Top 20 Indie Games of the Early 2010s

The scrappy era when bedroom coders and tiny studios reshaped gaming, with pixel-art platformers, roguelikes and quiet narrative experiments all jostling for the crown. Cast your vote!

1

Bastion

Supergiant's 2011 action RPG with a reactive narrator and a hand-painted floating world.

1000pts

2

Terraria

Re-Logic's 2011 2D sandbox adventure of mining, building, and boss battles.

937pts

3

Minecraft

Markus Persson's 2011 sandbox phenomenon of block-building and survival that became a cultural juggernaut.

922pts

4

Journey

Thatgamecompany's 2012 wordless desert pilgrimage celebrated for its emotional anonymous multiplayer.

922pts

5

The Stanley Parable

Galactic Cafe's 2013 meta-narrative walking sim built around a wry omniscient narrator.

807pts

6

Fez

Phil Fish's 2012 2D-meets-3D perspective-rotating puzzle platformer.

807pts

7

Gone Home

Fullbright's 2013 first-person exploratory story set in an empty 1990s family house.

749pts

8

FTL: Faster Than Light

Subset Games' 2012 spaceship-management roguelike of tense real-time crew survival.

749pts

9

Shovel Knight

Yacht Club's 2014 8-bit-styled action platformer starring a chivalrous shovel-wielding knight.

749pts

10

Limbo

Playdead's 2010 monochrome puzzle-platformer with a haunting silhouette aesthetic.

749pts

11

Papers, Please

Lucas Pope's 2013 dystopian document-thriller about a border-checkpoint inspector.

749pts

12

Transistor

Supergiant's 2014 sci-fi action RPG blending real-time and turn-based combat in a neon city.

681pts

13

Hotline Miami

Dennaton's 2012 top-down neon-soaked ultraviolent action game with a synthwave soundtrack.

681pts

14

The Binding of Isaac

Edmund McMillen's 2011 roguelike dungeon crawler of grotesque biblical body horror.

681pts

15

Guacamelee!

DrinkBox's 2013 Metroidvania brawler steeped in Mexican folklore and luchador action.

681pts

16

Rogue Legacy

Cellar Door's 2013 roguelite platformer where each heir inherits quirky genetic traits.

599pts

17

Don't Starve

Klei's 2013 gothic wilderness survival game with a Tim Burton-esque art style.

599pts

18

Spelunky

Derek Yu's 2012 roguelike platformer of deadly procedurally generated caves.

499pts

19

Super Meat Boy

Team Meat's 2010 brutally precise platformer about a boy of meat rescuing Bandage Girl.

499pts

20

Kentucky Route Zero

Cardboard Computer's episodic magical-realist adventure that began in 2013.

499pts