Every "best indie games" list is really a list of the games someone couldn't stop thinking about, dressed up as objectivity. So we'll be honest about ours: this is the list of indie games the team at Tyrian Games actually pushes on friends in 2026, across every genre, with no pretence that taste is a science. We make an indie game, which means we play an unreasonable number of them — partly for love, partly because watching how the best ones solve problems is the cheapest education a small studio can get.
A quick definition, since "indie" gets stretched. We mean games made by small or independent teams without a major publisher steering the ship — anywhere from one person to a few dozen. Budget and team size, not vibe. By that measure, some of the most important games of the decade are indies, and several are below.
TL;DR
- The two indie titans of the current moment are Balatro and Hades II — one a solo poker deckbuilder, the other a studio masterwork. Start with whichever sounds less like you; you'll be surprised.
- For pure "how did so few people make this" awe: Animal Well and Blue Prince.
- For comfort with depth: Stardew Valley and Sea of Stars.
- For dread done right: Dredge and Pacific Drive.
- HAWKER (September 2026) is our entry — a debt-driven shopkeeper roguelite from a small Australian team.
The twenty
1. Balatro (LocalThunk, 2024). A poker roguelite made largely by one anonymous developer that became one of the most-played games of its year. Proof that a single great idea, executed with total confidence, still beats a hundred-person budget. The defining indie of the decade so far.
2. Hades II (Supergiant Games, full release 2025). Indie only by the loosest definition now, but Supergiant earned the label and never gave it up. The most complete narrative roguelite ever made. If you want to see the absolute ceiling of small-studio craft, it's here.
3. Animal Well (Billy Basso / Bigmode, 2024). A metroidvania built almost entirely by one person over seven years, dense with secrets that the community is arguably still unravelling. Tiny file size, enormous game. The kind of project that makes other developers quietly despair.
4. Blue Prince (Dogubomb, 2025). A roguelite puzzle game about drafting the rooms of an ever-changing mansion, and one of 2025's biggest critical surprises. Brain-meltingly clever, endlessly discussed. The current darling of the "I can't explain it, just play it" school.
5. Dredge (Black Salt Games, 2023). Folk-horror fishing where the dread arrives while you work. Over a million copies sold and a genre quietly reshaped. We owe it a lot; see our games like Dredge list.
6. Hollow Knight: Silksong (Team Cherry, when it ships). Still the most anticipated indie game in the world, and we're not going to pretend otherwise. Whenever it lands, it lands on this list. The original is already an all-timer.
7. Pizza Tower (Tour De Pizza, 2023). A frantic, hand-animated platformer that runs on pure expressive energy. Looks like a fever dream, plays like a dream. Indie animation at its most alive.
8. Dave the Diver (Mintrocket, 2023). Dive by day, run a sushi restaurant by night — a systems-stacker that shouldn't cohere and absolutely does. One of the most charming hybrids in years. Our games like Dave the Diver piece has more.
9. Pacific Drive (Ironwood Studios, 2024). Run-based survival in a haunted exclusion zone with a station wagon you keep alive by hand. Eerie, mechanical, and unlike anything else. The car becomes a character.
10. Sea of Stars (Sabotage Studio, 2023). A turn-based RPG that honours the SNES golden age without being trapped by it. Gorgeous pixel art, generous design, genuine warmth. Comfort food with real cooking behind it.
11. Cult of the Lamb (Massive Monster, 2022). Roguelite combat plus cult management, and the combination holds beautifully. Found an audience far beyond the usual roguelite crowd. See our games like Cult of the Lamb list.
12. Tunic (Andrew Shouldice, 2022). A little fox, a big mysterious world, and a manual you have to piece together as you play. Tender, cryptic, and quietly one of the best puzzle-adventures of the decade.
13. Inscryption (Daniel Mullins Games, 2021). A deckbuilder that becomes something else, repeatedly. Saying more spoils it. One of the great structural magic tricks in games.
14. Stardew Valley (ConcernedApe, 2016, still updated). The benchmark. One developer, a decade of free updates, and a farming sim that became a genre unto itself. If you've somehow never played it, fix that. See our games like Stardew Valley list.
15. Disco Elysium (ZA/UM, 2019). The most ambitious writing in any RPG, full stop. A detective story about politics, failure, and the voices in your own head. Not for everyone, essential for many.
16. Slay the Spire (Mega Crit, 2019). The deckbuilder that launched a subgenre. Still the cleanest expression of the form, with a sequel in active development. Bottomless.
17. Moonlighter 2 (Digital Sun, Early Access 2025). Dungeon-crawl by day, shop by night — the clearest cousin to what we're making. A confident sequel improving on a beloved original. See our games like Moonlighter 2 list.
18. Caves of Qud (Freehold Games, 1.0 2024). A traditional roguelike fifteen years in the making, with one of the deepest and strangest worlds in games. Procedural history, mutations, sentient plants. A destination, not a starting point.
19. Outer Wilds (Mobius Digital, 2019). A space mystery built around a time loop and pure curiosity, frequently named one of the best games ever made. We won't spoil a second of it. If it's somehow new to you, go in blind.
