Explore Best Indie Games of 2023

The best independent games may be those that fill in the gaps big-budget beefy-boys in the videogame industry have overlooked, those that explore genres and styles that are no longer popular because someone in marketing claimed they were irrelevant, or those that explore concepts that are too “out there” to be explained to the C-suite.

Or the best independent games might be the ones that are the most intimate—that share a private aspect of their creators and give us a sense of human connection that is lacking in games created by enormous nameless teams. 

They may even help us recognize a part of ourselves and realize that what we once believed was abnormal is actually a common experience, which will make us feel less isolated. Or they might bring to light a perspective we hadn’t given much thought to, illuminating why someone with whom we disagree feels the way they do and deepening our comprehension of the world.

All of those titles, spanning a variety of genres, are included on this list of the finest independent PC games. There are independent open-world games, independent metroidvanias, and warm, comforting indie games. You’ll have realized that the term “indie” doesn’t actually signify anything and that all games are stunning regardless of the label we give them by the time the semantic satiation sets in. Hold on a second, please. It simply means “independent” and designates games that were created independently. After that is resolved, let’s get to the list.

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Best Indie Exploration games

A Short Hike

A Short Hike, a calming little game about scaling a large mountain, plays up to its name by allowing you to finish the entire thing in only a few hours. It’s up to you how much time you spend wallowing in this endearing world; you encounter a lot of different animal folk on the journey up the mountain who want to chat, play a game, show you a new method to move around, or perhaps seek your assistance.

You find sideways excursions over the terrain as well as these sidequests, where you could find hidden cash and golden feathers that improve your climbing and gliding abilities. You are a bird person, but because flying would make the whole “climbing a mountain” thing a bit silly, you can only jump and swoop.

Umurangi Generation

Your photographic skills will improve thanks to the Umurangi Generation. That’s a promise. Umurangi is a cyberpunk urban photography simulation that gives you a handheld camera that is a work of art in and of itself. It is a beautifully tactile, tangible device that gradually gets bulkier with more lenses, features, and post-processing effects. The video game Umurangi Generation is passionate about photography, but it will never criticize you for a poor photo.

It does, however, assess the absolute situation of the world with a loud, proud voice. Unrepentantly anti-colonial and anti-cop, Umurangi Generation is a protest play set in the middle of the end of the world. While taking aim at the international response to the 2019 Australian bushfires, the police response to the 2020 George Floyd protests, and the complacency of video games in supporting violent power structures, the sci-fi setting of the UN’s Evangelion-like protector mechs still deals with real-world political issues.

Proteus

Proteus doesn’t because you make up its narrative on your own. You are dropped on a procedurally created island and given free rein to explore, climbing hills and chasing frogs, as you like.

It has a plot in the sense that you can experience a particular order of events. Though it’s a nuanced tale. (Here’s a hint: standing stones are involved.) There is a build-up and climax there if you want it, but even if you never learn the secret narrative behind Proteus’s islands, simply strolling through them while listening to their soundtrack—which varies depending on where you are and what you are doing—can make you feel good.

The Forgotten City

It’s possible to choose at one point in The Forgotten City to declare, “There’s no shame in building on the works of people who came before you.” When you’re in a Roman city that, like everything Roman, is owed to the Greeks, who were owed to the civilizations that came before them, it makes sense to say so at the time. The Forgotten City was once a Skyrim add-on before being changed into a solo adventure, thus it’s also appropriate.

Additionally, it has undergone significant retooling, making it worthwhile even if you have played the original. This isn’t just a side quest in a fantasy open-world RPG anymore. You are imprisoned in a cursed Roman hamlet where, if even one resident sins, they will all be transformed to gold in this self-contained time travel odyssey through history. Being sent back in time to the moment of your arrival to try to avert the catastrophe once it occurs each time makes you the only one guaranteed to escape this.

As it happens, some of those individuals are you from a prior cycle, and you are also building on their work. Each time the cycle resets, you bring with you objects and knowledge that you can use to open new doors, change the course of events, and save lives. 

