The 10 Best Indie Games, Ranked

For too long have Triple A game studios lorded over us with their buggy games and their pay-to-play online campaigns! For too long have we suffered under the yoke of corporate gaming mediocrity! A new era has dawned, one where the best of indie games rule! And rule they do.

10. Outer Wilds

Outer Wilds is a cartoony, sci-fi romp with less focus on combat and more on exploration. Puzzle solving, dimension jumping, black hole diving, gravity defying exploration. Your jobs is to screw around a little solar system that is stuck in a 22 minute time loop. Every 22 minutes the sun that lights this system goes supernova. If you haven’t solved every puzzle by then, it’s back to the start with you! It’s a game of trial and error, where you learn more and more with each delving into Outer Wilds‘ lush planetary vistas. For those who wish to heed the call of science, there is no better game.

9. Hollow Knight

Many games were inspired by the brutal, high stakes combat of Soulsborne games, but who among them had the clever idea to place a Dark Souls style hack and slash dark fantasy adventure in a 2D side scrolling bug world? Only Hollow Knight. You play as the titular bug knight, making your way through an insectoid world that is slowly becoming corrupted by a malevolent force. Don’t let the soft edges of its graphics fool you, this game is downright unforgiving. Fast-paced, merciless combat combines with Legend of Zelda style exploration and lore to create the best game about bugs ever mad.

8. Amnesia: Dark Descent

Amnesia: Dark Descent‘s impact on horror gaming cannot be overstated. It practically invented a genre! The genre were all you can do is run away and hide from horrifying monsters that drive you insane when you look at them. Amnesia puts you in control of a memory-challenged protagonist making their way through a spooky castle populated by sack-headed horrors. What can you do when you face a foe? Run and hide. But don’t stay in the dark for too long, or else your sanity meter will deplete and you will start to hallucinate monsters that aren’t there … or are they?

7. Hades

Hades took the idea of a rogue-like game and ran with it. You play as Zagrius, son of the Underworld’s ruler Hades, fighting his way through the hordes of Hell to do Oedipal battle with your own father! Steeped in Greek myth, the game throws everything the Pits of Tartarus have to offer against you. Minotaurs, saytyr cultists, even chthonic gods stand in your way! Like a Souls game, Hades is brutally difficult. You will die, and die a lot. That’s the point. When you revive, you will face a fresh hell a little stronger than before.

6. Limbo

Perhaps the first “ambient horror” game in history, Limbo trades undead horrors and gruesome jump scares for a world full of … nothing? Just some spooky, dark trees. Tall grass. Eerie wind. Night. Oh and a giant spider. Limbo‘s protagonist, a nameless boy, scours the edge of hell looking for his lost sister. He has to platform over deadly traps, perilous architecture, and of course avoid the aforementioned giant arachnid. It’s an unsettling slow burn of a horror game that terrifies with what isn’t happening just as much as what is.

5. That Dragon, Cancer

I can’t even think of the title of this game without tearing up. That Dragon, Cancer is a two hour long avant-garde art video game about parents wrestling with grief of their twelve month old baby’s cancer diagnosis. Made by the parents of Joel Green, a little boy who succumbed to cancer after battling it for four years, That Dragon, Cancer takes the player on a narrative experience through Joel’s short and beautiful life. This game is not so much “played” as it is “experienced,” and the experience is unforgettably. Tragically so.

4. Stardew Valley

Have you ever wanted to escape the hum-drum big city life? Live in a quaint little town as a farmer? Raise animals? Water plants? Hang with magical wizards? Engage in pansexual dating escapades with the local populace of hotties? Now you can. Taking a page out of the Harvest Moon handbook, Stardew Valley created was is arguably the greatest comfort game ever made. The magic and the mundane combine to make an adorable slice of life fantasy farming simulator that may just feel more real than the real world. It’s a must play for anyone seeking sweet escape. Charming little Pelican Town is as sweet as an escape there is.

3. Cuphead

Cuphead is the ritzy-ditzy finger-waggin’ 1930’s dancin’ bullet-hell game that we didn’t know we needed. It’s about two pieces of anthropomorphic dishware who gamble away their souls in a deal with the Devil. After the vessel-headed brothers beg for mercy, the Devil offers another deal. If they can repossess the souls of debtors who also made bad deals with the Prince of Darkness, he’ll let the boys keep their souls. Cuphead and Mugman then embark on a side-scrolling quest of nigh-continuous boss battles, each more trying than the last. Don’t be fooled by the cute rubber hose animation, these games are mercilessly hard.

2. Minecraft

Minecraft is more than a game. Minecraft is a landmark moment in gaming history. It’s like LEGOs: the idea is simple, but the possibilities are endless. Set it in an endlessly generating building block world, Minecraft sets you in the square shoes of an adventurer who must build to survive. Make a house of dirt blocks. Craft tools. Mine for better materials. Build a bigger, stronger house. Build weapons to fight tougher monsters that guard even better materials. Build a block mansion. Explore new realms. Mine. Fight. Craft. Build. Repeat. The game can be played forever, and players have spent YEARS building digital works of architecture that rival the Taj Mahal. What makes it even better? It’s MULTIPLAYER. You and your friends can jump on a server and blow up each other’s hard-earned houses with TNT. What could be better?

1. Undertale

Undertale is perhaps one of the greatest videogame stories ever told, both in game and outside of it. Written, coded, designed, and scored by one man, Undertale‘s creator Toby Fox proved that you don’t need a massive studio and a multi-million dollar budget to create gaming greatness. All you need is a good idea and elbow grease. The story centers around a young child taken to the world of monsters, who must either kill or befriend their foes in order to survive. The game subverts the adventure genre by telling a complicated story of morality that is infinitely replay-able due to its myriad of endings. Fair warning, this game is as a horrifying as it is heartfelt, and you make emerge from it as the savior of the world or its killer. The choice is yours.