Top 50 UPCOMING Indie Games in 2025

Recently, I posted a list of the Top 25 of 2025 Most Anticipated Indie Games and have been overwhelmed by the reception that the list has gotten. Needless to say with only 25 spots, some games didn’t make the cut, some games were forgot about and even since then, more Indies have been revealed, so technically with this list and the first list, this would make the Top 50 Most Anticipated Indie Games of 2025.

Since we already ranked the first list, we aren’t going to rank this list 26-50 because after some discoveries and forgetfulness, a lot of these games would fit in the Top 25. Instead, this time around I will just be listing 25 more amazing indie games.

Nipping this in the bud, these games will range from all different types of Indies including teams with a handful of devs to triple-i level studios and some studios that might even have publishing deals with bigger companies, which doesn’t make them less independent, they just were fortunate enough to secure a publishing deal and alleviate some stress for their next release, so hats off to them.

It’s possible that we missed something and put in a small studio that might not be indie, but let’s not get too caught in the weeds with the definition of what an independent game studio is. Instead, let’s just try to have fun and get excited for some (mostly) indies together.

In case you missed our first list, be sure to check it out here or in the video right here >>>>>>>>>>>

THE LIST

1.Baby Steps

From the creators of Ape Out and Getting Over It comes a very unique game about an adult burnout who is transported to another world and needs to learn to walk again or to take his first baby steps. Crossing the difficult terrain in the trailer looks reminiscent of Death Stranding, but with a much less serious tone.

The trailers also display how hilarious the game will be thanks to the emergent gameplay, but also there appears to be some very dry and witty writing. Baby Steps is definitely going to take the walking simulator conversation to another level.

2. Greenfield

Greenfield is a blend of Inside, Limbo and Control. At least that’s how Six Foot Giraffe refer to their game and its inspiration. As someone who is and has been desperately looking for something to fill that playdead void, Greenfield looks like it might work. However, there have been other attempts at that formula like Somerville and Planet of Lana with different results, but nothing quite executes the mystery and unease of the playdead world combined with the frictionless gameplay

Greenfield is a story driven puzzle platformer where you explore a forgotten island facility, which could be real or symbolic. You explore different biomes, using lost technology in search of answers. Each biome will be unique and centered around a specific energy. Fire, water, wind, photonic and magnetic.

As nice as the trailer from a year ago looks, Six Foot Giraffe is only one person and that is a monumental task.

3.Drifter

The point and click genre hasn’t had a renaissance yet like many older genres have. Boomer Shooters, 3D Platformers, and even Metroidvania’s continue to thrive. Although The Drifter might look like another generic point and click with its retro pixel aesthetic, it becomes clear within seconds that this is something different.

The voice acting is superb and immediately captures your attention. However, within minutes of playing the game, you hear fellow train drifter mumble something about not this again before being gruesomely riddled with bullet holes. As you narrowly escape, it sinks in that you are caught in the middle of something much bigger than trespassing. You are caught in the middle of a time loop. The controls are effortless on Steam Deck, there aren’t obtuse puzzles and when you combine the voice acting and pulp thriller plot, The Drifter could be the reinvigorating that point and click genre need.

4.Core Decay

There hasn’t been any shortage of boomer shooters, but most of them are all trying to be the same mindless shooter. Core Decay, in the words of the developer “is a love letter to immersive sims of the late 90’s and early 2000’s like Deus Ex and System Shock” and they have also listed games like Descent and Unreal as inspiration. Core Decay takes place in the Great Depression of 2089 and the Earth is about to become uninhabitable, but humanity isn’t aware how dire the circumstances are.

The objective is to uncover the truth and save whats left of civilization in a mission that will take you across the globe to five continents from Seattle to Siberia. The visuals have a modern retro aesthetic, but the use doesn’t seem to be nostalgia bait. With such a small amount of immersive sims nowadays, Core Decay could make a splash.

