GAMES.CON 2025: A small dive in the Serbian indie game scene.
Walking around, trying games and chatting with the devs.
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Hi, I’m Luigi. I share my notes, observations, analyses, and what I learned from the masters.
Intro
From the 19th to the 21st of December 2025, the city of Novi Sad hosted for the first time the GAMES.CON: Games and pop culture festival.
The festival has been usually held in the capital, Belgrade, but this year, for organisational reasons, the location was shifted.
Entering the festival gave me exactly the feeling described by Keith Burgun in an old episode of The Clockwork Game Design Podcast; while the event is far smaller than international conventions such as GDC or PAX, this reduced scale creates a familiar atmosphere that makes people genuinely feel like an active part of a living community.
The festival contains all the ingredients that make it worth a visit:
Multiple booths selling gadgets related to video games, tabletop games, old and new pieces of tech
Tournaments of tabletop and video games (from classics like D&D, Magic the Gathering, LoL and DOTA, to less popular one)
A stage hosting several shows and live events
A corner featuring vintage arcade cabinets from the late ’80s and ’90s
A large area dedicated to the local Indie scene
Inside the Serbian Indie Game Scene
The coolest part of the conference, at least for us was the Indie Corner X Games.con 2025. We spent most of the time hanging around with the indie developers at the show, they were very friendly, open to discuss about their games and let us try their prototypes.
Plantlike by Jack Volopas
The first game we tried was Plantlike by JackVolopas, the development of the game took around 10 years and one interesting thing is that, as the developer said, he didn’t use any game engine, rather the whole game was done from scratch using only C and C++.
The game is a Tower defense, roguelike where you are a weird creature with tentacles that grows on a floating island.
Your survival is linked to 3 key elements: air, water and organics that you are consuming at a faster pace as you grow among hostile creatures.
The game contains a lot of details and specific mechanics to learn along the way: every tentacle extremity can be transformed in a different appendix that provides specific advantages to your creature; the transformation must be planned based on your needs and the specific tile where the tentacle is located since it affects the types of transformations allowed. The game allows also for stopping the time from flowing and plan your next steps.
Another surprise of this game is the presence of a skill tree on the line of games like Civilization that you can use to “evolve” your available transformations.
The game is also equipped with a nice initial walkthrough that is clearly and slowly introducing the player to all the mechanics of the games.
A part of the definitions provided by the developer, I would add the game contains also element of classic strategy games and city builders. Overall an interesting playing experience that is available for free on itch.io.
The game is already fully released and runs on Windows.
Animal Times by Fusion 29
Animal Times is a turn-based strategy game, openly inspired to the classic board game Risk but with a twist related to the rules, since in Animal Times the combat outcome is calculated subtracting the values of the resulting dices.
The aim is to conquer territories in a fictional world map leading an army of animals.
The visuals of the game are quite appealing, and the medieval chill-out music in the background fits perfectly.
Most of the rules are the same of the classic Risk game and they are well described in the game options; the only things I was find missing, but maybe it’s due to the fact that the game is not still officially released, are the chain attacks and the possibility to run more of two attacks in the same turn as it is possible in Risk. Overall a good game for the lovers of the original Risk.
The game is currently in play testing phase and should be released in April 2026; you can join it and play it for free.
It’s worth noting that the game is developed with the Godot game engine, a free and open source game engine; Windows, Mac and Linux operating systems will be supported.
Fusion 29 is also present on itch.io at the fusion29dev page. Here you can find the first prototype of Animal Times as well as an interesting game idea created for a game jam called Akikaze where you need to help a monk to remain in his meditation state (you can play this one as well for free on itch.io).
Dwarf simulator by Ascalon Games
Another game we tried is Dwarf simulator. The game is still in development and soon it should be available in Early Access on Stem, the release date hasn’t been announced yet.
In this first person 3D game, you play the role of a dwarf living in an underground cave. The game develops through a sequence of missions (or task) to accomplish and includes a craft system that will allow to build and sell weapons.
The demo we tried was quite limited but the concept looks promising.
The game will be running on Windows systems.
Ghost Mansion by Lumi Gaming
Lumi Gaming is a small studio that has already a few games on their records, all developed for Android and available on Google Play.
In this game the Ghost Mansion is just a suggestive background to partecipate to a set of fast paced mini games together with a other few little ghosts.
From the Lobby (the Mansion) we can access at the moment 4 different funny mini-games where we compete with other players. The type of games proposed have quick-to- get mechanics and are perfect to keep us entertained when we have a bit of free time or while waiting in a queue or commuting by bus; the multiplayer supports adds even more fun to the mix (I am not sure how big is currently the community counting that it was just released two months ago).
