Indie Sampler 2025
This column is a reprint from Unwinnable Monthly #194. If you like what you see, grab the magazine for less than ten dollars, or subscribe and get all future magazines for half price.
———
What’s left when we’ve moved on.
———
Continuing my bi-annual tradition, in lieu of a Game of the Year roundup, instead I bring a list of indie games of interest from this year. Here are my rules: these games are from a (relatively) small team and have received (relatively) little coverage (sorry Ball X Pit.) They are games I haven’t previously reviewed (Consume Me, Misericorde Volume 2, Demonschool, Solitaire Mystery, Many Nights a Whisper), which you can read about elsewhere. Nor have I written about them in another format (Blue Prince, Seance of Blake Manor, Hollow Knight: Silksong). Was this just an excuse to demonstrate how many indie games I played this year? Anyway.
Here are six games that flew under the radar that I would recommend, or at least interested me to spend time with. If I had more time and money, this list could include 60 more; so many great games came out this year. In contrast to narrative being the force attracting me to games as usual, this year I found style being the thing catching my eye and, often, letting me down. I found some of the indies I played this year placed visual style above gameplay, on a scale from just needing more time in the oven to feeling like they never surpassed their early concepts. Others were fun but felt like a Skinner box trying desperately to keep me playing. All of the games on this list not only drew me in with a unique look but kept my attention for the long haul, or at least as long as they ran. While they’re not my favorites from this year, they all had some unexpected narrative, mechanical or aesthetic depth hiding under the surface.
Starvaders
I really thought I was done with “games that are like Slay the Spire.” I just want to play Slay the Spire 2 at this point. But I heard about Starvaders (on Into the Aether) and decided to give roguelike deck builders more of my time, and you know what? This is better than most of them, because it has an angle (being reverse Space Invaders). Protecting earth from aliens, you move on a grid to shoot them down, or hook them, or zap them with a laser or burn them with crystalline flame.
It’s true that I got tired of Starvaders long before I finished it. It has what I’m hesitant to call a problem, but is a feature of many games I played this year: a crazy amount of content, bordering on too much. I think one’s tolerance for the amount of stuff in a videogame is completely dependent on personal taste – I will 100% an RPG if I love it, and again I’ve played a disgusting amount of Slay the Spire – but recent releases do pile it on. Here there are three mechs and ten pilots (two more coming soon) and three difficulty levels, each pilot controls differently and has different attacks to learn. I simply don’t have enough brain space for that. But I got a good fifteen hours of enjoyment from Starvaders before I started feeling overwhelmed, and someone with greater tolerance for mechanical repetition could get dozens more.
Keep Driving
More than any other game on this list, Keep Driving hooked me with a feeling. A branching story about driving a car to a music festival, it displays its mechanics as a car dashboard and plays music from in-game bands while you drive. It reminded me of driving back late from work as a teenager and listening to the radio or a CD I’d remembered to stash in the car, ruler of my small world for 45 minutes at a time. The art, music and writing are all stellar, even if the “fighting” mechanics can be frustrating and the screen a little cluttered. While I only played one “route” so far, I’m excited to go back and try the others and unlock more CDs.
Of the Devil
In contrast to the other games on this list, Of the Devil’s style actually put me off at first. But within half an hour of the (free) first chapter, I not only came around on the art but knew that Of the Devil was one of my favorite games of the year (Credit to my fellow columnist Autumn for telling me about it!). Of the Devil is an investigation game like Ace Attorney where you read briefs and observe the environment to collect information. It’s very well written and little touches imbue every activity like reading off your phone and VR crime scene observation with a futuristic flair. The setting is so similar to the trajectory our world is on it seems to barely qualify as fiction, yet the writers give enough worldbuilding for their cases to breathe without feeling either preachy or unimaginative. In 2086, the surveillance state has become almost total; “warm” robots threaten to replace every profession; and guilt is presumed, yet human impulses shine through. Especially since it’s free to try, this is an easy recommendation.
Whisper of the House
Sometimes you have to ignore one part of something to enjoy the rest. Such was the case with Whisper of the House, a furnishing game with a story minimal enough to vanish at times. The thing that blew me away the most about it, and I promise I will never say this again, was the number of placeable assets. Truly, I didn’t know so many bars of soap and packets of ramen could be rendered in one game. You acquire these by a gacha-esque point system that makes even less of an impact than the story – you just earn points by placing furniture and fulfilling requests, and you end up with way more points than you could ever spend. A lot of so-so choices; however, this game kept me for its ten hours or so while other similar games let me down in far less time, and a lot of that is down to the style. A witch’s cavern, a time traveler’s workshop, and a shack intruded on by the sea are just some of the rooms for you to fill with personalized furniture and random supermarket items alike. While the supernatural elements didn’t work for me at all, what’s underneath them is a relaxing, competent decorating game with lots of variety.
Frog Bard
The shortest game on this list runs just five minutes, although you can replay it a few times to see more variations. You’re a little frog in a jumpy cart driving to an inn to perform and getting inspiration along the way. You only use two buttons, drive and select, and you have no input on the final outcome of the song you’ll sing. It feels more like a proof-of-concept than a game. However, the experience becomes more than its parts as you drive the (very bouncy) cart and follow fireflies around a foggy forest. Driving up hills and bouncing off trees is more fun than it should be. When I picked this up, I had the suspicion this would be a “cozy” game – I mean, the main character is a frog with a puffy hat – but the word I would use instead is “atmospheric.” Basically, like watching a mini film while you play a non-competitive racing game.
Detective Instinct
Did you ever read Ace Attorney fanfiction? Of course I didn’t, but if you did, you might like the second investigative game on this list, Detective Instinct. Reminiscent of DS mystery games like Hotel Dusk, it has you solving a murder mystery on a train, which for the record is the best setting for a murder mystery there is (enclosed space? hello?). Detective Instinct nails the “goofy, yet sinister” character archetype those older games are known for, though its main characters and villains don’t reach the same level of magnetism. The controls are also a little clunky (I really wanted a highlight tool to indicate where there was new information after the first round of a conversation.) But these aspects just make me excited to play the next game from this studio; Detective Instinct has the potential to get even better with time, from an already strong foundation.
———
Emily Price is a freelance writer and digital editor based in Brooklyn, New York, and holds a PhD in literature. You can find her on Bluesky.
