I don't cover games as often as I should, mostly because my granddaughter Jess would tell you I'm still mentally living in the era when you blew into a cartridge to make it work. But every so often a batch of indie games crosses my desk and I remember why this corner of tech is so much fun. Engadget's latest indie roundup did exactly that, and one title in particular made me smile before I'd even seen a single frame of gameplay.

Let's start with the one that got me. There's a game where you play a retired assassin running a DVD store. Yes, a DVD store. If the setup sounds suspiciously like a certain suit-wearing gentleman who avenged a dog, well, you're not wrong, and that's clearly the point. What charmed me is the mundane fantasy of it: the quiet shop, the shelves, the ordinary life. I remember when renting a movie for the weekend was an event, when you walked the aisles and judged covers and read the backs of boxes. Turning that ritual into a game setting feels like a little love letter to a version of retail that's mostly gone now.

The other headline grabber is a roguelike take on Armored Core, the big-mech action series. If you're not familiar, roguelikes are games where death sends you back to the start, but you keep enough progress that each run makes you a little stronger. It's a genre that has swallowed huge parts of the gaming world over the past decade. Mash that loop together with giant customizable mechs and you get something that sounds genuinely fresh, run-based robot combat where every attempt teaches you something. My colleague Marcus could explain the systems under the hood far better than I can, but the pitch alone works on me.

The roundup's author also spent time with Emberville, which deserves a mention here because of who's making it. The studio behind it, Cygnus Cross, is co-owned by a Twitch streamer named Ben. The author played roughly the first hour and came away with impressions worth reading. Streamers moving from playing games to actually building them, that's the part I find encouraging. It's the same pattern we watched when YouTube creators started making their own cameras and gear. The tools keep getting more accessible, and the people who understand audiences start making things for those audiences. I've seen this movie before, so to speak, and it usually ends well for the rest of us.

And that's really the larger story here, isn't it? Indie games are where the interesting risks happen. The big studios have to hedge, sequels and safe bets and budgets the size of small countries. Meanwhile a handful of developers are making a game about a retired hitman renting DVDs, and somehow that's the idea that gets made. It reminds me of the early app store days, when a single person with a laptop could build something weird and wonderful and the whole thing cost less than lunch.

If any of these catch your eye, click through to the Engadget piece for the full impressions and the complete list. There's more in there than the two I've highlighted.

As for me, I may just hand this one to Jess and ask her to tell me if the DVD store game is as charming as it sounds. She grew up streaming everything, so the idea of physical discs probably strikes her as ancient history. Sweetheart, some of us remember when the DVD extras were the best part of the whole evening...