casual sweats indie games are saving the industry

What is an “Indie” game developer and why should anyone care?

While there is some debate over the EXACT definition of “Indie” as it pertains to video games, the non-pedantic definition is something like this: a video game developer, usually an individual or very small team (but not always), that creates video games without any financial or development assistance from a larger studio or publisher. The number of indie developers has fluctuated quite a bit since the inception of the video game industry, but there are more now than ever, estimated at around 31,000 in the US alone as of 2021. Interestingly, many have only published one game.

Casual Sweats Rocket League Indie Games are Saving the Industry — **Ok, now why should you care?**

You might assume from the definition of “indie” that these developers have less resources and more limitations on what they can make as a result. You’d be correct. However, the freedom that inherently accompanies a lack of obligation to large corporate structures allows these developers to do interesting and new things with their games, often leading to wholly unique experiences that mainstream developers could never achieve because of the scale of risk.

First-person shooter rhythm games, soccer with cars (yes, Rocket League started as an indie game), bone-chilling horror, pixel art crafting and survival (yes, Minecraft also started as an indie game), and games that simulate using 90’s era computers are among the charming and quintessentially unique experiences that could have only come from indie studios. Trust me, you should care deeply about indie studios.

Many, MANY of the games we know and love today have indie developers to thank for their popularity. Myst was a deep first-person puzzle game that incorporated live action video and incredibly realistic graphics. A decade after Myst released, we’d get games like Portal, The Witness, and Superhot, all indie games.

Enchanted Scepters was the first point-and-click adventure game, revolutionizing the way we interacted with the still-nascent phenomenon that was video games. A mouse input allowing players to select actions and interact with objects made playing these games much more user-friendly and lowered the barrier to entry since players didn’t need to type commands and keep track of their commands and responses on their own. Games like Grim Fandango, the Telltale games (The Wolf Among Us, Batman, Tales from the Borderlands), The Curse of Monkey Island, and even L.A. Noir and Minecraft owe their existence and popularity to Enchanted Scepters.

Do you like Call of Duty? Bioshock? Titanfall? Wolfenstein? Maybe you prefer games like Skyrim or Oblivion? Perhaps you’re a Borderlands or Half-Life fan. How about Battlefield? Well, you should thank Jon Carmack, John Romero, and Tom Hall for creating a game called Wolfenstein 3D in 1992. While it wasn’t the first First-Person-Shooter (that honor goes to a game called Maze War) and although the sprite-based graphics and inability to look up or down made it rudimentary by today’s standards, it irrevocably transformed and elevated the action shooter genre and paved the way for some of the best-selling and most popular games ever made.

One last example. Even those who are only tangentially interested in video games have likely heard of Metroid and Castlevania. Both released early in the NES era, these laid the groundwork for a genre known unimaginatively as Metroidvanias. Games in this genre often have varying degrees of their identifying characteristics, but at least some amount of item acquisition, exploration, puzzle solving, backtracking, and ability acquisition is present in these games. But Metroid and Castlevania were not the first games to introduce this style of gameplay. That honor goes to a game called Xanadu, released on PC in Japan in November, 1985.

casual sweats xanadu certificate indie games are saving the industry — Designed by Yoshio Kiya and published by Nihon Falcom, Xanadu was a sequel to a game called Dragon Slayer, but the resemblance began and ended at the series relation. Xanadu, with its groundbreaking karma system, individually leveling weapons, and intricate quest systems, became extremely and unexpectedly popular and was one of the best-selling Japanese PC games of all time, paving the way for Metroid, Castlevania, and the entire Metroidvania genre.

Popular modern games in this genre include Hollow Knight, Dead Cells, Ori and the Will of the Wisps, The Messenger, and one of my personal favorites, Axiom Verge. Even games like Zelda owe some of their popularity and concepts to Xanadu, a risky “little” indie title that changed everything. (Awesome side note, if players sent in their Xanadu save data after completing the game, Nihon Falcom would send out a certification card with a serial number stating that player had completed the game.)

Since the beginning, indie studios have been pioneering new ideas and gameplay mechanics that eventually become mainstream. But someone had to take a chance first, and that’s not something large corporations tend to enjoy doing. And in truth, many of these gambles, from a kickstarter campaign for a game animated entirely through claymation (Knite and the Ghost Lights) to a superhero game based on a wildly popular animated series (Superman 64) to one of the most ambitious and contentious exploration/survival games ever made (No Man’s Sky), don’t pay off, at least at first. But they still serve as signposts to creators that come after, offering inspiration, guidance, and maybe most importantly, new territory ripe for the next crazy idea. Indie games might not always get much attention and they might not be everyone’s taste, but gaming will always be indebted to these games and their wild ideas. With all of the recent layoffs, consolidation, bean-counting, and rising development costs in the games industry, gaming is still the world’s largest entertainment category by a wide margin and the companies profiting the most owe much of that success to the indie developers who have been carrying the industry on their overworked and underfunded backs for, pardon the pun, the love of the game.

