We thought 2024 was a great year for indies, and it was, but it turned out we hadn’t seen anything yet. 2025 will go down in gaming history as a stellar year for independent games and studios. Instead of confining our favorite indies to a top 10 list, we’ve taken the liberty of casting our votes for 25 indie games, which you can read about below.
Shacknews Top 25 Indies, 24 – 11
25. Wanderstop
24. The Midnight Walk
23. Star Racer
20. Cast N Chill
20. Shrine’s Legacy
20. The Drifter
19. Full Metal Schoolgirl
18. Tiny Bookshop
15. Neon Inferno
5. Bye Sweet Carole
15. Routine
14. Absolum
13. Lumines Arise
12. The Seance of Blake Minor
11. Gigasword
10. Windswept
Windswept is a game that could have easily gotten by many of us this year. It didn’t have the star power of something like Silksong, but it was quite an enjoyable title all on its own. Thankfully, WeatherFell’s adventurous platformer featuring a duck and turtle caught our eye, and once we were in, we were hooked by its charming nods to the duo-platforming of games like Donkey Kong Country.
Windswept is a single-player platformer in which you play two characters as a single entity. The duck and turtle have different moves that allow them to overcome various challenges that the other can’t. The duck can glide, spin, and float jump where the turtle can be bounced upon or thrown into the air. When you’re playing as one, the other often acts as a deployable prop, but both of them make up the full kit of moves.
This game gets hard as nails, too. Windswept eases you into its fun with gentle levels that introduce you to the concepts of its movements. However, it isn’t long before you start running into challenge levels that demand pinpoint reflexes. You don’t have to take on those levels, but the best players among us will enjoy pushing their limits and reaching the goal at the end of these daunting gauntlets.
For the rest of us, Windswept is a wholesome return to the bygone era of Donkey Kong Country games. Every level is stuffed with collectibles to hunt down, and there’s a challenge in getting all of them when getting hit can temporarily lose you access to the turtle or the duck. Overcoming that challenge and 100-percenting these levels with both characters at the goal was a constant joy that kept us coming back for more. Windswept slipped in behind our back in 2025, but we’re glad we noticed it because it was a deliciously different flavor of platforming in a year that had quite a few really good titles in the genre.
Windswept is available on Steam, Nintendo eShop, PSN, and Xbox.
9. Peak
You and three friends stand on an icy shelf looking up at a wall of frozen rock. One of you has a rope, another has a piton, a third has a magical bean that will sprout a stalk, and you’re holding the stuffed toy of Bing-Bong because you want that Achievement for taking him to the summit. You’re all cold and losing stamina, the fog is slowly rising, and you need to make this last ascent to reach the next checkpoint. This is PEAK and it has taken the internet by storm.
Developed by Aggro Crab, PEAK is one of the best indie games released in 2025. It’s a co-operative game that ignited a new sort of gameplay experience where four friends get together to overcome some obstacle all while using hilarious in-game voice chat and weird tools. It’s a game about climbing a mountain by any means necessary, surviving the harsh climates, and giving your friends a helping hand when they start to slip.
What makes PEAK so enticing is simply how it feels to play. Climbing takes stamina and as your character gets hungry, your available energy depletes. You’ll find fruit, mushrooms, eggs and all other edible things as you climb, but not all of them will offer helpful effects. There are also a variety of tools to help you. There are grappling hooks, expandable platforms, balloons, and even mystical items that behave in weird ways.
The trick is that you can only carry four of these things in your backpack – and that’s if you even have one! Some equipment will need to be left behind. It’s this decision making process and allocation of goods among your group that lead to intense moments. Maybe your teammate holding the rope you need slipped and fell down several feet? Perhaps leaving that expandable platform behind will come back to bite you in the butt when you reach a later biome.
PEAK is the ultimate camaraderie-building game. It can be fun to throw a banana peel at a teammate or laugh as they fail an easy jump. But it’s more fulfilling to see everyone make it to the next checkpoint and even more so to see a full squad survive to reach the titular peak.
Peak is available on Steam.
