The COVID-19 pandemic affected many industries, and video game development is no exception. Massive AAA games appear to be experiencing more delays than ever as studios acclimate to working from home, with Nintendo's The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and Bethesda's Starfield being just two examples of games delayed to 2023. Indie developers are often at an advantage in this regard, as even when problems arise they have smaller teams to coordinate and more experience going completely remote.
A lot of the most acclaimed titles released over the last few years have been produced by independent teams, like Supergiant Games' Hades - its sequel having just been confirmed at The Game Awards 2022. This year had a ton of notable indie games to fill the gaps between AAA titles like Horizon Forbidden West or Pokemon Scarlet and Violet. Entries are ordered alphabetically by title.
Chained Echoes
Despite being one of 2022's latest releases, Matthias Linda's Chained Echoes has impressed scores of JRPG fans by steamlining oft-criticized elements of the genre through quality-of-life updates and a lack of grinding. The game's huge 16-bit world is beautifully rendered and houses a sharply written, mature story that doesn't hold audiences' hands, while also making it clear which NPCs are relevant if players want to skip extraneous content. Combat is consistently challenging thanks to its "Overdrive" system and clever boss fights, making for battles that feel tense without wars of attrition given players are healed between each fight. Many have likely missed this gem in the end-of-year rush, but it's worth jumping into.
Citizen Sleeper
As with many indie games, Citizen Sleeper stands out first-and-foremost for its unique style centering the character art of French illustrator Guillaume Singelin. However, developer Jump Over The Age backs this style with plenty of substance, giving players the chance to deeply understand its sci-fi world and the colorful characters inhabiting it. Like many gems of the cyberpunk genre, Citizen Sleeper confronts audiences with hard questions about the ills of capitalism through the desolation of its main space station, Erlin's Eye. With Citizen Sleeper available now on Xbox Game Pass, there's little excuse not to check it out.
Cult of the Lamb
Massive Monster struck gold following in the footsteps of Happy Tree Friends via a game that blends sweet animal characters with dark themes and violence. Pushed into the spotlight by publisher Devolver Digital, Cult of the Lamb captivated a huge audience with its two-toned gameplay loop; shifting between a customizable management sim and action-heavy roguelike at such a rapid click that players rarely grow bored. It's also a short enough journey that replayability is encouraged, opening possibilities for a variety of cults that have different paths toward the central goal of killing the Bishops of old faiths who dared to lock away the lamb's eldritch deity.
Escape Academy
Escape rooms are often the most fun alongside friends; an experience that Coin Crew Games hoped to capture through its co-op puzzle game Escape Academy. After years of isolation due to a global pandemic, co-op titles like It Takes Two have received well-deserved attention, and Escape Academy drew a lot of eyes after showing off its mystery-filled academic setting at Summer Game Fest. Coin Crew co-founder Wyatt Bushnell told Game Rant that he and Mike Salyh met working at a real-world escape room, and that comeraderie bleeds into the final product.
Neon White
Neon White takes the best parts of first-person action games, deck-builders, and anime-style visual novels and wraps it all into one extremely glossy package. Developer Angel Matrix has received a lot of praise for its game's skill-based parkour that lends itself to speedrunning tricks, but just as noteworthy is the story woven around an intermingling band of Neons - demon-hunting assassins who compete for a chance to go to heaven. Trailers describe the game as "by freaks, for freaks," and with Neon White coming to PlayStation consoles this month, it has certainly found an audience.
Nobody Saves the World
Coming from DrinkBox Studios, the same developer behind the acclaimed Guacamelee series, Nobody Saves the World was one of the year's earliest breakout indie successes. It is a top-down, Diablo-esque ARPG that plays around with fantasy and video game tropes by letting protagonist Nobody shapeshift into numerous forms with their own abilities, strengths, and weaknesses (and the whole thing can be played co-op). DrinkBox continued the fun with Nobody Saves the World's Frozen Hearth DLC in September, adding new areas and transformations while confirming its intent to keep the experience alive for fans.
Norco
Norco is likely the lesser-known point-and-click adventure game released this year compared with Return to Monkey Island, but it earned a coveted "Best Debut Indie Game" nomination at The Game Awards 2022 for a reason. With an evocative, Gothic pixel art style set in a "distorted" version of its titular town in Louisiana, Norco has garnered developer Geography of Robots comparisons to games like Disco Elysium - fine company to be in. Norco's narrative is driven by the player's choices, but it is ultimately impossible not to get sucked into its tale of family and decay.
Return to Monkey Island
Classic LucasArts point-and-click adventure games like Day of the Tentacle and Grim Fandango sometimes see re-releases on modern hardware, but decades-on sequels like Return to Monkey Island are far less common. The series was first created by Rob Gilbert, Tim Schafer, and Dave Grossman in 1990, each of whom went on to make deeper marks on the industry with studios like Humongous Entertainment, Double Fine, and Telltale. Gilbert coming back on Return to Monkey Island was a key part of its pitch, and long-time fans found it comfortable to slip back into the conflict of Guybrush Threepwood and LeChuck thanks to Terrible Toybox's faithful work.