So let’s show them some love. Here are some of my favorite indie games.

Honorable mentions

Recommendations with asterisks… I’ll explain.

Baldur’s Gate 3 - This is technically an indie game, so I feel justified adding it to this list, but Larian is far from a tiny studio. Larian, with their almost 500 employees, have been cranking out CRPG (Computer Role Playing Game) bangers for years. Most of these games have been in the Divinity franchise, an original franchise set in a fantasy world called Rivellon. Larian’s reputation and acclaim have increased with each release as has their collective mastery of creating some of the absolute best RPGs ever made. Baldur’s Gate 3 is the culmination of their almost 3 decades of experience.

casual sweats baldurs gate 3 indie games are saving the industry — BG3 is their first game set in the D&D universe, specifically in The Forgotten Realms setting. Translating the complex and intricate rules of D&D to a video game in a way that newcomers and seasoned players alike can enjoy is hard enough, but capturing the epic, adrenaline-charged, scary, and downright goofy tone of D&D is maybe even harder. Larian absolutely nailed all of it. BG3 can have you furiously defending helpless refugees from a vindictive druid one moment and inadvertently catching a troll and bugbear having… an intimate moment… the next. This range of experience and tone is typical of a D&D game, but nearly impossible to translate effectively into a video game without giving your player narrative whiplash. Baldur’s Gate 3 threads that needle perfectly while also keeping the stakes high and providing dozens if not hundreds of hours of entertainment. No two playthroughs are alike. Or four and planning a fifth, if you’re like me. I love this game and if you enjoy epic fantasy with goofy humor and some delicious stat point goodness in the mix, I think you will too.

Disco Elysium - To be clear, I do not recommend this game, but that isn’t because I don’t think you should play it or because I don’t think it’s good. Confused yet? Let’s get into it.

Let’s first talk about why it’s on the list at all. Disco Elysium is technically also a CRPG, but with a completely different tone, setting, aesthetic, and set of gameplay mechanics. Set in Revachol (we’ll come back to this name in a bit), a fictional, fantasy realism version of the post-Soviet capital of Estonia, Disco Elysium put you in the shoes of an alcoholic, depressed, mildly schizophrenic detective named Harrier “Harry” Du Bois who is in the midst of a murder investigation. Harry wakes up with a severe hangover and drug-induced amnesia so bad that he has to be reminded of his identity and occupation by his stalwart and capable partner, Lieutenant Kim Kitsuragi. This murder investigation serves as the inciting incident that dredges up discoveries about society and self that equal parts unpleasant and undeniable. Tackling mental health, moral philosophy, marxism, communism, capitalism, and revolution (even going as far as referencing the activism of anarchist François Claudius Ravachol, the inspiration for the name of the location in Disco Elysium), this game does much more than just tell a story; it forces you to face down questions about yourself and the world in which you live, the answers to which might fundamentally change you. That combined with the voice acting and art make this one of the most memorable and impactful games I’ve ever played.

casual sweats disco elysium indie games are saving the industry

Now let’s talk about why I don’t recommend it. This game was developed by a small team called ZA/UM in Estonia. Founded as an art collective and named after the constructed language of avant-garde Russian poets in the 1910s, ZA/UM released their first game, Disco Elysium, in 2019 after about 4 years of development (almost 20 years, if you count from when the world of Elysium was first conceived as a table-top RPG). Disco Elysium garnered overwhelming critical acclaim and floods of positive reviews from players when it released, winning Best Indie Game, Best Role-Playing Game, Best Narrative, and Fresh Indie Game at The Game Awards in 2019, and sold about 3 million copies in the first year. I promise this all matters. Here’s why.

After a resounding critical and financial success, the team took a well-deserved rest before getting to work on additional content for Disco Elysium as well as pre-production for a planned sequel. In the meantime, the monumental success did not go unnoticed by Margus Linnamäe, the company’s biggest investor, who saw an opportunity to turn an even larger immediate profit. Through a series of shady financial deals, in 2021 Linnamäe sold his shares to Ilmar Kompus, another Estonian businessman, who then ousted the original creators and seized control of the company and its intellectual property, including Disco Elysium.

