AAA games suck up most of the attention, but true innovation and risky bets are only really found in the indie sector. It’s always hard to tell what will take off, but right now, these look to be the biggest indie games of 2024.
Before diving in, it’s important to recognize the controversy surrounding the definition of “independent game” that arose in the lead-up to The Game Awards 2023. In light of that, I’m relying on a definition that I have previously outlined, which is that the game has to come from an independent or publicly owned studio that does not publish other studios’ work, irrespective of the publisher attached to the project.
By this definition, Baldur’s Gate 3, Alan Wake 2, and Immortals of Aveum are all independent games, while Jusant, Dave the Diver, and Kerbal Space Program 2 are not. With that out of the way, here’s the list:
33 Immortals
Platforms: PC, Xbox Series S|X
Release Date: TBA (Early Access)
Thunder Lotus, the team behind Spiritfarer, is back with a new game that seems more like their earlier games, Sundered and Jotun, than the 2020 hit that put them on the map for many. 33 Immortals is a roguelike action game with the novel twist that you’ll be tackling its challenges alongside 32 other players. The challenge: to travel through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven to challenge your damned fate by rebelling against Lucifer, Adam and Eve, and, ultimately, God.
If you love your literature as much as I do, you might find yourself thinking that some of those elements sound reminiscent of Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy — and you’d be right. The team is adapting the classic text with a few wild twists thrown in. And, hopefully, it feels a bit more respectful to the source material than Dante’s Inferno.
Black Myth: Wukong
Platforms: PC, PS5, Xbox Series S|X
Release Date: August 20, 2024
One of the first new-wave Chinese action games to capture global attention way back in 2020, Black Myth: Wukong is a retelling of the classic novel Journey to the West. In it, players take on the role of a monkey warrior questing through a strange world.
What’s really captured our interest, though, is the utterly wild gameplay. It’s fast-paced with a huge number of skills — including melee, magic, and the ability to transform into other creatures — having been shown off across the various trailers. Combine that with an evocative dark fantasy aesthetic replete with enormous bosses to overcome, and you end up with a game that can hopefully shake up a genre that feels a bit like its glory days are in the past. Maybe that’s hyperbolic, but we’re hopeful that Black Myth: Wukong can live up to its incredible promise.
Broken Roads
Platforms: PC, PlayStation, Switch, Xbox
Release Date: Early 2024
Broken Roads is my personal most anticipated game on the upcoming schedule. It was penciled in to launch back in November, but a last-minute delay pushed it to early 2024. Disappointing? Sure, but we all know Shigeru Miyamoto’s quote about delayed games.
And Broken Roads has the potential to be the next home for the millions of players who find themselves entranced with Baldur’s Gate 3 in 2023. It may not have quite the same scale or reactivity as Larian’s latest, but it’s a similarly classic-styled CRPG that promises a huge number of possibilities and variations. Plus, the morality system seems genuinely game-changing in the way it’s tied to real-world schools of philosophy rather than binary notions of good and evil. The fact that it also happens to be set in a post-apocalyptic vision of Australia is just one more thing that helps it to warm my Vegemite-loving heart.
Dead Static Drive
Platforms: PC, Xbox
Release Date: Q3 2024
Eldritch horrors are here, and the world is coming to an end. All you have is a car, the will to survive, and the friends you find along the way. Dead Static Drive has the tagline of Grand Theft Cthulhu, and if that doesn’t excite you, then you might want to check whether you still have a pulse.
The game is set in a strange vision of 1980s America, where monsters roam, and your quest is to road trip across this broken land in the hopes of preventing the apocalypse. That mission is wrapped up in survival gameplay, and you’re challenged to explore, scavenge, find friends, and fight foes. While that all sounds familiar enough, it’s wrapped up in an unforgettable visual style that will stand out in any crowd.
Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes
Platforms: PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series S|X
Release Date: April 23, 2024
One of the last major Kickstarter-funded video games, Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes is another example of a legendary designer trying to bring back a classic game style. This time, it’s Yoshitaka Murayama and the Suikoden series. As in the Konami classic, players will be tasked with recruiting an army of 100 characters to both build a bustling town and take down the threats facing the world.
Players on the fence can get a glimpse of what to expect from the 2022 prequel, Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising, though Hundred Heroes will be orders of magnitude larger and more complex. It’s an old-school JRPG in the purest sense of the idea, so if you’re looking for a throwback that’s not a straight remake, this is one of the surest bets to have on your radar.
Enotria: The Last Song
Platforms: PC, PS5, Xbox Series S|X
Release Date: TBA
The soulslike genre feels like it moved into a new stage of maturity in 2023, with games like Lords of the Fallen and Lies of P putting their own distinct stamps on the genre that FromSoftware built. Enotria: The Last Song is looking to extend that in 2024, introducing a summery, Italian-influenced edge to the usual proceedings.
