10 Indie Games That Are Must-plays in 2026
2026 will be remembered as the year Grand Theft Auto VI finally made its grand debut, PlayStation made a controversial decision about their physical game support, and Capcom seemed to release a new highly rated game every month. It's a shame that the big names will likely be the only ones remembered because it has quietly been a very strong year for games from independent studios and small publishers. While this year has been great for AAA games chasing scale and fidelity, the indie space has been chasing innovation and unbound creativity.
These games are not only pushing the industry forward with awesome ideas, a ton of them are also performing very well and have been some of the top sellers of the year. From a train-flipping arcade adventure to a unique, paint-focused take on prop hunt, indie games have shown that innovation and originality can stand just as tall as big budgets and decades-old franchises. Here are 10 indie games from 2026 that deserve to be played, counting down to the best of the year so far.
10. Orbitals
The most charming game to hit the Nintendo Switch 2 this year is surprisingly not a first-party title. This honor belongs to Orbitals by Shapefarm, a small team based in Mitaka, Tokyo. This It Takes Two-inspired co-op puzzle adventure is a love letter to early 90s anime, and no game has nailed this look better.
Playing as young rookie explorers Maki and Omura, you work to save their collapsing space station from a mystical cosmic storm with the help of a friend. The pair spring through derelict ships, dogfight with hostile drones, and solve puzzles with unique tools in this asymmetric adventure where each player experiences different playstyles.
What makes the game stand out is its presentation. Shapefarm partnered with Studio Massket, a support animation studio that has previously worked on massive series such as Attack on Titan and Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, for hand-crafted cutscenes and voice work. Like Josef Fares and Hazelight's hit games, Orbitals supports both local and online split-screen co-op. Better yet, you can GameShare or have a friend download the Friend's Pass so you can both play with only one copy of the game. Orbitals is available now as a Nintendo Switch 2 exclusive for a fair $39.99 price point digitally and $49.99 physically with the full game on the cartridge.
9. Esoteric Ebb
Esoteric Ebb is a unique dialogue-driven CRPG developed by Christoffer Bodegård and published by Raw Fury. It can best be described as a Dungeons & Dragons version of Disco Elysium. The game didn't have much hype going into it, but word of mouth has gained it a cult following.
You play as The Cleric who wakes up with a massive hangover and a missing god, tasked to investigate a mysterious explosion at a tea shop. You'll maneuver the fantasy metropolis of Norvik through investigation, conversation, and skill checks instead of combat. Esoteric Ebb features a staggering number of choices that really bring out the feel of a tabletop RPG, which you experience even more with the visible dice rolls. Failures push the story sideways instead of forcing a restart, and the writing holds up throughout the entire narrative with weight and depth.
Esoteric Ebb is available on Steam for $24.99 and what makes it special is its confident refusal to conform. There are no action mechanics to broaden the audience and no accessibility compromises at the expense of the vision. This is a dense, wordy, and downright weird role-playing game for a very niche audience, and there is nothing else quite like it in 2026.
8. Mina the Hollower
Sean Velasco, co-founder and director of Yacht Club Games, said in an interview that his next game is a make-or-break situation for the studio. After four years with many delays, Mina the Hollower was a success and one of the highest rated indie games of the year. These are the stories you love to see in this industry, especially with gaming studios closing down left and right.
This love letter to the Game Boy Color may be built to look as dated as Nintendo's 8-bit handheld, but its gameplay is anything but that. Mina, a genius inventor who created spark technology, wields a number of weapons with distinct playstyles and uses her Hollowing technique to burrow underground. The game is unapologetically tough and seemingly draws from games like Castlevania, Link's Awakening, and Bloodborne.
Composer Jake Kaufman returned from Shovel Knight to put together another awesome soundtrack that makes playing Mina the Hollower worth it alone. With the game coming at around 20 to 30 hours to beat, it has a good amount of content for $19.99. It's also available across all major platforms, so there's no excuse not to pick up this indie achievement.
