Shadow Empire. Best 4X wargame ever. 400 page rulebook included. Realistic logistics and planet generation 6000 years in the future!

I'll have to go with Selaco, it's not even finished (in fact it's approximately half done) but it feels more complete than any mainline Halo game after H:Reach. Looks better too.

Dungeons of Dredmor! Just a really solid, straightforward roguelike with a ton of stuff and a cheeky sense of humour.

Crumble A speedrunning platforming game, where you play as a blob with a tongue. Pleasant experience to play through while learning, while absolutely balls to the walls insane when actually speedrunning, actually 100% achieved this

Cyberpulse Twin-stick arcade neo style virus slamming game. Great control precision, challenging and colourful. The right thumbstick pressing might take a bit of getting used to.

Pseudoregalia Such a fun old school platformer. Big bunny girl MC for some reason but SUPER FUN and satisfying movement mechanics and the world is built well enough for the mechanics. A few hour long game, unless you look everything up.

Actually going to put some indie demos here I played this weekend, that I really enjoyed: Half-Sword Physics based medieval combat game. Reminds me of Exanima but instead of 2.5D, you can play Half-sword in 3rd or 1st person, which is really fun. Can have full gore or turn the gore completely off.

Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon First person (potentially later also 3rd person) RPG, very much in the vein of Elder Scrolls or Dark Messiah of Might & Magic. Really enjoyed the demo, it takes place on the tutorial island/dungeon. Going to buy the full version when it releases, because there seems to be a save wipe for 1.0.

Bloodthief Reminds me of Neon White and Ultrakill having an even more indie baby. Seemed to be pretty simple and good speedrunning platforming fun.

Shape of Dreams 2.5D action RPG roguelike. Very pretty and gameplay feels good. Didn't play it quite enough yet, only thing I kinda disliked was the amount of cooldowns on abilities.

9Kings Small town defense game with waves of enemies led by other kings attacking your kingdom. Really enjoyed this one. Demo isn't too difficult, even when I am really bad with these type of games.

RKGK (RAKUGAKI) 3rd person platforming game, where you bring some colour to the world with your graffiti. Very fun movement and popping colours. The dialogue isn't necessarily for me but the gameplay felt really fun.

Unbeatable Colourful rhythm adventure game, style is great and soundtrack slaps.

From the top of my head

• crawl stone soup. Classic traditional rogue like. Less fiddly than net hack, but very good.
• untitled story (an older game by the main person behind Celeste. Looks like Ms paint but is utterly charming)
• everything supergiant did. Hades, bastion, pyre
• binding of Isaac is a classic.

i'm not sure The Ur-Quan Masters counts as indie

Exanima Unique physics-based isometric dungeon crawler also featuring an arena career mode.
Moddable.
Really slow development cycle, though.

Severed Steel Futuristic 3D shooter with maybe the best movement system I've tried, with wall running, full 360 air movement, sliding and more.
Weapons have only one magazine, so you're constantly sourcing them from your enemies while blasting holes into the fully destructible levels.
Very replayable.

It's probably between stardew valley, rivals of aether, or cheaper world.

There's also a number that are almost perfect like wargroove, peglin, and kingdom rush.

Rogue Legacy

Another Crab’s Treasure.

Oh, haha, a souls game but with crabs, funny parody haha!

Except, no, while it does seem like it would be compared to SpongeBob humor, and it does self censor “shit” to “ship”, the themes of the story go well beyond just “Crab must find his stolen shell!”

It takes time to ramp up but in some ways it feels like a better-written game than most Soulslikes (to me, that’s not a high bar given the way many of them wrap their lore in many layers of obfuscation that you don’t get to enjoy in the moment)

Watching speedruns and trying NG+ is also a lot of fun.

Pyre is my all time favorite, it's the only game i've ever platinumed and still kept playing to see a few more permutations. But by terms of sheer hours put in? Rimworld.

Used to play battlefield 2, BC2 and 3 alot. Then I stopped playing online games and recently started playing "Ravenfield". It's succesfully filling the void, there are even battlefield maps and some vehicle/heli/jet/tank mods and ignoring the fact that it looks like battlefield heroes (very indie-style graphics), the physics/handling feels pretty close, especially when flying heli and shooting rockets

One of my all time favorites right now is Brok The Investigator.

