What are the best indie games on PC? A question for the ages, navigating through Steam’s ever-growing list of indie releases becomes increasingly harder to do as time passes.
Consequently, picking out the best indie games on PC is no small feat, however, reaching the top of the pile is immensely rewarding. The indie space is where you’ll find anything from straightforward, retro-inspired, gameplay-focused titles to narrative-driven and experimental games.
To make your life slightly easier, we’ve prepared a handy list of the best indie games on PC. While it certainly doesn’t feature all of them out there, we’ve included both popular and obscure titles that are worth your time and attention.
Fall Guys
Developed by Mediatonic
Purchase From: Humble Store
Fall Guys is a massively multiplayer party game that emphasizes colorful, chaotic fun over anything else. Pitting up to 60 players in different game modes, the title requires players to both fight on their own to be the last one standing while also sprinkling moments when alliances of convenience can get you one step closer to your goal. You’ll also find a handful of team modes in which you compete against other teams and do your best to bend the laws of physics to your will and avoid elimination.
Fall Guys was a massive hit at launch and, as long as developer Mediatonic provides regular content updates, there’s a good chance that Fall Guys will become a name that multiplayer enthusiasts will bring up frequently.
Viola
Developed by Jelle van Doorne
Purchase From: Steam
Viola isn’t your typical platformer. Melding elements of rhythm-oriented titles with a more classic Metroidvania gameplay, Viola implements music into moment-to-moment combat and movement features to make for a rather unique experience, all things considered.
Created by a single developer, Viola is described as “a humorous and emotional story about learning to love yourself”, which makes it one of the most wholesome games you’ll find on our list. The game will allow you to create your very own cast of musician-warriors to take on adventures alongside the titular Viola, with the promise of making exploration fun again. A tall order, but we feel Viola tackles it admirably.
Nightmare Reaper
Developed by Blazing Bit Games
Purchase From: Steam
Nightmare Reaper is about as fast as it is brutal - ridiculously so. Clearly inspired by Doom, Quake, and other such vintage shooters we now hold in high regard, this is the game you want to play when you want nothing more than to leave untold destruction in your wake. Players take on the role of a hospitalized patient that, upon going to sleep, enters a sort of a hellscape where guns, blades, and magic do all the talking. It’s quite amazing, really.
Featuring clear and crisp graphics, a booming soundtrack, and a downright impressive array of weapons and weapon-like implements, it’s hard to go wrong with Nightmare Reaper if you’re in the market for a new retro FPS to blast through.
Haque
Developed by SuperTry Studios
Purchase From: Steam
In Haque, players choose between characters featuring a vast array of differences in classes, races, equipment, and little travel companions. You want to be a bird-man necromancer with a crossbow that flings spells with one hand and fires arrows with the other? You can. You want to be a werewolf armed with nunchucks and be the baddest martial artist this side of the full-moon? If it’s there, go for it. Along the way, you’ll find treasure troves of new gear to change up your style on the fly. Sometimes it will lead to victory. Sometimes it will lead to ruin. Sometimes randomization will make mincemeat of the strongest champion. Just try to live long enough to survive the gauntlet, proceed to the next level, and claim glory.
Haque oozes with love for old-school aesthetics between its pixel and grid-like presentation, turn-based strategic combat, and classic dungeon-crawling style, which is why it made our list of the best indie games on PC. However, it’s also made by people with genuine understanding of those games and what we expect of them. Just when you think you have it all figured out, Haque will use your comfort against you and surprise in a number of delightful ways. All of this is supported by a solid soundtrack that will ease your heart when the action is slow and get your pulse pounding when it’s time to fight for your life. Who will you play as and how far can you go?
Tower 57
Developed by Pixwerk
Purchase From: Humble Store
In Tower 57, one or two players can choose between six agents, each with different load-outs and perks to take on the tower. Along the way, you can upgrade your own guns or scrounge weaponry from enemies and caches throughout Tower 57’s various floors. Use your arms and abilities to subvert or annihilate obstacles like walls and locked doors to move forward in areas brimming with riches for you to find. If that’s not enough, relax between floors and explore opportunities from citizens of the tower at various commercial hubs before getting back to the fight. You’ll find friendly faces here and there willing to sell you weapons, give you jobs, swap your limbs for robotic replacements, and more… for a price.
Tower 57 is a lush and feature-rich shooter featuring a wide variety of challenges and enjoyment. It’s got a decent enough story to move the game along and more action than you can chuck a grenade at. Six agents, one tower, and a vast gauntlet of floors await. The only real question is whether you have enough ammo to annihilate everything standing between you and the top.
Nex Machina
Developed by Housemarque
Purchase From: Humble Store
Nex Machina is a pumped-up shooter heavy on the eye-watering visual effects that make even Windows Media Player seem like something from the distant future with its visualizations adding a hypnotic extra layer to a heavy beat. Nex Machina combines booming electronica beats with a fast-paced action-adventure that has you running scared of bullets flying across the screen while you strafe and shoot back while pressing on and triggering various extra walkways.
