The indie game scene has never been more alive than it is in 2025. With major studios playing it safe, it’s the indie developers who continue to push boundaries, take creative risks, and develop unforgettable gaming experiences.
Whether you’re into emotionally rich narratives, genre-bending mechanics, or pixel-perfect retro throwbacks, this year’s indie lineup has something for everyone. From hidden gems to breakout hits, here are some of the best indie games you need to play in 2025.
As the lethal hunter Hornet, adventure through a whole new kingdom ruled by silk and song. Captured and brought to this unfamiliar land, Hornet must battle foes and solve mysteries as she ascends on a deadly pilgrimage to the kingdom’s peak.
Hollow Knight: Silksong is the epic sequel to Hollow Knight, the award-winning action-adventure of bugs and heroes. Journey to all-new lands, discover new powers, battle vast hordes of bugs and beasts and uncover ancient secrets tied to your nature and your past.
Hollow Knight: Silksong can be found on Steam for $19.99 USD.
Playing as a fallen fighter named Alta, you’ll manage a tea shop within a magical forest and tend to the customers who pass through. But Alta does not want to be here. And if she gets her way, the tea shop will be nothing but a brief and painful memory.
Wanderstop is a tea shop management ritual. Grow and harvest the ingredients needed for tea, and then mix them together in an unusual tea-making contraption. Along the way, speak with many travelers who pass through the shop, learn their stories, and make tea that’s just right for them.
Wanderstop can be found on Steam for $24.99 USD, with a free demo.
Welcome to Mt. Holly, the mysterious manor with shifting rooms. In Blue Prince, you embark on a genre-defying experience, filled with a unique mix of mystery, strategy, and puzzles that weave together to create an unpredictable journey. Will your explorative steps lead you to the rumored Room 46?
Upon reaching a closed door in Mt. Holly, you decide what room appears behind it and each decision shapes your path as you navigate through the manor. Every door can reveal new and exciting chambers that contain their own unique challenges and secrets. But be careful how you draft, for each day the manor’s floor plan resets and the rooms you saw today may not be the same rooms you see tomorrow.
Blue Prince can be found on Steam for $29.99 USD.
Guide a team of occult investigators to investigate the disappearance of a noble family. Keep your team well equipped and safe from hunger, injury, madness, and disease. Each member of this motley crew offers their own unique skills to aid with your quest. But they also harbor their own secret ambitions…
Combine characters, items, and locations to craft tools, potions, and occult rites. Master a deep, nonlinear crafting system as you progress through the story. Explore eight chapters of cosmic horror. Each one presenting new challenges, events, and characters… all woven into this tragic twisted tale.
The Horror at Highrook can be found on Steam for $19.99 USD, with a free demo.
Look Outside is a survival horror RPG set in a single apartment building. A mysterious event turns anyone who looks out the window into grotesque monsters, leaving the world in absolute chaos. Scavenge the building to seek food, supplies, and weapons while encountering strange characters – human and otherwise.
Plan tense expeditions outside your apartment as you fend off grotesque monsters dwelling in and around your building. Return to your home with gathered resources and partial answers to your questions to recuperate by playing games, making dinner, crafting tools, and getting to know your neighbors turned allies.
Look Outside can be found on Steam for $9.99 USD.
Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector
The highly anticipated sequel to one of 2022’s most acclaimed RPGs, Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector takes players to the Starward Belt, a richly realised, ramshackle set of habitats in an asteroid belt full of secrets, stories, and characters trying to make ends meet.
You are a sleeper, an emulation of a human mind housed in an artificial body. You are on the run from the corporation that made you and the gang that seeks to control you. Commandeer a ship, build a network of crew and allies, and take on challenging contracts as you seek to build a future for yourself.
Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector can be found on Steam for $24.99 USD, with a 25% off sale for the weekend.
Erenshor is a single player adventure designed to capture the game play and feeling of an MMORPG. You will meet and group with hundreds of SimPlayers – which are your digital companions who persistently exist in the world, who progress independently, and who will always be ready to group and adventure alongside you whenever you’re ready.
This is a single player love letter to early MMORPGs that paved the way for the games we play today. Taking inspiration from the classics of the late 90s and early 00s, Erenshor does not offer quick rewards or hand-holding. Players will get lost, stumble upon deadly foes, and learn hard lessons. The keen adventurer will be rewarded.
Erenshor can be found on Steam for $19.99 USD, with a free demo.
Once a year, the Paintress wakes and paints upon her monolith. Paints her cursed number. And everyone past that age turns to smoke and fades away. Year by year, that number ticks down and more of us are erased. Tomorrow she’ll wake up and paint “33.” And tomorrow we depart on our final mission – Destroy the Paintress, so she can never paint death again.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a ground-breaking turn-based RPG with unique real-time mechanics, making battles more immersive and addictive than ever. Explore a fantasy world inspired by Belle Epoque France in which you battle devastating enemies.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 can be found on Steam for $49.99 USD.
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