Indie is a budget, not a genre, and the reason the label is useful anyway is that small teams take the risks large ones cannot. Most of the mechanically original games of the last fifteen years came from three people and a good idea.
What makes a good one
Whether the one idea is strong enough to carry the whole game. Indies do not have the resources to hide behind production, so the design is exposed — which is exactly why the good ones are so good.
One idea, explored completely
A single mechanic taken as far as it goes, and a runtime that stops when it is done.
Big indies
Small teams that made something the size of a studio game and did not compromise on it.
- Hollow Knight — Forty hours, a map you have to earn, and it started as a game jam.
- Hades — A roguelike wrapped in the best narrative framing the genre has.
- Grounded — Survival crafting at insect scale, with a real ending.
Indies that revive something
Games made because nobody was making the thing any more, so someone did it themselves.
- Lies of P — A soulslike with a weapon-assembly system nobody else attempted.
- Stellar Blade — Parry-first action in a genre that had drifted away from it.
- Arc Raiders — An extraction shooter played quieter than the rest of the genre.
Common mistakes
- Waiting for a sale on a five-hour indie. The short ones are the ones most worth paying full price for.
- Judging by the art style. Some of the hardest and deepest games there are look like children's books.
- Assuming small means short. Hollow Knight and Terraria are both bigger than most games with a hundred people on them.
Questions
What actually counts as an indie game?
Self-published or published without a large publisher's money. It says nothing about the size of the game, which is why Hollow Knight and a two-hour art piece sit under the same label.
Why are indie games often better designed?
Constraint. Without a budget to hide behind, one idea has to carry the whole thing, so the idea has to be good — and a small team can commit to something risky that a large one would sand down.
What is the best indie game to start with?
Hades if you want something with hooks, Hollow Knight if you want something enormous, and Journey if you want to see what two hours can do.
