[INDIE PICK 3] Vol. 3 by ZUN
2025.04.13
With INDIE Live Expo 2025.4.13 just around the corner, we’re counting down the final days until the big event!
As always, the show will feature over 100 carefully curated indie games from around the world.
To help you enjoy the program even more, we’ve put together a special series called INDIE PICK 3, where we ask guests and industry insiders to share a few indie titles they’ve been following.
For our final installment, we asked ZUN, the creator of Touhou Project, to share three of his favorite indie games—plus what he likes about each of them.
(Full disclosure: the casual tone of his comments might be because we cornered him in his hotel room during a Touhou fan event in Korea this past February, and kind of forced his answers out of him.)
The enigmatic developer behind Team Shanghai Alice and the legendary Touhou Project series. In addition to previous appearances on INDIE Live Expo, he also composed our official theme song.(You can find him on X here → @korindo)
So without further ado, here are ZUN’s indie picks!
ZUN’s Top 3 Indie Picks
I spent so much time playing Factorio! Maybe it’s the programmer in me, but once I started, I just couldn’t stop (laughs). I kept optimizing things endlessly… I completely forgot the goal was to escape the planet—I was just obsessed with making everything more efficient. It was such a good time!
The visuals are beautiful, the music is amazing—I just keep going back to it! Weirdly enough, the more I played, the worse I seemed to get, but that made it even more fun. I really love the atmosphere and world, too.
This one’s a must-mention for me. Outer Wilds was just incredible. I went in totally blind, didn’t look up anything beforehand. Even though the game says, “the world loops every 22 minutes,” the vibe in your home village at the start is so relaxed, you’d never guess what’s coming. I remember thinking, “What’s up with this chill little space game?” Then I figured out how to launch my rocket, immediately crashed and died… And then the loop started. That’s when it hit me: “Ahh, this is the kind of game it is!” Every place you visit feels fresh and new—and when I landed on this creepy ocean planet, it was so scary I almost cried (laughs). Definitely one of those games I wish I could forget just so I could experience it all over again.
And that’s my list!
And that wraps up our third installment of INDIE PICK 3, featuring none other than ZUN and a few of the indie games he’s spent serious time with!
From his picks, you can really see the split between his programmer brain and his musical side—a very ZUN-style selection.
That’s a wrap for this series! Don’t miss INDIE Live Expo 2025.4.13, airing Sunday, April 13 (JST)—you might just discover your next favorite indie game!
【Check out other people’s PICK3!】