Best indie games of all time

Hollow Knight▲ Rising

A tiny studio in Adelaide built a Metroidvania so dense and confident it made 40-hour playtimes feel stingy, hiding entire kingdoms behind bosses like the Radiance and the Hollow Knight himself that punished hubris mercilessly. It proved indie games could out-scope AAA in sheer world-building without a single loading screen breaking the illusion, and it minted an entire genre revival in its wake. Charm boards, nail arts, Pale Ore — every system rewarded curiosity, and that's why fans still argue it's the high-water mark for atmosphere over hand-holding.

Year: 2017Critic score: 9.4/10

added by IJRin 10 rankings

Hades▲ Rising

Supergiant took the roguelike's endless-death premise and turned it into a story engine, so every failed run against Zagreus's father actually deepened the plot instead of resetting it. The narrative-driven roguelike wasn't new, but nobody had married combat feel, voice acting, and permadeath-as-character-growth this seamlessly before. It walked away with a Hugo Award nomination and BAFTA wins, dragging 'genre hybrid' games into the mainstream conversation for good.

Year: 2020Critic score: 9.3/10

added by IJRin 7 rankings

Celeste▲ Rising

Madeline's climb up a mountain became gaming's most sincere metaphor for anxiety and self-acceptance, wrapped in some of the tightest, most punishing platforming ever tuned — the B-Sides and C-Sides exist specifically to humble speedrunners. The assist mode sparked a genuine industry conversation about accessibility without 'ruining' difficulty for purists. It's the platformer people point to when arguing that mechanical challenge and emotional storytelling aren't mutually exclusive.

Year: 2018Critic score: 9.2/10

added by IJRin 10 rankings

Outer Wilds▲ Rising

Twenty-two minutes, a dying sun, and no combat — just a solar system built entirely around a time loop that rewards knowledge, not reflexes, culminating in a finale that recontextualizes everything you thought the game was about. It's the rare game where the credits made grown adults cry over astrophysics and quantum mechanics. Ask any 'game of the decade' list and Outer Wilds is there, usually cited as proof that curiosity itself can be a genre.

Year: 2019Critic score: 9.3/10

added by IJRin 5 rankings

Undertale▲ Rising

Toby Fox's solo RPG let you spare every monster instead of grinding them for XP, and then never let you forget that choice — the genocide route lore-locks itself into your save file as a permanent scar. It weaponized bullet-hell mechanics, meta-narrative, and a mother-figure boss fight with Toriel to ask what RPGs even owe their NPCs. A decade later its fingerprints are on Deltarune, a thousand fan games, and basically every 'your choices matter' pitch since.

Year: 2015Critic score: 9/10

added by IJRin 8 rankings

Stardew Valley▲ Rising

One developer, ConcernedApe, spent four years alone recreating and then surpassing Harvest Moon, shipping a farming sim so complete it single-handedly revived a stagnant genre and sold over 20 million copies. The moment you first unlock the mines or marry a townsperson you've watched grow for seasons, it clicks that this isn't just nostalgia bait — it's the genre's new gold standard. Its multiplayer update and constant free content drops turned a solo passion project into the template every cozy game since has chased.

Year: 2016Critic score: 9.2/10

added by IJRin 6 rankings

Disco Elysium▲ Rising

You wake up with no memory, a ruined liver, and a coat that talks to you, and from there ZA/UM built the most literate, politically alive RPG in a decade with zero traditional combat — just skill checks that are internal psychological arguments. Its thought cabinet mechanic made 'leveling up your ideology' a genuine gameplay verb nobody had tried before. Critics ran out of superlatives; it's the game that made 'walking sim with a thesaurus' sound like the highest compliment possible.

Year: 2019Critic score: 9.2/10

added by IJRin 5 rankings

Slay the Spire

MegaCrit fused deckbuilding with roguelike runs and accidentally invented an entire genre overnight — 'deckbuilder roguelike' is now shorthand understood by millions, all traceable back to the Ironclad's first Bash. Its early access transparency, patching card balance in real time based on community data, became the model for how to launch a strategy game. Every Slay-the-Spire-like that followed (and there are dozens) is still chasing the elegance of its original card pool.

Year: 2019Critic score: 8.9/10

added by IJRin 5 rankings

Cuphead▼ Falling

Studio MDHR mortgaged houses to hand-paint and traditionally animate every frame in the style of 1930s Fleischer cartoons, then packed it with boss rushes so brutally precise they became a rite of passage on Twitch. The Devil's Casino aesthetic hid a run-and-gun engine as demanding as Contra, proving 'style over substance' was a lazy binary all along. It's the game people cite when they want to argue indie titles can out-produce and out-punish anything Nintendo ships.

Year: 2017Critic score: 8.8/10

added by IJRin 8 rankings

Subnautica▼ Falling

Dropped into an alien ocean with nothing but a knife and rising dread, Subnautica turned survival crafting into genuine thalassophobia simulator, the Reaper Leviathan's screech becoming as iconic as any horror movie sting. Unknown Worlds ditched combat-first survival tropes for exploration and vertical depth, both literal and mechanical, letting the ocean itself be the antagonist. It's regularly cited as the survival genre's peak specifically because it never needed guns to make you afraid.

Year: 2018Critic score: 8.7/10

added by IJRin 5 rankings