7. Denshattack!!
This game's strange premise can only be described as a mix of Jet Set Radio and Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, but with trains. Denshattack!!, developed by Undercoders, lets players control a several-ton train that grinds and flips its way across Japan like a skateboard. It's pure arcade action fun with a banger soundtrack that's worth the admission alone.
At its core, Denshattack!! plays like the beloved extreme sports games of the 2000s, chaining tricks and stacking combos to gain higher scores and make a name for yourself. Except these insanely flashy tricks are being performed by a gravity-defying locomotive. In the campaign, you'll play as Emi Araki facing off against the malevolent Miraido corporation. She'll meet a colorful cast of characters with a roster of rival trains to compete against as well.
It's such an odd concept for a game, and that's what makes it work so well. At $19.99 and available across all major platforms, it's worth picking up for something that feels like a breath of fresh air. Denshattack!! only exists because a small team had a ridiculous idea and enough freedom and talent to pull it off. This isn't the type of game that makes it out of a shareholder meeting alive, and that's exactly why Denshattack!! deserves to be on this list.
6. Slay the Spire 2
Few sequels, especially in the indie scene, carry the expectations Slay the Spire 2 did, but Mega Crit delivered fully. The original game spawned the modern roguelite deckbuilder, so Mega Crit had the daunting task of expanding on a recipe that hundreds of games had already copied and reinterpreted. Their Early Access launch showed their plan of attack.
They decided to keep the core of what made Slay the Spire special: players climb a spire, build decks through rewards, and adapt to boss encounters and random events. What Mega Crit decided to improve on is depth, adding new characters with unique gameplay mechanics and card synergies that are just as satisfying as the original, if not more so.
Slay the Spire 2's numbers skyrocketed at launch, and the game still sits comfortably amongst 2026's biggest sellers despite being an Early Access launch. The only question left is what the full release will bring, since Mega Crit has shown they're good about improving their game over the course of Early Access instead of using that time to damage control. For fans of the first and newcomers alike, Slay the Spire 2 is an essential indie pickup.
5. Mewgenics
The first major indie hit of 2026 proved that a decade of development time can be worth the wait. Mewgenics, developed by super team Edmund McMillen (The Binding of Isaac and Super Meat Boy) and Tyler Glaiel (Closure and The End Is Nigh), is a tactical roguelite RPG about breeding cats.
That description definitely undersells how deep it actually goes, though. Players will create an ever-evolving army of cats carrying inherited traits, mutations, and genetics that continue to compound from generation to generation. You'll then send them into randomized tactical turn-based battles, trekking through a Slay the Spire-style branching map. There are easily hundreds of hours of content available once you get deep into the systems.
McMillen's signature mordant humor and grotesque art style are plastered all over the project and players continue to resonate with it decades later. Mewgenics passed 100,000 concurrent players on Steam and reached a million copies sold on its first week. It also released earlier this month for all current-gen consoles, expanding its reach to even more players. Mewgenics goes completely against the grain of AAA gaming norms, and it's successful for it.
4. Vampire Crawlers: The Turbo Wildcard from Vampire Survivors
Not many developers can boast that they created a new subgenre of games, but poncle is one of them. Their revolutionary hit, Vampire Survivors, spawned the Survivors-like (or Bullet Heaven) genre which has seen many takes on the formula. With the game's success, they didn't decide to build on it in the traditional sense of just making a bigger, better sequel or successor. Instead, they wanted to make something completely unique again, and that's how we got Vampire Crawlers: The Turbo Wildcard from Vampire Survivors.
This game takes some of the great game design elements from Vampire Survivors and morphs them into a first-person deckbuilding dungeon crawler. And somehow, it works fabulously. The snowballing power fantasy returns as you build your deck with characters, weapons, and items from the original game. The further you get through a run, the more powerful and chaotic your deck gets before you're filling the screen with insane visual effects and wiping out dozens of enemies at a time.
