Top 50 Indie Games
Embankment
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Here you go–my personal ranking of the best indie games ever made! The last decade or two have seen an explosion of innovative and memorable indie games, and these are some of the most enduring standouts. This is all in good fun, so feel free to weigh in with thoughts, recommendations, and rankings of your own!
Here’s a few other videos on the channel about indie stuff:
Katana Zero vs. Hotline Miami:
Top 10 Mystery Indie Games:
17.01.2023
Wonderful video. I’ve played 35 on the list, looking forward to playing the other 15! I already own 10 of those. First up Papers Please.
I usually don’t respond to these bc it’s y’all’s opinions but Hotline Miami at only 46 is a head scratcher.
I'd like to give a shout-out to five indie-games that I was hoping would be on this list, two of which I learned about from a YouTube channel called Stumpt:
1. Terraria. Not sure why this game never made the list, as Minecraft no longer is an indie-game. It is the only indie-game to reach 1-million positive reviews on Steam, and is easily the second most famous indie-game behind (what used to be) minecraft. I'm pretty sure I don't need to explain what Terraria is tho. It also happens to be my most played game on Steam with 1200 h played.
2. Starbound. The bastard child of Terraria which every gamer compares to it. It's more exploration themed than Terraria in that you explore an endless universe with procedurally generated worlds which you explore to mine metals to progress through the campain. Whilst the game on its own is rather "meh", it's probably one of the most moddable games where you can add a near endless amount of new races and content mods like Freakin Universe, which might as well be its own game for how large it is.
3. Crawl. When he talked about Towerfall being on of the best multiplayer pvp-games I instantly got to think about Crawl. The whole premise is that four players fight each other for survival, where one player is alive and the rest is ghosts that do everything to kill the player who's alive and steal their life-force. And the way a player can win is to defeat a boss controlled by the other three players. There's a lot of strategy in the game, which may favor the more experienced player.
4. Death Road to Canada. Like with Crawl, I got to think about this game because of its multiplayer feature. This game is all about your groups survival whilst you face an endless horde of zombies on your way to the Canadian border, which is a safe-zone from the zombies. The areas you visit and encounters you have is completely random, which means every play-through is a different experience. It's an extremely hard game, and only gets harder the more players you have (to a total of 4).
5. Oneshot. Whilst I'm not equally as surprised that this game never made it on the list, the story in this game is something else. I've never cried as hard reaching the two endings in this game. The story is about a cat with a blue scarf, red had and jacket, called Miko. He/she (it's not entirely clear what gender they are) wakes up in a abandoned house and finds a light bulb which everyone calls the "Sun". Your job is to take this light bulb to the top-most floor of the lighthouse which lies at the heart of the world. There's a lot of mysteries about what kind of world Miko is in and what will happen when they return the Sun. It's definitely a game worth checking out if you love emotional story games.
What an awesome video! Dangerous for Steam Deck users😄
I know you'll probably not see this comment, but I really hope you do because there is one game that isn't in your list and is barely recognized by anybody anywhere. This game is called "aground", and originally it was a demo on game websites, but a small while back it was fully released on steam, and ever since it has still remained as my number one favorite multiplayer indie game. It has a bunch of gameplay and story, and is genuinely fun, allowing you to practically do whatever you want with your friends, especially late game. Now I don't want to spoil too much, as my favorite aspect of the game was the completely unexpected paths it took and development. I highly suggest it, and I really hope it gains some amount of publicity as it is just an amazing game, especially with friends. It made some of the funniest moments in any games I've ever played with friends, and I super duper suggest it.
There is this game I played a while ago the demo mainly called Aground, its a 2D terrarria minecraft type game, but the only similarities are the simplistic combat and the mining. The story is very interesting where you and many other people crash land on a planet with a bunch of islands, the three in the demo are a normal island where you build your little town and a dragon to the far right, a magic island and an island inhabited by humans with advanced technology where you can become a cyborg. on the demo alone i spent SIX HOURS playing it before it was beat. seriously check it out. its $20 on Steam.
Indie games are the games Triple A devs wont make but are great and often much better
I didn’t really get on with Outer Wilds but I’ll give it another go!
If you’re a fan of deck builders like Slay the Spire, you should absolutely play Inscryption. It turned me into a fan of the genre and is one of my favorite games I’ve ever played.
Yo, are you ME?! I feel like somebody made a video about my favorite games for me 😂
I was surprised to see FTL so high, but darned if I didn't love that one too. Unlocked all the ships and achievements and whatnot. The length of a run hit a real sweet spot with me.
despite being extremely light on story (which i used to claim to value highest), Into The Breach is one of my favorites ever. it's not 100% RNG free even within the battles (grid damage has a low but non-zero chance of being completely resisted, which in one instance was the final denominator in securing the last move of the last battle of one of my runs), but the level of knowledge means there's almost always some surprising way to mitigate damage no matter how impossible things look (and in the rare case that there isn't, it's because of your own failure to play smarter earlier in the mission).
