The best indie games of 2025 so far

Nearly 19,000 games were released on Steam in 2024. That’s a number that’s been only growing annually since 2019, making it impossible to play everything that’s been released — not to mention the many new games every year that aren’t released on Steam, either. While big, expensive games from massive publishers like Activision or Ubisoft tend to get the majority of media attention, some of the best video games independently released in a given year risk flying under the radar.

Here at Polygon, plenty of our full-time jobs revolve entirely around video games, but it’s impossible even then to keep up with everything. But we’re making room every day to seek out indie games across all genres — weird, wonderful takes on first-person shooters, wacky reinventions of card games, and dark, creepy typing games included. We’re defining indie games as made by an independent studio untethered from a major publisher. Some of the games here may have financial backing or support from a big-name publisher, but are technically independent.

Here are all the indie games we’ve liked and written about this year.

• For fans of holes, here’s a game about digging them
• This ultraviolent indie game would have pissed off Congress in the 1990s
• This $5 Soulslike is overflowing with gloomy vibes and evil ants
• Wikipedia rabbit holes trained me for this genealogical mystery game
• Friendship is survival in Citizen Sleeper 2
• These two games demand you type if you want to survive
• Stimulation Clicker is pure internet hell mode