It truly was a great year for indie developers and gamers alike.
2025 has been a standout year for indie games, with many releases not only drawing huge audiences, but also earning nominations in multiple categories at The Game Awards, including Game of the Year. Whether developed by solo creators or small, passionate teams with limited resources, these games have shown that creating something good, affordable, and genuinely enjoyable does not require a complicated formula.
We are not dismissing AA or AAA releases, however; there were plenty of great games from bigger studios as well, but indie developers delivered in such a big way this year, by capturing players’ attention and creating experiences that resonate. Among the thousands of indie games released in 2025, these seven stand out as the ones that went the extra mile and are worth checking out.
The Blue Prince
By Timothy Raj Augustin
The Blue Prince is developed by an indie film and game studio called Dogubomb, and provides perhaps one of the year’s most interesting gaming experiences by far. To describe all the weirdness and intricacies that comprises The Blue Prince would be to betray its hidden surprises, and many unexpected twists and turns. I could sum up its appeal just like this: it’s an incredibly complex board game, only in digital form.
The game asks players to explore a mansion that is in constant flux, drawing “cards” by opening each door in the mansion to decide the rooms they might lead to. In practice, it’s just like playing a round of Forbidden Desert or Betrayal on the House on the Hill, laying down cards to represent items or spaces that the player might stumble onto.
This is a mystery game with a shockingly compelling story, but a keen eye for detail and an unwavering determination to scan every nook and cranny of the mansion will be necessary to see your journey through.
Hades II
By: Anna Bernardo
It’s hard to believe two heavy hitters in the indie space released sequels in the same year, but here we are: Hades II arrived just two weeks after Hollow Knight: Silksong. After early access since May 2024, Supergiant Games took their time refining and perfecting the experience–and it shows.
Hades II follows Princess Melinoë, sister to Zagreus, as she wields dark magic and Olympian aid to battle the Titan of Time, Kronos, in order to save her family and the Underworld. The game expands its predecessor’s world, story, and gameplay with new mechanics like “Hexes” and a dual-path system.
The sequel perfects the original formula while adding deeper and more complex gameplay, with new characters and a richer world. Its signature gorgeous art, tight combat, and addictive narrative loops remain, now amplified by the witchy magic system, the surface world, and doubled content. The result is a roguelike evolution that feels both familiar and thrillingly new.
And while some may still prefer Zagreus’s story, Hades II stakes its own claim in the Underworld, delivering a fresh, ambitious, and fully realised adventure.
Hollow Knight: Silksong
By: Anna Bernardo
One of the year’s most anticipated games, Hollow Knight: Silksong not only earned a Game of the Year nomination at The Game Awards, but also won Best Action/Adventure Game.
For those who haven’t been following, the game puts you in the boots of Hornet, who has been captured and taken to the ruined kingdom of Pharloom. She must scale its deadly peak to uncover the truth behind her capture and the silk-based “Haunting” afflicting its bugs, all while mastering new abilities and taking on fearsome foes. As a Metroidvania sequel, it doubles down on Hornet’s agile, silk-infused combat and exploration through beautifully hand-crafted, interconnected lands.
The hype preceding its release seemed unstoppable. Fans kept the buzz alive thanks to outlets like Daily Silksong News, while The Game Awards host Geoff Keighley endured thousands of “Silksong when?” questions every time a major event rolled around.
When it finally released, it broke multiple digital stores, from Steam to Nintendo eShop, and delivered big. Team Cherry, a four-person studio, spent seven years perfecting every detail, launched it at the same price as the original, and impressed critics and players alike with its art, story, punishing-but-creative gameplay, and music. It peaked at 535,000 concurrent players in under 24 hours and sold seven million copies in less than four months.
Team Cherry may be small, the game took seven years to perfect, and it isn’t about flashy AAA tech or needing the latest high-end PC rigs–but Silksong proves that if you make something players will genuinely love, they’ll show up in droves.
Date Everything!