Flexibility of play takes center stage here, with players able to wear the masks of fallen foes to change up their approach. That’s compounded by the ability to switch between three loadouts on the fly and enter different planes of reality at certain points to solve environmental puzzles and traversal challenges. Meanwhile, your quest is to end a world of stasis where the people are trapped in an endless play. It’s a promising permutation on a now-familiar formula, but maybe that brightness is exactly what the genre needs.
Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn
Platforms: PC, PS5, Xbox Series S|X
Release Date: Q3 2024
Cyberpunk 2077, Weird West… I love it when a developer has the conviction to name their game after an entire subgenre of fiction. It feels like a statement of intent, a challenge to any and all comers. Flintlock fantasy may not have the same level of awareness attached to it as those others, but it’s just as capable of intriguing, with its unique blend of magic and early firearms.
Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn goes all-in on that, offering up a pre-Industrial flavored action RPG. It may be aesthetically distinct, but the story feels familiar in all the best ways. As a soldier, you set out to unite with a party of skilled warriors and technicians with the ultimate goal of killing the cruel gods that have set a plague of the undead upon the world. It looks slick, and I can’t wait to see if it sticks the landing.
Hollow Knight: Silksong
Platforms: PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox Series S|X
Release Date: TBA
After five years of waiting (and counting), Hollow Knight: Silksong feels almost like The Last Guardian or Shenmue 3 in that its eventual emergence from its development cocoon will allow us all to breathe a sigh of relief. But as a follow-up to one of the most beloved metroidvanias of the modern era, the wait is almost guaranteed to be worth it.
The game will cast players as Hornet, a boss from the original Hollow Knight, as she explores a new, haunted kingdom that promises to be significantly larger than the first game’s Hallownest, as well as adding more than 150 new enemy types. Other additions include more acrobatic movement and a revamped set of player skills. Silksong is by far one of the most anticipated indie games on the horizon, and hopefully, it lands in 2024 after missing a planned release in the first half of 2023.
Mythwrecked: Ambrosia Island
Platforms: PC (Other Platforms TBA)
Release Date: Q3 2024
The Ancient Greek pantheon has become a rich source of remix and reinvention. Like 2023’s Stray Gods, Mythwrecked: Ambrosia Island imagines the gods as having been transplanted to the modern day. The twist: they have no idea who they are.
You play as would-be holidaymaker Alex, whose plans for a much-needed vacation are upset when a vicious storm sees her wash ashore on Ambrosia Island. From there, your challenge is to befriend the amnesiac gods, help them recover their memories, and restore the island to its former glory. It’s proudly a cozy, non-violent game, and with 2020’s Röki under its belt, you can rest assured that developer Polygon Treehouse has the chops to make it into a memorable, emotional journey that will stay with you.
NEVA
Platforms: PC, PS5, Switch, Xbox Series S|X
Release Date: TBA
From Nomada Studio, the development team behind Gris, comes another gorgeous, evocative adventure. The game’s reveal trailer outlines the premise: a dying world, an overwhelming darkness, and the bond between a woman, Alba, and a wolf cub.
The game follows these two beings as they grow older and closer through the years. It won’t be straightforward, as both of them need to know who they are on their own. Neva is billed as a tale of adventure, identity, and survival as the duo seeks a new home, a new place of safety. We know precious little about it, but that’s enough to be utterly enchanted.
Slitterhead
Platforms: TBA
Release Date: TBA
After a stellar year in 2023, it’s safe to say the horror game renaissance is in full swing. Slitterhead, though, is a new IP on the block, helmed by Keiichiro Toyama, whose bona fides in the genre consist of creating the iconic Silent Hill and Siren series.
Where those are more tense, cerebral horror experiences, Slitterhead sees Toyama leveraging his more recent experience with the Gravity Rush games for something that’s a bit louder, gorier, and more action-packed. While the team at Bokeh Game Studio has been steadily releasing dev diaries and interviews, we know precious little more about the game than we did on its reveal at the end of 2021, but the names attached, the body horror in that first trailer, and the promise is enough to keep us excited.
Stormgate
Platforms: PC (Other Platforms TBA)
Release Date: Mid-2024
Developer Frost Giant Studios is currently seeking funding for Stormgate via Kickstarter. From a very modest goal of $100,000, the team has sourced almost $1.5 million at the time of writing, proving that there’s an audience starving for a new competitive RTS that promises to shake up the genre.
Because that’s exactly what Frost Giant is trying to do. The team is helmed by Blizzard veterans with big plans for the future of the genre: 1,000 unit battles, 3-player co-op, a mission editor, a deep campaign set in a universe that blends science-fiction and fantasy and plans to support the game with regular content drops for the long-term. It’s an exciting prospect for genre fans, especially in the absence of any word on a new Starcraft.
Those are the big ones, but they’re really only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the indie goodness heading our way in 2024. The handful of others that made it onto the extensive shortlist for this article are the following:
