A daunting amount of amazingly good indie games came out in 2015, so many that it was hard for anyone to stay on top of all of the new releases. As indie gaming grows in popularity and game development tools become easier to access and learn, the number of quality releases per year will only increase. I’m looking forward to the deluge, even if it means that I’ll never possibly be able to play every game that’s deserving of attention.
I’m skeptical of any list that claims to name the “best” games of the year, especially when the number of releases has skyrocketed. Still, it sure is fun to make one! So here’s my list of the best my favorite games released between, oh let’s say December of 2014 through December of 2015. They’re unranked and presented in a random order because my choices are not based on any mathematical system. Calling them “favorite” instead of “best” feels less dogmatic, but I’ll still be tossing around “best” and similar terms below, I’m sure; just remember that they are entirely subjective.
In the interests of preserving my sanity, I had to find ways of limiting the initial size of the candidate pool, so I didn’t include free or “pay what you want” games, “early access” games, or any games that came out for mobile platforms or consoles before they were released for PCs (if I had the time, I’d make a list for each of those categories).
Buckle up, here we go!
An astonishingly beautiful exercise in surrealism, Dada, and subverting/celebrating JRPG tropes. More about it here.
Exhilarating and often maddening arcade stealth’em-up. Probably the best pure platformer of the year. More here.
A very meta game that’s quite hard to describe in a few words. It’s a satire of AAA development hell and an adventure played from the POV of a character stuck in an unfinished build of a game that doesn’t quite know what it wants to be. You learn to manipulate elements of the game world and take advantage of its unfinished state to meet your ends as the tale of gamedev gone awry unfolds through top notch voiceovers. If I was numbering this list, this game would be near the top.
The game that will make you love clowns again. Well, you’ll love Dropsy, at least. He’s the most wonderful, most memorable game character of the year. Creator Jay Tholen’s wordless point’n’click adventure is full of oddball beauty and honest emotion. And lots of hugs.
The gorgeous, impressionistic, maximalist pixel art is a sharp contrast and a perfect compliment to the ultra-streamlined resource management and distribution system. There’s lots of decision making, planning, and riding majestically through the forest. The nighttime sieges are genuinely intense and dawn always breaks with a great sigh of relief. More about the game here.
The amazingly talented Loren Schmidt’s first commercial release, Strawberry Cubes, is still largely an enigma to me, but I keep returning to its trippy mysteries. It encourages and rewards experimentation better than any game since Starseed Pilgrim. The low-res, glitch-tastic, limited-palette visuals are just aesthetically pleasing as hell. More here.
It’s every bit as good as they say. Funny, surprising, subversive, adorable, creepy, and full of heart. Ideally, don’t read much about it before you’ve play it at least twice. And please don’t pass it up just because it’s getting ridiculously popular. There are plenty of games that I like but can understand how not everyone would; with Undertale, I just can’t imagine not enjoying it without actively resisting joy.
The creepiest game of the year is also one of the most beautifully illustrated. The gorgeous storybook-style graphics make the game’s frequent cruelty and gore easier to digest. Kilmonday Games’ masterpiece of surreal horror is also a first-rate point’n’click adventure with a wide variety of puzzles, tons of characters and interesting dialogue, and even some minigames. If you want, you can give the demo a whirl.
One of the most beautiful games in years, this mix of autobiography, history, parable, and fantasy is like nothing else that’s ever been made. It contains some of Jack King-Spooner’s most beautiful art, most bewitching music, and most honest storytelling. Being able to make it was actually the reason he taught himself to make games in the first place.
My favorite player vs. player game of the year. It manages to be a stealth game, a tactical battle, a horror experience, and a shout-at-your-friend deathmatch all at the same time. I wrote about it here.
Porpentine has done more than anyone to put Twine on the map and cement its place as a viable tool for creating games. She’s also cemented her own place in the pantheon of IF authors and text game creators who have advanced the medium. It’s because of the ingenious ways in which she makes the look and feel of text games integral to the experience. It’s because of the almost casual poetry she uses in the descriptions and dialogue in every one of her text games. It’s because of the more traditionally ludic elements that she injects into many of her interactive fictions. Eczema Angel Orifice collects 25 of these hypertext works for your enjoyment and provocation.
Stephen “thecatamites” Murphy is the punk rock godfather of indie games. I’d bet that his work has inspired more people to make their own weird little games than any other recent developer. 2010’s Space Funeral is part of the essential indie game canon. 50 Short Games is pretty much what it says on the cover. It’s also a shining monument to creativity and to embracing creative constrictions in order to flourish creatively. And the games are packed with offhand allusions and symbols. There are layers of satire, commentary, and references. Check out the in-depth analysis going on here.
Why hasn’t this game received more fanfare? In a nutshell, it’s a 2D action-roguelike set in a facsimile of the Cthulhu mythos. You investigate old mansions, collect clues, fight eldritch horrors, and try to keep from going mad and blowing your brains out. It sucked me in and kept me playing like no other game on this list. Once again, Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw proves that he can make a damn fine—and quite spooky—videogame.
An orgy of bullets, explosions, and stylized old-West violence. Up to 9 players can choose one of 11 different characters, each of which makes playing the game almost a completely different experience. FarmerGnome’s A Fistful of Gun is the best shooter of the year AND the best co-op experience of the year.
Rituals, which went by the name “The Official” during development and testing, might be the most overlooked game of the year. It’s somewhat Myst-like, in that it’s essentially a series of 3D, first-person puzzles that add up to a metaphysical journey of sorts. Perhaps the node-based movement and the low-polygon art turned people off. Maybe it was the brief running time, or maybe the ambiguous story. Regardless, all of these qualities helped make it into the pensive, engaging experience that I found it to be on each of my playthroughs.
Veteran indie dev Arvi “Hempuli” Teikari made the game he’d always wanted to make and delivered the year’s best metroidvania (and there were quite a few of those). Every little thing about it reveals the hand of a master. The titular space station is brought to life with deft arrangements of as few pixels as possible while still being evocative and atmospheric. The gameplay is as smooth as butter made from the milk of angels. Nothing crazy is added to the formula, but every platform, every pickup, every enemy feels perfectly placed.
To quote myself, Downwell is “A masterpiece of coherent design and playability.” It’s so elegant that it seems far simpler than it actually is. You discover the intricacies of its mechanics as you descend deeper into its endless depths. More about the game here.
The game that put FMV games back on the map as a genre that could actually produce something good. The full-motion video in Her Story is no mere gimick; it makes perfect sense within the context of the game. More importantly, Her Story succeeds because it makes you feel like you’re really carrying out an investigation, and it gives you a reason to pay attention during the videos (to learn new search terms and thus find more videos). It’s brilliant.
Indie stalwart Messhof’s remake of his own freeware classic is the best minimalist hardcore action game since Super Hexagon. It plays sort of like a platformer in which you can’t touch the ground (or ceiling, or walls, or anything else). The level of challenge reaches absurd heights in no time. It’s like a slap in the face from a Zen master.
TowerClimb is chock full of wonders, but it takes you a while to get to them. This is a case in which patience is richly rewarded. TowerClimb is almost like 2 different games. The first half is an extremely solid and somewhat fiddly action-roguelike about ascending a vertical dungeon and being pretty fragile. Then you get a sword, and everything changes. Next thing you know, you’re doing all kinds of crazy things. Maybe you play basketball against a boss. Maybe you go to a dance party. And so on. It’s awesome. I wrote more about TowerClimb here.
What were your favorite games from 2015?
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