Are there any good indie games on the world's largest video game store? I dunno, are there any leafy trees in the Amazon?

From what I've been playing: Stardew Valley, Factorio, Vampire Survivors, Derail Valley, A Hat In Time, Project Wingman, Frostpunk 1 and 2, Portal 2 (technically self-published), Signalis. Voices Of The Void will eventually have a Steam release. All of those games work well on Linux.

I play indie games a bunch, here's my shortlist:

• Factorio (factory builder)
• Enter the Gungeon (bullethell top down shooter)
• Slay the spire (rougelike deckbuilder)
• Subnautica (underwater exploration/survival/base building) - nr 2 is in early access, publisher deal with Krafton so good for the devs they fucked up trying to get out)
• Megabonk (rougelike auto-shooting, 3d vampire survivors type)
• Outer Wilds (space mystery exploration)
• Chants of Senaar (language decoding)
• Return to the Obra Dinn (forensics)
• Dave the Diver (dive fishing/sushi serving)
• Celeste (2d platformer)
• Neon White (speedrunning FPS)
• Papers Please (soviet style document checking)
• Cuphead (metroidvania)
• Magic Archery (very short and solid incremental, free and unmonetized, very rare)
• Inscryption (deckbuilder)
• Schedule I (drug dealing sim)
• Hollow Night (2d platformer Soulslike)
• Hades (roguelite)

All of them are good and they're mostly different types of games. All are tons of fun to play and most of them have a very charming art style (schedule I, and Megabonk Notably lacking there)

Out of these the absolute favorites are Factorio, Outer Wilds, Return to the Obra Dinn.

Side note, very important you stick with Outer Wilds until you find a major secret, people sometimes bounce off it and miss out on a once in a lifetime gaming experience.

Rimworld. Does have a native Linux port. It's a colony simulator in space. 2D. It you have a lot of control over your colony, you can micro manage everything. I have over 1000 hours in the game.

I'm sure you've heard of this one already, since the internet can't stop talking about it, but Hollow Knight and Silksong are both phenomenal games.

I've also got to mention one of my personal favorites, Book of Hours (and it's predecessor, Cultist Simulator). Weather Factory's style is... unique to say the least, but if you love them you'll really love them.

Also Balatro. Another one that I'm sure you've heard of because it has taken the internet by storm.

Kenshi

Caves of Qud

Entropy Zero / Entropy Zero 2

MINERVA

Squad

Road to Vostok

Citizen Sleeper / Citizen Sleeper 2

Risk of Rain / Risk of Rain 2

Terra Invicta

Ghost Song

Sifu

... and if you have an inkling toward the OG 'walking simulator'...

Dear Esther: Landmark Edition

I am mostly confident that all of those are either self published or published via what was at least at the time of original release of the game, a fairly small indie publisher.

EZ and EZ2 are technically mods for HL2 but they are pretty darn good and then quite good, respectively.

Dear Esther and MINERVA are also HL2 mods.

Squad is basically the old Project Reality mod for Battlefield 2, but made in Unreal Engine by at least originally about 75% of the old PR mod team.

Anyway, I tried to pick some games that are indie, but are not as well known, largely due to not being cutesy.

Any genre is pretty wide open but I'll list some of my most played.

• Oxygen not included
• Hydroneer
• Abiotic Factor
• Raft
• Planet crafter
• Against the storm
• Graveyard keeper

songs of syx, couldnt stop playing that, just started dredge aswell

This must be a troll post. So many indie games on Steam

nope sorry, none.

I've been playing a lot of Parkitect recently, which is self-published

Space Haven

Heart of the Machine

Into The Breach

I love art of rally, iracing arcade, dome keeper, kingdoms and castles, stonks 9800, mini motorways and bzzzt, they all work on Linux. Hope you have fun with any game though.

Eastward is probably my favorite video game ever. I actually learned about it from a post here on lemmy a month or two after its release and I don't think I've ever seen it mentioned in the wild since. Gorgeous pixel art, characters you fall in love with, wonderful soundtrack. It's not for everyone - it's very dialogue-heavy and a lot of the story is left open-ended - but the world they've built is so compelling and packed with emotion. It's really heartwarming at times and beautifully creepy at other times.