It’s designed to be a fluid experience from start to finish rarely letting up or slowing down for you to catch your breath. There’s no joy on standing still, after all. The appeal of the game comes from its run n’ gun tactics and blasting through countless enemies with a satisfying beam of light. Best of all? It’s local co-op enabled!
JYDGE
Developed by 10tons
Purchase From: Humble Store
In a time where all we want is a sequel to Dredd, JYDGE is ready to fill the void. A twin-stick shooter set on the backdrop of a futuristic crime-riddled city, it’s a title that had our own reviewer dishing out a rock-solid 9/10 score.
Applauded for approachable controls and rewarding combat, everything else from its plethora of weapons and character upgrades is considered icing on the cake. Twin-stick shooters are a dime a dozen, but 10tons have managed to stand out from the crowd. Read more about the title in our JYDGE review. Check out the full review here to see why it made our list of the best indie games on PC.
RimWorld
Developed by D-Pad Studio
Purchase From: Humble Store
Ah RimWorld. An almost impossibly comprehensive colony creation simulator that borrows liberally from the likes of Joss Whedon’s seminal Firefly television series, RimWorld’s broad premise is that your ship has crash-landed onto an alien planet and you must live long and prosper, or, well, don’t and then die. There’s almost nothing you can’t do in RimWorld, you can tame animals, farm the local environment, build solar panels, scavenge other space wrecks, build terrifying war machines and, on a much more micro-level, take pleasure in watching the relationships between your colonists grow into love or even hatred for one another.
Ultimately, RimWorld has so much depth that it’s almost scary. Everything plays a part; from the attitudes of your colonists and the skills that such behaviours make them more suitable for through to dealing with various types of body wounds, building prosthetics and much more besides there are hundreds upon hundreds of hours of gameplay here to keep players of all skill levels fully occupied. Even better still, RimWorld has an absolutely thriving mod community that has been hard at work fashioning a veritable flood of new content for the game and they don’t look to be stopping anytime soon. Look, if you don’t have RimWorld, stop reading this and buy it by clicking on the link at the top of this section and if you do, well, what are you doing with your life?
INSIDE
Developed by Playdead
Purchase From: Humble Store
INSIDE is a platformer in which the player must traverse puzzling environments and often avoid various creatures, people, and pitfalls. Limbo was known for its disturbing death sequences when the player failed to avoid danger and INSIDE pushes the ante up further with its own slew of gruesome endings. That said, the checkpoints are frequent and the game is often quite fair to the player. Players probably won’t die nearly as much as they died in Limbo.
The environment of INSIDE is quite a thing to observe. Outside of the minimal context, Playdead brings us another living that feels eerie and dystopian. The nameless boy, non-descript outside of his red shirt, travels through a series of changing environments that range from navigating a strange facility to swimming through underground paths to running through the woods, chased by animals and other danger. The threats escalate appropriately and the game keeps the tension of danger and moments of consideration for puzzle-solving in relatively good balance.
Neon Chrome
Developed by 10tons Ltd
Purchase From: Humble Store
In Neon Chrome you are tasked with taking down a futuristic megalomaniac called ‘The Overseer’, a particularly unsavory chap, he has designs on controlling society and generally being a massive jerk without compare. Remotely controlling one of three randomly generated gun-toting agents, each of them have varying skills and abilities, such as hacking or dealing extra damage, while you go about the place blowing your enemies to bits and looting bigger and badder weapons to do it with.
Even though you die often, and you willdie often, Neon Chrome does that thing that all good roguelikes should do whereupon with each respawn your character feels a little bit stronger than they were before. Whether that’s an improvement in stats, starting weapons or some other buff which are all paid for with credits dropped from destroyed crates and fallen foes, it’s abundantly clear that developer 10tons have a formidable grasp of what makes a great roguelike.
March of the Living
Developed by Machine 22 & Creaky Corpse Ltd.
Purchase From: Humble Store
A procedurally-generated adventure that ensures that no one playthrough is the same, in March of the Living you are greeted with a map of the area that shows the paths available to you, taking you through abandoned shops, gas stations, police stations and so on, with each location offering up a bespoke risk/reward ratio of loot and conflict depending on where they are. In fact, the procedural generation in March of the Living is such that you can expect to see over one-hundred and sixty different events in total, with heaps of different dialogue, new characters to encounter and much more besides.
With its exaggerated pixel-art,easily accessible real-time combat and sophisticated survival mechanics that allow you to both scavenge from abandoned buildings or trade with fellow survivors there is certainly a great deal to like about March of the Living. Sure enough, the overall presentation might not be that stellar, but if you’re looking for an FTL-like experience set in the midst of a zombie apocalypse, than March of the Living proves itself to be a worthy morsel to sink your teeth into.