This is why I do not recommend buying Disco Elysium. Its creators developed a game that, among other things, dared to critique the capitalist oppression under which so many suffer and then, in what might be the most ironic twist of fate ever, were immediately kicked to the curb by the very system they were critiquing when it was clear there was exponentially more money to be made. The good news is that several of the ousted creators have gone on to found other studios that are working on some exciting things!

Robert Kurvitz, the lead writer and designer of Disco Elysium and Aleksander Rostov, Disco Elysiums’ art director, founded Red Info and are working on an unannounced project.
Some producers (they chose not to release the names publicly as of yet) from Disco Elysium founded a studio called Longdue Games, working on what they call a “psychogeographic RPG.”
Founded in part by Heiti and Kaur Kender, producers who worked on Disco Elysium, Dark Math Games has announced they are working on a game called XXX Nightshift, which they describe as a “true detective RPG.”

If Disco Elysium sounds appealing to you, but you don’t want to fund devastatingly oppressive and fraudulent business practices, keep an eye on these new studios to see what Disco Elysium’s devs do next.

#7. Blue Prince

So many things have to go juuuust right, but when they DO? Oh boy…

Do you remember Myst? It was gorgeous, weird, esoteric, and mystifying. A first-person puzzle adventure game, Myst would often put you in situations where you’d be learning the rules of a puzzle while simultaneously also learning what the puzzle even was, driving you further and further into obsession until you devolved into a barely functional human troll in a dark room with a cork board and yarn because EVERYTHING MEANS SOMETHING. Myst was the beginning of anxiety issues for many millennials, if I had to guess, although I came by mine via other means, but this certainly didn’t help. ANYWAY… Blue Prince reminds me of Myst in the best ways. Mysterious, deceptively deep, slightly creepy, and cerebral enough to make you feel like an absolute genius (and sometimes a bit of a dunce) when you do figure something out, Blue Prince does everything I want a puzzle game to do, and some things I don’t. Let’s talk about the good first.

casual sweats blue prince indie games are saving the industry — Right away, Blue Prince’s premise is unique enough to at least make you look again to make sure you didn’t misread it. You have inherited a house from an eccentric and wealthy family member and decide to explore it. This isn’t as straightforward as it sounds though, because of the particular quirk of this estate: its layout changes every day. As you explore, you also learn that there is quite a bit more going on than just inheriting a strange magical house. There are math puzzles, logic puzzles, cryptic notes, and *vibes*.

And there are layers. So. Many Layers. Think you’ve solved a puzzle? Actually you’ve just worked out one piece of a bigger puzzle. Or maybe those puzzles aren’t actually related? Or maybe they are? WHO KNOWS? But you’ll damn sure want to find out because the way this game doles out clues teeny bit by teeny bit is just so tantalizing it drags you along with the feeling the next huge discovery could happen any moment. And it could! The seemingly endless supply of “wait, WHAT?” could easily make this game your new obsession.

Ok, now let’s talk about why this game might not become your new obsession. Blue Prince’s puzzles, while clever and deep and engaging, are all subject to a rogue-lite structure (a game structure that presents randomized gameplay and procedurally generated content on a per-run basis with some potentially permanent meta-progression) which means that you’ll definitely have to wait for all the randomized factors to line up juuuust right to let you progress. This is generally not my jam when it comes to gameplay anyway, but coupled with complex puzzles, this makes for an infuriating experience much of the time. Even when you KNOW what you’re looking for or how to solve a puzzle, you still need to wait for the RNG (random number generation) gods to favor you before you can test out your theory.

I love the ambience and cerebral nature of Blue Prince, but the randomness of the gameplay is going to turn quite a few people away.

#6. return of the obra dinn

1800’s sailor-themed Clue, but better.

In Return of the Obra Dinn, you take on the role of an insurance investigator for the East India Company, which I promise is more exciting than it sounds. When the Obra Dinn drifts into port more than 5 years after disappearing and being declared lost at sea, you are tasked with assessing the mysterious loss of the crew and cargo. Armed essentially with only your wits and a notebook, you must explore the ship and deduce what happened all those years ago.

casual sweats return of the obra dinn indie games are saving the industry

Gameplay consists mainly of moving through the ship and inspecting objects and scenes, then pulling out your notebook and piecing together entries to determine the “fates” of each of the crew members (usually grisly deaths) as well as their identities, which will enable you to understand what happened to this ship. You also carry a pocket watch that freezes time to let you see and explore the moment someone died, including allowing you to hear those moments as you move through them. When you feel you have enough information, you add those entries to your notebook and your deductions are only confirmed as true if and when you are correct. As you play, you’ll discover that everything you see and hear is helpful, from accents to clothing to locations, making you feel like Sherlock Holmes when you are able to bring all of that information to bear and reveal the truth.