5.Mandragora

Many have tried to create a Metroidvania with Souls-like elements in that order, but Mandragora is approaching this from the opposite angle. A 2.5D Souls-like with Metroidvania elements. The primacy focus of Mandragora is on the demanding combat, strong atmosphere and RPG elements. The world is explored at a much slower and more methodical pace and the universe is much more oppressive than the usual genre standard. Immediately, you can see the difference from the character class screen, which is something very foreign to the metroidvania genre.

In the words of the developers “they were inspired by the exploration from the original Castlevania games, the combat from Dark Souls, the emotional storytelling from Witcher 3, and the visuals from Ori”. The world looks harsh, combat seems calculated, the bosses look epic, the upgrade trees seems daunting, multiple classes, and then you also have a crafting system for weapons, armor and trinkets.

6.Pony Island 2: Panda Circus

Every single title from Daniel Mullins Games have been received extremely well with critical acclaim for Pony Island, The Hex and Inscription floating around the 90th percentile. Even higher is the Steam reviews for all of those titles, which averages above the 95th percentile. Unfortunately, I missed Pony Island, but have seen many plays of it and did play Inscryption. I am ready for Daniel Mullins mind bending game.

7.Blue Prince

Blue Prince is a first person puzzle based rogue-lite where you play as an heir to a giant estate and the only problem is that you need to find the elusive room 46 in the 45 room mansion. The problem is that you only have four days to accomplish your task or you will forfeit your inheritance. Each day you try to find the 46th room by beginning in the lobby of the mansion. Each door you go through can transform the blueprints of the next room into a handful of different rooms. You have a limited amount of steps that you can take, you have a grid that limits your blueprint drawings, some doors require keys, some rooms require gems and some rooms require gold.

In addition to the core mechanic, the mansion is littered with puzzles and mysteries for you to solve. At the end of the day or when you run out of steps or find yourself at a dead end, you go to sleep, lose everything you have acquired and the layout of the mansion goes back to a blank slate. What you retain is mostly your knowledge.

The visuals aren’t pushing Unreal 5 engine limits, but the art direction is stunning. On numerous occasions I found myself just staring at the environment like the view of the mountains that greets you when you go out the front door.

8. Bionic Bay

The elevator pitch for Bionic Bay is that its Limbo meets Portal in this physics based puzzle platformer. The visuals have a stark contrast and the gameplay is addictive as you want to move from one obstacle to the next. In the demo, there was an experiment that went wrong and now your character has super power that allows him to jump higher, move faster and teleport.

The story seems interesting to as a scientist has been transported to an ancient bio-mechanical world and not only are you trying to escape, but you are also trying to uncover the secrets of this universe in this unique sci-fi platformer.

9. Demon Spore

Demon Spore is a top down twin stick shooter with roguelike elements inspired by 80’s action horror. You play as a scientist who was trying to cure world hunger by creating a faster growing livestock, which sounds awfully similar to some of the advancments trying to be made today. Demon Spore is developed by Dino Boss, who is a solo developer who has a deep love for 80’s action and horror flicks. In addition to John Carpenters The Thing being the main source of inspiration, Dino Boss also lists other 80’s sci fi/action/horror titles like Predator and Alien.

The elevator pitch is quite simple: Get to the Elevator. As you can gather from the title, a demon spore has broken out of the lab and you need to escape. You will need to select to correct path out of the 49 available rooms to reach the elevator. Along the way you will also be looking for crucial equipment like weapons to help in survival

Demon Spore has had a few demo flights and the feedback that has been given is that a lot of people felt like it reminded them of a board game in a good way. People also enjoyed that the game was more than just shooting as it involves puzzles to solve, paths to choose and stealth mechanics. There is a level of strategy involved

10. Echo Weaver

Most Metroidvanias released are now reductively called Hollow Knight ripoffs, which isn’t fair to a lot of Metroidvanias that are trying new things. The good news is that Echo Weaver is nothing like Hollow Knight. Echo Weaver feels truly original due to its visuals and time loop premise.

The time loop is implemented in such a genius as you have health, but you also have time before your loop runs out and you have to restart the cycle again with the information that you gained on your last loop. You’ll discover shortcuts, where items you need are and what areas aren’t worth your time. You’ll also encounter blocked off areas that are unlocked by sacrificing a certain amount of your time, which is a very unique way of implementing the time loop. The visuals are unique and don’t feel like it’s pulling inspiration from anywhere.