SpeedRunners
Developed by DoubleDutch Games
Purchase From: Humble Store
Three things are certain in life; death, taxes and the fact that SpeedRunners looks much, much better in motion than it does when shackled by static screenshots. Part racing game and part 2D platformer on crack, SpeedRunners channels easy to play, yet difficult to master gameplay beats with the sort of verve that it’s easy to see why despite being in Early Access for so long the game remains one of Steam’s most popular and enduring titles.
Beyond all the hazards, neat power-ups and the crazy-colourful superhero aesthetic, SpeedRunners greatest and most attractive asset by far is just how well it controls. Creating a pitch-perfect marriage of ultra-responsiveness and gravity teasing floatiness, SpeedRunners is simply one of the most eminently enjoyable and satisfying competitive games around. Throw in local co-op play, a level editor and extensive Twitch support, and you have a game that will have long legs for years to come. Get stuck in.
Hieroglyphika
Developed by M. Hanka
Purchase From: Humble Store
A turn-based strategy RPG at heart, Hieroglyphika casts players as a plucky adventurer type who must plumb the depths of an ancient Egyptian pyramid in order to conquer the evil within while hoovering up as much loot as possible in the interim. While stripping out text entirely from the game is a bold move indeed, it also runs the risk of making the game veer towards the unapproachable; especially for folks who frustrate easily and would otherwise struggle with regular fare.
Bolder still is that the game has no handholding in it whatsoever and yet, whereas in the hands of other developers Hieroglyphika may have drifted into the realms of the unintelligible, here the game rewards experimentation as little by little you unearth the myriad of systems and mechanics that comprise the experience. Learning the game in this piecemeal fashion soon reveals itself to be a satisfying experience too, as each subsequent playthrough sees you armed with more knowledge and refined tactics than previous attempts.
10 Minute Barbarian
Developed by Wolff Dobson
Purchase From: Steam
Doing exactly what it says on the tin, 10 Minute Barbarian is a strategy lark designed with the individual who barely has enough time to breathe in mind. Able to be conquered in ten minutes or less, 10 Minute Barbarian has players taking command of a barbarian horde as they attempt to avert a demon-stuffed apocalypse in the length of time that it might take you to brew a pot of tea.
Naturally, the whole premise would fall flat on its pixellated face if it took you longer than ten minutes to work out how to play the thing. Thankfully though, 10 Minute Barbarian is wonderfully simple to pick up while being mightily difficult to put down at the same time. Viewed from a top-down perspective with simplistic visuals, 10 Minute Barbarian has you moving about the countryside, scooping up recruits for your army and fighting enemies wherever you find them. The fighting itself is pretty much handled entirely by the AI, with a game of numbers operating behind the scenes to dictates who will win based on strength and quality of numbers.
You have to be careful though; since every tiled move that you make costs one day of time and with a desperately finite amount of time available to you, each movement and decision needs to be prioritised and pondered over, lest you find yourself woefully unprepared in the end. With a massive array of different maps, tweakable parameters and instantly gratifying, bite-sized portions of strategy 10 Minute Barbarian is pretty much the gaming equivalent of a hugely tasty cereal bar and quite honestly, it feels all the better for it, making it an easy pick for our list of the best indie games on PC.
Porcunipine
Developed by Big Green Pillow and Curve Digital
Purchase From: Humble Store
So few games these days seem to take into account the substantial, crack-like allure of local multiplayer. So it is an absolute delight that Porcunipine by developer Big Green Pillow has waddled onto the scene to remind us of those halcyon days of folks huddled around a computer, having a good old lark while they engage in compelling competitive play.
Intriguingly, Porcunipine seems to have a nice whiff of Acid Nerve’s brilliant Titan Souls about it too, since each player only has one quill to fire at their opponents who can only take one hit in return before the quill has to be picked off the floor to be used again. Adding to the chaos is that the quills themselves can actually bounce off walls and, besides leading to some impressive trajectory killshots against other players, can actually kill the player who originally fired it off in the first place.
Iconoclasts
Developed by Konjak
Purchase From: Humble Store
Iconoclasts is a very special kind of game. Not by virtue of its genre, mechanics, or any individual part of it, but the gestalt game. Seeing as it was developed entirely by one guy over the span of 10 years, it’s about as Indie as you can get. This pixel-art Metroidvania title is a masterpiece of character-driven storytelling with a beautiful art style and engaging gameplay. It’s that kind of game that will go down in Indie history as one of the greats.
Iconoclasts takes players to a world with funky flora and fauna, varied locales and an oppressive theocracy lording over everyone and restricting the use of this world’s most valuable and least abundant resource, Ivory. The One Concern, as they are called, assigns everyone’s jobs, and the mechanics of this world - the ones dealing with Ivory powered machinery - are almost priestlike and not just anyone can have at their washing machine with a screwdriver. Robin, a rogue mechanic, is discovered by agents at the beginning of the game, which catalyses the story.
