Nearly 19,000 games were released on Steam in 2024. Thats a number thats been only growing annually since 2019, making it impossible to play everything thats been released — not to mention the many new games every year that arent released on Steam, either. While big, expensive games from massive publishers like Activision or Ubisoft tend to get the majority of media attention, some of the best video games independently released in a given year risk flying under the radar.
Here at Polygon, plenty of our full-time jobs revolve entirely around video games, but its impossible even then to keep up with everything. But were making room every day to seek out indie games across all genres — weird, wonderful takes on first-person shooters, wacky reinventions of card games, and dark, creepy typing games included. Were defining indie games as made by an independent studio untethered from a major publisher. Some of the games here may have financial backing or support from a big-name publisher, but are technically independent.
Its still early in the year, but indies have been off to a great start. There are job simulators, survival horror games, Soulslikes, holes to dig, and maybe just the best new game of the year — you name it, and theres probably a new indie game out there for you.
Here are all the indie games weve liked and written about this year.
- ByCass MarshallApr 4, 2025 Ive been ensnared into the wild life of a drug dealer in Schedule 1 Image: TVGS
Theres something wrong with this town; its immediately apparent as soon as I arrive. Ive recently fled my humble desert hometown after my uncle was raided by the cops and his criminal enterprise was seized. Im working on rebuilding the empire here in the sleepy town of Hyland Point, but there are a few problems to deal with. First of all, I need to learn the ropes of how to grow weed, cook meth, and maintain a customer base. Secondly, a rival criminal organization firebombed my RV. Finally, the cops remain a constant hassle. Thats just life in Schedule 1, a surprisingly expansive drug dealing simulator with some wacky twists, all created by a solo developer.
Schedule 1 has risen through the Steam ranks and maintains popularity because it has a really satisfying core gameplay loop. Much like Palworld, the first big surprise hit of 2024, Schedule 1 liberally borrows from other simulator games and different genres. I can play single-player, in which case I handle every element of the operation: growing, packaging, selling, expanding. Or I can rope in up to three friends and we can each handle part of the business.
Read Article > - ByMatt LeoneMar 28, 2025 Terrys Other Games answers the question: What if UFO 50, but nonfiction? Image: Terry Cavanagh
The game you most associate with Terry Cavanagh probably depends on your age. For me, its Super Hexagon. Why? Mostly because it came out my last year in college and provided an excellent alternative to working on the things I was supposed to be working on. To this day, I cant think of the game without imagining my college library, because thats largely where I played it as a “break” from studying that often went longer than the studying itself.
Perhaps youre more familiar with Dicey Dungeons, though. Or, for the real connoisseurs, the nigh unpronounceable VVVVVV. If you havent played any of these three Cavanagh games yet, I have good news for you: Your reading journey has come to an end. You should play at least one, if not all three, of those great games. Then, perhaps, Terrys Other Games will be for you. Depending on your taste in annotated bibliographies.
Read Article > - ByMichael McWhertorMar 10, 2025 This slimy Soulslike isnt the cute Dark Souls alternative I hoped it would be Image: Pancake Games/Whitethorn Games
Pitched as a cute, approachable “Souls-lite,” Slime Heroes combines two of my favorite things in video games: adorable slimes and Dark Souls-style gameplay. Despite some good ideas, Slime Heroes recipe doesnt quite work. Yes, its cute, but it also feels frustrating, clumsy, and unfinished.
Slime Heroes casts the player as a colorful, customizable blob who fights way above its weight class in an attempt to save a fantasy world from a spreading corruption. Played from a top-down isometric perspective, my slime has a variety of attacks at its disposal: a light attack, a heavy attack, and a jumping smash attack that adorably transforms my slime into a smashing fist or an anvil. I quickly earned spell-like skills that let me throw projectiles or summon a whirlwind that sucks in my enemies.
Read Article > - ByCass MarshallMar 7, 2025 Knights in Tight Spaces is a fantastic follow-up to a deck-building delight Image: Ground Shatter/Raw Fury
Knights in Tight Spaces is a roguelike deck builder with deep strategy, lots to unlock and explore, and a whole lot of style. The game is a successor to the 2021 title Fights in Tight Spaces, but while the original game was a modern spy thriller with a tightly focused combat loop, Knights in Tight Spaces sprawls out onto a much broader canvas, telling an epic tale of brawlers, wizards, necromancy, medieval conspiracies, and frantic hand-to-hand combat.
