We've signed a game about death

PUBLOG

When we signed Feed the Scorchpot, it was in the whirlwind of covering indie games: writing the newsletter, editing videos, and running the game jam. And now that we've wrapped up our curational side (for now) to focus on publishing, it feels like we're taking it up a notch by signing another game. If you don't want the story, the next game from us is Abelina.

So, Abelina.

It's a heavy one. Completely on the other side of the spectrum from a board-game roguelike with dragons, this one is dead-pan: You died. And this is your afterlife. Gabe (the dev) wants to explore what happens when you’re no longer a living being on Earth, and extensions of those themes in general. Mostly because “it scares me the hell out of me” (direct quote), and exploring it through a game felt like a great creative and self-exploratory challenge.

To say that we've got two games in our portfolio is surreal. It really does bring that "oh damn, this is getting real" feeling into what we're doing. And it's a step into crazy, whacky, somewhat unknown territory.

The people behind it

Gabe's the solo dev — a CG animator whose work has run through Valorant, League of Legends, Love, Death + Robots, Dolby, Purina and Campbell's Soup, now condensed into Abelina. Then there's Ryan on music and sound: a Senior TED Fellow and Webby winner, currently VP of Music at WaitWhat, with credits on the 2025 film Weapons, and the upcoming Resident Evil. He and Gabe have been collaborators for years and Abelina's just their latest creative swing together.

The bit that’s new for us

Much like Feed the Scorchpot, we're tackling marketing, outreach, press, content — and one extra little thing: a bit of designing. And with the back-and-forth we've already had with Gabe, this is going to be an entirely different experience for us — one we are PUMPED for. Gabe was looking for all the standard publisher things, but he also wanted collaborators who could help shape parts of the game before it releases. We played what's there — the world's beautiful, the animation's what you'd expect, and yeah, it's a little rough around the edges right now, but you can absolutely see it's going somewhere good. So we get to work with Gabe on shaping this story so it lands in your hands juuuuuust right.

That kind of challenge is what puts a fire in our bellies. We had snippets of it with Feed the Scorchpot, but this is a level up — a completely different angle we need to come from.

Come watch us figure it out

If you're curious how this comes together, we're trying something different: an open "dev-chat" in Discord. The conversation Gabe, Clem and Josh type in is there for everyone to see — what we're working through, ideas as they come up. You can't join in with words, but you can react. (Fair warning: it's hard to keep a Discord buzzing this early when we're re-jigging a lot of the bones.) Come have a peek, and there are plenty of other channels to say hello in too. Just ping us.

More emails to come, obviously, and we hope they're a good read. But if you ever want the real-time "what is Indieformer doing right now", our Discord's the door.

Josh & Clem

P.S. Check out the new webpage we’ve got for Abelina!