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[BigBooper]

This is purely based on my observations, so there's no research and statistics to back it up and I'm probably wrong, but it seems like it's been years since a really great indie game released.

I was browsing my queue on Steam for a while today because I just haven't bought many games in the past few years and just wanted to see what I've missed. There were some decent ones, but few to none that seemed of the caliber of a Shovel Knight, Stardew Valley, Spelunky, SteamWorld Dig, Fez, Prison Architect, etc.

It seems like there's a lack of good releases in general on Steam the past few years, but especially at that high quality indie level. Plenty of shovelware card battlers and hentai though. What gives? Or am I just imagining it?

 

[SEGA_2012]

There are many great indie games out there. What Remains of Edith Finch, Distraint 1 and 2, Sagebrush, etc.

 

[Chukhopops]

There were tons of really good ones but games media doesn’t focus on indie games that much those days. I don’t know why it changed when they were pushing so many mediocre ones a couple years ago.

- Hades
- Cyber Shadow
- Griftlands
- Inscryption
- Deaths Door
- Spelunky 2
- Dicey Dungeons
- Monster Train
- Crown Trick
- Echo Generation (still playing it)

And that’s only the ones I played.

 

[winjer]

WTF are you smoking?

So many great indie games now.
Dusk, Prodeus, Amid Evil, Charion, Hades, Supraland, Opus magnum, Call of the sea, Journey to the savage planet, Dread Templar, Ion Fury, Poly Bridge 2, Creeper World 4, Into the Breach, ...
And the list goes on and on.

 

[tommib]

Murder House is my favourite indie of the year and probably on my top 5 for GOTY.

 

[Fbh]

Nah, there's a lot of great Indies and smaller games in general.

It's just that in the almost 10 years since Fez the amount of smaller games on consoles and steam has exponentially increased. So you need to put in a bit of extra effort to dig through mountains of shovelware and find the good stuff

 

[bender]

- Spelunky 2

Just an aside but this is one of the bigger disappointments I've ever had in gaming.

 

[OmegaSupreme]

House Party is a good time.

 

[fart town usa]

Lamentum is pretty great, at least what I've played so far.

Pixel Art 2D survival horror. Plays real similar to OG Resident Evil; limited inventory, safe rooms, need ink to save, etc.

 

[eyesabitdull]

WTF are you smoking?

So many great indie games now.
Dusk, Prodeus, Amid Evil, Charion, Hades, Supraland, Opus magnum, Call of the sea, Journey to the savage planet, Dread Templar, Ion Fury, Poly Bridge 2, Creeper World 4, Into the Breach, ...
And the list goes on and on.

This.

OP, idk about you, but for me, it takes to play an Indie game to know if it's any good.

I've bought indie games on a whim and found them to my favourite games.

Perhaps you should just, idk, take a leap of faith if you find some that piques your interest?

 

[RiccochetJ]

I agree that discovery is an issue on Steam, but there are plenty of good/great indie games that have come out recently. You just have to put a bit of effort into what Steam will surface to you. Adjust your filters so that you're not seeing the low effort Hentai stuff. Unless of course you want to buy them I suppose.

 

[ClosBSAS]

To epic games moneyhatting

 

[Kacho]

Are you limiting indie games to 2D pixel art or something? Still lots of great stuff dropping.

 

[MidGenRefresh]

I agree that discovery is an issue on Steam

I don't know a better tool to discover games than Steam.

If anything, there are too many great indie games coming out what feels like every other day.

One recommendation from me:

 

[ssringo]

Lots of great indies unless you hate rogue like/lites and early access. Then it's a bit more barren.

My autocorrect just derped.

 

[Kagoshima_Luke]

Throwing this one out there as well (on Steam and GamePass):

 

[Holammer]

If OP gets a lot of hentai and TCG recommended, stop playing them. Your "feed" is personalized, based on your activity and purchases on Steam.
You can explore the Discovery Queue on Steam or this here forum. Try this thread for example.

Just an aside but this is one of the bigger disappointments I've ever had in gaming.

I actually put in 18h into it before I gave up. There's no flow and the damn moles. Had a much better time with Spirits Abyss.

