streets of Japan.
Even among all the works exhibited by PLAYISM, "A Passing in the Night" is considered a somewhat strange "walking simulator." Everythinggj about it appears quite abstract—it doesn't force players to do anything, only requiring you to wander the streets in your preferred manner. However, this wandering isn't truly purposeless—after an hour, depending on the player's actions, the game will reach different endings.
"A Passing in the Night" is a very "PLAYISM" game—it carries a strong artistic quality, and its core experience is built around the act of "nighttime walking," which lacks a clear objective. Consequently, it doesn't give players many concrete instructions, leaving many confused upon starting, repeatedly asking themselves: Who am I? Where am I?
This strange experience stems from the authorial elements within "A Passing in the Night's" indie game framework. At the event, I met the game's two developers—a Japanese couple influenced by overseas culture. They told me the game's inspiration came from their peculiar habit of "going for walks late at night when it's quiet," and the many surreal descriptions in the game derive from what they saw and felt during these walks.
"A Passing in the Night" is special, special enough to represent the most "extreme" side of PLAYISM. But more often than not, PLAYISM is also keen on games that appear simple and pure yet still possess sufficient creativity.
For example, "Skate Knight," exhibited alongside other titles this time, is just such a game. As a small-scale title that debuted back in 2024, "Skate Knight" is simple in terms of game rules, system architecture, and visual presentation. Players only need to control a knight riding a skateboard, switching back and forth between three lanes to advance, with the protagonist's sole objective being to defeat enemies blocking the path.
"Skate Knight" incorporates light "roguelike elements," yet its control experience is very close to "Vampire Survivors"-style games—whenever players accumulate enough experience points on the track, they level up and gain a skill that makes the character stronger. These skills activate automatically at certain frequencies, while players only need to control when to switch lanes, handle enemy attacks, or pick up dropped rewards.
This relatively low barrier to entry happens to be "Skate Knight's" biggest advantage at various offline exhibitions—even if you've never played this type of game before, you can smoothly understand and get into it. Simple and easy-to-understand rules, combined with a cute cartoon pixel art style, mean players trying out the demo don't have to bear much pressure from start to finish, picking up and putting down the controller as they please, earning PLAYISM's booth plenty of goodwill from passersby.
Of course, if you belong to the "hardcore" player category from the start, this year's PLAYISM booth also features some works worth paying extra attention to. These titles not only severely test players' operational skills but also demand patience for repeated challenges.
Among the more representative titles is a 2D platformer called "Iron Spikes," which is also a highly difficult Metroidvania-style game with unique systems and action mechanics.
For players familiar with PLAYISM, "Iron Spikes" is not an unfamiliar game. Back in 2023, its development team had already released an indie game called "Rust Moss." Its biggest feature was that the protagonist possessed an elastic rope capable of firing in multiple directions and attaching to specific surfaces—"Iron Spikes" inherits most of the core elements from its predecessor. Players must not only control the launch angle of the rope to move at high speed between platforms but also consider the impact of physical properties like "gravity" and "recoil" on movement during gameplay.
Using ropes to move quickly across the map while engaging enemies with firearms might not sound too difficult, but because this type of action gameplay is so rare, it inevitably becomes a comprehensive challenge to reaction speed, operational skill, and even awareness for first-time players.
Interestingly, this ultra-high-difficulty gaming experience has become the greatest charm of "Iron Spikes." Its core audience really enjoys this challenge—on the very first day of the convention, "Iron Spikes" also released a free demo on Steam allowing players to experience the early content. This demo quickly achieved a 99% positive review rate, a quite rare occurrence for early access demos.
As for works like "Iron Spikes" that established cooperative relationships with PLAYISM starting from their previous titles, we can actually see quite a few on this year's booth—most of them had already accumulated sufficient experience and technology while developing their predecessors, and how to introduce new systems and control development scale became the biggest focus points for sequel development.
For instance, the development team behind "Idol Manager," a management simulation game that sparked considerable discussion in 2021, brought the latest sequel in the series, "Idol Manager: Virtual Star Path," this year.
