Every console generation, you’ll constantly see Sony and Nintendo re-releasing their old games in a new way, and a new wave of appreciation for the classics that still hold up. That doesn’t happen for indies.
Usually, indie game releases come into the world, and people talk about them when that happens. The wave of appreciation dies out as new things come along, which meanstons of heavily polished, great games go underappreciated.
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I wanted to look back on ten great indie games that have been around for over a decade and have been released in great shape. These are all good games in their own right, and any old fans can tell you that.
I’d heavily recommend dipping your toes into these since they’re timeless classics that don’t get their spot in the limelight every few years like the big Nintendo classicsdo, which is a shame.
10To The Moon
A Timeless Story
To the Moon
While the visuals inTo The Moonaren’t the best, just about every other aspect of it is incredible, being a story-focused game where you go through the motions and experience some incredible writing.
The music is heart-wrenchingly beautiful, andthe story hooks you in with a cool memory-altering plot and quickly pulls you deeper and deeper into an emotional voidwhere you’ll end up a wreck by the end.
The gameplay is what you’d probably expect from a story-forward RPG Maker game. You can interact with stuff, grab a few things, and that’s about the extent, but since it doesn’t focus on that aspect, it feels completely fine.
When you write something beautiful and focus so heavily on that masterpiece of written work, it’s bound to end up a timeless, incredible title that I can’t help but recommend to anyone who loves great stories.
Endlessly Innovative
Frequently called the game that started the modern indie movement,Fezis a 2D puzzle platformer on a 3D plane, something that might seem ordinary nowadays, but was an incredible revolution on release.
This game required an incredible effort from a small team, built in a custom engine since no standard engine had the technology to create it at the time. That effort paid off, though, as Fez is of superb quality.
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It feels like a modern-day release, with a vibrant pixel art style that pops harder than most other gamesand a gameplay gimmick of wrapping around 3D objects that never gets boring.
Fez is both simple and incredibly complex, offering a ton of great puzzles with simple mechanics. There’s a reason you’ll probably see it referenced in any game design class out there: It’s a great example of a great game.
8Minecraft
Blocked In
You’ve playedMinecraft, and if you’re like me and first played it over a decade ago, you’re probably also of the opinion that it was a great game during the beta and first releases, despite its simplicity.
Most of the modern Minecraft updates have just been adding stuff on top of the game, but the base mechanics and gameplay haven’t changed much since beta 1.8, aside from release 1.9, but we don’t talk about that one. The beta versions still hold up well to this day.
It’s absolutely one of the biggest indie success stories of any media format, much less video games. Building and surviving in a procedurally generated world and going on new adventures every time is endlessly appealing.
No matter what update you play on, it’s always fun to walk around huge forests, deserts, and mountains, and just get lost or build a cool home.
7Hotline Miami
Still Super Stylish
Hotline Miami
When talking about old games with a few gallons of sauce,Hotline Miamishould immediately come to mind, being one of the pioneers of the vaporwave aesthetic that was a massive fad in the 2010s.
It’s action-packed, gory, early-GTA-inspired, hasawesome shoot ‘em up gameplay, and packs a ton of neon effects that make you feel like you’re in an 80s-inspired barand staring at the signs for a little too long.
The pixel art can look a bit off, but it’s covered with enough effects that you don’t even notice, especially while you’re in the flow of things and racking up points before being hit by something due to your awful reaction times.
Even if the rest of the game can be a bit garish, the music is a timeless masterclass, making you feel both cool and a little bit bad for all the bloodshed you’re causing before you press R to restart.
All About Timing
While you might have some particular opinions on Jonathan Blow,Braidis a timeless game that deserves all the credit it gets, with an incredibly creative rewind gimmick and a huge surge of popularity for indies as a whole.
For reference, this game was released in complete form in 2009 and quickly rose to become one of the most popular Xbox Live arcades, popularizing it as a great place for indie developers to get time to shine finally.
It’s gotthe engaging presence of a puzzle platformer where you can reverse time while moving independentlyof everything else, making for cool sequences where you jump over enemies moving right toward you, then do that a few hundred times.
