Celebrating one year of cool video game news and silliness! // April Future Friends Newsletter
throwing balls and harvesting the stars in honour of ‘Mayo Gate’ anniversary
Hi friends!
Can you believe it’s been a year of this newsletter?
In April 2025, we decided to seriously work on a way to summarise all the cool game news we are involved in, as well as share some silly team lore for the banter. From Grace’s FFG x One Piece casting to the ‘Great Mayo Rift’ that fractured the fabric of this very real company… what a ride it’s been!
Although the public poll was unanimous in us all being fired for our lasagne transgressions… Future Friends Games has somehow grown in size and continues to do fun indie game business. We feel very lucky to be doing this so thank you for joining us on this fun newsletter journey!
Anyway, enough with the sincerity. Back to FFG indie game news!
Throw Balls & Collect Stickers in this Chaotic Roguelike!
STICKER/BALL, the super combo-driven roguelike that’s like if pool, pinball, and Peggle formed a polycule and had a deckbuilder child, will be launching May 4th on PC via Steam! Fire balls. Hit dice. Earn points. Add wacky sentient stickers. Trigger crazy combos. Revel in the chaos!
This really addicting number go up game is made by a super lovely solo dev, Bilge, and features over 100+ unique stickers, 36 dastardly enemies, roguelike mechanics, cool music, fun, and frogs that can hijack spaceships… If that doesn’t convince you to give it a go, then check out these demo reviews:
“I have no idea at all what is happening here. And I love it for that.” - Kotaku
“This Roguelike is a Pure Dopamine Injection” - @OlexaYT
“You had me holding my pee for half an hour.” - A demo reviewer
Future Friends Roundup!
🎰 Cloverpit surprise launched a free Leaderboard update AND a DLC in the Triple-i showcase! Now you can show off your skills or insane pit-runs in the online leaderboards. The Unholy Fusion DLC features 30 fusion charms to create absolutely ridiculous builds, 11 new base charms, 7 new memory cards, a new ending and much more. All out on PC, Xbox and Mobile!
🌍 Starvester is one of our new publishing games we announced! It’s a nice incremental game about building megastructures in space via star-system wide factories, and also a viral hit! Click, click, click the planets, deploy swarms of drones, mine resources, unlock upgrades and harvest the power of the stars!
🌳 Treeplanter, the interactive woodland game about designing landscapes, launched this month! For every copy sold, the developer will plant a real tree in partnership with local communities! Henry is on track to plant over 1k trees… he’s going to be a busy boy!
🍅 On-Together is turning one of their in-game pets into a plushie! The team recently did a community tournament to decide which one to pick and we are happy to share that Pandoodle won! We can’t wait to see the red panda in plush form soon!
⚔️ Queen’s Domain, the Kings Field inspired retro-fantasy action RPG, reached a milestone of 150k wishlists! This is a huge number which is so helpful for indie dev teams. We love to see it!
Team Lore!
🎨 Thomas tried his hand at graphic design and it was certainly received. Tough crowd.
💀 Thomas, perhaps looking for revenge, then sent some mysterious files in a possible attempt to destroy the company from the inside. Allegedly.
🐶 Conker, lovable fur companion of Adam, got a new yellow neckerchief. Everyone tell Conker right now how handsome and dapper he is.
🥪 Britain’s most beloved and charming character, Kris, went to London to have a nosy at London Games Festival and met Paddington Bear. What a cute little pair they are.
🦅 Louisa aka our resident peregrine falcon expert has kept us updated on our favourite birds, Poppy and Henry, and their fresh little babies. We are heavily invested in the well-being of these pips here at FFG. Shout out to the Cromer Peregrine Project!
👨❤️💋👨 Abi shared her special interest with the team at 9:15am on a Monday.
Friends of Future Friends
NEW LAUNCHES
🔎 Hand-drawn hidden object game, Nippets, is out now! Pet cats, shake trees, peek through windows, poke the Future Friends team (hehe) and discover a delightful world filled with secrets and stories. It’s a very charming game by a very charming triple-threat combo team: Blink Industries (Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared), art director Frederikke Frydenlund and development company Uwu Biz (Gang Beasts, PVKK)!
