The 50 Best Indie Games of 2025 You Probably Missed

2025 was a strong year for indie games and a mediocre year for AAA. While publishers were busy explaining why their $400M productions were disappointing shareholders, a wave of independent developers shipped some of the most interesting, creative, and replayable games in recent memory.

I played a lot of them. These are the ones worth your time -- ranked by someone with no financial relationship to any developer on this list, no PR copies, and no algorithmic recommendations. Just games that were worth playing and opinions about why.

Balatro -- one person, Game of the Year, $14.99

The Top 10

1. Balatro ($14.99, PC/Switch/PS4/PS5/Xbox)

The best game of 2025. Made by one person in their spare time. A poker-themed deck-building roguelike with a modifier system innovative enough to find genuinely new ground in a genre everyone thought Slay the Spire had solved. I have looked up from this game at 2am more times than I care to admit.

Concord had eight years and $400M. Balatro had one developer and several years of spare time. Balatro won Game of the Year. The contrast is embarrassing for the industry and I find it genuinely instructive.

Who it's for: Anyone who likes roguelikes, deck-builders, or just games with genuinely novel ideas.

2. Animal Well ($24.99, PC/PS5)

The best Metroidvania released since Hollow Knight. One developer, Billy Basso, published by Bigmode. Dense with secrets in ways that most games simply are not -- the lore community was still discovering things a year after release. I finished it and immediately wanted to start again because I knew I had missed things.

Who it's for: Hollow Knight fans. Metroid Dread players. Anyone who likes genuinely discovering things rather than following markers.

3. Hades II (Early Access, $29.99, PC)

Still in Early Access but already better than most finished games. Supergiant does not ship things before they are ready and the early access content demonstrates this. New protagonist. Expanded combat. Same design philosophy of narrative delivered through run-based structure.

Who it's for: Everyone who played the original. Play the original first if you have not.

4. Neva ($24.99, PC/Switch/PS4/PS5/Xbox)

Devolver Digital. An action game about a woman and a wolf surviving in a corrupted world. The combat evolves as Neva grows and the emotional arc the game builds through that evolution is genuinely affecting. Around six to eight hours. Nothing padded.

Who it's for: Action game fans who want artistic ambition alongside the mechanics.

5. Caves of Qud ($29.99, PC)

The most complex roguelike ever made, reaching full release in 2025 after years in Early Access. Dense, systemic, will kill you in unexpected ways for the first twenty hours, and then reveal itself as one of the most generative game worlds ever built. Not accessible. Worth it if you have the patience.

Who it's for: Hardcore roguelike players. You know if you are one.

6. Tactical Breach Wizards ($19.99, PC)

A turn-based tactics game about wizards breaching rooms. Funnier than it sounds. Better designed than you would expect. Every puzzle has a perfect solution and the game wants you to find it without telling you what it is. One of the most satisfying tactics games in recent years.

Who it's for: XCOM fans who want something that has a sense of humour about itself.

7. Mouthwashing ($9.99, PC)

Two to three hours. One of the most disturbing games of the year. A horror game set on a stranded cargo ship that reveals what happened through a non-linear structure. No monsters. Just people in crisis with the constraints of normal life removed. I finished it, sat quietly for a while, and thought about it for days.

Who it's for: Horror fans who want something that will stay with them.

8. UFO 50 ($24.99, PC)

Fifty complete games in one package, designed to simulate a fictional 1980s game library. Some are excellent standalone games. All are interesting as design objects. Absurd value. One of the strangest and most impressive projects released in years.

Who it's for: People who grew up with 8-bit games. Game design enthusiasts. Anyone who appreciates genuine ambition.

9. Lorelei and the Laser Eyes ($29.99, PC/Switch)

From Simogo. A puzzle game with logic so precise it feels like solving a proof. One of the best puzzle games released in a decade. Requires patience. Rewards it completely.

Who it's for: Fans of Return of the Obra Dinn. People who like puzzles that respect their intelligence.

10. Arranger ($19.99, PC/Switch)

A puzzle adventure game where the protagonist moves in rows and columns along with everything else on screen. The most original puzzle mechanic of the year. Charming, precisely designed, and distinctive in ways most games actively avoid being.

Who it's for: Puzzle game fans who want something genuinely novel.

11-30: The Second Tier

All of these are worth your time. I have played all of them. None received the attention they deserved.

11. Nine Sols ($21.99) -- Taiwanese action-platformer combining Sekiro-style parry combat with Taoist sci-fi worldbuilding. Mechanically exceptional. 12. Indika ($16.99) -- A Russian nun in the 19th century, in a game that manages to be genuinely thought-provoking. One of the most unusual premises in years, executed with real commitment. 13. Mullet Mad Jack ($14.99) -- Hyperstimulation FPS. Kills you if you stop killing things. Exactly as stupid and as fun as that sounds. 14. Crow Country ($16.99) -- PS1-era survival horror aesthetic done correctly. Short, focused, excellent. The kind of game that knows exactly what it is. 15. Rise of the Golden Idol ($19.99) -- The sequel to the excellent Case of the Golden Idol. Better in almost every way. One of the best mystery games available. 16. Star Trucker ($17.99) -- A trucking game in space. Slower than everything else on this list. More interesting than most of them. 17. Dungeons of Hinterberg ($24.99) -- A Zelda-like set in the Austrian Alps with dungeon puzzles during the day and social links in the evening. Genuinely original combination. 18. Pepper Grinder ($14.99) -- A precision platformer about drilling through terrain. Excellent movement feel. Short and tight in all the right ways. 19. Rusty's Retirement ($9.99) -- An idle city-builder designed to run in a strip at the bottom of your screen while you do other things. The most novel format idea of the year. 20. Backpack Hero ($14.99) -- A roguelike where the puzzle is spatial inventory management. More interesting than it sounds and more replayable than expected. 21. SteamWorld Heist II ($24.99) -- Excellent tactical RPG. The SteamWorld series is consistently good and consistently underappreciated. 22. Goblin Stone ($19.99) -- Turn-based RPG roguelike with genuine mechanical depth. Better than the marketing suggested. 23. Hauntii ($16.99) -- A ghost possession game with a distinctive art style and melancholy tone. 24. Pacific Drive ($29.99) -- A driving survival game set in the Pacific Northwest exclusion zone. Tense, atmospheric, mechanically original. 25. Rogue Waters ($17.99) -- Tactical roguelike with naval combat. Better than the genre saturation might suggest. 26. Enotria ($34.99) -- Italian folklore Dark Souls. The setting alone is worth the price. 27. Manor Lords ($29.99) -- Medieval city-builder strategy. The most impressive Early Access release of the year, from a solo developer. 28. Botany Manor ($16.99) -- You grow plants. It is extremely relaxing. Sometimes that is exactly what you need and nothing on this list will serve that need better. 29. Ereban: Shadow Legacy ($24.99) -- Stealth action with shadow mechanics. Visually distinctive and mechanically interesting. 30. Cryptmaster ($16.99) -- A dungeon crawler where you interact through typing. One of the most unusual input methods in years.

31-50: Worth Your Time

The Point

Ten of the games in the top ten cost $25 or less. The total cost of all ten at full price is under $250. Every single one of them delivered more interesting, more replayable, and more memorable experiences than any $70 AAA release from the same year that I can think of.

The publishers do not want you to know this. Now you do. Work through this list instead of pre-ordering whatever has the biggest marketing campaign.

Balatro -- $14.99 -- is where to start. Buy Balatro on Steam