Games

Factorio.

Honourable mentions:

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

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.

Undertale

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.

Exanima Unique physics-based isometric dungeon crawler also featuring an arena career mode.
Moddable.
Really slow development cycle, though.

Severed Steel Futuristic 3D shooter with maybe the best movement system I've tried, with wall running, full 360 air movement, sliding and more.
Weapons have only one magazine, so you're constantly sourcing them from your enemies while blasting holes into the fully destructible levels.
Very replayable.

Dave the diver! /s

But seriously I'm a real sucker for platformers, and so A Hat In Time is my most favorited one. It brought back this sort of charm I haven't felt since the n64 days and I love it!

Stray and Kena: Bridge of Spirits are pretty awesome too, would be my second and third favorites

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

FTL: Faster Than Light

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.

I've not seen many RPG maker games mentioned here, so i'll do my part. These are a lot of my favourites through the years:

• To the moon

• Finding paradise
• Oneshot
• Celeste
• Omori
• End roll

There are also a lot of them that i've not played but i've watched full playtroughs of, like IB, Hello Charlotte, Lisa, ... and most recently The coffin of Andy and Leyley

One game i would also like to add is Rain World, which is a 2d survival platformer, a bit challenging, but i would argue it's also a "metroidbrania" if you know the genre, games that have knowledge as gates rather than keys or power-ups like metroidvanias. Some notable examples are Outer wilds or Return of obra dinn, who others have already mentioned

Stardew

Check out frog fractions!

Top of my list right now is Vintage Story! It's like a serious version of Minecraft, with more focus on realism.

Probably Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. All the older Indy games weren’t that great but this new one is really good.

Balatro. It's a great Maths game.

Monster sanctuary (turn based monster collector) and Roboquest (arena shooter) were a couple from recent years that stood out to me

For older games nethack and dwarf fortress are great if you can look past the graphics

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.)

I really love Supraland, but it’s hard to convince people to try it for some reason.

hypnospace outlaw

Balatro

Obra Dinn

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. :)

Can't believe none of these haven't been mentioned yet: Starsector Kenshi Graveyard keeper Battle brothers Ghost of a tale

Gotta go with Dwarf Fortress. Been playing on and off for the past 10 years at least, it's just endless !!FUN!!

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.

One of my all time favorites right now is Brok The Investigator.

It's a game by French company COWCAT Games that is describes as a point and click beat'em-up game. Has lots to do because there are multiple endings. It has a free visual novel made to essentially showcase a vn engine that can be used to make BTI fan games or your own creations and has an upcoming DLC (apparently only gonna be $9.99) that focuses more on the combat side of the game.

It's currently available on PS4/5 (vita planned but scrapped), xbox (don't know if they mean one and series x/s or just series), switch, steam, itch(dot)io, and even epic if you hate yourself.

Probably gotta be Starsector

The video that hooked me

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.

I rarely play platformers and really enjoyed Celeste

Dota.

Ok, I know what you're saying, "But Valve makes Dota2" which, yes, this is true. But the OG game came about from gamers just loving games and making a custom game. I think it's peak "indie" in it's origin. Which went off to spawn several clones (League of Legends, Heroes Of Newerth, Heroes Of The Storm, Smite, Pokemon Unite, Paladins, etc.). Dota2 by far has the most hours played of any game.

For me it's Rimworld

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.

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 loved a tiny one called The Last Day of June.

It was on PlayStation Plus and it really had a great story.

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.