For me, indie game Motorslice is one of the year's sleeper success stories. It has a visual design that feels familiar, but with the confidence to do more than just replicate; it's partly a love letter to brutalist megastructures, but also a nostalgic nod to some of the 3D action games, from Shadow of the Colossus to Mirror's Edge. Read my Motorslice review for a deeper dive, but it left such an impression I had to track the dev down to hear how it was made.
Built by a tiny two-person team at Regular Studio, Luqui and his brother Saiki, the project leans into constraint, turning limitations into a visual style and a gameplay hook that feel lean and engaging. Across its towering concrete structures, yellow hazard markings and rich blue skies, the game channels influences as varied as Fumito Ueda’s vast, lonely worlds, the guided clarity of early Prince of Persia, and the oppressive megastructures of Tsutomu Nihei’s Blame! – all filtered through a deliberately hand-crafted approach.
