Pantaloon Launches The Playbill, an Indie Game Subscription Built Around 'Bold and Bizarre' Titles

Pantaloon, a publisher that began as a game curator, has launched a subscription service for indie game fans. Called The Playbill, it works like Xbox Game Pass but concentrates on what the company describes as "bold and bizarre" titles.

The launch lineup mixes third-party releases with Pantaloon's own catalogue. The outside games include Buckshot Roulette, Silt, Ex Sanguis and Cabin Factory. Pantaloon's titles are Sub-Verge, Occlude, It Takes a War, Boxroom, Rolla and the music creation sim Offbeat.

As Game Pass does with first-party Xbox games, The Playbill will add each new Pantaloon release to the library as soon as it comes out. The service also has a timed exclusive of its own: Virtue: Prologue, a visual novella that accompanies Virtue and a Sledgehammer. It is due out next week.

A section called the Green Room collects demos, playtests and "abandoned prototypes." The first playtests on offer are for Isle Goblin, Mr Magpie's Harmless Card Game and Lemonade Apocalypse.

Pantaloon founder Jamin Smith said the aim is to celebrate "more experimental and eccentric games." According to Smith, the subscription model lowers the barrier for players to try genres and experiences that Steam's market-shaping algorithms might not surface. Smith also said the service will not feature or platform any games that use generative AI "in any form," calling The Playbill "a celebration of the craft of making games."

Pantaloon moved into publishing after building a newsletter audience of more than 50,000 subscribers. Readers could solve puzzles to earn game keys or pay for codes to its curated titles. On The Playbill, the puzzles, the community features, Virtue: Prologue and a couple of alternate reality games are free to access. The full game lineup requires a Primo subscription, priced at $5 a month or $60 a year.

The service runs on keys, so Pantaloon will rotate games out once it runs out of keys for them, and it plans to add new titles regularly. Annual subscribers can claim all 13 games in the initial lineup, plus every title added later.

Monthly subscribers get less choice. They receive one guaranteed game each month and cannot pick which one. "The monthly titles are part of bespoke partnerships, so the games are defined," Smith told Engadget, adding that some puzzles, including this month's, let solvers choose their reward.

Monthly subscribers who stay for six consecutive months gain access to all of the games. Smith described that rule as "a mechanism just to prevent somebody getting" the whole library straight away "and then canceling."