By Timothy Raj Augustin
Sassy Chap Games’ Date Everything! puts everything but the kitchen sink up for romance, and the kitchen sink too, for good measure. This pun-filled dating simulator follows a protagonist who begins to see average household objects as real people, but only when he puts on a strange pair of glasses called Dateviators. There are over 100 “Dateables” in Date Everything! for players to romance, though finding them will be a task in and of itself.
You’ll quickly discover that not only are the most obvious objects in the house romanceable, like chairs and shelves, but some very tricky-to-find ones too: the air in the house, the player’s nightmares, and an actual glitch in the video game, among others. The Easter Egg hunt of finding Dateables is a lot of fun, but a stacked voice cast and great artwork also works in their favour, endearing these quirky characters to the player rather quickly.
Date Everything! is one of the most creative dating simulators we’ve played by far, and certainly one of the most content-rich in the genre to date.
Dispatch
By Timothy Raj Augustin
Dispatch took the games industry by storm this year, thanks to its fresh take on Telltale’s choose-your-adventure formula. Dispatch follows a semi-retired superhero named Robbie Robertson, who joins a hero dispatching service while waiting for his mecha suit to get fixed. He gets tasked with turning a group of ex-villains into heroes. Unfortunately, that turns out to be a lot more trouble than he might have anticipated.
Dispatch’s charming cast and intriguing plot earned the game a lot of fans right out of the gate. However, the game’s weekly episode releases also deserve some credit here; each week, we waited for new episodes of Dispatch to drop, keen to find out how Robert’s final confrontation with the mystery villain Shroud would turn out.
As the weeks went by, positive word-of-mouth for the game began to circulate, as players fell in love with its characters and debated the many narrative choices they had to make throughout Robert’s journey. Dispatch Season 2 when?
Megabonk
By: Anna Bernardo
Another indie hit that took everyone by surprise was Megabonk, a 2025 roguelike survival game developed and published by solo developer vedinad. Described as a 3D Vampire Survivors-like, it features procedurally generated maps, automatic combat against hordes of enemies, and character progression through randomized upgrades.
Megabonk quickly won fans over for being an addictive, chaotic evolution of the Vampire Survivors formula. It stands out with 3D Risk of Rain 2-inspired movement, deep build variety, satisfying progression, meme-heavy humour, and a respect for player time, offering strategic depth and fun in a cheap, accessible package.
It may not be the most polished or visually striking game, but vedinad hit on a formula that’s impossible to resist: a game that’s just plain fun.
PEAK
By: Kurt Lozano
This game is PEAK. Developed through a collaboration between indie studios Aggro Crab and Landfall Games, PEAK is a co-op climbing game where up to four players must work together to climb up a pre-generated mountain comprised of four different biomes. After it released in June, it quickly became viral for how chaotic things can get the higher up you go despite its simple premise.
Climbing up a mountain is easier said than done, even when you do it in a video game. While playing PEAK is nowhere near as dangerous as scaling Mount Everest, you still have to carefully manage your stamina while avoiding falling to hunger or injury. Luckily, you can find food and tools to help you on your way. And, if you're playing with friends, there will always be someone to pull you up those last few inches right before your stamina runs out. You can always cannibalize them if you run out of actual food too.
But more than just providing a simple and fun gameplay experience, PEAK also touches on something innate in almost every human being: the desire to climb up, rise above whatever challenges come your way, and reach the PEAK. Whether you do that by working together with your fellow climbers or leaving them behind once they become a burden (good luck avoiding the Scoutmaster if you do), is entirely up to you. Also, you can play basketball in the airport before you start a game and do unspeakable things to a plushie of the game's mascot, Bing Bong.
There are plenty of other great indies not mentioned in this list. RV There Yet?, Bongo Cat, R.E.P.O., Schedule I, and Deltarune all reached over 100,000 players this year, impressing fans with their depth of gameplay and plot. Even the many games that didn’t hit these numbers, like Absolum, Tiny Bookshop, Bounty Star, Zexion, and more, deserve recognition.
With so many impressive indie releases this year, it’s exciting to imagine what 2026 could bring, and there’s hope that players will continue to seek out, support, and celebrate the creativity and passion coming from small teams.
