The best indie games in 2026 aren’t trying to compete with AAA budgets. They don’t need to. While big studios spend $300 million on a single release and still ship it broken, small teams are putting out finished, original games that people actually want to replay.
This list covers the indie games worth playing right now, from recent 2026 releases to older titles that still hold up. We skipped anything with a publisher bigger than Devolver Digital, and we skipped anything that’s been on every “best indie games” list since 2018 without good reason to include it again.
1. Blue Prince
Developer: Dogubomb | Platforms: PC, PS5, Xbox, Switch | Released: 2025
Blue Prince is a puzzle game built inside a roguelike. You’re exploring a cursed manor, building it room by room, trying to find Room 46. Every run reshuffles the architecture. Hallways that led somewhere last time now dead-end. Rooms you relied on for clues might not appear at all.
The puzzles aren’t the usual “push block onto pressure plate” fare. They’re environmental, layered across multiple runs, and some of them require information from previous attempts that the game never explicitly tells you to remember. It respects your ability to notice things without hand-holding you through the process.
Expect to sink 20+ hours before you see credits. Expect to keep playing after that.
2. Slay the Spire 2
Developer: Mega Crit | Platforms: PC (Early Access) | Released: 2026
The original Slay the Spire more or less created the deckbuilding roguelike genre. The sequel doesn’t reinvent it. Instead, it refines everything: more cards, more relics, more enemy variety, and a new class system that gives each run a cleaner identity from the start.
Two new characters join the roster alongside reworked versions of the originals. The Inventor builds contraptions from spare parts between fights. The Necrobinder raises defeated enemies as temporary allies. Both add enough mechanical depth to make the first game feel like a prototype in hindsight.
Still in Early Access as of March 2026, but the core loop is already tighter than most finished games in the genre. If you burned 200 hours on the original, clear your schedule.
3. Animal Well
Developer: Billy Basso | Platforms: PC, PS5, Switch | Released: 2024
Animal Well was made by one person, and it shows in the best possible way. Every screen has intention behind it. No filler rooms, no padding, no copy-pasted assets. It’s a metroidvania where the map is the puzzle, and every item you find changes how you read the environment.
The bubble wand lets you create floating platforms. The top lets you traverse gaps. The yo-yo interacts with objects in ways the game never tells you about. There are at least three layers of secrets: the ones you find on a normal playthrough, the ones you find when you start looking harder, and the ones that require community collaboration to decode.
It takes about 8 hours to “finish.” People are still finding new secrets two years later.
4. Balatro
Developer: LocalThunk | Platforms: PC, PS5, Xbox, Switch, Mobile | Released: 2024
Poker meets deckbuilding roguelike. You play poker hands to score points, buy jokers that modify scoring rules, and try to hit increasingly absurd score thresholds. That description makes it sound simple. It is not.
The joker combinations create scoring engines that spiral into millions of points per hand. One run you’re playing flush-heavy strategies. Next run you’re stacking multipliers on pairs. The run after that you’re building around a single joker that triples everything when you play exactly four cards. Every decision compounds.
Sold over 4 million copies in its first year, won multiple Game of the Year awards, and was made by one developer. The mobile port is dangerously good if you value your commute time.
5. Hades II
Developer: Supergiant Games | Platforms: PC, PS5, Xbox, Switch | Released: 2025
Supergiant already proved with the first Hades that roguelikes could have real stories. The sequel shifts to Melinoë, Zagreus’s sister, fighting upward from the underworld to confront Chronos. The combat is faster, the build variety is wider, and the narrative integration with the run structure is even more seamless than the original.
New weapon types and a revamped boon system mean the first 50 hours feel like constant discovery. Arcana cards add a persistent upgrade layer that the first game lacked, and the hub area between runs is packed with character interactions that make you want to talk to everyone before starting another attempt.
If you bounced off roguelikes because they felt repetitive, Hades II is still the genre’s best argument against that complaint.
6. Outer Wilds
Developer: Mobius Digital | Platforms: PC, PS5, PS4, Xbox, Switch | Released: 2019
Outer Wilds is seven years old and nothing else has come close to what it does. You’re an astronaut exploring a solar system stuck in a 22-minute time loop. When the loop resets, everything resets with it, except your knowledge. The entire game is a puzzle solved by learning things.
There are no upgrades. No unlocks. No experience points. The only thing that changes between your first loop and your hundredth is what you know. Every planet has secrets that connect to secrets on other planets, and the moment it all clicks together is one of the best feelings in gaming.
Play it blind. Don’t look anything up. You can only experience it once.
7. Cairn
Developer: Game Atelier | Platforms: PC, PS5, Xbox | Released: 2025
A rock climbing simulator that’s actually about rock climbing. Not “press X to climb” but actual route-reading, grip-management, stamina-rationing climbing. Each cliff face is a spatial puzzle where your body position, reach, and weight distribution all matter.
The learning curve is steep (fitting, for a climbing game). Early routes feel impossible until the mechanics click, and then you start reading the rock face the way the game wants you to. Overhangs that looked impassable suddenly have obvious solutions once you understand how to shift your weight.
