Games that don’t need the budget of a AAA blockbuster to be impactful, fun, or enthralling. Independent games can do what no big-budget game can do: be anything they want.
Every year there’s bound to be good indie games releasing. And this list is by no means a comprehensive look at the entire indie game development scene. Plenty of notable titles often discussed on Reddit and socials are missing here, and in some ways we like it that way. We can highlight even more niche picks from the games we got to play this year.
Gamer Matters have made a clear stance on what we define as an indie game, and with the discourse from 2023, we’ve refined our definition of an indie game as per the following:
- Developed by a small team with a modest budget
- Not associated with any large game publisher that is also publishing AAA games
- Carries the “indie spirit”
- The game doesn’t fit the mould of a typical AAA game
- OR the game is doing something that a AAA game have not made mainstream
- OR the game cannot exist if developed in a AAA game development environment
Per our definition, 9 games of the Top 30 Games Of 2024 counts as an indie game, and thus eligible for this category.
Past Winners: HoloCure: Save The Fans (2023), Vampire Survivors (2022), Chivalry 2 (2021)
Best Indie Game Nominees
- 1000xResist
- Baladins
- Balatro
- Buckshot Roulette
- Content Warning
How The Winner Is Decided (Deliberations Summary)
Never have a deliberation for Best Indie Game been this short. The length of it mostly comes from making the list of all nine eligible games into our self-imposed arbitrary nominees list of only five games. Each of the editorial team knew who should win, there was no argument to be had.
Content Warning being this year’s shadowdrop game is funny, but it being a fun multiplayer game about making content by any means necessary invites a fun sandbox that appeals to a group of friends (moreso if they are also content creators).
Buckshot Roulette gets a shot at this award for its tense variation of Russian Roulette. There’s something powerful about this gamblecore games, but this one gambles on if the shotgun you’re about to squeeze is loaded or not.
Baladins, as the sole flag-bearer of the cosy/cozy/wholesome game in our list, is genuinely a fun take on a timeloop knowledge-based game. The shenanigans you can pull off, like kidnapping a lady, putting her in the inventory so that you can return her to her mom and resolve their differences (badly) is funny. Even funnier if you kept her in the inventory by the end of the cycle and the ever-judging time-eating dragon has to rummage through your pockets and found said lady.
1000xResist being an existential sci-fi story about the horrors of being a copy of a copy is definitely a highlight of this year.
But no one can beat the allure of gamblecore poker roguelike. Sometimes, the best ideas of a game are just simple ones. And Balatro is one of those genre mashups that somehow just works. It helps that the execution of the idea is rock-solid, with smart changes to make it more than just a straight game of poker.
Best Indie Game Winner
Congratulations to Balatro for winning Best Indie Game! The one developer of Balatro has every right to say this line from gamblecore coiner Radxflipnote: “I can’t stop winning!”
Check out the Gamer Malaya and Gamer Matters Game Of The Year Awards 2024 hub for full list of awards.