Indie games are becoming more and more a part of popular gaming culture, and these great RPGs are a great example.
Role-playing games are the only type where people love and accept indie games more than any other. Small makers have been adding classics to the genre for years, and these games are often thought to be among the best of all time, even better than some triple-A games. This is likely because the genre has a lot of different things to give.
Many independent RPGs have been very successful in the past, but the last five years have seen a great run of games that will be remembered for a long time. There are a lot of games for people who want a newer RPG made by an independent creator.
Moonlighter (Metacritic Score: 83)
Living two lives can be hard, but players of Moonlighter should enjoy taking on all of Will’s different parts. During the day, the owner takes care of his shop. At night, he goes out to fight monsters. In Rynoka town, players will be able to decide what to sell at the store, set prices, and handle the money the store makes.
The indie roguelike will have players fight monsters when they are not at the shop. This will force them to look at each enemy carefully and figure out how to beat them using both weapons and the surroundings.
Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night (84)
People think Castlevania is one of the best action-adventure games ever made, and they’ve been waiting for a new game in the series. Koji Igarashi, who was a director at Konami, was one of the people who worked on the show.
Igarashi left the company and chose to start a new studio to make a game similar to Castlevania. In the independent RPG Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, an orphan named Miriam is trying to stop Gebel from destroying herself and the world. To do this, she has to go through a castle full of demons.
Genshin Impact (84)
Genshin Impact is an action RPG that takes place in the fantasy world of Teyvat. It was made by the Chinese independent producer miHoYo. This world is home to seven different countries, and each one is ruled by a different god.
Players take on the role of the Traveler, a twin who is trying to find their brother or sister somewhere in the world. With Paimon’s help, they must engage the gods and nations in their search for the other twin. The open world can be explored with a group of up to four people, but only one of them can be controlled at a time.
13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim (85)
Even though it was published by a big company, RPG 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim was made by an independent team called Vanillaware. The story of the game is about thirteen Japanese high school kids in the 1980s.
Early on in the game, the group is forced to join a war between Kaijus and mechs in the future. The game is an adventure game where you move from side to side and fight in real time. Players will also have to look around and talk to people to move the story along, and they can look at scenes in Analysis mode.
Wildermyth (86)
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The idea of a story-driven RPG with random events, procedurally generated maps and encounters, and procedurally produced characters sounds like an experiment that could go wrong if the developers aren’t careful when putting these systems together. Luckily, Wildermyth didn’t fall for this trick and showed beyond a doubt that this game is easily one of the most underrated strategy RPGs on Steam.
Even though the characters are chosen at random and made by algorithms, they have a lot of heart that most written role-playing games can only dream about. As party members go on amazing journeys, they can make friends, become rivals, and fall in love. Eventually, they will pass the torch to their children or other young adventurers.
CrossCode (86)
CrossCode, an indie RPG, was out in early access for a while, but it wasn’t actually out until September 2018. This action RPG is made by Radical Fish Games. It looks like an old SNES game and takes place in the future.
Lea is the player, and she is in a made-up MMORPG called CrossWorlds. The conflicts and exchanges that happen in the game she is playing are the center of the game. The game has a fast-paced real-time combat system and different tasks that need to be solved as you play.
Bug Fables: The Everlasting Sapling (86)
When I think of great role-playing games made by big companies, I think of the Paper Mario games from the early 2000s. Some fans are upset that the makers have changed what they think made the first two games in the series good turn-based RPGs.
Moonsprout Games thought the same thing, and so they made Bug Fables: The Everlasting Sapling. The players take on the roles of three insects who are looking for wealth and a way to live forever in Bugaria. The game looks like paper and has turn-based battles, just like its origin.
Pillars Of Eternity 2: Deadfire (88)
Before it became an Xbox Game Studio, Obsidian Entertainment was known as one of the most successful independent game makers because it had a number of hits since it began. Before it was bought, one of its last games was the update to one of its most popular role-playing games.
In Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire, players take on the part of the Watcher, a person who can see into the souls of other people. The main goal of the game is to sail a ship across the open seas and fight enemies on land. The player can choose from four versions for each class.
Omori (87)
Fans of games like Earthbound and Undertale will fall in love with Omori and how well it turns assumptions on their heads. At the beginning of the game, most people would think that it’s just a cute RPG about a boy and his friends exploring a strange world and having a great time with their friends.
But it doesn’t take long for players to realize that this game is really broken. The psychological horror side of the game comes out in surprising and brilliant ways that keep players on the edge of their seats as they figure out what’s going on with Omori and Sunny.
Rogue Legacy 2 (88)
The sequel to the highly acclaimed indie smash hit Rogue Legacy was finally released in 2022, and fans were eager to jump back into the procedurally generated worlds with the help of a list of randomly generated ancestors. The new game didn’t change too much from what made the first one so fun to play, but it did add a lot of new and interesting gameplay elements, as well as new bosses and enemies that were very hard to beat.
The end result is an expanded version of Rogue Legacy in which players grind for gold, build their castle, fight a bunch of hard bosses, and find new, helpful heirlooms in the style of Metroidvania to help them get through some places that they couldn’t get to before. Rogue Legacy 2’s high Metacritic score is well-deserved because it gives fans a better version of the original Eggy Car game that doesn’t stray too far from its roots.
Barbearian (89)
Barbearian is a bright and fun top-down hack-and-slash game that was first released for iOS in 2018. It plays a lot like Hades, Nobody Saves the World, and other action-packed bullet-hell games. The Indie release is a game that doesn’t take itself too seriously. It blew away everyone’s hopes and works amazingly well as both a mobile game and a PC game on Steam.
Barbarian is a good choice for players who want to try something different. Its fast-paced, action-packed gameplay should appeal to most players, and it has a wide range of levels that will challenge those who want something harder while also appealing to those who just want to chill out and hack away at enemies.
Curse Of The Dead Gods (90)
Most players’ expectations were set by Dark Souls, which gave the gaming world a tough-as-nails gameplay loop that felt great to beat. Players would have to fight minor monsters, hacking and slashing their way through them to get to bosses that were really scary and hard to beat. Some great indie games were influenced by this way of playing, and many of them chose to make their games very hard.
Curse of the Dead Gods is a great example of a game that does a hard gameplay loop right. Fans of Hades will feel right at home with this top-down release. Players move through a series of procedurally generated areas, collecting tools and upgrades to help them fight the darkness and survive some really scary enemies.
Chained Echoes (91)
Chained Echoes is a game that came out of nowhere and became popular with JRPG fans. The game’s unique levels system and references to old games like Chrono Trigger made it stand out as a great example of a game that does a great job of combining old genre tropes with new ideas.
Valandis is a beautiful place to visit, with many different landscapes that look pretty unique and interesting. The Overdrive system is also fun, and it pushes players to stop using the same tactics over and over in battle and try new things.
Disco Elysium (91)
Most role-playing games are about fighting, but Disco Elysium is not at all like that. In a game by ZA/UM, players start out as a detective who can’t remember anything. They don’t know anything about the character at first, and they have to solve a murder case without any background information.
The main way to play the game is through skill checks and conversations. Players have a set of 24 skills that they can improve as they go through the game. These skills can help them figure out what’s really going on.
Hades (93)
The most recent game by Supergiant Games was thought to be one of the best games of 2020.In Hades, the player’s character, Zagreus, is trying to get away from the Underworld and his father, Hades, so he can get to Mount Olympus.
“Runs” are parts of the game that the player must go through. When going through a series of rooms, players will fight in a hack-and-slash style that, if they live, can earn them rewards that can help them continue the run and may even help them in future runs as well.
