Games

Shadow Empire. Best 4X wargame ever. 400 page rulebook included. Realistic logistics and planet generation 6000 years in the future!

Here are the ones that don't get uninstalled from my potato box:

• Sable

• Ion Fury

• Torchlight

• Ziggurat

• Baba Is You

• Edritch

• Fez

• Plunge

• Valley

• Into The Breach

• Journey

(Disclaimer: some are very old, some may not be indie, eh, I did my best.)

Crumble A speedrunning platforming game, where you play as a blob with a tongue. Pleasant experience to play through while learning, while absolutely balls to the walls insane when actually speedrunning, actually 100% achieved this

Cyberpulse Twin-stick arcade neo style virus slamming game. Great control precision, challenging and colourful. The right thumbstick pressing might take a bit of getting used to.

Pseudoregalia Such a fun old school platformer. Big bunny girl MC for some reason but SUPER FUN and satisfying movement mechanics and the world is built well enough for the mechanics. A few hour long game, unless you look everything up.

Actually going to put some indie demos here I played this weekend, that I really enjoyed: Half-Sword Physics based medieval combat game. Reminds me of Exanima but instead of 2.5D, you can play Half-sword in 3rd or 1st person, which is really fun. Can have full gore or turn the gore completely off.

Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon First person (potentially later also 3rd person) RPG, very much in the vein of Elder Scrolls or Dark Messiah of Might & Magic. Really enjoyed the demo, it takes place on the tutorial island/dungeon. Going to buy the full version when it releases, because there seems to be a save wipe for 1.0.

Bloodthief Reminds me of Neon White and Ultrakill having an even more indie baby. Seemed to be pretty simple and good speedrunning platforming fun.

Shape of Dreams 2.5D action RPG roguelike. Very pretty and gameplay feels good. Didn't play it quite enough yet, only thing I kinda disliked was the amount of cooldowns on abilities.

9Kings Small town defense game with waves of enemies led by other kings attacking your kingdom. Really enjoyed this one. Demo isn't too difficult, even when I am really bad with these type of games.

RKGK (RAKUGAKI) 3rd person platforming game, where you bring some colour to the world with your graffiti. Very fun movement and popping colours. The dialogue isn't necessarily for me but the gameplay felt really fun.

Unbeatable Colourful rhythm adventure game, style is great and soundtrack slaps.

I am having a lot of fun with Timberborn and Big Ambitions.

Timberborn is a colony builder where you are in control of beavers. You have to survive between times of good water, bad water, and no water.

Big Ambitious is a business sum in new York make by the same person who made Startup Company.

Factorio.

Honourable mentions:

• Chants of Sennaar
• Blue Prince
• Animal Well
• Raft
• Citizen Sleeper

Dungeons of Dredmor! Just a really solid, straightforward roguelike with a ton of stuff and a cheeky sense of humour.

Balatro. It's a great Maths game.

I'll have to go with Selaco, it's not even finished (in fact it's approximately half done) but it feels more complete than any mainline Halo game after H:Reach. Looks better too.

Pushing the definition but I started when it was still in beta... Minecraft has gotten hundreds and hundreds of hours put into it.

Terarria and Starbound are both really good and scratch that same itch as Minecraft. Core Keeper is another one that has some of that feel and I ended up really enjoying.

Surprised I haven't seen it mentioned but Cave Story was made by one guy doing everything... and everything in it is immaculate. It's still free for the original version as well.

Stardew Valley is awesome and restarted a genre.

Crypt of the Necrodancer is awesome, and well worth checking out... also goes on sale really cheap.

Pacific Drive is a fun one to check out. If you're from the PNW, it will hit even more.

Really enjoyed Stray. Worth grabbing on a sale.

OwlBoy was a delightful game with a lot of character.

Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night was a really nice return to form if you like IgaVanias.

If you like roguelites then you owe it to yourself to check out Enter the Gungeon (isometric) as well as RoboQuest (fps).

If you want a game that's beautiful, with emergent story and is hard af... definitely check out Rain World.