11. Bye Sweet Carole

It’s hard for an art style to stand out and grab your attention immediately. Remember the first time you saw something like Cuphead and how captivated you became with its unique art style that no one else was doing. Bye Sweet Carole is what you would get if you took classic Walt Disney Animation, made it horror and then combined those elements into a platformer.

The game itself currently looks a little stiff, but the art style and the supernatural horror game with a narrative focus could do the heavy lifting and take a lot of the focus off the controls. With the art direction, I will give Bye Sweet Carole the benefit of the doubt for now.

12. Sleight of Hand

Sleight of Hand is a third-person stealth action deck-builder. It’s no secret that deckbuilders are having a moment, but as with anything, there is always room for one more if something is done right or innovates. Sleight of Hand is inspired by noir and tactical espionage action about a witch who must infiltrate her old coven using a cursed deck of cards. Sleight of Hand is set in the hardboiled, rain soaked city of Taboo, a world that is separated by those with magical powers and those without.

Previous to founding Riff Raff Games in 2019 in New Zealand, Joshua Boggs also led Framed and Framed 2, two award winning puzzle games with a noir aesthetic and very positive reviews. It’s clear that the studio has a deep love for noir adventures. Riff Raff games is currently about a dozen people, but they definitely garnered attention being featured on the Xbox Partner Showcase.

13. Graft

After a less than great reception of 2023’s The Lamplighters League and disappointing sales, Paradox Interactive announced that there would be layoffs at Harebrained Schemes, which they had just acquired a few years back in 2018 for 7.5 million. In 2024, Harebrained and Paradox came to an agreement that they could regain their independence, but their IP in the form of their back catalog would remain at Paradox.

Their first game since they have become independent again is Graft, an isometric survival horror cyberpunk RPG. From your fallen enemies you are able to graft parts of them onto you and transform into a better version of yourself. However, these grafts come with consequences from the previous owner that you have to live with. GRAFT looks visually similar to what the studio did before with the Shadow Run Trilogy, but with a much darker tone visually. The studio found success before with this formula and GRAFT looks like a spiritual successor, which bodes well for critical success. The reasoning behind thinking it might release in 2025 is because of its similarity to Shadow Run and how familiar the team is with those workflows and that design.

14. Project C

Some games might not make 2025, but some games on the list don’t even have a real title yet. Project C is the collaboration between Half Mermaid games and the newly minted Blumhouse Games. Half Mermaid is the studio founded by Sam Barlow, who is behind games like Her Story, Telling Lies and the most recent critical smash, Immortality.

There isn’t much to go by except the current Steam tags that list FMV, horror, dark and sci-fi. There is also a lot of redacted text in the description, but it does say for the first time ever in a video game. Sam Barlows first three games are more dramatic and the change to horror sci-fi in FMV sounds like an absolute blast. Trying to piece together what little bits of story, there appears to be someone who can see events or timelines in a kaleidoscopic nature, which fits right in line with the mechanics of his previous games.

15. Koira

Although Koira might be published by Don’t Nod, it’s being developed by Studio Tolima, a handful of people from Belgium. Their main goal is to tell emotional stories through a minimalist approach and Koira seems to be doing just that as you befriend a puppy and help guide it out of the forest to safety.

With its minimalist art style, Koira uses the art direction and score to convey all of the emotion while you explore the forest figuring out puzzles and stealth sections to progress. The adventure sees you traverse shaded groves, slide down snowy hills, withstand blizzards and find your way through dark caverns. Watching the trailer, it is clear that Koira is going to be a emotionally heavy game

16. Lab Rat

Imagine if you can, Portal, but as a top down puzzler and you would have Lab Rat. Lab Rat is being developed by Chump Squad, a studio founded in 2018 by Gwen Frey, who had previously worked on Marvel movies and at Irrational games on Bioshock Infinite. Chump Squads first game was Kine and it was self published, sounds like it was mostly developed solo and it reviewed extremely well at outlets like Edge Magazine and Eurogamer.

