Yesterday in the Hard Drive offices Jon Ruggiero turned to the staff and said he’d love to hear our favorite indie games, but only if we could list them off really quick so that he could ignore us all at the same time.
He has a point — you never know if an indie game recommendation is going to be for the best RPG you’ll ever play or a POS FPS that’s hardly playable. Plus everyone that tries to tell you what game they like is boring as hell. How can you possibly listen to all those recommendations and (only to then immediately disregard them) in an easy and efficient manner?
Luckily we at Hard Drive are here to help! Our staff of highly-trained and needlessly-obsessive journalists have listed below the indie games they love with a passion, so that you have one quick and easy resource to ignore them all at once. If you’ve somehow read to this point, thanks for not ignoring this, and enjoy our choices for great indie titles you shouldn’t ignore but probably will.
Yume Nikki
Yume Nikki provides a weird and wonderful dream world for you to explore and nothing else. While some might find this boring or uninteresting. Luckily, I’m pretentious so I think it’s simple, mysterious, and beautiful. Let me put it like this, you don’t fall asleep and then complain why your dreams didn’t have complex gameplay mechanics or systems. Well, maybe you do, but if so please never come near me. – By Gabe Porter
Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion
I cannot win against the IRS but I can win against Mayor Onion’s corrupt politics. – By El Gimpador
Quiplash by Jackbox Games
Playing Quiplash together should be required at the beginning of any new friendship or relationship to test whether you share the same sick sense of humor. If the new friend or love interest doesn’t know what Quiplash is, cease all communication immediately. It’s not going to work out. – By Jus Kaplan
The Maze
Just thinking about this game brings back joyous memories of sleepovers and pre-pubescent angst. This classic flash game from 2003 brought the world together at a time when everything felt so bleak (look up the Iraq War). It’s got a clean & simple layout, top notch sound design, and puts your hand steadiness to the ultimate test. If you think you can handle the challenge, you can’t go wrong with The Maze! – By Julien Perez
American Arcadia
American Arcadia is a witty and surprisingly thought-provoking adventure with incredible voice acting and fantastic writing. Seamlessly switching between first-person and 2.5D side-scrolling, the puzzles are fairly accessible but still make you scratch the dome.
Through the story’s twists and turns, impeccable artstyle and solid gameplay, American Arcadia should not be missed for fans of The Truman Show, Playdead’s Inside and witty dystopia. ” – By Tyler A
Parasite (2019)
Parasite has got to be one of my favorite films. Beautiful cinematography and excellent performances bring to life a scathing criticism of modern capitalism. While on the surface it may appear as though the low class family are the parasites the title refers to, as the film progresses it becomes more clear that the rich family are the real parasites.
I also believe the movie is not attempting to villainize those who hold wealth, but rather show how we’ve created a world where simply being smart or talented is not enough to – What? This list is about indie games, and not independent movies? Whoops.” – By Alex Kitsinger
Inscryption
“I like card games.
I like video games.
What is a card game?
Who made the first card game?
What is K█rn█ff█l?
What REALLY is K█rn█ff█l?
What the ████ is a Daus?
How do you crack it?
Why did the Russians care?
Who is Barry Reginald Wilkinson?
Who REALLY is Barry Reginald Wilkinson?
Who is Maxim Kaminski?
Who is █ay██e?
Why did she ███?
Follow the S████.
The █████ is at work.
49.301911 N, 123.14154 W
The O██_D███ is out there.
Good luck ████ C█████.
M
”
The Talos Principle
“I love puzzles and I hate God.” – by Cathy Herbert.
