Indie games have come a long way in a relatively short amount of time. It wasn’t much more than a decade ago that indie games would only ever be seen by a small community on PC, with no chance of ever getting put on a major console or storefront. However, with platforms like Steam bringing more attention to these projects, plus early initiatives like the Xbox Live Summer of Arcade on the Xbox 360 shining a light on how talented single, or very small, person teams could be, indie games suddenly found themselves sharing the spotlight with the high budget AAA games. In many cases, these rag-tag teams of developers working on a passion project in their spare time, with only what money they could give to it out of pocket, were reviewing better and selling more than their titanic competition.
Today, indie games are more common than ever. Once the wall was broken down, more individuals and small teams started emerging to offer new and unique experiences that the larger developers found too risky. These indie teams are where gamers turn to not for cutting-edge graphics, although the tools they have are allowing their art to rival big-budget games, but for brand new gameplay, narrative, or even fourth wall-breaking experiences that don’t exist anywhere else. In the early days, finding the best indie games was far easier, but now that time has passed and so many amazing indie titles have come along, with more arriving almost daily, there are almost too many to sort through. That’s why we’ve curated this list of the best indie games of all time.
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Cave Story
The Binding of Isaac
Braid
SUPERHOT
Super Meat Boy
Papers, Please
Shovel Knight
Hollow Knight
Stardew Valley
Undertale
INSIDE
Minecraft
Slay the Spire
Her Story
Amnesia: The Dark Descent
The Stanley Parable
Baba is You
Cuphead
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