Apple's Indie Games Week Puts Seven Small Teams in the Spotlight

Apple opened an Indie Games Week on the App Store on 12 October, according to its Newsroom. Each day brings new App Store features and curated collections, alongside editor guides to indie games on iPhone, iPad and Mac.

The seven games in the spotlight

Apple named seven titles: Sifu, Vampire Crawlers, No Man's Sky, Little Kitty Big City, 9 Kings, Dome Keeper and Yes, Your Grace 2: Snowfall. Several are not new. Some arrived first on PC or console, and No Man's Sky makes its mobile debut on 28 October. So this is as much a showcase of games coming to Apple platforms as of games born there.

Why a feature matters to a small team

For an indie studio, store placement is one of the few levers that does not need a marketing budget. A feature slot can decide whether a launch is seen at all. The catch is that it is curated and hard to plan around. A studio can polish a game, localise it and follow the platform guidelines, and still have no say over whether it is chosen.

The announcement itself does not mention any developer programme, application process or regional focus, so we would not read it as a new route for studios to apply for. It is a spotlight on selected games, and that is all we can say from what Apple has published.

The funding side of the same story

Discovery is only half of the indie equation. Earlier this year, Griffin Gaming Partners launched a $100 million fund for independent games, announced on 7 May 2026. Reports describe it as paying for projects in return for a share of revenue rather than taking equity, with 15 projects funded so far. The percentages and geographic scope have not been made public, so we cannot say who could apply.

Put the two together and a pattern shows: revenue-share funding on one side, curated store attention on the other. Both reward finished, distinctive games and give small teams more options than a single publisher deal.

What we take from it

At Anahata Interactive we are a small self-publishing studio, so we watch these moves closely. Our practical takeaways are modest. Build a game with a clear identity, because curators pick games that are easy to describe in a sentence. Prepare store assets and localisation early, so a feature does not find you unready. And treat funding terms as something to read closely, since revenue share and equity shape a studio very differently over time.

The week runs through the coming days, and the collections are worth browsing for studios of any size. Which of the seven are you downloading first?