Their follow up is a Lab Rat, a game about a metrics obsessed AI that monitors your every move in the maze. The world seems highly inspired by Aperture Science Labs and its dark, satirical humour that was a staple of the Portal series.

Lab Rat features over 130 puzzles that consist of figuring out moveable objects, diverting lasers and manipulating electricity in hilarious ways and by the end ,it looks as though the game will likely try to break the fourth wall

This time around, Chump Squad has bulked up and there are now four developers working on the project with the art created by the lead world builder on Bioshock Infinite, Mike Snight.

17. Menace

Nothing quite hits the same turn based tactics sweet spot quite like X-Com with its blend of strategy and sci-fi. Menace looks to fill the void and PCgamesN said “if you’re craving X-Com 3, Menace might be what you're looking for” With features like perma-death, alien races and character backstories, it’s easy to connect the two.

Menace is coming from Overhype Studios, the team behind the cult hit Battle Brothers, the medieval, lo-fi turn based tactics game. In Menace where you play as a strike force against an alien race across multiple planets. You need to push back and protect humanity with infantry mechs and tanks with main inspiration drawing from Warhammer 40k tabletop with a massive amount of variables from deployment zones, map size, map type, and objectives.

18. The Lost Wild

The easiest way to describe The Lost Wild is that it looks like Alien Isolation meets Jurassic Park. Even the description of the game sounds like Alien Isolation as you are caught in the middle of the food chain, keep your head down, evade and if all else fails try to intimidate using non lethal weaponry, resulting in an intense game of cat and mouse.

The Lost Wild is not to be confused with Jurassic Park: Survival that was announced afterwards from Sabre Interactive. Although the status of Annapurna Interactive and any game that they were publishing might be up in the air at the moment, the fact that the people who were at Annapurna saw something in this game speaks volumes about it as their track record of good games published was high. The bright side is that it appears as though Annapurna have already began filling the vacancies.

19. Shroom and Gloom

I wasn’t sure if I was going to add this, as it doesn’t seem like it has a great chance at landing in 2025, but it is my list and I want to be optimistic about this game. There is a small chance that it hits early access near the end of 2025. Shroom and Gloom is a first person, rogue-like deckbuilding dungeon crawler. What makes Shroom and Gloom captivating is a combination of the art style that feels reminiscent of Inscryption and the unique first person perspective

Shroom and Gloom was created at a Game Jam in 2021 and the prototype is available on itch.io with the small team hoping that they can get enough interest and funding to make Shroom and Gloom into a full experience. It’s tough to find information, but the team have said that they are currently working on the Steam page, which means that the early access version should be the next step on the list. As a huge fan of deck-builders, rogue-likes and dungeon crawlers, Shroom and Gloom is a game we will be keeping a close eye on.

20. Retrieval

Retrieval feels like the biggest wildcard on this list for numerous reasons. First, it very likely will not release in 2025. Second, this is a brand new studio consisting of just a handful of people from Barcelona who are completely unknown and finally, it’s very unclear if we have seen any gameplay at all. Retrieval is a cinematic horror adventure and what it really has going for it outside of the absolutely stunning visuals is that it won the award from PlayStation Talents for Game of The Year.

Trailers have fooled me before, but the visuals combined with the atmosphere remind me of two other horror titles. Resident Evil 2 and PT. When I first played both of these titles something felt different. They were on the cutting edge of the genre and if the gameplay is able to match the trailer, Retrieval might be the next big thing in horror.

One of the glimmers of hope that it might release in 2025 is that 333 Studios have posted about Retrieval being PS5 Pro enhanced. With the PS5 just releasing, it would seem that if it didnt have much chance of releasing

21. Mixtape

I would put Mixtape on this list just for the soundtrack alone with songs from bands like Smashing Pumpkins, Joy Division, and Iggy Pop. It’s easy to imagine that the rest of the soundtrack will be just as incredible. Outside of the soundtrack, Mixtape looks has a stunning art direction and is being developed by Beethoven and Dinosaur, the BAFTA award winning studio behind 2021’s The Artful Escape.