Some indie games I thought were great that weren't on the list:
Stray
Undertale
Nobody saves the world
Inscryption
Chained echoes
Ghost song
Disco Elysium is absolute shit. Couldn't play it more than 5 minutes and has to stop by its shittiness. And Subnautica is an absolute scam of a game. They rip you off your money for a pile of shit that anyone who is 5 years old can put together in a few days and still looks ugly and is 0 fun and just annoying and nothing else. A complete scam, you pay money for nothing – boredome and annoyance.
transistor is very low IMO, it's your opinion but it's easily top 5. also Risk or rain 2 should be top 5 too imo
Darkest Dungeon?!
Inscryption is another great one
I would also recommend Horace to all platform enjoyers
Even though the gameplay might become a bit tedious towards the end but the storytelling is just something else – very heartwarming and funny
longest top games video i've ever watched. Worth every minute tho
What song is played at 17:50 thank you
Just want to echo many of the other commenters and praise the video. Great script, editing, and thoughtfulness behind each entry without sounding long winded like many "top video game lists" often do. Earned a subscriber from me!
Since this video idk if you’ll read this or not but two of my favorite indie games are solar ash and ghost runner and I think you should really check them out if you’re interested
Check out twelve minutes , it's been sooo long since a game awakened the excitement I had as a child , i got hooked right on the spot and finished it in one sitting, definitely recommended if you feel video games don't hit the way they used to
Great list, only missing:
– Don’t Starve/Don’t Starve Together
-Cuphead
– Brothers: Tale of two sons
Very solid list, i havent played some of these but in my list i would have to put in slime rancher and coffee talk, both are very unique, calming and exciting
I think "the Darkest Dungeon" and "Project Zomboid" should be here. They are very very good.
i concluded that our tastes are very diffrent
how could you make a list of over 50 title and never mention
12 minutes
bright memory
yokus island express
hue
spelunky
little nightmares
the talos principe
superliminal
among us
ori and the blind forest
world of goo
cuphead
Go try Rain World.
I can see u are a very cultured son of a gun! I have been slow in indies recently, since my time to play games have shrinked to almost nothing…I will rush to your channel as soon as a get a Deck to see what did a miss out…Plus I have played a lot of the games in the list.
yeah no gris is not pronounced grease. 'murican developers smh.
Really didn't like golf story. I would have placed rim world there. One of the best sim card ever in existence
i don’t know if you have repentance now but if you don’t, you should definetly get it, i’m sure it would bump it up several spots
Great list. Most indies that I love are in the list… But since no list can be perfect I missed hard one game (I was pretty sure it would be on the top10 and was a little bit shocked it didn't make a top50 list): Cuphead.
Have you ever played Darkwood, if not, i highly recommend it
Outer Wilds made me realise Indie games are the future of gaming innovation, the triple A studios have become rather stale
I in no way can ever understand how people think hades is better then binding of isacc like seriously have u seen the amount of content and amazing bosses binding of isacc has in comparison
All good games, but it's a very generic list, I guess it's what an abstract "best" boils down to, the most popular ones. For those of you looking for lesser known gems, I would like to recommend, in no particular order:
Noita
Darkwood
Rainworld
Opus Magnum
Synthetik 1, 2
Manifold Garden
Antichamber
Trials of Fire
Sunless Sea/Skies
Linelight
Furi
It's easy to say that a game is missing, even with 50 really great games on this list, but I really liked the experience on OneShot and it could be somewhere around here.
However, Outer Wilds is one of the greatest (if not THE greatest) video game experience that I'll ever have.
I got my eyes full only by listening to the soundtrack or seeing some footages of it. It is truly amazing and I wish that everyone played this, at least once.
where is unsight in the list
Some classics that are not on this list and comes to mind are Guacamelee 1/2, Undertale, Enter the Gungeon, Ori 1/2, A Hat in Time, Cuphead, Dakest Dungeon, Axiom Verge 1/2, Blasphemous, Little Nightmares 1/2, Spelunky.
Ultrakill
Whats the amount of money you need to pay to create a dev account and afterwards upload a game to steam, is it 100$ for account and 100$ for game upload? Or is it 100$ for account creation and game upload together?
I'm surprised neither Risk of Rain was on this list. The gameplay is fantastic. And while it's not very transparent, it actually has some pretty deep and interesting lore if you're willing to do some digging.
I hope @soulpassage will be there one day 🙂 sooonnn
You didn't compare anything to dark souls. good job. But for some games you compared to Zelda, I was really scratching my head about why Dark souls wasn't mentioned. Have you not played it?
No darkest dungeon or terreria is wilddd but this is still a pretty good list
Top 5 is interchangeable. Personally HADES top my list!
super hexagon
Thank you for introducing new games to me. Played more then 10 of these and have couple more in collection waiting, but thanks to you i added couple more.
Great video..can't imagine the effort you put into this