Malaysian deckbuilder fans looking for the next thing after Inscryption have a 12-day window. Just A Shadow Game, a dark-fantasy roguelike about the horrors of game development, has opened its first Steam playtest from 13 to 25 May 2026.
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Kai T chevron_right
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What the playtest opens up
Vietnam-based studio IndieLab, backed by Singapore publisher Soft Source Publishing, has put its upcoming title into a public playtest on Steam. The game is listed under strategy and indie with a planned 2027 release date, alongside an existing free demo that has run on Steam since earlier this year.
The playtest cracks open a much wider slice of the game than that demo. Players get a second clan, with its own buildings, troops, cards and relics. There is a new in-game "protagonist's room" with a computer interface that ties together the meta-narrative about being an indie developer hounded by a sinister entity named Shadow. A meta-progression system also lets players earn Inspiration Points after each run, which the in-game developer spends to unlock new cards across attempts.
The cards, buildings and relics on the table
Five new spell cards arrive in the playtest: Scaphism, Cadew (duplicates every field in a ritual), Incubation (reduces mana costs when fields are destroyed), Sunny-Side Up (generates mana for exhausted cards) and Dreamfall (converts temporary pagans into real pagans). Three new buildings join the roster: the Well, which absorbs all troops on the battlefield and attacks enemies in a lane; the Pain Altar, which fires two projectiles at a slight damage penalty; and the Mechrow Assembly, which spawns a Mechcrow that doubles its damage on sacrifice.
The playtest also lays in a relic system and a dedicated Relic Shop Room, which is the studio's bid at deepening run-to-run variety.
Why this one is worth a look
Deckbuilders and roguelikes are having a deep moment, and Southeast Asian studios have started shipping titles that compete with bigger Western indies on craft. Just A Shadow Game's blend of deck building, ritual mechanics, tower defence positioning and a self-aware "game about making games" narrative puts it in the same shortlist as Inscryption for players already hunting their next strategic indie.
The publisher angle is worth flagging too. Soft Source Publishing is Singapore-based and IndieLab is Vietnamese; Malaysian gamers will increasingly see indies in this category that they can support without a regional store workaround.
System requirements
The minimum spec is light. The game asks for Windows 10 or 11, a dual-core 2 GHz CPU, 4 GB of RAM, and a graphics card with 2 GB of VRAM or higher. Recommended pushes RAM to 6 GB and VRAM to 4 GB. Storage is a tiny 2 GB. Most Malaysian gaming laptops from the last five years will run it without issue.
How to join
Playtest access runs through the game's official Discord (discord.gg/DGmVyMps). The dev team is using the playtest window primarily to gather feedback on gameplay feel, pacing and system design, so the studio is actively reading tester posts during the two-week run.
The takeaway
Two weeks is not a long playtest window. If you wishlist indie strategy on Steam, watch first-look videos on YouTube, or just want a new deckbuilder before Just A Shadow Game's full 2027 launch, this one is on the short list right now.