While the art style isn’t traditionally beautiful and can be off-putting at first blush, it lends to an atmospheric and unique feel that is truly singular while being low-res enough to be pulled off by ONE PERSON. That’s right, Return of the Obra Dinn was developed by Lucas Pope, a one-person masterpiece machine.

If deductive puzzles, atmospheric seafaring vibes, and compelling stories tickle your fancy, you should set sail on the good ship Obra Dinn.

#5. Cuphead

How can something so cute be so CRUEL?!

With one of the most unique and difficult art styles to execute, Cuphead is worth checking out even if the game ultimately isn’t for you. Cuphead is a side-scrolling run-and-gun shooter featuring the titular Cuphead as he sets out on an adventure to pay off his debt to the devil. The animation is hand-drawn in the style of 1930’s cartoons, the backdrops are hand-painted watercolors, and the tracks are original jazz recordings, lending the whole thing an authentic old-timey feel.

casual sweats cuphead indie games are saving the industry — Don’t be fooled though, the 1930’s animation style absolutely does not mean the gameplay is sluggish or easy. Each level contains a very short introductory zone that is mainly focused on leading you to a boss battle that requires lighting reflexes and dogged determination. To say Cuphead is hard and unforgiving would be vastly understating the maddening experience of beating your head against boss attack patterns, parry windows, and dodge timing as you try to do enough damage to the boss with your finger guns to kill it.

You’ll know pretty quickly if this game is for you or not, but even if torturous difficulty is not usually your cup of tea (couldn’t resist the pun), the beautiful animation and sound design are worth the price of admission.

#4. oxenfree

Teens, a mysterious island, and interdimensional ghosts. It’s like Scooby Doo, but good.

What could go wrong when a group of teens decide to go party on an island that contains an old, abandoned military installation? Quite a bit, turns out.

Oxenfree focuses on Alex, an angsty teenager that brings her step-brother along to an overnight party on a fictional island called Edwards Island, off the coast of Oregon, which happens to be the location of an old military installation with a mysterious past. Oxenfree tells its story mainly through dialogue between characters, in which you can choose options that affect how the conversations and, by extension, how the overall plot progresses. The dialogue is charming, featuring all of the problems and themes you’d expect from teens; college plans, tension at home, feeling lost and out of place, goals and dreams… It’s almost enough to make you nostalgic for those days. Almost.

casual sweats oxenfree indie games are saving the industry — Oxenfree is relatively gameplay light, favoring vibes and atmosphere over lots of interactivity, but there is gameplay. As mentioned, you can make dialogue choices that affect the story in various ways. Exploring the island, finding objects, and, strangely enough, tuning a portable radio are some other ways you progress the story, although Oxenfree is mostly uninterested in progression and prefers to let you exist and poke around the world in your own time.

An oil painting art style and the haunting score make Oxenfree one of the most memorable indie titles I’ve ever played, even earning it a spot on my top 5 in 2016 when it was released.

#3. Bastion

A steampunk fantasy wild west RPG. ‘Nuff said.

Some games just drip style. The devs at Supergiant are masters at worldbuilding and creating a tone that seeps out of every pixel of their games without being heavy handed or overbearing, and their first game, Bastion, is no exception.

Bastion is an isometric ARPG (action role-playing game) in which you play as The Kid, an adventurer striving to rebuild the Bastion, the last safe haven, after The Great Calamity tore the world to pieces.

casual sweats bastion indie games are saving the industry

Hand-painted art, moving original music, and a husky-voiced narrator that narrates what you’re doing in real time all work together flawlessly to elevate Bastion to a tier of excellence most ARPGs don’t achieve. While the gameplay is not groundbreaking per se, it is solid and snappy, with enough variety and flexibility in weapons and pacing to let you play in a way that suits your preference. Guns, crossbows, swords, hammers, special attacks, gadgets, and potions are all made available as you get deeper into the game and each offer combat styles that have their strengths, offering no bad choice and no wrong way to play, in my opinion.

I can’t emphasize enough how much the narrator adds to the experience. Bastion was Logan Cunningham’s first video game project, having agreed to do it as a favor for a couple friends of his that worked at Supergiant, and he absolutely nailed it. Logan has gone on to become Supergiant’s resident voice actor, featuring in four more of their games and eight games in total, as well as a few movies and TV episodes. Logan’s voice is distinctive and carries a comforting yet commanding quality that draws you in from the very first deep, dulcet tones.

