Better late than ever! This is day three of our 2026 NZGDC experience and so much happened! I spent the bulk of my day playing loads of games and chatting with fellow developers.

Above we have students from the Massy Univeristy I met the previous night showcasing their cool games. I played two Spoooooky games: ‘Starving Woods’ and Spellhaven’. We had some good chats and I look forward to seeing where these projects go.

You can follow Spellhaven by SwordRat on Steam here: Spellhaven: The Last Lighthouse Keeper on Steam

For Staving Woods there is no current public demo, but I will be first to jump on it when it does! Again, thanks all for letting me snap photos!

I then made my way around to the cool people at Bunguin Games! I got a lot of good advice about horror games in New Zealand, discussions about UI, and got to play some games!

Gareth Fox (Lead Game dev) and Maggie (UI and 2D concept artist). They currently have two titles in development:

Cold Salvage: Its like Phasmophobia meets Alien Isolation and just from the demo (and private playtesting) I can see a great co-op game for horror lovers. I think it stands out from Phasmophobia as it doesn’t feel nearly as janky with a much more polished UI.

Headlice: A dark comedic horror game where you control a crab who is intent on revenge against its coffee overlords and escape the lab. It reminds me a little of Octodad with the physics

I managed to peep into the booth where Milk Trigger where hosting their demo for Peep. A very fun indie horror in the psx art style in a similar vibe to No, I’m not a Human.

Quin (Milk) and Jacob (Trigger) were very chatty and passionate about their game (everyone was to be fair) and had all the time to answer my questions or chat about horror. I look forward to their game release in 2027 and seeing them in the future!

I next ran into Anna at Balancing Monkey Games who just this week (a month after the conference) they released their new massive titles ‘Beyond These Stars‘. I first met Anna in a brief video call when I joined the NZDGA, so to see her in person was very cool. Plus this game was so much fun (and I don’t usually play city builders, but a Terry Pratchet-like whale world meant I couldn’t resist).

Check out their game which is now on steam: Beyond These Stars on Steam

Who knew it would take me a whole month to get day number three out! But now the business of this month has settled (for now) I am back to present some cool people and games I played at the conference.

I promise the next day wont take so long next time!