The visuals, despite being somewhat low-res, still haven’t lost their charm, due to the lovely hand-painted style the entire game is depicted in. It’s a lovely game, and one you could convince me wasn’t made 15+ years ago.
In The Shadow
Another indie that helped kick off this modern indie game renaissance we’re in,Limbo, is a horror-ish puzzle game with a striking monochrome, shadowy style that makes it stand out to this day.
The combination ofhuge spiders coated in silhouette with increasingly complex brain-teasersmay make some want to pull their hair out, but it’s all fair and rewarding, if a bit obtuse to figure out.
Either way, I’ve played plenty of modern games thathold up far worse than Limbo, and its design language is one of pure excellence, easily communicating to the player where they are and what’s dangerous, even with only one color.
It’s a real masterclass game, and the fact it’s around 15 years old astounds me, as it hasn’t aged a day. There’s pretty much nothing separating it from modern-day releases, they just cooked really hard.
4Super Meat Boy
Slick and Speedy
Super Meat Boy
On the pure gameplay end of things,Super Meat Boyis a better precision platformer than 99% of the newest entries into the genre, constantly remaining fair, challenging, and exhilarating to pull off.
Sliding around surfaces succinctly sells the speediness of your character, feeling like you’re slippery and floaty, yet giving you so much input over where you’re going that you never feel completely out of control.
While Meat Boy might have one of the worst bosses ever put into a video game, therest of the content in the gameis all killer, no filler, with level design that makes you want to go faster and perfect every movement.
The art style isuniquely Flash game-esque without ever feeling low quality, as if it were a tribute to the era it was made in.
Meat Boy has a few hundred hours of content with all its collectibles, characters, and room for mastery.
3Castle Crashers
Bashing Them In
Castle Crashers
While still receiving updates to this day,Castle Crasherswas one of the best multiplayer beat-em-ups back when it was released, and given my friends still ask to hop on it from time to time, it still is.
It’s not like most arcade beat-em-ups; instead, it feelsexplicitly designed for multiple people, allowing everyone to do different things and hopefully cooperate just enough to take down a big shadow beast while riding a carriage.
The movesets are both that mashy simplicity you’d expect from the genre, while containing enough room for player expression and having characters just unique enough for each playthrough to feel new and exciting.
Like Meat Boy, it has a style that is uniquely Newgrounds-ish, but to me, that bleeds charm and style, rather than looking like it was drawn by a teenager who just picked up Adobe Flash for the first time.
Spelunking Slipstream
While a procedurally generated sandbox roguelike sounds like a descriptor for a bunch of recent indies,Spelunkywas doing all that way back in 2008, and is still a great game to run through nowadays.
Though there’s a sequel that improves on most of the game, the first is still an incredible game in its own right, andit feels awesome to delve into caves, weave around enemies, and blow yourself up by accident.
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This game just has an immaculate flow to it that’s hard to put into words. It masterfully combines a destructible environment with the idea of running through areas while collecting as much stuff as possible, and it feels incredible.
The hand-drawn style holds up well to this day, and the game is always fun to start up and plow through. Plus, trying to kill the shopkeeper only to realize you should probably stay in your lane is a hilarious universal experience.
1Cave Story
Always Engaging
Cave Story
I’m only a little bit older thanCave Story, and that makes me feel incredibly strange, as I’ve grown up loving it, playing through with a guide to get the best ending, and constantly revisiting it due to my adoration.
It’s a platformer, shoot ‘em up, and somewhat a Metroidvania, but it pulls off the linear gameplay mixed with limited exploration so much that it feels just as open as all of its contemporaries, with some ingenious mechanics.
Leveling up your guns to get what’s essentially a new weapon is such a rewarding process that makes mastery a fun process to achieve, letting you keep your big laser as long as you don’t get clipped by a Jelly.
The ending is either saddening, or you work your ass off through one of the hardest video game gauntlets ever, because happiness is worth fighting for.
It’s one of my favorite games, and it’s crazy that it’s a free indie game from 2004.
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