It's a game by French company COWCAT Games that is describes as a point and click beat'em-up game. Has lots to do because there are multiple endings. It has a free visual novel made to essentially showcase a vn engine that can be used to make BTI fan games or your own creations and has an upcoming DLC (apparently only gonna be $9.99) that focuses more on the combat side of the game.

It's currently available on PS4/5 (vita planned but scrapped), xbox (don't know if they mean one and series x/s or just series), switch, steam, itch(dot)io, and even epic if you hate yourself.

I haven’t seen it mentioned and feel like it should count, since it really just had a solo programmer working with a graphic designer and musician, but RollerCoaster Tycoon and RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 took a big chunk of my gaming time.

Gunpoint. Charming, atmospheric, doesn't outstay its welcome.

I really love Supraland, but it’s hard to convince people to try it for some reason.

I've not seen many RPG maker games mentioned here, so i'll do my part. These are a lot of my favourites through the years:

• To the moon

• Finding paradise
• Oneshot
• Celeste
• Omori
• End roll

There are also a lot of them that i've not played but i've watched full playtroughs of, like IB, Hello Charlotte, Lisa, ... and most recently The coffin of Andy and Leyley

One game i would also like to add is Rain World, which is a 2d survival platformer, a bit challenging, but i would argue it's also a "metroidbrania" if you know the genre, games that have knowledge as gates rather than keys or power-ups like metroidvanias. Some notable examples are Outer wilds or Return of obra dinn, who others have already mentioned

Dota.

Ok, I know what you're saying, "But Valve makes Dota2" which, yes, this is true. But the OG game came about from gamers just loving games and making a custom game. I think it's peak "indie" in it's origin. Which went off to spawn several clones (League of Legends, Heroes Of Newerth, Heroes Of The Storm, Smite, Pokemon Unite, Paladins, etc.). Dota2 by far has the most hours played of any game.

hypnospace outlaw

Kerbal space program (the first one) And The Long Dark

Can’t really decide which I like more, and they are vastly different

I remember playing an RPG back in the day called “Dink Smallwood” on my old Macintosh laptop, it was one of the few games that were Mac compatible. Really funny and self aware dialogue, pretty great! I found out there’s an app version of it for mobile

Sayonara Wild Hearts is a magical experience that can't be described honestly. On difficult stages, it engages all your senses and you're just 100% inside, enthralled by the visuals, music and rhythm. This is probably the most focused and most precise game ever, everything it has, works. It's not just my favorite indie game, it's one of my favorite games ever.

Also, Night in the Woods and Keep Driving. Both resonated with me emotionally in a lot of ways, touching the things I care about. Keep Driving also has a really fun gameplay loop and an incredible music selection (which works as a boost for that emotional factor).

Honorable mentions: What Remains of Edith Finch (it made me uncomfortable and scared at some moments) and Firewatch (nice way to tell a story, and the characters feel real).

I have a personal soft spot for Doki Doki Literature Club because it got me into programming when i was young, but that's far more sentimental and to be honest i wouldn't play it again as an adult really. If i had to pick something functionally though I'd say Project Zomboid. there's a fuck ton of fun to be made in that, especially with Multiplayer. Even in singleplayer i like to turn on a NPC mod and assemble my own makeshift Walking Dead cast

Check out Tunic. I would recommend going blind.

Banished, you can't get more Indie than just one guy's passion project.

I don't know what it is about that game but it really struck a chord with me and I've come back to it over and over. It's my favorite game to play when I'm sick and can't do anything. It's relaxing and peaceful and cozy while also being complex and ruthlessly challenging at the same time, so it's like spinning plates. Seems easy when you get the hang of it but it can all come crashing down if you make a bad enough mistake. It's spawned some copy cats, and I've tried them, but the original just gets me somehow.

Stardew Valley

Crimzon Clover: World EXplosion. Top 3 shmups of all-time and best shmup on Steam, IMO.

Most of my picks have been mentioned already, but I had a blast with Mullet Madjack. A tongue in cheek riff on 80s anime in a boomer shooter where you have 10 seconds to live, but each enemy kill gives you 2 more seconds of life.