8. Look Outside
When it comes to indie hits, Look Outside is punching above its weight class. Developed by Francis Coulombe, the game puts you in the shoes of Sam, a man doing his best to survive a body horror-infused apocalypse from the dusty and supply-dwindling halls of his apartment building. This end of days setting is unlike anything else out there, but it is best likened to the film Bird Box, where anyone that looks outside… changes.
Trapped in this building, you’ll need to scavenge the other apartment units for supplies and help – or dispatch – the other residents. Some of them are friendly, some are not. Some have already peered outside and have transferred into eldritch horrors with far too many eyes and enough holes to set off someone with trypophobia all while gurgling and blubbing.
Combat in Look Outside is handled in a first-person perspective, turn-based manner, similar to the Wizardry series or last year’s incredible Felvidek. There’s an unnerving edge to entering combat thanks to the survival horror tension of limited resources but also due to what you see. The enemies come to life thanks to the chunky pixel art style and they might shuffle closer to you mid-fight, revealing more of their disgusting visage. It’s enough to tie your stomach into a knot as you realize just how twisted these poor people have gotten from simply looking outside.
And yet that’s all part of the devious appeal of Look Outside. When left alone in an apartment building with the loose hope that maybe everything will be okay in a fortnight, who wouldn’t go poking around the depths and maybe take a risky peek outside?
There’s a bit of sinister enjoyment to be found in pushing your luck while slinking the halls to hopefully see something else gross or collect some vital bit of equipment that will help you cinch the next fight. Spend a bit longer exploring and your danger meter will slowly fill, offering you more XP if you can get back home safely. But, it’s the apocalypse; risk can just as easily lead to disaster as it does reward.
Look Outside manages to walk that line of punishing but fair, ensuring you never feel quite comfortable with your decision. As far as indies go this year, few of them manage to nail the horror of Look Outside.
Look Outside is available on Steam.
7. Blue Prince
While “roguelite” is often used to describe an action-adventure game, it has gradually expanded to other genres. One type of game that roguelite elements typically wouldn’t fit into is a puzzle game. However, Raw Fury and Dogubomb got exceptionally creative with Blue Prince, a game about putting your brain to work, breaking it into pieces at the end of the day, and reassembling it just in time to start over again at sunrise.
Blue Prince is about finding the Antechamber in Room 46, which holds the key to a valuable inheritance. However, the layouts of the manor change each day. Players are challenged to think about the layout of each room, connect them in such a way to reach the final area, and get lucky enough to avoid hitting a dead end. Needless to say, that’s not always possible.
Blue Prince’s genius, however, is that a dead end run doesn’t have to feel wasted. Nearly every room has a secret, whether it’s a puzzle within the room, a note left on a desk, an abandoned computer terminal, or hidden messages along the walls. There is always something to learn or something worth marking down in a notebook to come back to later. All of it feeds into the greater story of the manor itself and its deceased owner, conveying narrative in a more unconventional manner.
Lateral and logical thinking are put to great use in Blue Prince. Finding that random secret, putting together complex solutions, and hitting paydirt with certain rooms is a satisfying feeling, but it’s Raw Fury and Dogubomb continuing to pile on the intrigue as the story goes along that makes Blue Prince a memorable experience.
Blue Prince is available on Steam, PSN, and Xbox.
6. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
After approximately six years in development, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 arrived this April and had an immediate impact on gaming culture. The French studio’s RPG offered both a brilliant narrative and combat system, drawing comparisons to Final Fantasy and the Persona series.
As a turn-based RPG, Expedition 33 shook up the formula with its use of parrying and dodging. These real-time elements added another layer to combat by rewarding players for recognizing and responding to enemy attack patterns. It also smoothed over some of the pain points that can come with a turn-based system, allowing players to turn the tide of a battle with some well-timed reactions.
The story of Expedition 33 is one worthy of its prestigious comparisons. It’s an emotional journey that manages to subvert expectations and surprise players with all its twists and turns. It’s all reinforced by impeccable performances from Charlie Cox, Jennifer English, Ben Starr, and the rest of its ensemble.
For those who come after.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is available on Steam, PSN, and Xbox.
