Underrated Indie Games You Should Play (Best Hidden Gems)
7 Underrated Indie Game Gems
Fourteen Thousand Five hundred twenty four. That’s how many games released on Steam in 2023 According to SteamDb. That’s not even including exclusive platform games on Xbox, PS or Nintendo. With the absolute deluge of games pouring out every single day, it’s inevitable that some will go unnoticed or under appreciated.
Here are a few gems from the past few years that seem to have not gotten the appreciation they should’ve when they released and are still just as good as they day they came out. As a nice bonus, most of these titles are only around 10 bucks at most and if you even wait for a sale you could probably pick it up for less.
Lonely Mountains Downhill
Lonely Mountains Downhill is aesthetically minimalist and very pleasing. The game also has a high level of serenity as you can stick to the main paths enjoying the sights and sounds of nature. Buuuuuuut, the game truly shines when it becomes a voxel version of trials but without all the explosion. You are trying to get down the bottom of the mountain bike trail ASAP and the amount of shortcuts you can try/attempt is absurd. The crashes are brutal, always wince inducing and since you’re a little voxel dude, it’s never over the line. The restart speed from the last checkpoint is near instantaneous as you grind sections for milliseconds to beat you best or climb the leaderboards. You can customize your bike based on what traits help your playstyle the best or suit the terrain as well. LMD has also seen updates on the level of Dead Cells
Nuclear Blaze
Speaking of dead cells, what if you were a firefighter in a game that featured Dead Cells extremely precise movement and controls. It’s not a coincidence, Nuclear Blaze was created by Deepnight Games, a small one person indie studio founded by the creator of dead cells. The premise is simple, move from one location to the next is segregated sections of a top secret facility. Each section is basically a puzzle as you try to stop the spread of fire from the source. Additionally you can search for cats to rescue and the game even features a super kid friendly mode, which I can attest that young ones will love as the game was created for the developers sons love for firefighters.
Bleak Sword DX
Bleak Sword was released as an Apple Arcade exclusive back in 2019, which explains why it went largely unnoticed for 3 years. Apple Arcade is full of amazing titles that don’t feel like mobile experiences. Bleak Sword DX is a deluxe version of that game with a bunch of added features. Bleak Sword is an isometric souls like that features bite sized, diorama levels with a lo-fi Atari aesthetic. The gameplay is simple yet rewarding with patience and timing rewarded. The sound and soundtrack are immersive and minimalist at the same time, while the visuals are very unique. bleak Sword DX is A perfect fit on the steam deck and Nintendo Switch
Mini Motorways
As a follow up to Mini Metro, Dinosaur Polo Club refined the aesthetic and formula into Mini Motorways. Mini Motorways is a minimalist city builder that has you focus on only creating motorways to get enough people from point A to Point b before the meter fills up. It starts with point a, but eventually new points get added and you all of a sudden need to manage all the traffic congestion with the limited resources you are awarded. At the end of each week you can select from certain things like road tiles, roundabouts, highways, stop lights, bridges and more. As the weeks pass, these decisions are not to be taken lightly. If all of this sounds stressful, it is, but it’s also counter balanced by a spa like score, with melatonin producing beeps and boops. This is accented by a grid based minimalistic view that is not only visually pleasing but also makes the gameplay extremely readable at all times unlike some busy city builders. Mini Motorways is a great game to play on the go on Switch but is also available on Apple Arcade.
Terra Nil
I'll name you some weird indie games: Broforce, Genital Jousting and Anger Foot. All of these games have only one single thing in common. They were all created by Free Lives, who are the ultimate developer chameleons. In 2023, Free Lives released Terra Nil, a reverse city builder that saw you try to help Mother Nature take back the world as you put in pollution scrubbers, irrigators and help ecosystems thrive before you try to remove all traces that you were there in the first place. Their story is implied that this is set in the future, as some levels feature abandoned buildings, but it doesn’t need a story because Terra Nil is such a pleasant experince to take part in. The game is only around 5 hours but you could spend a lot more trying to fill in everything in your handbook, which is rendered as a stunningly in what appears to be your journal. This is the kind of a game that you could put on after a long stressful day and just soak in the sounds and sights of nature. Terra Nil is a great handheld game that you could play on the Switch or Steam Deck in your bed.
Solar Ash
Everyone loved Hyper Light Drifter, myself incudled, as it would likely land in my top ten games of all time. Heart Machine could have followed it up with another 2D pixel adventure, but pushed itself beyond any reasonable limit and created a 3D game with a new engine that felt like a blend of Tony Hawk, Hyper Light Drifter and Shadow of The Colossus. Oddly enough, despite HLD not having any words, I found that story to be more engaging, easier to follow and found a deeper connection with the protagonist. About the only thing I would have loved to see from Solar Ash would have been a skill tree to upgrade attack power or traversal abilities, but outside of that, Solar Ash was a great game that is overlooked by many and deeply underrated. The good news is that Heart Machine looks to have taken a lot of the hard work and design that made Solar Ash great and used it in Hyper Light Breaker.
Entropy Center
People have been begging for Portal 3 since 2011, and Viewfinder certainly got a lot of attention in 2023 as a mind bending, first person puzzle game, but in 2022, there was The Entropy Center. This first person puzzle featured loads of similarities to the beloved portal series including a idealistic sterile facility, first person, gun and a cheeky companion. The unique angle is that in the Entropy Center, your gun companion rewinds time, and when you combine all of the environmental elements with the rewind mechanic, it becomes extremely satisfying. The story also does more than enough to support the game mechanics, leading to experience that more people should have played, especially the ones asking for a new portal entry.