The Best Indie Games We’ve Played for 2025

Another Crab’s Treasure is an indie game inspired by the Souls formula that trades gothic gloom for undersea humor. But don’t let the outer shell fool you; this title has all the demanding combat and rewarding exploration you expect from this increasingly popular action-RPG subgenre. Or just give the crab a gun.

You’re going to see a lot of games on this list that are throwbacks to beloved retro titles. Indie developers love to put modern twists on classic games. Axiom Verge is a sprawling, nonlinear, sci-fi side-scroller directly inspired by the Metroid franchise. The game’s brilliant level design matches Nintendo in terms of quality, and its truly alien weapons and abilities make an already isolating formula feel even more unnerving.

Designed by a single developer, Balatro takes the thrill of card gambling remixes it into a brilliant roguelike. Thanks to the ever-shifting Joker system, you don’t have to know anything about real poker to start earning unbelievably high scores with wacky modifiers.

With its haunted world, dark aesthetic, dense map, and punishing combat, Blasphemous 2 is a 2D Metroidvania take on the classic Dark Souls formula. That’s an achievement all by itself. However, Blasphemous 2 pushes things further with its fascinating use of religion, and transgressive and taboo topics ripe for indie exploration.

Konami’s not making any new, good Contra games anytime soon. Fortunately, now we can blast robot aliens like it was 1992 with Blazing Chrome. Pixel-perfect, 16-bit art and razor-sharp gameplay capture the chunky pleasures of vintage running and gunning. Multiple playable characters give you an excuse to dive back into the fray again and again. 

Koji Igarashi didn’t create Castlevania, but he did elevate it to new heights with his groundbreaking work on Symphony of the Night and other games that followed that formula. As a Kickstarter project, Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night promised even more gothic castles to explore and dastardly vampires to whip. The finished project delivers, and then some. You won’t even miss the Belmont name.

Bomb Rush Cyberfunk leverages Jet Set Radio’s vibes and gameplay, an extremely early 2000s, Sega Dreamcast-like vision of the future. In the cel-shaded city, you alternate between extreme sports tricks, graffiti shenanigans, and fighting cops to prove that your crew is number one. An unofficial follow-up to an already underground punk favorite is as indie as it gets.

As the latest project from the minds between Octodad, Bugsnax presents you with a new, silly scenario. In Bugsnax, you use wacky traps to capture monsters made of food. What other games let you shoot ketchup guns to trick walking hamburgers? Beneath the absurd exterior is a surprisingly touching story that will keep you invested long after the initial novelty wears off. A new expansion adds even bigger Bugsnax to find and feast on.

Video games are power fantasies, and what has more power than a deadly monster? Carrion is a horror game where you play as an unstoppable killer blob, not one of the poor doomed souls trying to stop the blob. The awesome, icky animations really sell the feeling of being this tentacled terror. A smart difficulty curve means you must work just hard enough for your slaughter to feel earned.

Cassette Beasts is a stylish RPG that puts its own spin on collecting creatures and pitting them against each other in combat. And as an indie game, it can get away with more radical and experimental ideas than Pokémon ever could. The open world has many quests, the fighting mechanics have the extra depth that experienced players crave, and the story veers off in cool, surreal directions. Most importantly, there are some great monster designs, like ghostly sheep and living bullets.

Cuphead spent years in development, and you can see every second of that hard work on screen. Cuphead’s stunning animation perfectly captures the look and feel of classic 1930s cartoons and applies it to a retro-style, side-scrolling shooter. The bombastic boss fights are a visual feast you’ll never get tired of looking at again. That’s great, as the challenging difficulty forces you to replay sections again and again.

Despelote understands that sports aren’t just games we play, but a culture that unites us. This brief autobiographical experience has you live out the narrator’s childhood in Ecuador as the country attempts to qualify for the FIFA World Cup. You kick a soccer ball around city streets, knocking down cans and scoring makeshift goals. But Despelote’s true love of soccer comes from how it brings communities together on both a local and global level. The beautiful game indeed.

Disco Elysium puts you in the shoes of an amnesic cop trying to solve a murder mystery in a realistic, RPG world that’s styled after genre classics, such as Baldur’s Gate and Planescape: Torment. You can customize your character by listening to the right voices in your head while ignoring the others, but the true, grungy beauty lies in the powerful, political, working-class story and themes.  

Divekick demonstrates how fighting games don’t need complicated combos to have strategic depth. In this two-button game, you can dive and you can kick. If you get hit once, you die. By stripping out mechanical complexity, Divekick hones in on the tense competitive mind games that fighting games are truly all about. Plus, it’s just hilarious.

With Freedom Planet, indie fans made the dream Sonic the Hedgehog game Sega never could. It was Sonic Mania before Sonic Mania. Fast-paced platforming, colorful visuals, and looping level designs show how with the right execution, any game formula could be great, no matter how washed-up the original mascot is.