The only thing that is a bit frustrating at time, are the controls, with a virtual joystick on the bottom left of the screen and interaction buttons on the right that are at time not quite responsive, making some games (i.e. Lava run) difficult to enjoy.
The game is free to play with in-app purchases.
Bad Week by Nitročelik Games
This is the game with the most unusual concept I saw at the Games.Con, the best way to describe it is to quote the description on their Steam page; Bad Week is a retro-style first-person narrative-driven immersive life simulator set in early 2000s Belgrade.
You play as Zoran, a middle-aged alcoholic trying to survive the challenges of daily life while managing his health, relationships and addiction. Your goal is to keep it together for a week and make choices that affect your life and family.
In the demo we tried, you are wondering around the Belgrade’s blocks after the NATO bombing of 1999. You doctor reaches out to you to communicate you the results of your latest blood analysis that revealed severe health issues and additional your social life is falling apart.
The atmosphere and the time setting is defined quite well with several sweet details as the Zastava cars parked around the streets.
Unfortunately the developers have no estimated any release date so it’s hard to say when this game will see the light. The game is completely developed with the Godot game engine and will support Windows operative systems.
Fragments by Lazar Varagic, Alex X, Vidan Tomic
Fragments is a first-person psychological horror developed using the Unity game engine for Windows operating systems. You need to find clues (fragments) that will help you investigate your past and your traumas.
The atmosphere is very nicely built, with unsettling music, a scary dark forest where we are wondering and a mysterious masked man (or a ghost) that is chasing us.
Honestly neither when we tried the game at the Games.con nor when we tried the demo alter home we succeeded to get much far. The forrest looks more or less all the same with little or no clue on which way to take and the masked ghost ended up to got us all the time.
If you want to try out the game there is a demo available on the related steam page (link in the title of this section).
Water, Me & You by Shosha Games
This game looks promising but unfortunately is still under development and no release date has been announced.
The game follows the great success of recent co-op titles as “It takes two“ and “Split Fiction“ using similar concepts and mechanics. The stars of the game are little creatures called Woodlings that are now populating the world. We guide one of those creatures through different adventures while gathering resources, solving quests and developing several skills as crafting, farming, fishing, cooking or building to help the community to flourish.
Hexalith by Artemi studios
The last game we had the pleasure to examine and try out was Hexalith. This is a sci-fi city builder with a very catchy soundtrack.
I must say this game looked the most “complete” among the ones we tried and probably needs just a little bit of tuning. The visuals, mechanics, and soundtrack are all very well curated.
The game takes inspiration from pioneers of the genre like SimCity, but here the development of your futuristic city is driven by the missions and objectives you complete. There are main missions, which must be completed in order to progress, and secondary missions that are optional; you collect resources, buy blueprints for new buildings, and grow your city.
Failing to complete the target mission defines the game’s loss condition, but there is no clearly defined win condition—so you can, in principle, keep expanding your city forever.
Of course, as the genre requires, there are resources generated from the tiles you choose for your city, as well as natural disasters such as meteor showers.
In the game there are references to actual buildings that are part of the current Belgrade cityscape like the Avala tower or the VMA building.
For sure a title to follow and that you can try for free since the demo version is currently available on Steam.
And there is more…
There were multiple other games present at the conference but unfortunately we couldn’t try them all. Here is a short description of some of them if you want to take a look.
Skyborne Chronicles by Ivan Gvozdanovic, Luka Beatovic: a city-building, resource management survival game set in an alternate post World War I timeline. Your mission: manage a flying city, keep it airborne, and ensure humanity’s survival for 100 years. This game will be soon available in early access.
Otpisani by Pr0py: this FPS is based on an old Yugoslav drama tv-series called Otpisani, you can play the current version for free on itch.io.
Sova by Entropic Island: narrative-driven action roguelike set in a sci-fantasy world. The release is planned by 2026 and you can currently join the playtesting.
Oprost by Thunderpunch Studio: story-driver action 2D platformer. The release is planned by 2026.
The last Slava by Dibidus games: an interesting take on one of the most famous Serbian family’s traditions, the Slava. Unfortunately there is no Steam page related to this game, I could just find a short gameplay video. The game is clearly still under development.
Driving Rogue by Gravity Works: a 3D arcade racing game with car customizations, drifts and crashes. The release is planned by 2026 but no demo is currently available.
Swords and Hexes by Studio Bedem: a top-down strategy-RPG. No release date available.
Conclusions
It was great to partecipate to this conference and realize how the Indie Game Dev scene is Serbia is currently active and vibrant. We will keep an eye on the titles under development presented this year and looking forward for the next one!