5. Skate Story
The history of skateboarding is a journey of expression, of passion, and of rebellion. It’s a story of athleticism, achievement, and camaraderie. In the purest heart of the pursuit, it’s a vibe, and one that is perfectly encapsulated by the fantastical sports narrative of Skate Story.
Players play a demon that wants to skate and eat the moon in a realm where both are explicitly prohibited. In order to achieve their moon-eating dreams, the demon gets its hands on two things: a skateboard (good!) and a body made of glass (slightly less good). Immediately, the demon sets off on their quest, engaging in the gift of speed, sweet jumps, and daring tricks, as they try to protect their fragile glass body while sprinting towards their lunar reward. Once that first moon is eaten, the demon wants more, and yet the powers that be demand they cease their relentless skating. That doesn’t fly with the demon, so we not only start skating for moons, but also to survive.
Skate Story is, first and foremost, an excellent skateboarding game. The controls feel intuitive and satisfying from the simplest jump to more convoluted skateboarding antics, and the exhilaration of speed and danger throughout the game is excellent. This isn’t a game where you land endless strings of tricks with constant transitions and manuals in between. It’s a more sensible approach where the tricks and combos feel real and earned. Moreover, doing the same thing over and over is boring, so Skate Story appropriately asks you to mix it up to keep things exciting.
Between the metaphorical nods to skating’s history of expression and rebellion, and the sheer depth of quality in its gameplay, Skate Story presents us with one of the most satisfying video games to ever put foot to board. It’s not just a good skateboarding game. It’s one of the best we’ve played.
Skate Story is available on Steam, Nintendo eShop (Switch 2), and PSN.
4. Ball x Pit
Look, I like brick breakers. I’ve been playing them since the days of Arkanoid (I’m a little too young to remember Breakout) and they’re a fun time. But could a brick breaker be worthy of inclusion on a list as stacked as the best games of 2025? I wasn’t so sure—until I played Ball x Pit.
Calling Ball x Pit a mere brick breaker is reductive. The bricks are enemies, the enemies have their own attack formations and patterns, and the balls you bat back and forth to hurt them are weapons that can take many forms. You can transform them into balls with unique powers such as the ability to ghost through enemies, freeze them, poison them, or set them on fire, to name a few. The “baby balls” that bounce around can take on attributes of their own depending on which upgrades you choose.
But there’s more to clearing levels than transforming balls. Each character starts with a different ball, making your starting choice important depending on your play style. From there, you’ve got enemy formations to think about, each boss’s unique offensive and defensive maneuvers, and your selection of character (or characters, in some cases), some of whom boast properties that make them extra useful in some situations and extra dangerous in others. As if that wasn’t enough to manage, you also have a town to build up and look after: harvesting crops, mining rocks, and upgrading buildings all affect your abilities in the eponymous pit.
It only took one level for Ball x Pit to get its hooks in me. The game loop of batting balls, choosing and upgrading abilities, combining powers to create new abilities, and managing your little settlement provides a fantastic hit of dopamine. Ball x Pit isn’t just one of the best indie games of 2025. It’s one of the best games of the year, and worthy of this spot on our list.
Ball x Pit is available on Steam, Nintendo eShop, PSN, and Xbox.
3. Hades 2
Supergiant Games had put itself on the indie gaming map with a library of unique experiences. It wasn’t a developer that did sequels. In 2025, the team bucked that trend with its very first sequel, one that happened to be a sequel to one of the most influential games of this generation. Hades 2 not only stuck the landing, but it has surpassed the original by further building on its foundation.
Throughout its stint on Steam Early Access, Supergiant Games carefully crafted its Hades 2 campaign, taking players back through different corners of the underworld. However, it was also a place to try out new combat systems, hub world elements, and introduce new characters. By the time the game reached 1.0, it was a fully realized adventure that built on the story of the original Hades, but with a mostly new cast and an air of mystery regarding the fates of the previous game’s characters.
Hades 2 is a game that constantly encourages players to improve themselves, a message delivered through its central plot. Only through gradual improvement, incremental stat upgrades, learning enemy patterns, familiarization with the layout ahead, and maybe just a little bit of luck could players hope to achieve victory. What puts Hades 2 a step above its predecessor is an entire second quest in the overworld that takes the game’s challenge to new heights. It’s one thing to survive Chronos in the underworld, but only the truest of warriors can end all of his machinations across the realms of the living and the dead.