It seemed impossible to top Hades, one of the greatest indie games of all time. It was an unexpected yet masterful blend of fast-paced action and rich storytelling that leveraged roguelike repetition. But Hades II found a way to improve on that mythic predecessor. The new story introduces incredibly cool witchcraft elements into the ancient Greek setting, and the gameplay follows that theme with magic-based combat and unlockable spells. But with two separate paths to attempt again and again, Hades II isn’t just better than the iconic original: It’s twice as big.

The original Hollow Knight became a cult classic by blending Metroidvania-style exploratory side-scrolling with precise combat and overwhelming bosses that recalled the best FromSoftware games. And it all came packaged in a hauntingly beautiful art style featuring a vast, underground realm of tiny bugs. After a long wait, Hollow Knight: Silksong delivers what fans have clamored for over the years. There are new moves to master, new enemies to overcome, and a new world to explore. Meme no more: Silksong is real, and it’s spectacular.

Into the Breach’s tiny, turn-based tactics battles make you feel like a master strategist. As monsters randomly emerge from the ground, you must come up with new strategies on the fly to save humanity. Fortunately, your mech squads come equipped with the nifty powers you expect from giant robots. You can play and replay this roguelike until the end of time and still discover new ways to approach each skirmish.

Indie games can get away with radical art styles you’ll never see in big-budget affairs. Inside, the follow-up to Limbo, is another game about controlling a child as they escape puzzling, terrifying, abstract setpieces with a haunting, foggy, monochrome atmosphere. No other games evoke feelings of dread and desperation like Inside. 

Nobody Saves the World’s take on action role-playing has you transforming into different characters, complete with their own strengths and weaknesses. Gallop into monsters as a horse, summon demons as a necromancer, and pump iron as a bodybuilder. Mix and match powers to create wacky loadouts as you explore a nonlinear world full of challenging dungeons to conquer alone or with a friend.

The original Rogue Legacy was a standout title in the crowded indie roguelike space. After spending years in early access, the full release of Rogue Legacy 2 already surpasses the original. You still fight your way through dangerous castles, respawning as a randomly empowered descendent each time you die. But the increased variety of classes, diverse combat mechanics, improved visuals, and extra locations make this a bigger and better endless adventure overall.

Sabotage Studio made a splash with its ninja sidescroller throwback, The Messenger. Its new game, Sea of Stars, harkens back to classic 16-bit RPGs like Chrono Trigger. Although the characterization could be deeper, the excellent presentation and satisfying mechanics make for a robust package, something we especially appreciate in indie games.

Shovel Knight combines the best bits of retro gaming’s golden age, from Mario’s map screen to Castlevania’s items to DuckTales’ pogo stick attack, to create the best platformer that never released on the NES. This treasure trove has only grown more enticing over time, thanks to the substantial expansion campaigns. Plus, Shovel Knight himself stands tall as arguably the most prolific, modern, indie mascot.

A game that sees you play as a cute kitty instead of a hulking space marine is the kind of wild swerve we love in the indie space. So much of Stray resembles a big-budget, sci-fi adventure, but you see it from a feline perspective, exploring areas and solving puzzles using the skills of a typical housecat. There’s a button just for meowing!

Jonathan Blow helped lead this wave of acclaimed indie games with the time-bending platformer Braid back in 2008. His next game, The Witness, is what happens when one of gaming’s most peculiar indie developers gets a blank check to do whatever he wants. The Witness asks you to solve a series of genuinely clever puzzles, typically about drawing lines inside mazes. Each puzzle is presented as terminals on a mysterious explorable island that’s a philosophical puzzle in and of itself.

Reality shows are all about manipulating fame-hungry people into debasing themselves for the public’s entertainment. The Crush House asks you to stop being a passive observer and start doing that manipulation yourself. This devious voyeur simulator tasks you with capturing footage for a sinister (yet hilarious) reality show. Choose the contestants that create the most drama and find the best camera angles for presenting it to the world.

Saying anything about The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe, aside from “it’s amazing,” feels irresponsible. The original was a fiendishly clever comedy game satirizing the role choices play in video games and in our own lives. If that game was The Matrix, then this reimagined and expanded version is The Matrix: Resurrections, or the second coming of Frog Fractions. If any of that makes sense to you, you’re in for a treat. If you’re totally confused, just dive in and enjoy the ride. 

UFO 50 tells the tale of a fake console to deliver 50 real games designed by an all-star team of indie talent. From intense arcade action to in-depth RPGs, all genres are represented. Retro graphics meet modern design ideas. UFO 50 isn’t just a great indie game, but an independent anthology.

Vampire Survivors is proof that even though indie games may not always have the most polished look, you shouldn’t let that stop you from enjoying their magnificent gameplay. Vampire Survivors plays a bit like a shoot ‘em up, but instead of moving and shooting you only control movement. Your character automatically shoots, so positioning is crucial. The longer you last the more you level up and the crazier your automatic weapons become. In time, all enemies around you crumble to dust, or rather, a mess of pixels.

First off, Treachery in Beatdown City is one of the greatest video game names of all time. Fortunately, it’s a great game, too. In this deconstructed beat ‘em up, you use a unique blend of turn-based and real-time combat to fight your way through cops, punks, and gentrifiers. Hilarious, scathing writing gives the game a radical, political edge that makes other games look cowardly in comparison.