Google Play unveils indie festival featuring 30 new games

Winning over the hearts and minds of developers is a great way to make your platform succeed. That is part of why Google is announcing today its Google Play Indie Games Festival, which takes place on September 24 in San Francisco.

The free event — which is a celebration of all things indie — will feature 30 new titles, including 15 that gamers will have the chance to play. The festival will also feature representatives from the indie game community and other industry veterans. The list of judges voting on the best games at the show includes Ron Carmel, cofounder of Indie Fund; Noah Falstein, chief game designer at Google; Emily Greer, CEO of Kongregate; and Jordan Maron, also known as independent YouTuber “CaptainSparklez.”

The event will feature a curated list of 200 different submissions from indie game makers. Check out the full list of selected titles here.

Veteran game designer and USC games professor Richard Lemarchand will be the emcee for the event. The winning developers will receive prizes as recognition for their efforts, such as Google Cloud credits, Nvidia Shield K1 tablets, Razer Forge TV bundles, and more.

One of the games on display is HOVR. Check it out below.

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat at VentureBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.