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.
Indie games make up about half of the Top 30 Games Of 2025 for us here at Gamer Malaya and Gamer Matters. And every year we have quite the selection to of indie games that we were fortunate enough to cover and discover. That does mean that we may forgo obvious standouts of the year in some cases, and that’s fine by us! A more diverse list means you get to discover more games since we may have snubbed on the favourites.
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
Past Winners: Balatro (2024), HoloCure: Save The Fans (2023), Vampire Survivors (2022), Chivalry 2 (2021)
Best Indie Game Nominees
- Blue Prince
- Easy Delivery Co.
- Farthest Frontier
- Mars First Logistics
- Tokyo Xtreme Racer (2025)
How The Winner Is Decided (Deliberations Summary)
2025 in general has been a breezy year for deliberations, as the hard part comes from figuring out what makes it into the self-imposed arbitrary limit of five nominees before crowning a winner. Best Indie Game is the same case here.
But there was one somewhat controversial call: the exclusion of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. Not that it isn’t eligible, by our definitions it’s an indie game. But the fact that it’s more of a “standard” RPG with the big innovation being parries and the depth of character builds are not quite enough to make it a bona-fide indie game by our definition. Its nebulous “indie spirit” isn’t strong enough. It’s not going against the grain enough with its ideas where it won’t ever exist unless it’s developed independently. Plus, awarding this game this accolade doesn’t mean much when the team doesn’t feel as strongly to do so.
And having that diversity in the list is important, enough to give Farthest Frontier a spot. In the grand scheme of things, a survival city builder isn’t new, but it’s executed well, novel enough, made from a development team that previously made a game in entirely different genre (this is the makers of the ARPG Grim Dawn) and having a city-builder here, one that finally left Early Access, feels deserving.
Mars First Logistics gets a nod here for being a delivery game that rewards equally hard work and smart engineering. There’s a lot of design work that went to ensure the early difficulty of the game allows players to not simply solve the game with one omnitool of a vehicle, but also make doing the arduous process of transporting one funnily-shaped item from point A to point B across uneven terrain with Mars physics fun.
Easy Delivery Co. is also a delivery game, delivered differently. The survival aspects of making ends meet driving a tiny kei truck across winter roads is both relaxing as it is thrilling. And the spooky aspects it has going on is intriguing enough to keep doing the deliveries.
Tokyo Xtreme Racer (2025) goes hard by just being itself. We have fans of the original series last seen on Xbox 360, and more fondly remembered when it was on the PS2. The return of the cult classic has not shown age. The fighting game-esque battle system where you outrun an opponent by driving cleanly on the Tokyo Expressway, weaving through traffic, and avoiding contact and crashes, is just as thrilling and fresh today.
But if there was a winner among these, we all locked in that one game. That one game that successfully combined puzzles with roguelikes. That one game that makes you think differently. That one game that isn’t like any game you might have played before, despite having just about every mechanic you’ve seen before. It’s a masterwork of game design, to create a genre blend as odd as a pairing of mango and sambal belacan. Yet it works so harmoniously.
Best Indie Game Winner
Congratulations to Blue Prince for winning Best Indie Game! The journey to reach Room 46 is one to remember from 2025, and it’s the best indie game we’ve played this year.
Check out the Gamer Malaya and Gamer Matters Game Of The Year Awards 2025 hub for full list of awards.