Taking place against the backdrop of this incredible music and visuals is the last night of high school together with friends. Everyone likely has fond memories of their last few months and days in high school at a time in our life before the real reality set in. Being able to experience these moments, but with a fantastical spin and knowing that they are the last moments together sounds magical. The gameplay sounds like a mixtape of different games as well including skateboarding, hitting baseballs, setting off fireworks, exploring an abandoned theme park and flying.

22. We Kill Monsters

There is something about We Kill Monsters that is so damn intriguing. The world feels open, full of mystery and begs to be explored. We Kill Monsters is the sophomore game from Glass Revolver, a small five person team, led by Jacob Williams.

In 2018, Development began with We Kill Monsters as a 2D Monster Hunter style game, but decided that everything that he was creating would be better off in 3D as it would make the world more realized. Despite all of his close friends and family telling him to stick with development, Jacob transitioned the project into 3D and is now being created using Unreal Engine 5. He also didn’t give himself any possibility to go back on his decision. After deciding to create We Kill Monsters in 3D, he completely deleted everything that he had already developed, so it wouldn’t tempt him to take the easier path.

This commitment to a vision is refreshing, and is one of the reasons that we are excited for We Kill Monsters in addition to what footage was shown in June 2023 at the Annapurna Interactive showcase. We Kill Monsters will be fully available in solo or co-op

The game feels reminiscent of many games including Shadow of the Colossus, ICO, Monster Hunter, Elden Ring, and even Death Stranding, but still feels wholly unique.

23. Threads of Time

Threads of time is turn based JRPG with a gorgeous pixel aesthetic, but what really grabs your attention is the time traveling setting that ranges from 12 million BC where dinosaurs ruled the earth, to a cyberpunk 2400 and all the way to the apocalypse. Threads of time is created in Unreal Engine 5 and looks incredible.

There is one slight issue and that is that Threads of Time was supposed to be published by Humble Games, which was recently shut down just a few months ago. The good news is that it was said that their upcoming releases are not affected, which sounds good, but only time will tell. It likely wont get the same attention and marketing budget, so hopefully Threads of Time will be able to garner enough attention to find success.

24. Hela

Hela is a 1-4 player co-op game about exploration and adventure in a beautiful Scandinavian environment where you play as mischievous mice. The game is being developed by Windup Games and when I first saw the reveal a few months back, it looks very fun, but it wasn’t until I realized who the team behind it was that my interest spiked. Windup Games only began in 2022, and prior this was the same people who developed the Unravel series. It was hard to find information as to what happened with Coldwood Interactive, but it likely had to do with their previous games, which were published by EA.

Once you learn that, it’s hard not to see the evolution of Unravel when you see Hela. There is the art style in which you can clearly see Unravel, but now in a fully 3D perspective, you have a grappling hook that comes out of your magical backpack similar to the yarn from Unravel and now there will be up to four player co-op, which is up from 2 player in Unravel.

Hela is clearly an evolution of what the studio is good at and with both games having reviews around 80, there is good hope that the studio will evolve not only concept, but mechanics, gameplay and refinement.

25. Bonus Round

I couldn’t decide on the final spot, so here are a few extra picks

DarkSwarm

Dark Swarm from Bitfire Games reminds me of the PS3 era, specifically Helldivers 1 and Housemarque titles like Dead Nation, which in my books is a very good thing. DarkSwarm is a 1-4 player top down tactical shooter with extraction elements. The world is procedural and features destructible environments. There is more to DarkSwarm than just shooting as it features stealth, hacking and tactical gameplay mechanics, progression and class based operators.

Silent Hill Townfall

After playing Silent Hill 2 Remake, I remembered just how good that world can be and it made me more excited for all of the other Silent Hill projects that Konami announced years ago. After Bloober Team transcended what a remake is with Silent Hill 2, I am very excited for Silent Hill Townfall from No Code, the studio behind the atmospheric space game Observation. Despite the Annapurna situation, Downfall appears to be moving along.