What is an indie game?
Indie games are games developed by third party developers made entirely by people without support of large video game publishers. A lot of indie games are very small and can be a very close-knit team, where people choose to make games more tied to what they want to push for instead of having goals from other larger companies. This is great, because of the game giving creative freedom towards the developer, and ensuring that the game can run well on certain game apps including Steam and Itch.io
Many indie games can be gems in the rough, but can very well be games that are often considered to be Games of the Year, here are four such examples.
Denshattack!
Denshattack was made in June 2026 by Fireshine Games, it’s a game that involves facing off against rival train gangs, riding trains across the entirety of a domed-off form of Japan where you can do tricks, similar to the likes of Games like Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater and Skate.
The game’s very unique and creative with a vast majority of different styles, and every song made in game is meant to be something you will add to your playlist, with hit pieces from Lotus Juice/Shoji Meguro (Persona), 2 Mello (Celeste/Bomb Rush Cyberfunk), Ryo Nagamatsu (Mario Kart, Splatoon), Takenobu Mitsuyoshi (Daytona USA, Sega Rally Championship).
The game may not make sense, but trust me when I say you will be in for a blast.
UNBEATABLE
UNBEATABLE is a hit music/rhythm game made in December 2025 by D-CELL Games, where you are in a dystopian form of Japan, where music is illegal and you do crimes by fighting a police form known as HARM.
A lot of the music tied to the game is very good, there’s a really good 8 Hour long story, and the game has regular updates as of the past few months with new arcade mode songs, including a recent DLC with the hit indie music artist Jamie Paige, with more DLC and newer content to come over the next few months.
The game was recently nominated for the World Sound Track Awards, which D-CELL deserves greatly considering they have been working on this game since early 2021, and the story of how the game came out to be is very inspiring, considering that the developers have essentially been working hard to get this out since then, with making the audio, graphics, and trying to repair bugs in the process.
The game isn’t perfect, but it’s a lot like how games kinda are nowadays. You don’t need any form of AI to make games, you need a passionate and supporting team with an idea willing to flesh out to make an amazing game, even if the game is broken when it comes out, you can work on it with your team to ensure that every bug is fixed at a later date.
Celeste
The game that almost feels like a calling out in support of Trans People, this game was made in 2018, and even was how the developer of the game Maddy Thornson came out as trans. This game was made by Extremely OK games, and has a story themed about a trans woman by the name of Madeline climbing up a mountain in order to fight against her anxiety and depression.
Along the way, her and the people you see along the way has cases of self-doubt and anxiety which you have to use in order to get past them through the case of very tricky 2d Platforming in an equivalent way to games such as Super Meat Boy, but also being a fair game with tonnes of checkpoints where you only lose about 5-10 seconds with every death, this game has a very rewarding skill ceiling with a low barrier to enter, the game also has a very thriving Speedrunning community where you can play the game from start to end within the span of an hour with very little practice.
The game is very fun and even though it’s hard, it’s not too punishing to where you will be throwing your controller every 5 seconds.
Balatro
I’m sure many people have heard of this, but Balatro, a game made in mid 2024 is a roguelike game where you play poker hands in order to beat boss blinds of increasing difficulty. This game also includes jokers which can essentially give chips and mult which can give you more points towards beating higher and higher blinds.
The game has almost endless replayability, with 15 different decks, 8 stakes of various different difficulties and 150 different jokers, so no two different games can be the same. The game also has a freeplay option, where you can go further than 8 rounds, up to a maximum of 39, where you score higher and higher points, going up to highs of Naneinf, which also is equivalent to a score higher than 1.8^e308.
There’s also these effects that you can use in order to change cards and the effects of the game in order to get closer to the higher totals, featuring scientific notation.
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