Rogue Legacy 2
Rogue Legacy was a smash-hit in 2013, helping popularize the sub-genre of rogue-lites by ensuring players can make themselves stronger between defeats. In Rogue Legacy, this took the form of a character's descendants inheriting their goods and base to balance out the random boons or buffs of genetics. Cellar Door Games' sequel launched in Early Access two years ago with the same core, but Rogue Legacy 2 has become more robust over the course of its development. Between a large-scale ending, new character archetypes, gameplay systems, and more in Version 1.0, Cellar Door seems to have succeeded in its goal of making a sequel so ambitious that it could be considered "Rogue Legacy 3."
Sifu
Though fans of the John Wick franchise got an official licensed game in 2019's John Wick Hex, early footage of Sloclap's Sifu captivated audiences with the idea of a 3D beat 'em up capturing much of the same magic as that film franchise and the long history of Eastern martial arts cinema preceding it. There were debates about Sifu's cultural authenticity coming from a Western studio, but few can argue with how well it captures frenetic close-quarters combat in settings pulled straight out of the movies. The added twist of Sifu's protagonist growing older with each death only heightens the short experience's focus on player mastery.
Signalis
Many saw Striking Distance Studios' The Callisto Protocol as poised to rejuvenate the survival horror genre thanks to the involvement of Dead Space co-creator Glen Schofield. While it wasn't all that fans hoped for, they could turn to the Humble Games-published Signalis from months earlier. Signalis is dripping with atmosphere through desolate, foreign environments rendered via polygonal PlayStation graphics and high-quality sprites, and it has a score to match. Mechanically, the game uses classic inventory management to make its combat tenser, but players will spend just as much time tracking puzzles on real notepads while deciphering contradictory lore that obscures what protagonist Elster is experiencing. It's an impressive package even without knowing German developer rose-engine consists of just two people.
Stray
Stray feels the most AAA of any indie game released in 2022, but that speaks to the talent of BlueTwelve Studio - a French team spearheaded by former Ubisoft devs with hardly 30 people working at the peak of production, according to an interview with producer Swann Martin-Raget this August. The idea of playing a cat who explores a Bladerunner-esque world intrigued many when it was announced in 2020, and the delivery was successful enough for Stray to win multiple recognitions at The Game Awards 2022 (including Best Indie). So many were charmed by the experience of one cat making the world brighter that there are already hopes BlueTwelve will follow up.
Tinykin
Tons of indie games riff on what made classic 2D platformers popular, with some like Shovel Knight earning mainstream recognition. Just as many projects like A Hat in Time, Demon Turf, or Lunistice try to capture the magic of 3D platformers, and Tinykin is one of the strongest examples in 2022. It's a collectathon in the truest sense, with protagonist Milo smoothly shifting between soap-grinding and traveling across gaps in a bubble to solve tasks for sentient bugs in a sandbox home pulled straight out of Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. Add in five unique Pikmin-esque Tinykin to solve puzzles and movement challenges, and Splashteam's referential sense of humor will carry many players through creative ecosystems built out of everyday objects.
Trombone Champ
Simulator games are a dime-a-dozen, be they focused on realism like PowerWash Simulator or physics-based mayhem as millions watch streamers flail around being a goat or inept surgeon. Holy Wow's Trombone Champ burst onto the scene this September with a similar concept applied to the music-rhythm formula of games like Guitar Hero. If the hilarity of watching people butcher Mozart using nothing but a trombone wasn't enough, Trombone Champ's modding support adds theoretically endless challenges ranging from Final Fantasy 7's "One-Winged Angel" to Dragonforce's "Through the Fire and the Flames" - all with custom visuals.
Tunic
Andrew Shouldice's Tunic has been in the public eye since E3 2017, with many anticipating the isometric Legend of Zelda-esque adventure game starring an adorable fox. Tunic was able to exceed those expectations by adding a unique spin through its in-game instruction manual. As players explore the beautiful world, they'll come across pages of a manual that would have released alongside an old-school title, written in an alien language. Deciphering the manual and handwritten notes in its margins reveals more about Tunic's lore and mechanics, recreating a schoolyard sense of discovery in a way players will undoubtedly discuss for years to come.
Vampire Survivors
The Game Awards 2022's Best Debut Indie category went to Stray, but BlueTwelve's visual splendor was greatly contrasted by the cacophony of Vampire Survivors: a roguelike bullet hell shooter that looks like someone dumped a bucket full of Castlevania assets onto a blank canvas. This minimalism shouldn't discredit the work of solo dev Luca Galante though, as plenty of people have already sunk hundreds, if not thousands of hours into finding the right combination of items to clear hordes of enemies efficiently and with the greatest particle effects. Given Vampire Survivors just released on mobile, it will continue to dominate peoples' idle hours for a long while.