It’s a niche game that does its niche better than anyone expected. Not for everyone, but if the concept appeals to you at all, it delivers.
8. Stardew Valley
Developer: ConcernedApe | Platforms: PC, PS5, Xbox, Switch, Mobile | Released: 2016
Yes, it’s from 2016. It’s still on this list because the 1.6 update added enough content to qualify as a new game. New farm types, a meadowlands layout, new events, new fish, new crops, and a mastery system for endgame players who thought they’d done everything.
ConcernedApe continues to update this game for free while other developers charge $40 for less content as DLC. The multiplayer co-op supports up to four players sharing a farm, and the mod community has kept the game alive with quality-of-life improvements and total conversion mods.
If you’ve never played it, you’re looking at 100+ hours before you run out of things to do. If you have played it, the 1.6 update is reason enough to start a new save.
9. Celeste
Developer: Maddy Makes Games | Platforms: PC, PS4, Xbox, Switch | Released: 2018
Celeste is a precision platformer about climbing a mountain. It’s also about anxiety, depression, and self-acceptance, and it handles those themes without being preachy about it. The story works because the gameplay mirrors the narrative: you fail, you try again, you get a little further each time.
The difficulty is honest. Every death is your fault, respawns are instant, and the checkpoints are generous enough that frustration never overwhelms progress. The assist mode lets players adjust speed and add dashes without stigma, which was ahead of its time in 2018 and still sets the standard for accessibility in hard games.
The B-sides and C-sides add brutal post-game challenges for players who want them. Speedrunners are still finding new techniques eight years later.
10. Hollow Knight
Developer: Team Cherry | Platforms: PC, PS4, Xbox, Switch | Released: 2017
Hollow Knight gives you 40-60 hours of hand-drawn metroidvania for the price of a sandwich. The map is enormous, the boss fights are tough, and the art direction carries a melancholy tone that sticks with you long after you put the controller down.
Combat is simple on the surface (nail, dash, heal) but the charm system adds build variety that rewards experimentation. Boss rushes in the Godmaster DLC are some of the hardest content in any 2D game. The Grimm Troupe expansion added an entire questline and one of the best boss fights in the genre.
Silksong, the sequel, has been in development for years. In the meantime, the original has enough content to keep you busy for months.
11. Cellar Door
Developer: Finite Reflection Studios | Platforms: PC | Released: 2026
A first-person horror game set in a house that shouldn’t have a basement this large. You go downstairs to check on a noise and the staircase just keeps going. The basement expands into corridors, rooms, and spaces that don’t match the house above.
Built in Unreal Engine 5, it looks better than it has any right to for a studio this small. The lighting and sound design carry most of the atmosphere, with long stretches of quiet punctuated by moments that force you to question what you just saw. Short game, about three hours, but those three hours are dense.
12. Pacific Drive
Developer: Ironwood Studios | Platforms: PC, PS5 | Released: 2024
A survival game where your vehicle is your base, your inventory, and your lifeline. You drive through the Olympic Exclusion Zone, a fictional stretch of the Pacific Northwest filled with anomalies that warp reality. Between runs, you repair and upgrade your station wagon in a garage that slowly fills with salvaged parts and jury-rigged modifications.
The driving feels heavy in a good way. Your car takes damage, tires pop, doors fly off, and the engine stalls at the worst moments. Managing your vehicle’s condition under pressure while navigating reality-warping hazards creates a loop that’s part survival horror, part road trip, part mechanical puzzle.
Not what you’d expect from a driving game. That’s exactly why it works.
How we picked these games
We defined “indie” as games made by teams of roughly 50 people or fewer, without major publisher backing (Devolver Digital and Annapurna are borderline but we allowed them). Every game was played by our team, not pulled from aggregate review scores.
Selection criteria:
- Is the game doing something original, or at least doing something familiar better than anyone else?
- Does it hold up right now in March 2026, not just when it launched?
- Would we personally recommend it to a friend without caveats?
We mixed recent 2025-2026 releases with older games that still deserve attention. A great game from 2017 that you haven’t played yet is more useful than a mid game from last month.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best indie game of 2026 so far?
Slay the Spire 2, even in Early Access, is the strongest indie release of 2026 so far. Blue Prince is the runner-up if you prefer puzzles over deckbuilders.
What indie games are coming out in 2026?
Hollow Knight: Silksong remains the most anticipated indie game with no firm release date. Slay the Spire 2 is expected to leave Early Access in 2026. Other notable upcoming releases include Outward 2, The Legend of Khiimori, and several unannounced projects from Supergiant Games.
Are indie games cheaper than AAA games?
Almost always. Most games on this list cost between $15 and $30. Several of them (Balatro at $15, Hollow Knight at $15, Celeste at $20) offer more playtime than $70 AAA releases. Stardew Valley is still $15 after ten years of free updates.
Can I play these indie games on Nintendo Switch?
Most of them. Balatro, Hades II, Stardew Valley, Celeste, Hollow Knight, Animal Well, and Blue Prince are all available on Switch. Pacific Drive and Cairn are currently limited to PC and PlayStation.