Bastion is incredibly fun, tells a meaningful story, and exudes cool in a way that makes it widely appealing to “hardcore” gamers and casuals alike.

#2. Outer Wilds

How would you like to do a big think while suffocating under the weight of an existential crisis?

casual sweats outer wilds indie games are saving the industry — You awake, eyes adjusting slowly to the vast night sky as a lone comet blazes overhead. As you slowly rise, you realize you are not alone. You sit up on what you realize is a sleeping bag next to a crackling campfire and turn to see someone roasting marshmallows. By talking with your campfire companion, you learn that you are an astronaut and today is your launch day. So begins a game that is heartbreaking, terrifying, and riveting all at once.
It’s difficult to talk about this game at all without spoiling it and it’s just more enjoyable going in blind anyway. The exhilaration of discovery is in large part what makes this game so great. Suffice it to say that Outer Wilds is a haunting puzzle game that will make you feel deeply about a lot of things.

#1. Stardew Valley

Stardew Valley is the pinnacle of cozy games and I will fight anyone who says otherwise.

casual sweats stardew valley indie games are saving the industry

Look, COVID lockdowns were not great. From toilet paper shortages to trying to time grocery runs to avoid crowds to figuring out how to balance child care or at-home schooling with everything else, it was scary and uncertain and depressing. But for some of us introverts, it was also… kind of nice? Obviously a deadly global pandemic isn’t nice, but get off my back for enjoying things feeling a bit slower for a while, ok?

As a kid growing up in the midwest, every now and then during a severe storm, we’d get a tornado warning. Sometimes, there was even a sighting relatively close by. When this would happen, we’d grab some flashlights and candles, some food, water, and things to keep us busy, and head down to the basement to wait it out. It was never actually serious and we never had to hide out in the basement for very long, but it always felt exciting and cozy and scary sitting in a dark basement on the floor with a sleeping bag and some books, wondering if our house was going to blow away. When lockdowns started, that same feeling came rushing back. I brought Stardew Valley with me to the lockdown basement while we all waited to see if the pandemic would blow us all away. It became my lifeline.

Stardew Valley is a farming simulator that tells the story of a beaten down corporate drone who inherits a farm from their recently passed grandfather. The 16-bit aesthetic and ostensibly simple gameplay make the game approachable while concealing the deeper story and secrets the game doles out as you play, pushing Stardew Valley past genre boundaries into new delightful territory. And it was developed by a solo developer named Eric Barone under the pseudonym Concerned Ape.

Stardew Valley is open-ended and free-form, allowing you to engage with the things that you enjoy and completely ignore the things that don’t interest you, if you so choose. If you want to just be a farmer, plant your crops and tend to your animals without interacting with the other parts of the game, you can. If you want to start a brewery or a winery or just make artisan mayonnaise and jams, you can. If you want to be a death-defying adventurer, delving into the local caves to find treasure and slay monsters, you can! And if you want to do all of the above, you can. The game sets out some goals and objectives for you, but it isn’t pushy with them and won’t judge you for taking everything at your own pace. The systems for all of these avenues are much more complex than they first appear and are enjoyable enough to spend hours mastering.

And the music! I often spin up the soundtrack while I work or write (guess what I’m listening to right now) and just vibe to Nocturne of Ice, my personal favorite. Every track drips with FEELING, whether it be warmth, melancholy, playfulness, mystery, or just something as abstract as crisp fall air that smells faintly of leaves and earth. This score is the cherry on top of the decadent sundae that is Stardew Valley.

It’s challenging to put into words what I found in Stardew Valley. I think the zen of being able to bring order to the chaos of a run-down farm provided catharsis during a time when it felt as if society was walking a razor edge. The sense of community from helping to fix up the town and help some neighbors was cathartic when isolation became emotionally draining, even for an introvert like me. The crafting, livestock, and combat systems are just involved enough to be engrossing without being off-putting, an ideal way to shut off the outside world and just make some numbers go up. Stardew Valley is big enough to offer whatever you need and deep enough to continually reward whatever activity you decide on. I owe the retention of my sanity, such as it is, in no small part to Stardew Valley. Maybe it was a time and place thing, but Stardew Valley kept me grounded and I am sincerely grateful to Eric Barone for bringing some hope and coziness to the lockdown basement while I waited out the storm.

Indie developers like these have been nudging gaming forward since the very beginning and they’re still at it, mad science-ing away because they have an idea that might just work. Sometimes it doesn’t, but sometimes it does. And sometimes that’s life-changing.

Play these games. You deserve the fun and these devs deserve the support.

How Indie Games are Saving the Industry (and Some Awesome Games I Recommend)