This is a sequel at its best: Knights has all the stuff I loved about Fights, but the developers at Ground Shatter seem far more confident in using the tools in their arsenal. Each battle takes place on a tight grid, and I have to carefully position my party, avoid dangers, pick up the occasional chest of loot, and ponder upon my strategy.
Read Article > - ByOli WelshMar 7, 2025 Atomfall mixes STALKER, Doctor Who, and Children of Men into a very British nuclear disaster Image: Rebellion
Atomfall, the new game from Sniper Elite developer (and 2000 AD owner) Rebellion, is set in the Lake District in northwestern England in an imagined version of the 1960s. Its a world of stark mountains, creepy moorland, homely village pubs, and eccentric country folk. Its also a quarantine zone where clanking, retrofuturistic mechs patrol a militarized town after a disaster at a local nuclear plant. Nearby, the remote forest is overrun by a lawless faction of druidic cultists. In other words, its Fallout, U.K. style.
Rebellion, always a cheerfully unpretentious studio, is happy to own up to this influence — among many others. According to head of design Ben Fisher, a soft-spoken Scot, the initial idea for Atomfall came from Jason Kingsley, who co-founded Rebellion with his brother Chris in 1992 and who is still its CEO. Kingsley — a history nut with a popular YouTube channel about medieval life, where hes often found in full plate armor on horseback — wondered what it would look like to combine a popular strand of gaming with a dark footnote in postwar British history: a fire that ravaged the Windscale nuclear plant, situated on the edge of the Lake District National Park, in 1957.
Read Article > - ByCass MarshallFeb 28, 2025 I had a blast in Neighbors: Suburban Warfare, a chaotic and colorful PVP game Image: Invisible Walls
Growing up in the suburbs outside of Toronto, I quickly learned how serious a matter like an overgrown lawn or late night tunes can become. Theres nothing more terrifying than the shadow of an active homeowners association. An upcoming multiplayer game takes that threat a step further, pitting two crews of suburbanites against each other and adding a heavy dose of Looney Tunes-style cartoon violence. Neighbors: Suburban Warfare is like Rainbow Six Siege, but with the tacticool military edges filed off.
I sat down with developer Invisible Walls for a couple of rounds of, well, suburban warfare. Each team has a house to defend, with a television, toilet, bed, and oven. In order to win, you must destroy the other teams objectives while defending your own. Of course, this is easier said than done. Your team can barricade windows, set up traps, or simply pummel enemies into unconsciousness to defend their turf.
Read Article > - ByAlice JovanéeFeb 25, 2025 Yes, Your Grace: Snowfall is going to put my conscience in mortal peril Image: Brave at Night
I missed out on the original Yes, Your Grace when it launched in 2020, but I devoured it on my phone in a single evening. My only issue with the kingdom management title? There wasnt enough of it. Thankfully, the launch of its sequel, Yes, Your Grace: Snowfall is right around the corner, and a free Steam Next Fest demo is now available, full of morally ambiguous decisions to weigh heavily on your soul.
Snowfall picks up shortly following the events of Yes, Your Grace, with a short animatic to fill you in, if you didnt get around to playing the original. Yes, Your Grace focused on the trials of the established patriarch of a royal household attempting to secure his legacy and keep his subjects satisfied. The major narrative threads in the original carry over to the sequel, and while youre presented with the option to have a default storyline chosen for you, you can also fill in your choices from the original title.
Read Article > - ByToussaint EganFeb 25, 2025 TankHead is a terrific roguelike vehicular combat twist on Shadow of the Colossus
Created by Toronto-based indie studio Alpha Channel, TankHead centers around Whitaker, a digitized human consciousness housed within a drone body. Set several years in the wake of a cataclysmic event, TankHead has players controlling Whitaker as he ventures into the “Event Containment Area” — an irradiated region where ordinary humans can no longer survive — on a mission to return to the site of his former home, the fabled floating city of Highpoint.
To do so, youll have to take command of a modular light-armored tank and hunt the TankHeads — drone weapons haunted by the errant ghosts of their former operators — in order to pierce deeper into the ECA and reach Highpoint. Naturally, this is easier said than done.
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