Into The Breach
Do you enjoy feeling like a tactical genius one moment only to marvel at your own stupidity in the next? Then have I got a game for you! Into The Breach released in 2018 and is the second game released by Subset Games, makers of FTL. Gameplay consists of deploying a team of three mechs with different abilities whose mission is to protect the last holdouts of humanity from giant bug-like monsters that have been growing underground. Each team of mechs feels unique and demands their own approach to taking out the bugs, and each run plays different than the last, offering an evergreen experience that really tickles that “One more run” part of your brain. I really cannot recommend it enough. If you have a Netflix account you can even play it on your mobile device for free! Why are you still reading this? Go download this game right now! – By Johnny Amizich
Castle Crashers
One of the original Xbox Live indie titles, I beat this game with every single playable character successfully ignoring years worth of homework as a young teenager. – by Lawrence Scotti
Return Of The Obra Dinn
In this time-travel puzzle game, the player has to deduce the answers to many mysteries like how so many people died aboard the titular ship, who was who, and why the graphics look like that. – by Pre-dead ghost
Umineko No Naku Koro Ni
This murder mystery visual novel about a family trapped on a private island is actually the greatest piece of fiction ever written. Just look at the title of any YouTube video about it or ask one of the eighteen people in the world who have played it! The plot is dense, the characters are compelling, the visuals are below average. Also, the gameplay is nonexistent because you literally just read it. But trust me! You know when you go to that one Chinese restaurant and the menu is almost illegible but you know the food is gonna smack? That’s Umineko. The soundtrack sounds like it was made for Mt. Olympus. It may have a higher word count than every Lord of the Rings book combined, but it only takes, like, 120 hours to read aaaaaaaaaaaand I can tell I’ve lost you and you’re never playing it. Your loss, I guess. My bad for trying to recruit you into the MLM this game really is. – By Connor Telford
Football Coach: College Dynasty
Have you ever had to pay a 17 year-old millions of dollars to move to Wyoming and play offensive tackle for your team? Did that newly-rich teenager proceed to get hurt in his first practice, missing the entire season and irreparably stunting his development? Did he then proceed to transfer to Alabama, blossoming into a first-round pick but leaving you with literally nothing to show for it? No? Then you’re missing out. Just like real life, 10/10. – By Lobster Jackson
The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth
A rogue-like dungeon crawler masterpiece that will consume thousands of hours of your life and leave you sounding like a total nut job. “A-and then I used mom’s knife plus soy milk to kill Mega Satan!” Sure you did TJ, now tell us when you’re gonna get a girlfriend? – by TJ Main
Fire Pro Wrestling World
With over 1,500 hours played over the past six years, ‘Fire Pro’ is the undisputed tribal chief of my Steam library. The game is the last hurrah for a series which has given wrestling fans the compelling gameplay they don’t deserve since 1989. For the record, there’s wrestlers who are world champion right now who weren’t even born when the first game came out. With a plethora of support that means the game can’t just be shut down like ‘WWE 2K’ titles, I could easily see myself playing the game for another 34 years.
The game has such longevity because it’s an open sandbox where you can make anyone do anything when that bell rings. Whether it be downloading your favorite anime character from the Workshop or delicately hand-crafting a move where they force their opponents to do the Griddy, the possibilities are endless. You can even edit how the CPU controls that wrestler, allowing you to form a true computer fight club. If AI is going to take over everyone’s job, the least they can do is kill each other for our amusement. For the record, the top dogs of my fight club are William Afton and Michael Cera. – By HG Punk
Unpacking
This one goes out to all of my fellow procrastinators out there. Because why would I want to unpack items from a vacation I took years ago or move things around to make my own home look nice? I can do that in Unpacking while convincing myself I’m getting ideas for the next time I rearrange my house (I will never take the time to rearrange my house). – By Daniel Johnson
Dusk
DUSK is a fun little indie horror FPS that is a direct homage to the super fast, floaty shooters of the 90s a la Quake. The intentionally dated graphics and pulpy level design legit make me feel like I’m playing this on a floppy disc at my friend’s house because my mom won’t let me play anything with blood. The soundtrack is also 100% bonafide industrial metal bangers by Andrew Hulshut, who for some reason is playing one of those guitars with way too many strings. – Colleen Nerney, Hard Times Editor
Disco Elysium
I have to go with Disco Elysium. The first time I played it I was blown away. It completely dodged every expectation I had, mostly because I thought it was going to be a dancing game like Dance Dance Revolution. It has disco in the title, after all. Turns out it’s not a dancing game, so I busted out the old leotard and sweatbands for nothing, but it’s still pretty cool. There’s some murder mystery going on, and all these dialogue trees and themes and stuff that I pretty much skipped through. Too confusing and boring. Mostly I just walked around collecting bottles to sell for money to buy drugs. Great game. – by Traye Holland
Void Bastards
Void Bastards is a rogue-like first-person shooter set in deep space, with a distinct cel-shaded art style that is instantly recognizable to anyone that loved 2000AD comics. As an awakened prisoner aboard a spaceship, you’ll be charting a course through the Nebula, making the most of your limited fuel and food reserves. Each jump is a choice between continued survival and certain death, as you loot derelict ships and shoot it out with pirates and aliens. Salvaged resources keep you fed, and your ship flying, but also let you craft better weapons and gadgets at your workbench.