There's real depth to the deckbuilding and card customization aspects, with a meta-progression system that will keep you saying, "One more run." For $9.99, Vampire Crawlers is a steal, and it's also available on every major platform and included in Xbox Game Pass. poncle shows that they're not a one-trick pony and have the skills to innovate with each new project.
3. Big Walk
The creators of the hilarious Untitled Goose Game followed up with something a lot less aggressive. Big Walk is a co-op game for up to 12 players about hiking with your friends, and the puzzle-packed open world can only be conquered by working together using communication skills.
What makes it clever is the distance between players. You and your friends are spread across this land rather than keeping close, so staying in contact requires an assortment of items. Communication is the main mechanic, not just a support system or feature, and the puzzles are developed with that in mind.
Big Walk was another fast success with over one million sold in six days. Where the biggest multiplayer conversations are usually PvP-focused, House House released a game that works as a cooperative experience with no losers and no pressure. It's a unique type of game you can only ever get from the indie scene.
2. Meccha Chameleon
This game is the biggest success story of 2026. Meccha Chameleon seemed to be nothing more than a simplistic multiplayer prop hunt game with a creative paint-focused twist. No one could've expected the game to become the fastest-selling game of the year, selling 20 million copies in just 2 months. A game developed by a single Japanese developer in roughly 2 months outsold AAA giants like Resident Evil Requiem and Crimson Desert.
The concept of Meccha Chameleon is simple. Players control a blank doll-like figure and paint themselves using intuitive controls to blend into their surroundings. It adds an artistic layer to the popular prop hunt genre. While hiders are camouflaging themselves amongst furniture, appliances, and foliage, hunters are searching for any off texture or color to take out as many hiders as they can.
The simplicity is the genius and the reason why Meccha Chameleon took off like wildfire across Twitch and YouTube. It also helps that it runs on almost any PC you throw at it and costs only $5.99, removing any barrier of entry. The game may not be the deepest or content-rich entry on the list, but its straightforward creativity sparked a game that's pure fun with friends for hours on end.
1. Demon Tides
Demon Tides, developed by Fabraz, is the best indie game of 2026, and it accomplishes something that a lot of indie games don't. It's a 3D platformer that can go toe-to-toe with the best of the genre, including Nintendo's peerless mustached mascot. Super Mario Odyssey is widely considered to be the greatest 3D platformer of all time. Demon Tides is the only other 3D platformer that stands within arm's reach.
The claims may seem bold, but Fabraz is the only developer to chase Odyssey's ambitious game design and, in some ways, outmatch it. Demon Tides is sort of an antithesis to something like 2024 GOTY winner Astro Bot. Where that game was praised for its AAA presentation and polish, tight controls, and beautifully catered level design, it was unambitious with its mechanical shallowness and linear one-solution design. Demon Tides is as wide as an ocean and as deep as one too. What it lacks in terms of AAA sheen, it more than makes up for in mechanical depth, creative freedom, and sheer content.
Demon Queen Beebz, the main protagonist of this sequel to Demon Turf, controls beautifully with an expansive and customizable moveset including dashes, gliders, bubbles, long jumps, side flips, triple jumps, and even more I won't list. The seamless open-world seas of Ragnar's Rock connect everything from the surprisingly engaging narrative to the endless speed-running opportunities. Demon Tides is available on Steam for $24.99 with a Nintendo Switch release coming soon, and it delivers in spades for the price. It may not be the massive success story of some of the other games listed, but Demon Tides is the 2026 indie game that delivers the best overall package.
Indie Games Continue to Push Gaming Forward
Grand Theft Auto VI will surely be extraordinary, and Rockstar earned the attention. But 2026 belongs just as much to the indie games that didn't have a billion dollars to spend, only unbridled creativity and a dream. 2026 should also be remembered for the communication-driven co-op game that brought friends together for a common goal, a cat-breeding passion project that was developed over a decade, and an ambitious 3D platformer from a small team that went toe-to-toe with Nintendo's biggest name. These are the games that pushed the medium forward this year, made by people who did it simply for the love of the game.
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