This whole mechanic thing is incorporated into the game’s… mechanics. Most of the game’s puzzles are based on interacting with stuff using your wrench, and sometimes the trusty tool comes in handy with the game’s many boss fights. Check out our Iconoclasts review for more info.
Factorio
Developed by Wube Studios
Purchase From: Humble Store
Factorio is an RTS game unlike the vast majority of others in the genre, and also encapsulates a primal sandbox. It isn’t a sandbox in terms of what modern colloquial use entails (a la Ubisoft open-world games) but rather a sandbox allowing unrestricted play with its given mechanics. Some of the game’s most impressive features can be explored in this free play, with the internet being full of jaw-droppingly complex or efficient factories, as well as ones made to perform songs with their sound-effects.
Of course, there is an actual, and very complex, game hidden under this, with intricate resource management, planning and some combat is involved as well. It can seem really daunting at first for players not used to the genre, however after getting a hang of it, you’ll start paying attention to make your factories look good beyond simply functioning without catastrophic failures. Factorio really lets players experience a sensation of having created something huge and impressive.
Book of Demons
Developed by Thing Trunk
Purchase From: Humble Store
The first entry in a series of multiple games intended as homages to classic titles from the 90s, Book of Demons takes inspiration from Diablo’s ARPG formula while adding a few elements for modern audiences. Built around a similar structure, Book of Demons features three heroes –the Warrior, Rogue and Mage– braving the depths below a cathedral in order to vanquish three evil bosses and thousands of their demonic, monstrous or undead minions.<p>
Making use of a rather unique papercraft aesthetic, Book of Demons successfully streamlines the ARPG formula, while making its combination of movement restricted to fixed paths and deck-based skill and item system offer healthy amounts of replayability. With its first project, Thing Trunk has managed to do what it set out: both pay tribute to a classic title and offer the perfect vehicle to introduce new audiences to the genre.
Dead Cells
Developed by Motion Twin
Purchase From: Humble Store
Dead Cells melds “2D souls-lite combat” with rogue-lite and metroidvania DNA, sending players on a challenging journey through a castle filled with baddies looking to send them to the afterlife. Dying, however, isn’t the end of the journey, the game’s mantra of “Kill. Die. Repeat” being upheld until its final moments.
Once an area of the castle is unlocked, players can immediately travel to it, making for a good dose of non-linear progression. Add to that a vast arsenal of weapons and skills that feel utterly satisfying to use, alongside enemies and bosses that cannot wait to stomp you into the ground and you’ve one of the best indies to have been released in 2018.
Mordhau
Developed by Triternion
Purchase From: Humble Store
Multiplayer medieval slasher Mordhau took a while to finally release, only to take the top spot in its, admittedly underpopulated, sub-genre. Learning from the likes of Chivalry: Medieval Warfare, Mordhau provides the perfect terrain for medieval combat that can be both tactical and chaotic. However, it’s often not enough to wildly swing weapons around, you need to know the type of strikes available and read your opponent.
Delaying attacks, parries and feints translate into intense one-on-one duels, while horses, catapults and, very often, entire parties of shouting maniacal players can turn a simple engagement into a chaotic flurry of slashes that ends in limbs being cut off. While it does feature premade classes, Mordhau emphasizes customization, letting players choose between a large number of weapons and armor pieces. From short swords to halberds, from lutes to bows, you can play as a multitude of medieval combatants, including fully armored knights, nimble minstrel-thieves or naked peasants swinging their scythe or fists at everyone.
Gato Roboto
Developed by doinksoft
Purchase From: Humble store
Gato Roboto proves that, although cats are amazingly awesome on their own, putting them into robotic suits unlocks new levels of awesome; and that’s precisely what it does. In it, you play as a cat donning a robot suit that’s tasked with blasting apart the nasty creatures that inhabit the alien underworld it crash-landed on. When spaces get too tight for your robot to pass through, and shiny new weapons lie on the other end, you can swiftly pounce out of your suit and navigate levels using your feline agility. In Gato Roboto curiosity doesn’t kill the cat.
The adventured is rendered in simple black and white colors and, despite its pixelated looks that harken back to a different age, blowing stuff up doesn’t lack in the desired chaos. In between its silly premise, joy of blowing stuff up and obvious nostalgia, you’re bound to find something to like about Gato Roboto.
Want to learn more? Give our Gato Roboto review a read.
That’s it for our list of the best indie games on PC. How does your list of favorite indie games look? Let us know in the comments.
Keep updated on the latest PC Gaming news by following GameWatcher on Twitter, checking out our videos on YouTube, or giving us a like on Facebook. Thank you.