Unlike its predecessor, which focused on cultivating traditional female idol groups, "Idol Manager: Virtual Star Path" introduces the concept of "virtual idols," which has become deeply ingrained in recent years. As the manager of an idol agency, players not only need to arrange training and performance schedules for the idols under the agency but also manage the daily work of these virtual idols from aspects such as "social media" and "daily live streams." Additionally, you can see plot designs unique to virtual idols in this work, such as "avatar design" and "motion capture."
Of course, as the biggest selling point of the predecessor "Idol Manager," this installment also devotes significant attention to depicting the various scandals occurring beneath the glamorous surface—these idols, who never show their real faces and live behind virtual avatars, also bring various troubles and even expose scandals. As the player acting as the manager, you must find the most appropriate way to quell scandals while maintaining public image and star popularity, but as the agency grows larger, this task becomes increasingly difficult.
And if the team behind "Idol Manager: Virtual Star Path" further introduced new concepts and enriched existing gameplay based on the nearly complete game architecture of its predecessor, then the team behind "Sea Sniffers" poured all their accumulated technical experience into another creative idea.
To be honest, "Sea Sniffers" is my personal favorite game at this year's PLAYISM booth. Because, whether in gameplay or concept, it provides a very intuitive sense of "fun"—this "fun" is even more impressive than their previous work, which was already quite "absurd."
Prior to this, the team behind "Sea Sniffers" was best known for the pixel-art beat 'em up shooter "Goose Goose Duck"—this action game themed around "geese piloting mechs" was also published by PLAYISM. Players take on the role of an intergalactic goose wielding a machine gun, firing at full blast to sweep away evil forces in the universe. Although "Goose Goose Duck" might initially remind people of "Metal Slug," after playing it, you'll discover that the developers behind it are not the type to settle for imitation; they always have their own ideas.
And "Sea Sniffers" is like the concretization of this idea.
This is a fishing-themed RPG that combines action, exploration, and narrative attributes. Players take on the roles of a special fishing duo—a human responsible for casting the rod and steering the boat, and a seal responsible for going underwater to "fish."
The most special aspect of "Sea Sniffers" is probably its depiction of the "fishing" process—you don't simply cast your rod and wait for fish to bite. In the game, what players actually do is "cast the line," then control the seal to search underwater for the prey they wish to capture.
The logic is simple, but fishing is hardly that easy. To successfully catch them, the seal must use every means available, even learning a set of skills and bringing the best equipment. Thus, "Sea Sniffers" became a game where players can play as a seal, delivering continuous punches in the deep sea to stun prey before hauling them onto the fishing boat—I believe this is one of the few fishing games on the market that truly allows players to "fight with fish."
What attracts me most to "Sea Sniffers" is its wildly imaginative game concept. Turning such an incredible, almost exaggerated idea into reality is precisely the greatest charm of "indie games." In this process, PLAYISM's unique eye for selecting games also plays a very important role.
Regarding this point, a brief look at the five PLAYISM-published games introduced above reveals that they differ significantly in production scale, genre, art style, and team background. Among them are even unconventional titles like "A Passing in the Night," which are full of the creators' personal expression and emotional depth.
In fact, besides the five games mentioned above, PLAYISM also brought several other special games, including the 2D horror adventure game "Midnight Train: New Moon" from Spanish developers, the roguelike exploration game "Million Depth" where you play as a "white-haired beautiful girl" descending hundreds of floors, the quirky puzzle adventure game "Full Stomach Escape Plan" featuring various food-based puzzles, the console version of Jonathan Blow's new work "The Order of Sinking Stars," and the anime-style 3D action game "Enki" developed by a Taiwanese team over nearly ten years—to celebrate the release of the Switch 2 version of "Enki," PLAYISM even prepared a separate demo booth outside the main booth and placed the game's promotional poster at the most prominent entrance of Hall 09, where indie games gather.
There is no connection or pattern可循 among these works, but if one must find a commonality, it is that they are all very "indie" and very "special," so much so that you can hardly find another game on the market with "repetitive" gameplay—this is precisely the important reason why PLAYISM can survive in a fierce market environment, exhibit proudly next to major publishers' booths, and not fear having its attention stolen.
Because PLAYISM never intended to compete with anyone—it is simply a publisher focused on the essence of "indie games." It was so yesterday, it is so today, and it will remain so tomorrow.