Hades 2 is available on Steam and Nintendo eShop.
2. Dispatch
In a gaming landscape where interactive narratives are largely past their prime, Dispatch showed us that this genre still has so much to give. AdHoc Studio manages to deliver poignant commentary on the superhero genre, while illustrating a beautiful portrait of legacy, romance, and redemption. We challenge anyone to play through Dispatch’s eight episodes without falling for one, if not all of its core characters.
In addition to its stellar storyline, the actual Dispatching in Dispatch is loads of fun. Not only can you send heroes out to complete tasks for the people of Los Angeles, but the game gives you the freedom to upgrade their individual stats as you progress through the game. It’s easy for the minigames to feel like filler in an interactive narrative game, but we couldn’t get enough of Dispatch’s management sim features.
Each episode of Dispatch is only around 50 minutes long, so you could easily blast through the entire game in just a few sittings. However, the nature of its branching pathways and multiple story outcomes incentivizes repeat playthroughs. In fact, we came to love the game even more after going back and seeing how each outcome felt fleshed out and fulfilling in its own unique ways.
If you ever enjoyed a Telltale game, or love quirky ensembles, you owe it to yourself to play Dispatch. There’s truly something here for everybody, and we look forward to revisiting this world for years to come.
Dispatch is available on Steam and PSN, and is coming to Nintendo Switch 2 in 2026.
1. Hollow Knight: Silksong
How does one crash every major online gaming platform storefront in one fell swoop? Only Team Cherry knows for sure, and it might never happen again. However, for one moment, the world flooded servers to play the long-awaited Hollow Knight: Silksong and did the impossible. The game literally broke the internet for a day. If that wasn’t cool enough, it turned out Silksong was a ridiculously good game to boot, and for that and more, it’s our Shacknews Indie Game of the Year.
Silksong takes the moniker of sequel more seriously than most games ever will. It doesn’t hold your hand or play nice. It assumes you know why you’re there and invites you into its masterfully crafted adventure with sinister delight. This is a world of pilgrimage and a promised land, where bugs from all walks of life ascend the lands of Pharloom to reach a mighty Citadel and gain a promise of happiness and fulfillment. Of course, that’s pretty much a lie and the roads to the top are filled with the corrupt bugs who fell along the way.
You have to battle through those bugs, beasts, and a plethora of burly bosses that inhabit the halls of Silksong, and you gain a satisfying collection of tools, gear, and moves with which to dispatch them. Moreover, Silksong constantly asks you to engage in harrowing platforming in which any given run-stopping mistake is often a razor’s edge away. Every new discovery and acquisition is a treat in this game, and it provides players with a variety of options with which to navigate the challenges their way.
What’s more, this game is absolutely beautiful from a music and visual standpoint. The art style is cleaner than ever. You wouldn’t think that bugs with shells for heads would be so expressive, but there were a ton of characters in Silksong that caught on in the fan community and remained memorable throughout the year. Meanwhile, the game’s soundtrack is filled with haunting ambience, charming background noise, and exciting battle themes where appropriate. Simply put, from gameplay to sound to visuals, every corner of Silksong feels dusted and polished to a vibrant sheen.
It’s hard to guess how a game will turn out when it takes as long as Hollow Knight: Silksong did to arrive. That said, Team Cherry’s dedication to putting its all into this game and making sure it was one of the most exhaustively well-designed platformers paid off. Silksong is a masterpiece on every platform it’s available, and it’s our Shacknews Indie Game of the Year.
Hollow Knight: Silksong is available on Steam, Nintendo eShop, PSN, and Xbox. Read our Hollow Knight: Silksong Indie Game of the Year article for even more on this fantastic and brutally difficult platformer.
Congratulations not only to the winners of our top 25 indie games list, but to all independent developers for a remarkable year in gaming. Be sure to read the rest of the Shacknews Awards in our Year of the Games: 2025 feature.