 

[Strider Highwind]

Death's Door is one of the years best releases. Eldest Souls is in my top 10 for the year too

And Katana Zero is one of the best games of the past 5 years for me. Also check out Blasphemous

 

[MidGenRefresh]

Oh, and this one:

 

[RiccochetJ]

I don't know a better tool to discover games than Steam.

If anything, there are too many great indie games coming out what feels like every other day.

One recommendation from me:

It can be good, but like I said, you have to put some work into it. Many times the algorithm overcompensates. So say I buy Darkest Dungeon, for the next little while I'll get nothing but roguelikes and rpgs surfaced to me and I have to spend time telling it that I'm not interested to get it back to equilibrium. I'd have to find it, but there's a funny video of one guy buying one of those Hentai games and then his recommendation list was nothing but that.

 

[BigBooper]

Added Huntdown, Death's Door, Creeper World 4, and Noita to my wishlist. I've tried a lot of the others mentioned and they just didn't catch my interest. I'm beyond tired of roguelites, so Hades didn't do it, I'll admit it is a very high quality game though. Not interested in survival games either.

I kinda hoped people would post examples to prove me wrong so I could add them to my wishlist. Thanks!

 

[MidGenRefresh]

It can be good, but like I said, you have to put some work into it. Many times the algorithm overcompensates. So say I buy Darkest Dungeon, for the next little while I'll get nothing but roguelikes and rpgs surfaced to me and I have to spend time telling it that I'm not interested to get it back to equilibrium. I'd have to find it, but there's a funny video of one guy buying one of those Hentai games and then his recommendation list was nothing but that.

You would be shocked if you can see how basic the logic behind the algorithm is.

Like you said: you have to put "work" into it and use tags. This way you always find something interesting.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

I just bought Sagrada (dice board game) and Mainframe Defenders for $5 CDN each.

 

[MidGenRefresh]

Added Huntdown, Death's Door, Creeper World 4, and Noita to my wishlist. I've tried a lot of the others mentioned and they just didn't catch my interest. I'm beyond tired of roguelites, so Hades didn't do it, I'll admit it is a very high quality game though. Not interested in survival games either.

I kinda hoped people would post examples to prove me wrong so I could add them to my wishlist. Thanks!

If you like immersive sims then also keep your eye on this one:

It's coming out soon. Made by Raphael Colantonio (previously Arkane: Dishonoured, Prey).

 

[BigBooper]

If OP gets a lot of hentai and TCG recommended, stop playing them. Your "feed" is personalized, based on your activity and purchases on Steam.
You can explore the Discovery Queue on Steam or this here forum. Try this thread for example.


I actually put in 18h into it before I gave up. There's no flow and the damn moles. Had a much better time with Spirits Abyss.

I wish I knew why. I think I got a sexy game in some indie bundle 5 years ago. I added some exclusions this morning. I do exclude Early Access games also, so I'm sure there are some good ones hidden because of that.

 

[Chukhopops]

Just an aside but this is one of the bigger disappointments I've ever had in gaming.

It wasn’t as good as the original but I still enjoyed it a lot. I think it’s waay overtuned and has too many « fuck you » systems stacked against the player whereas the first one was more balanced experience. But finishing it is also hugely satisfying for that reason.

 

[BennyBlanco]

Inscryption is real good. I almost made a thread about it but barely anybody here talks about PC indie games.

 

[bender]

Death's Door is one of the years best releases. Eldest Souls is in my top 10 for the year too

And Katana Zero is one of the best games of the past 5 years for me. Also check out Blasphemous

Speaking of games I didn't love, Katana Zero. After all the positive impressions, I was like, "this is fine". I need to check out the other two.

Moose Life is one of my favorites this year.

 

[bender]

It wasn’t as good as the original but I still enjoyed it a lot. I think it’s waay overtuned and has too many « fuck you » systems stacked against the player whereas the first one was more balanced experience. But finishing it is also hugely satisfying for that reason.

Spelunky is on my Mount Rushmore. I just couldn't get into the flow of Spelunky 2. And while the original had some not great art (characters), 2 is garish in every way.