Dying is inevitable, but that’s okay, as the next expendable convict gets hydrated and the mission proceeds ever onward. Each revived convict can have a positive or a negative attribute, and woe be you if roll the Smoker’s trait of randomly coughing–any hope of stealthily creeping around deep space derelicts infested with floating, blue-faced cherubs goes right out the airlock. Live. Die. Repeat. Maybe someday you’ll make it through to the other end of the Nebula, you never know.” – by Michelle Pereira
Cobalt Core
Even in an all-time year like 2023, Cobalt Core has stood out as one of my favorites of the year. Great deckbuilding gameplay that fans of any game like Slay the Spire will love, charming art and dialogue, and a chill soundtrack make Cobalt Core one of my favorite indies I’ve played. I wrote a lot more words about it that you can read here on Minus World as well! – By Parker Johnson
Hades
This is the game that introduced me to rogue-likes. I love the art design, the setting, the story, the boon system and really everything else about the game. The only downside I can think of is they made every character very attractive. When they put certain members of the Greek Pantheon on screen during dialogue I start howling like a wolf uncontrollably until I get a nosebleed. – by Jack H.
Dead Cells
Dead Cells is at this point a well-renowned Indie Darling turned success story. The game’s fast-paced Metroidvania Rogue-like also contains many Looter Elements with a strong diversity of weapons, enemies, and some genuinely killer boss fights. Aside from the game’s core mechanics, it offers a whole list of customization options, achievements, and even strange pieces of lore that refuse to offer a full picture of the collapsed kingdom- are you still reading this? C’mon man. Don’t make me do the whole… just play it, dude. It’s been around since 2018 which is basically forever ago. I shouldn’t need to sell you on it. Just watch a YouTube or a TikTok or a Reel about it, I don’t know. I have stuff to do. I’m actually going to go play Dead Cells, I think. See, runs are usually pretty quick, especially if you’re not very good at it- so I get to trick myself. I didn’t just waste an hour avoiding my work, I just did 4 quick 15-minute runs. Not the same thing. Anyway, the game is good- play it. – By E. Alexander Zimmermane
VA-11 Hall-A
Its very difficult to pick one favorite indie game in a sea of genre defining titles, but in the end for personal reasons i gotta give it to VA-11 Hall-A for its story and killer soundtrack – By Artemis / Artie2D
Spiritfarer
For anyone who has ever wished death upon their Animal Crossing villagers – Spiritfarer is for you. “”Oh cool, Zucker just said the exact same line of dialogue for the third time today,”” says the Animal Crossing: New Horizons player through gritted teeth and cascading tears. “”I can’t wait to see what he’ll repeat tomorrow!””
Fool that you are. If you were playing Spiritfarer, Zucker could die. You’d have an emotional chat with him at the gates to the afterlife where you intuit that in the mortal realm – he was your Uncle, or your best friend, or your hairdresser’s dog, or some other stuff, and he’d just taken the form of an octopus for reasons we can’t go into right now. And then you’d embrace, and he’d pass on in a beautiful show of flashing lights as the music swelled.
But this would only happen after you got to know Zucker, in the way you’ll get to know the likes of Astrid, Atul, Gustav and the rest of the motley crew in Spiritfarer. A gorgeous, truly emotionally resonant game in which you operate and customise the boat with which you’ll ferry these recently departed souls to the great beyond. Before you do that though, you take your time to know them, go on adventures with them, have deep, meaningful conversations about life and cute girls and other stuff with them. And then you watch them go forever in a beautiful kind of pyrrhic victory. It beats the hell out of watching them walk into trees and ask you for a clownfish every day. Absolutely no one asked, but if I were a spirit in Spiritfarer I’d be a giant bat and whoophee cushions would be my whole thing. I’d spend all day every day trying to get you to sit on a whoophee cushion. Now, dear viewer. I must go, forever. The 4 minutes I knew you were some of the most meaningful of my life, but all things must come to an end…Farewell. – by Brad Waters
Source of Madness
What were you expecting here? SOMA? Signalis? Two extremely thought-provoking, wonderful games, and two of my favorite indies. But here’s the thing: you already know them. I bet you don’t know Source of Madness (developed by Carry Castle).
