Best Indie Games of 2025: A Year of Independence

Best Indie Games of 2025: A Year of Independence

2025 was a standout year for independent games, with titles that not only captivated players but also redefined the industry landscape. This year's crop of indie games showcased creativity, innovation, and storytelling like never before.

In this blog post, we've curated a list of the top indie games from 2025 that you must experience. These games represent the pinnacle of independent development and have set new standards for their respective genres.

Top 5 Best Indie Games of 2025

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 was the game that caught everyone by surprise this year. While it doesn't break new ground in terms of mechanics or gameplay, it does what it does exceptionally well. The writing, storytelling, animation, art design, and score are all polished to an incredible shine. If you could only play one game from 2025, this would be the easy pick.

Hades II

In a year that didn't see the release of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Hades II would be the other easy choice for what to play if you could only play one game this year. The action and soundtrack push everything to new heights, which was already considered impossible before playing it based on how incredible the first game is. And that's what ultimately makes Hades II so incredible. It's able to evolve on what was already one of the best game store releases in the last decade with deeper mechanics that drive its build and give you more to do between runs. Its stunning example of how to weave narrative and gameplay together, and it goes beyond what it means to be a great game—it's a truly excellent game.

Eternal Strands

Eternal Strands is a debut project from Yellow Brick Games, founded in 2020 by Mike Laidlaw, former franchise director for Dragon Age. The studio's goal was to create wonderful journeys for players to experience. Five years later, Eternal Strands is the first journey they're asking players to join on. It might as well say they hit their goal of creating a wonderful journey. From early previews months ahead of its release and speaking with the studio, it was clear Yellow Brick Games had something on their hand with an extremely colorful and engaging mixture of game mechanics that sometimes felt like the greatest hits of mechanics players loved from games in the last decade. Thankfully, that wasn't to its detriment, while it isn't a perfect package, it's an impressive feat for a debut project from a new team and easily one of the more impressive indie titles this year.

Hollow Knight: Silksong

Just like how it would be impossible to talk about 2025's indie games and not mention Clair Obscur, it's also nearly impossible to talk about Hollow Knight: Silksong without mentioning its long-awaited DLC turned full sequel. The long development cycle when Team Cherry was finally ready for the spotlight only made it clearer that indie games were getting out of their

Hollow Knight: Silksong is another wonderfully crafted action platformer that will continue to excite and surprise you for as long as you play it. Whether you're in it for 10 hours or 60 hours, there's something around a corner that you've not seen yet. It's a stunning achievement in practically every facet of its game design and is undoubtedly one of the year's best indies, hands down.

ROUTINE

The second game on this list that returned after years away from the limelight, ROUTINE's story is a bit different from Silkong's. Instead of coasting on the financial success of their debut release and taking as much time as they wanted, Lunar Software was busy trying to get their debut release out the door while keeping rooos of their head. ROUTINE's gap between announcement and release spanned over a decade as the small team at Lunar Software had to pause development for several years before returning to the project after finding a publisher in Raw Fury. I can't tell you if it was worth the wait, but that's something you'll have to decide for yourself. However, what I can say is that ROUTINE is easily one of the year's best indie accomplishments and one of 2025's top experiences. It's dripping with atmosphere and tension that never really lets you breathe and is probably one of the best sci-fi horror games since Alien Isolation. As I wrote in my review, ROUTINE is an excellent puzzle-focused first-person horror game that despite its slow pacing is able to keep you at the edge of your seat for 10 hours straight with a rich atmosphere created by wonderful execution of its retro-futuristic aesthetic and stunning soundscapes that immerse you in its world and have you listening for the sound of a pendulum to avoid getting caught. Its narrative may not shine through as strongly as some others, but at the end of the day, it's altogether an interesting game—a game worth playing again and one that Alien Isolation fans should play while we all wait for Alien Isolation 2.

Honorable Mentions

The list of honorable mentions is as long as it is because we wanted to ensure you walked away knowing that the following indies are more than worth your time should you check them out. One small note about the list begins with Sunset Visitors debut title, 1000x Resist, which came out last year and appeared in our honorable mentions for indie games in 2024. But with its ports to PS5 and Xbox Series and our review of it coming this year, it felt appropriate to include it again even if it technically didn't qualify for the main five.

Others on the list include Baby Steps, Blue Prince, Despelote, Skin Deep, The Seance of Blake Manor, Skate Story, Morsels, The Midnight Walk, PEAK: Dispatch, Shotgun Cop, Wanderstop, Deltarune, Sword of the Sea, Citizen Sleeper 2, Starward, Vector, Keep Driving, Ball x Pit, Revenge of the Savage Planet