Is Black Mesa still considered indie? It's how I would recommend anyone play Half-Life 1 these days.

Rusty's Retirement... isn't so much a game.. sorta.. but yeah.. check that out.

Here are a few, hopefully they aren't mentioned yet:

• walking simulator/light puzzle game - Firewatch, What Remains of Edith Finch, INSIDE, A Juggler's Tale, Abzu, Nuts
• puzzle - Manifold Garden, The Case of the Golden Idol, GNOG, Gorogoa
• misc - Inscryption, Pony Island
• 3d platformer/adventure - Yooka Laylee
• metroidvania/platformer - Blue Fire
• programming - Human Resource Machine, TIS-100
• souls-like/boss rush - Furi, Titan Souls

Some of these might be AA, it's hard to tell the difference sometimes. I have plenty more where that came from. :)

Sayonara Wild Hearts is a magical experience that can't be described honestly. On difficult stages, it engages all your senses and you're just 100% inside, enthralled by the visuals, music and rhythm. This is probably the most focused and most precise game ever, everything it has, works. It's not just my favorite indie game, it's one of my favorite games ever.

Also, Night in the Woods and Keep Driving. Both resonated with me emotionally in a lot of ways, touching the things I care about. Keep Driving also has a really fun gameplay loop and an incredible music selection (which works as a boost for that emotional factor).

Honorable mentions: What Remains of Edith Finch (it made me uncomfortable and scared at some moments) and Firewatch (nice way to tell a story, and the characters feel real).

Vampire Survivors

It might just be because I was actually early aboard the hype train for this one; but this one just scratched that “one more go” itch until 2am like nothing else.

Enter the Gungeon

Randomly came across this via a YouTube short, and the art-style just meshed with me. Absolutely love the messy bullet-hell quick-play genre in general.. Hades being another great example of this.

I can't say it's my favorite, but after checking out all of these games, I'm just gonna post one I think all you guys would love.

NOITA

I'll put Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead up there with FTL and Dwarf Fortress.

FTL: Faster Than Light

The Binding of Isaac is already a famous title that has influenced so much of the roguelike/twin-stick-shooter genre. This game has permanently altered my taste in video games.

The game I’ve enjoyed as much as TBoI is Tiny Rogues. It’s much smaller, but still fantastic with rich build variety while never losing the need for skill and good reactions.

Stolen Realm is a turn-based tactical RPG that takes place in procedurally generated dungeons that play like little roguelike runs with overarching character progression. It’s multiplayer, but you can also just control up to six characters on your own too. It does eventually feel pretty repetitive and there are points that seem impossible to win, but it’s a unique game where you continually build that roguelike power fantasy and just progressively become more powerful to the point of it feeling game breaking.

Going Under is an adorable roguelite where you fight through various levels themed around a blend of corporate stereotypes and fantasy creatures like a crypto company run by skeletons or a delivery company run by goblins. The combat is a vaguely souls-like with an emphasis on weight and timing, but your weapons are office items found in each room that break down very quickly.

Webbed is a cute puzzle/platformer where you play as a little spider on a quest to save your spider boyfriend. The main gimmick is that you can shoot webs to create platforms, pull things, attach things to each other and more. It’s a short and sweet game that’s still decently challenging. It’s the only non-roguelike indie I recommend and it’s that good that I love it despite it being in a genre I rarely play and almost never finish.

Pyre is my all time favorite, it's the only game i've ever platinumed and still kept playing to see a few more permutations. But by terms of sheer hours put in? Rimworld.

Clonk Endevour is not my favorite game, but I played it a lot with friends when I was younger. You can play with 2 or even more people, with just a monitor and a keyboard! Also it's so old it should run on any potato.

edit: real answer is Slay The Spire

edit2: ah shit now all of a sudden all the good indie games I played pop up in my head. Project Kat I enjoyed. Synthetik was awesome. Caves of Qud hasn't been mentioned yet (didn't play it much though).

One game I love that hasn't been mentioned yet is Subnautica. The only survival crafting game I ever finished. The story telling and athmosphere are unmatched.