🪖 It’s time to squad up in Forefront 1.0, out now! The large-scale VR shooter with 32-player battles (woah!) enters full 1.0 release today on Steam VR, Meta Quest and Pico. Developed by Triangle Factory (Hyper Dash, Breachers), the 1.0 update adds a brand-new map, expanded weapon options, new progression unlocks, and more. So many things!
🧩 Piece together miniature worlds in Puzzling Places, out now! Discover ultimate relaxation in the PC version of the megahit VR jigsaw game. Puzzling Places is the ultimate jigsaw simulator with relaxing and satisfying 3D dioramas. No quests, no timers, no pressure – just puzzle at your pace, in short dips or epic puzzle sessions! This chill jigsaw puzzle game has been rebuilt from the ground up to support non-VR play as well as PCVR support. Super cool!
🖐️ Put your hands together for the new WHAT THE CLASH? update! That’s right! The goofy PvP online battler and 2025 App Store Awards winner has done the impossible and become even more chaotic! Danish comedy games company, Triband, have introduced the most requested feature to the hilariously wacky 1v1 game collection marathon: Same Screen Multiplayer! Det er fedt!
UPCOMING RELEASE DATES
🔷 Embrace your destiny in HYPNOS on May 6th! Enter the Nameless City at the edge of Dreams in this unique exploration adventure game. Set in a lovecraftian megastructure fever dream, HYPNOS is coming to Steam Early Access on May 6th, with a full 1.0 launch including PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S to come soon!
🐸 Hit the slopes in Sledding Game on April 30th (today!!) The highly anticipated social media sensation about having fun with your buds in a ski resort launches in Early Access on 30th April! Chill and hang out with up to 30 players (!!!) on Steam, Game Pass and Xbox. Go sledding, relax, be a (friendly) menace on proximity chat and see what else there is to do.
🛍️ Run your very own thrift shop in Thrifty Business on May 18th! Spellgarden Games (Sticky Business) have announced their cosy thrift shop management sim will be hitting shelves on May 18th on PC & Mac via Steam! Sort through boxes to find hidden treasures and arrange nostalgic displays (clothes, antiques, toys & more). Befriend customers, fulfil their requests and expand your store to turn it into a hub for the local community.
FRESH PLAYABLE DEMOS
🗺️ Create outrageous archipelago combos in Combolands! Crux Games – a two-person team composed of Skye Scott & Sam Alfred, designer of Terra Nil – have announced Combolands, a synergetically satisfying deckbuilder where your cards are buildings and your map is the deck! If this sounds familiar, then maybe you played Tiny Towns, the hit prototype on itch.io (100k+ views!) that’s now becoming a fully fledged game! Yippee!
🏆 Let your decks fight for you in Grail! Indie dev Tijmen Tio (one part of Dutch indie collective Sokpop, the team behind Stacklands and Grunn) has announced his upcoming new project: fast-paced fantasy deckbuilder Grail! Find synergies, craft a killer deck, then sit back and watch the action unfold. Are you keen to get your hands on the holy relic? Well, good news! There’s already a demo over on Steam!
🪄 Use the power of music to get up to witchy hijinks in Songs of Glimmerwick! Eastshade Studios, the indie studio behind the critically acclaimed Eastshade, announced that this highly anticipated story-driven magical RPG is coming to PC this year (and consoles soon after). Become immersed in a musical woodland fantasy world in the demo over on Steam!
And that’s a wrap on April!
A whole year of consistent monthly newsletters done and dusted (yay us!). Thank you for subscribing and reading our nonsense! We can’t wait to experiment and try some new things and see where we end up.
Not to be a tease, but May is looking to be very exciting and we have BIG announcements incoming 👀 So stay tuned and do tell your friends about this very professional and grammatically correct newsletter!
Smooches!
Future Friends Games