 

[Strider Highwind]

Speaking of games I didn't love, Katana Zero. After all the positive impressions, I was like, "this is fine". I need to check out the other two.

Moose Life is one of my favorites this year.

Really? Man I loved that game, and the music was amazing - but hey I understand. Another good indie is Hyperlight Drifter..And Im about halfway through Eastward and loving it.

 

[MidGenRefresh]

This will most likely by GOTY when it finally drops

 

[Notabueno]

We are somewhat in the 3rd wave of modern Indies.

This means the market is saturated and novelty is less obvious.

Which makes it harder for a clear curation like IGF to continue being a standard, and having the few indie masterpiece champions every year.

This gives the impression that the great indies are gone, which is not really wrong either considering contexts.

When Fez, Spelunky or Braid released they were revolutionary because there were no other full fledge indie-game that were that well conceived, directed and produced while being innovative. Then the second wave hit with bigger scale indie that started maturing in the mastering of narrative, immersive or mechanic and production value, in ways those games were still distinguishable enough from one another, but also comparable to AA titles. Then we went into the third wave of modern indie game where finding, be it just an original looking game amongst all the pixel, low poly or source crap (current trend is 90s 3D poly) became difficult, let alone one that was significantly interesting, innovative or well produced, despite the market having reached maturity, which means saturation and precedes fall. Happens in every scene and cultural domains...

 

[bender]

Really? Man I loved that game, and the music was amazing - but hey I understand. Another good indie is Hyperlight Drifter..And Im about halfway through Eastward and loving it.

I kickstarted Hyperlight Drifter and finished. I'm struggling to remember anything about it. haha.

 

[Kacho]

Added Huntdown, Death's Door, Creeper World 4, and Noita to my wishlist. I've tried a lot of the others mentioned and they just didn't catch my interest. I'm beyond tired of roguelites, so Hades didn't do it, I'll admit it is a very high quality game though. Not interested in survival games either.

I kinda hoped people would post examples to prove me wrong so I could add them to my wishlist. Thanks!

It's hard to know what people are familiar with, or what types of games they like. Good idea to have a thread for a bunch of random suggestions.

Just combed through my Steam library. Here are a few more I would recommend.

Here are some upcoming indies worth keeping an eye on IMO

(Yes, I really like retro FPS lol)

 

[Guilty_AI]

this released just this year

 

[Wildebeest]

There has been a ton of hype for games with a lot of variety like Hades, Baba is You, Celeste and Disco Elysium. I personally wasn't into that sort of sucking all the oxygen out of the room level of hype given to one indie scene darling like "Fez".

 

[Sophist]

most of the top rated games on steam for the last 365 days are indies

Top 250 best Steam Games this year

Helping you find good games on Steam: impartial games rankings compiled from Steam gamer reviews.

steam250.com

 

[Kagoshima_Luke]

We are somewhat in the 3rd wave of modern Indies.

This means the market is saturated and novelty is less obvious.

Which makes it harder for a clear curation like IGF to continue being a standard, and having the few indie masterpiece champions every year.

This gives the impression that the great indies are gone, which is not really wrong either considering contexts.

When Fez, Spelunky or Braid released they were revolutionary because there were no other full fledge indie-game that were that well conceived, directed and produced while being innovative. Then the second wave hit with bigger scale indie that started maturing in the mastering of narrative, immersive or mechanic and production value, in ways those games were still distinguishable enough from one another, but also comparable to AA titles. Then we went into the third wave of modern indie game where finding, be it just an original looking game amongst all the pixel, low poly or source crap (current trend is 90s 3D poly) became difficult, let alone one that was significantly interesting, innovative or well produced, despite the market having reached maturity, which means saturation and precedes fall. Happens in every scene and cultural domains...

 

[CitizenZ]

This is a joke, right?

 

[LimanimaPT]

Snails. Best game eva!!

 

[BusierDonkey]

I've played a ton of really good indies this year.

 

[Guilty_AI]

This will most likely by GOTY when it finally drops

Damn this is looking pretty good

 

[TintoConCasera]

I've played a ton of really good indies this year.

Name seven of them.

 

[Fuz]

I'm playing Flynn: Son of Crimson and it's a really great indie.
I might open a thread about it.