Is it the best indie game I’ve played? No. But is it the best roguelite? Also no. Do I still think about dancing in the air around a flailing mass of limbs while spraying it with unruly sheets of lightning magic? More than you’d think! Source of Madness is a 2022 side-scrolling roguelite where you play a robed Acolyte with elemental powers, traversing lands blighted by eldritch horrors. The art and vibes are the main selling points, with Al-assisted textures adding a bewitching, recursive feel to the world of the Loam Lands. The monsters are also suitably insane: each is a procedurally generated mass of limbs, tentacles, eyes, and more that flails and throws itself at you, screeching all the while as if in revolt against its own monstrous form. Source of Madness also happens to be incredibly fun (and chaotic) to play. It’s a little janky at times, but that’s par for the course when dealing with horrors from the stars. What surprised me most is how rich in actual Lovecraft literature the world of the game is. There’s lots of name-dropping of Elder Gods, yes, but Source of Madness uses and connects the Cthulhu Mythos in interesting ways, with some new twists and a compelling aesthetic. Just take my advice and always buy the Flame Lance Ring.” – by Nik Theorin
Snood
In 1999, this was undoubtedly the hottest game to play in the school library when you were supposed to be writing a paper about mitochondria. Legend has it some people actually paid for it after completing the demo, but only because they’d never heard of Bubble Bobble. -by Ben Friedman
Indiana Jones and the Emperor’s Tomb
Looking at the short list of Indy games, Emperor’s Tomb takes the cake. Acting as a prequel to Temple of Doom, this journey sees Indy once again pitted against the Nazis, this time in search of the idol of Kour- …whoops. I think I misunderstood what was being asked of me here. – by Brad Lester
Roadwarden
If your sensibilities are anything like mine, there is no game as perfect as Roadwarden. Weave your way through a world that feels alive around you in a particularly grim fantasy world. It is a text-based RPG that makes fantastic use of isometric view pixel art. Part visual novel, part RPG adventure, and part living world. With every day that passes, your decisions begin to build towards the shape of the world to come. The characters feel as though they live in this world, and it is a world that has no particular reverence for you. It is stark, it is desperate, it is beautiful, and it is perfect. Chef’s kiss. – by Mason Kennedy
Necrosphere
Oh wait are you still reading this article? Then check out Necrosphere, a genuinely challenging 2D pixel art metroidvania. The twist? You only use the left and right arrow keys. Jump? Side keys. The sick jetpack you get later on? Side keys. Go play to find out how. Or just ignore this recommendation like you did with all the others. – by Daniel Rauter
Tunic
Have you ever wanted to turn on a game and feel like it’s in the wrong language, you don’t know what’s going on and you suck at video games? Look no further! Tunic wears its inspiration on its sleeve, however, if you can get over the blatant similarities to Crash Bandicoot, you’ll find a puzzle/adventure game unlike any other.
It’s the type of game where its secrets have secrets that are having an affair with other secrets. It also contains what may be, with no hyperbole, the best puzzle ever found in a video game. Unless there’s an obscure Picross level out there that holds the secret to world peace for some reason. That would be pretty cool, I guess.” – by Ted Curtis
Pyre
The underdog of the pantheon that Supergiant Games, where Hades sits on top for many, Pyre needs to be talked about more! It’s a weird blend of visual novel and religious rugby. What makes this so interesting is that losses don’t dictate in a game over, the story must go on! It becomes really cool how your character roster will matter in matches, from both story and gameplay reasons. Darren Korb has another brilliant soundtrack to add to his discography. – By CJ Sweeney
Hollow Knight
Combining the exploration of Super Metroid and Symphony of the Night with a Tim Burton aesthetic, Hollow Knight is a massive and rewarding action-platformer with thumb-busting boss fights and adorable characters that pop with personality. – By Matt Shore, Occasional Human
Dodgeball Academia
A lot of people love indie games for their risk taking and examination of deep emotional themes. I do as well but I love whipping flaming dodgeballs at snot nosed kids even more. Dodgeball Academia allows you to do just that. With an art style and story straight out of a Saturday morning cartoon, it’s a charming, clever and oftentimes legitimately funny dodgeball RPG.
It’s structured like a retro JRPG where you explore, complete quests and gain new party members. Like Pokémon, enemies stand around the world and when you walk in their line of sight they challenge you. Only here, instead of engaging in animal abuse, you get to smack annoying kids in the face with dodgeballs. Even better is that you can pull off super moves to really pelt those little brats. Finally we gamers can be the ones doing the pelting.” – by Matt Fresh
Plenty of more indie games to ignore on the next page! Click the “2” to keep reading.
Continue Reading:
1 2