I remember playing an RPG back in the day called “Dink Smallwood” on my old Macintosh laptop, it was one of the few games that were Mac compatible. Really funny and self aware dialogue, pretty great! I found out there’s an app version of it for mobile

Dwarf Fortress. Not even just my favorite indie game, but favorite game ever.

For me, FTL: Faster than Light still hasn't been topped. Hades II might get there, though. Disco Elysium, Ikaruga, and Papers, Please are also high on the list.

Judging by the playtime, Rimworld. It is such an important part of my life at this point, it's not even funny. I've played thousands of hours, and don't regret it

Slice & Dice is the best dice-building roguelite ever and has a free demo that is only content-limited and allows you to already play an infinite amount of runs. I literally played the demo as much as a paid game for a month until I bit down—so hard that, once, when I had my phone in hand and intended to take a shower, I ended up crouching on the bathroom floor furthering a run for an hour before finally pausing to return to the real world.

Clone Drone in the Danger Zone offers awesome online co-op. Noita's world is just endless (people are still discovering new spell permutations years later). I will never turn down someone's offer or request to watch a run of FTL: Faster Than Light.

The AAA world is not impressive to me at all, and if anything gets deprioritized in my book; graphics or a third-person view do not a fantastic game make.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. If that doesn't count. Will....HoloCure or Noita or Parking Garage Rally Circuit.

Valheim. Bought it late January and already got almost 400 hours on it. Play it vanilla first then modded. I played it with friends, beat final boss on Day 997, we took our times, building and all along the way. Then I started over solo with x3 resources, no raid, and move metals through portal. I just wanted to see if I could solo all game and today I just finished basically everything. So right now, I'm just collecting resources for gears and buildings. Going to make few houses across the map.

First :

• Outer Wilds
• Disco Elysium

Then :

• Inscryption
• Carto
• Spiritfarer
• Pyre

Celeste or Hades

Immortality was cool

Little Inferno

• Skullgirls - Still the best damn fighting game ever made. I've been grinding for a full decade now, and I'll be entering Combo Breaker 2025 once again this year.

• Slay the Spire - The game that ruined all other roguelikes for me. What I love about StS is that it never lets you get complacent, never lets you lean on just one good synergy that will carry you the entire run. You always have to keep adapting, and you have to have a well-rounded deck to deal with enemies that are designed to counter players who try to rely on only one thing. And when I eventually got to the point where I'd had my fill of vanilla, there's so much fun stuff from the modding community to play around with. Packmaster is incredible.

• CrossCode - It's been years since I finished this RPG and its colorful cast still lives rent-free in my head. This is a game that is perfect in every way and adds up to more than the sum of its parts. Fantastic combat, tons of side content, endearing characters, emotionally powerful story, beautiful visuals, amazing soundtrack.

Inside

Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons

Eternal Strands

Disco Elysium

All very different and unique. All fantastic!

Stardew

Balatro

Obra Dinn

Hollow Knight

I love it so much that I can't finish it, I always stop when I'm about to fight the final boss. I just don't want it to end.

Maybe when Silksong came out I finish it once and for all.

NaissancE

N++

Undoubtedly the best, most complete 2D platformer I've ever played. Super tight controls and incredible level design, coupled with an episode-long timer mechanic that you can influence makes this one absolutely unmatched. Sure, games like Celeste are flashier, but nothing is a better game than N++. I think I put something like 120 hours into this to get the platinum on PS4. I would happily start over and play the whole thing from scratch again.

I haven’t seen it mentioned and feel like it should count, since it really just had a solo programmer working with a graphic designer and musician, but RollerCoaster Tycoon and RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 took a big chunk of my gaming time.

I rarely play platformers and really enjoyed Celeste

I urge anyone who has not played CrossCode to give it a try. I randomly played it during the pandemic, and I've since not been able to enjoy gaming the way I did it before. For me, it was very close to being a 10/10.

Cave Story, the original 2004 version.

I played it a long time ago and I still think about that game from time to time.