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Spider and Web

The pinnacle of low-fi games is here: a text adventure. In Andrew Plotkin’s interactive fiction masterpiece Spider & Web, you play a spy breaking into an enigmatic high-tech institution. The puzzles are contextualized by being explained in flashback as you move through its halls, past its cameras, and sirens. What’s occurring is a tale you tell when being questioned after being apprehended and imprisoned in the same place you attempted to elude detection. Even when you start moving in the wrong direction or make a mistake solving a challenge, the interrogator will interrupt and remark, “That’s not what really happened!” He’s pretty much the most cruel hint system ever created.

Knowing you’ll be caught gives the whole situation an air of certain doom. However, Spider & Web has more to offer than just that. You will eventually catch up to the present, and what happens next is brilliant. Spider & Web, which won five Xyzzy Awards, including Best Game, is witty, surprising, and free.

The Red Strings Club

The Red Strings Club is a cyberpunk game about three underdogs. Akara-184 is a genderless android that develops cybernetic enhancements to make people healthier, happier, and more well-liked online. Making people happy is part of Bartender Donovan’s job description because that’s how bars operate. He works as an information broker side-by-side, influencing clients by concocting beverages that highlight character quirks that he uses to keep them talking. Brandeis also wants to bring down the companies in order to make people happy. He works as a freelance hacker in a dystopian cyberculture. They must carry out that duty.

All three of these playable characters have worked very hard for their possessions. They are forced to play minigames as their work, which might be annoying at times but is necessary for them to survive while caught up in a corporate plot. 

That plot involves a scheme to subdue people’s emotions through mind control. The antagonists share the same goal as the main characters, but they approach it in a different way. The Red Strings Club makes full use of this concept by posing issues of when it is acceptable to play with people’s emotions and how, in our own modest ways, we presumably do so daily.

Disco Elysium

Disco Elysium appears to be a certain type of fantasy game, the kind that welcomes players with the message, “Welcome to Top-Down Town, here’s a world full of people to talk to and stats to raise, and perhaps a secret about your past to uncover!” It is one of those, a CRPG in every meaningful sense, but one that takes more inspiration from literary fiction and crime thrillers than trilogy covers with dragons. 

The story takes place in a dilapidated area of a modern metropolis called a Disco Borough, which is as trying to forget its own history of revolutionary revolt as you, the archetypal debauched investigator, have sought to do with your own.

Recettear: An Item Shop’s Tale

The reason there are so many wacky video games about managing a store that sells weapons, healing remedies, and food to intrepid travelers—about picturing life on the other side of the buy-and-sell menu—is because of Recettear. What’s it like to have to keep a Thirsting Blade on hand in case a wealthy murderer wanders by and needs one?

You aren’t only purchasing inventory, negotiating pricing, and rearranging the shelves when you play as the protagonist duo of shopkeeper Recette and financial fairy Tear. Additionally, you accompany chosen heroes on dungeon crawls in the Zelda style, with the understanding that you will divide the loot if you give them better equipment. 

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Pyre

A legendary, lyrical trip through purgatory using wizard basketball, Pyre is a true ballad of a game. No matter the outcome, every game forces you to move forward and gives the tale another twist that is both heartbreaking and bittersweet. 

The exiles who participate in this age-old sport in an effort to leave their purgatory go by the name Nightwings. They are a close-knit family, and even though you want to take them all home, at the end of each tournament, you can only take one of them with you. It always hits you in the gut when you have to say goodbye to your favorite party guests.

West of Loathing

Even after you’ve finished the main plot, cracked all of the (often extremely tricky) riddles, and gathered every hat (there are more than 50), West of Loathing is so delightfully packed with humor, creative writing, and endearing characters that it’s difficult to put down. Everywhere you look, including the settings menu, there is some descriptive wording that will make you smile, chuckle, or giggle. You will be motivated to explore the West of Loathing for words rather than for treasure or experience.