20. HAWKER (Tyrian Games, September 2026). Ours, and the only entry we can speak about from the inside. A debt-driven shopkeeper roguelite set in the fallen Duchy of Ysward: scavenge ruins by day, survive a combat system that inverts at night, and trade your way out of a debt to Death across thirty days. Folk horror, Breton myth, and a clock that never stops. Wishlist on Steam.
What makes a great indie in 2026
The thing that unites almost every game above isn't genre or budget — it's a single, specific idea held with total conviction. Balatro is "poker, but a roguelite." Animal Well is "a metroidvania made of secrets." Pacific Drive is "survival, but the car is your partner." Each one could be explained to a stranger in a sentence, and each one then goes impossibly deep on that sentence.
That's not an accident of taste. It's the survival strategy of the form. A small team can't out-content a studio, can't out-market a publisher, can't out-polish a hundred-person art department. What it can do is have one strange, specific idea that no committee would have greenlit, and execute it with a focus that big productions structurally can't afford. The indie advantage isn't smallness. It's the freedom to be peculiar, and 2026's best games are all peculiar on purpose.
The corollary, and the hard part, is that conviction has to be legible from the outside. A game with a brilliant peculiar idea that can't be communicated in a screenshot or a sentence will sink, no matter how good it is, because nobody will find it. Which brings us to the genuinely difficult thing about being an indie in 2026.
A first-hand Hawker example
The hardest problem in indie games right now isn't making the game. It's being found.
Steam alone publishes thousands of titles a year. The maths of discovery are brutal for a small team, and we learned exactly how brutal the first time we watched our own wishlist numbers. For weeks, HAWKER's wishlists crept up at the rate you'd expect from a game nobody's heard of — a handful a day, mostly from people who'd stumbled onto the Steam page sideways. Then one creator we'd never spoken to made a short video that lumped HAWKER in with a few other "shopkeeper roguelites to watch," and our daily wishlists jumped by an order of magnitude for three days. We hadn't done anything. Someone had simply placed us in a context — next to games people already wanted — and that context did what our own marketing couldn't.
That was the lesson, and it reshaped how we think about everything, including these articles. The indie discovery problem isn't solved by shouting louder about your own game. It's solved by being legible enough that other people can place you accurately — "it's the dark Moonlighter," "it's Dredge on land," "it's a roguelite with a deadline." The games on this list all benefited from being placeable. Balatro is "poker Slay the Spire." Dredge is "folk-horror fishing." We deliberately made HAWKER narrow — a debt-driven shopkeeper roguelite — not because narrow is clever, but because narrow is findable. A game that's a little bit of everything is a game nobody can recommend, because they can't finish the sentence "you should play this if you like ___." We'd rather be the answer to a specific question than a vague maybe to everyone. Wishlist HAWKER if the specific question is "what's a dark shopkeeper roguelite with a clock."
Sort by your mood
Don't pick by genre — pick by what you want tonight.
You want to feel clever. Blue Prince, Balatro, Tunic, Outer Wilds.
You want to feel skilled. Hades II, Slay the Spire, Pizza Tower.
You want to feel cosy. Stardew Valley, Sea of Stars, Dave the Diver.
You want to feel uneasy. Dredge, Pacific Drive, and HAWKER in September.
You want to feel awe at the craft. Animal Well, Disco Elysium, Caves of Qud.
Where to find the next great indie before everyone else
A short practical note, because half the joy of indies is finding them early. The best discovery tools in 2026 aren't the front page of any storefront — they're Steam Next Fest (the seasonal demo event, where you can play dozens of upcoming games for free), the festivals that curate by taste rather than algorithm, and a small number of critics and creators who genuinely play widely. Wishlisting the games that catch you does two things: it reminds you when they launch or go on sale, and — for the tiny teams behind them — it's the single most useful signal you can send, because Steam's algorithm treats wishlists as proof a game deserves visibility. If you only do one thing for the indies you love, wishlist them. It costs nothing and it's how small games survive long enough to launch.
FAQ
What is the best indie game of 2026?
For sheer impact and playability, Balatro and Hades II lead the pack, with Blue Prince the standout newer release. The "best" depends on genre, but those three are the safest recommendations.
What counts as an indie game?
A game made by a small or independent team without a major publisher directing it — anywhere from a solo developer to a few dozen people. It's about independence and scale, not art style.
Are there good upcoming indie games in 2026?
Yes — including HAWKER in September, ongoing Hades II content, and a strong slate visible each Steam Next Fest. See our most anticipated indie roguelites of 2026.
What is the best indie game on Steam Deck?
Most indies run beautifully on Deck. Balatro, Dead Cells, Hades, and Stardew Valley are perennial handheld favourites for their short, resumable sessions.
Is HAWKER an indie game?
Yes — HAWKER is made by Tyrian Games, a small independent studio in Australia, with no major publisher steering it.
The bottom line
The best indie games of 2026 aren't smaller versions of big games. They're the games big studios would never risk: one strange idea, executed with more conviction than money. The twenty above span every mood and genre, and any handful makes a better library than most full-price blockbusters.
And if you want to back a small team building something specific, you know where the button is.
Next read: Best roguelites on Steam 2026, or Most anticipated indie roguelites of 2026.