Dwarf Fortress

Noita is very cool, very deep, and has a tonne of content. It’s common for people’s first win to take about 100 hours, if they watch/read guides & the wiki

And I say first win, because the community calls getting your first win “the tutorial”. It’s 10% or less of the total content in-game

Two things that make it stand out: firstly, it’s hard. The community calls it “wizard death simulator”. That doesn’t mean that it’s not fun even at the start or that you can’t become ridiculously powerful, just that you will suck when you first start playing

Secondly, it’s not a metaprogression game which gives you the illusion of progressing by unlocking things or bumping up your stats. Killing bosses does unlock spells, but none of them are “if I find this at the start I’ll melt enemies”. They’re more “if I find this halfway through a run it might be fun to experiment and see what weird kind of a wand I can build”

Trailer: https://youtu.be/0cDkmQ0F0Jw

Tell me that doesn’t look sick

Hades, Dave the diver, Terraria, dead cells... All good indies are on steam...

Call of duty. Jokes aside what about bloons td6

Uboat

Could you please use the cross-post feature instead of making 4 separate posts in future? Thanks.

Some of the few i played the last year:

Tome 4: One of the best traditional rogue-like out there, with lots of classes and items. I won't lie, the graphics are dated but they grow on you. The greatest thing going for it, it's the number of races, classes, items that you can combine. You can play it for free on their page or get the paid steam version. It has some paid dlc. Sadly the developer hasn't appear in a while, i think they had a few real life problems, i hope they get better. Still the game is still top notch and with lots of content. If you are into traditional rogue-likes this one is a must play.

Cogmind: A traditional rogue like game but with a twist on the genre. Instead of exp, you get parts for your robot and part of the progression is learning about specific mechanics (info-war, stealth, hacking, etc). It has a really modern immersive ui, and really nice ASCII animations. It's tagged as early access but i consider it complete. It has dozens of different endings and ten years in development. But take my heed, It's pretty hard and may not be for everyone, some runs can be a bit frustrating. Check some videos or reviews before buying.

Caves of Qud: Lets keep rolling with traditional rogue-likes. This one is fresh out of the oven, I think they finished it last year and it was a fantastic ride. Unique setting in a post-apocalyptic world with mutants psychics and cyborgs. It has lots of customization, you can be a gunslinger mutant with 5 arms, each with a gun, four legs, two heads and that would be a normal run.
Just so you get around the level or craziness the game has, you can have your face chop up by a conscious tree, pick it up and wear it over your already mangled face just to assert dominance (Really, the chopped face gives +1 EGO when equipped). Check it out, fantastic game.

Bonus track:

Song of Syx: A civilization builder, that plays like a mix of colony management and paradox grand strategy games. Great game with a great developer.

Dyson Sphere Program: Ok, this one may not be an indie game, not sure, it has way more developers than the other games. But they are great and the game is gorgeous. If you like Factorio like games this one should be your jam.

Non-Steam Game:

While not in steam if you have experience running things with wine and proton, I suggest giving it a chance, you won't regret it.

Star Sector: Space game where you explore the galaxy with an ever growing fleet. It seems to take inspiration on Star Control. The battles are fantastic, the effect when a ship goes booms it's glorious. It has a great community with lots of mods. It's still in development but i consider it already finished. It has enough content for hundred of hours and that's no even counting mods. There is a big update coming, I think at the end of the year, may be worth waiting for it.

I've been enjoying En Garde!

Pompeii: The Legacy

Another take on roman inspired city builders. It's in early access but already really playable.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2632240/Pompeii_The_Legacy/

Metropolis 1998

City builder inspired by sim city 2000 with pixel graphics. The interesting thing here is that you can plan and decorate the houses you build. So it's a bit of simcity / sims mix with retro graphics

Currently only a demo is available.

https://www.yesboxstudios.com/

Check out Tunic

Someone else on Lemmy recommended Arco, and I've been enjoying the demo. Might buy!

Clair Obscur and Rogue: Genesia.

factorio squad expedition 33 no mans sky slay the spire 2 subnautica stardew valley terraria to the moon ib ao oni

these are the one i find good. your mileage may vary

I play this game called Deadeye Deepfake Simulacrum a little while back. It's a weird sorta immersive sim type game. You hack computers and shoot people and a bunch of other stuff as a cyborg corporate agent/debt-slave. It was cool

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4G7rHJ8g3ng

And my favorite right now: IGTAP. full release soon but the demo is so fun already. Play with proton even though there is a Linux build

Gorogoa

A gem is stationeers

Everything is a crab

There is no game(and their new game)

Deep rock galactic

Our adventuring guild: Tactics game full of flavour and min-max potential about getting a run down "guild of adventurers" from near extinction to a world class power