Our favorite indies of 2024: 10 must-play games you shouldn’t miss
If your only view into what’s hot in video games was The Game Awards, you might think that 2024 was lacking in great independent games. Indies struggled to land nominations at this year’s show, with Balatro standing out as the sole breakout success story. Almost everything else indie, with one exception, was quarantined to categories like Games for Impact and Best Debut Indie. I could forgive anyone who looked at the nominee list and walked away thinking that Final Fantasy VII Rebirth was the undisputed king of 2024.
Anyone who plays indie games regularly will paint you a much different picture. Deep below the year’s surface-level hits lies a layer of inventive indies that pushed gaming to new creative heights in 2024. The list of highlights runs deep. Indika is an eerie 19th-century adventure about a nun outrunning the devil, Arctic Eggs explores absurdism through fry-cooking minigames, and Minishoot’ Adventures reimagines the twin-stick shooter as a Zelda game. None of those games are anything like one another, but they’re all some of the year’s most creative, engaging works.
Recommended VideosAs we do every year, we want to highlight 10 indies that especially stood out to us this year. Some will look familiar if you’ve already read our Best of 2024 list, which was loaded with indies. It’s a woefully small list that can’t possibly contain every highlight (1000xResist, Crow Country, Arco, Children of the Sun … the list goes on). But this collection of games highlights a diversity of releases this year, spanning multiple styles and genres. If you haven’t gotten around to many of these, consider this a 2024 backlog. ~ Giovanni
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