Tetris and Minecraft, the two best-selling video games ever, are both independent successes. This is not meant to confuse return with worth, but it does highlight an indisputable fact: despite the dominance of AAA studios in this day and age, a really inspired independent vision always has the ability to arise, flourish, and, in rare circumstances, even take over the game industry. Given that independent gaming is currently experiencing a boom, the potential has never been greater.

From platformers and multiplayer puzzle games to run-and-gun games and role-playing games (RPGs), the independent gaming industry has flourished. Players frequently have a strong feeling of community as a result of these creations, and game developers experience an ever-increasing sense of personal identity.

There are so many growing indie game startups now, and every one of them provides us with some unique mechanic allowing them to grow exponentially. Some of those include:

Intercept Games

"A deep passion for space, simulation, strategy, and of course all things video games" is what the creators at Intercept Games are known for. Kerbal Space Program 2, a follow-up to the well-known space flight simulation game, is its main project. It lets players construct spacecraft, explore planets, and manage various space program operations on behalf of an extraterrestrial species.

Extremely OK Games

TowerFall and Celeste are classic platformer indie games developed by Extremely OK Games, an independent gaming business that was formerly established as Matt Makes Games. Maddy Thorson's first significant commercial game, TowerFall and its follow-up TowerFall: Ascension, was a hit following its 2013 release. With more than a million copies sold as of 2020, Celeste, which was launched in 2018, had a greater reception. Earthblade, Extremely OK Games' upcoming game, is presently being developed.

Heart Machine

The action and adventure games Hyper Light Drifter and Solar Ash, which draw inspiration from The Legend of Zelda series, are the creations of Heart Machine. Heart Machine, which got its name from creator Alx Preston's battles with heart illness, was first established to fund the creation of Hyper Light Drifter, the company's debut game and a project that successfully raised money through crowdfunding.

Innersloth

With its well-liked game Among Us and The Henry Stickman Collection, independent game developer Innersloth rose to prominence in the 2020s. Despite being released in 2018, the multiplayer deduction game Among Us didn't become well-known until 2020, when the COVID-19 epidemic significantly increased its usage. After being among the top 10 Twitch games of 2020, Among Us has since kept adding new game types, maps, and costumes to its library. In 2022, Among Us VR—a virtual reality headset version of the game—was launched.

Mega Crit

Slay the Spire, the first and only project of independent gaming firm Mega Crit Games, was born out of the coinciding explosion of digital collectible card games like Magic: The Gathering Online and Hearthstone as well as indie game design. The deck-building RPG Slay the Spire was listed on IGN's list of "The Best Roguelike Games" and has received several award nominations. The next undisclosed release from Mega Crit Games is now being developed.

Studio MDHR

Established by Chad and Jared Moldenhaur out of a "love of retro arcade action," Studio MDHR gained notoriety in 2017 thanks to its inaugural game, Cuphead. Since its introduction, Cuphead, a run-and-gun game with cartoon-style graphics from the 1930s, has become incredibly popular. The Cuphead Show! debuted on Netflix in 2022, the Moldenhaur brothers also produced Cuphead - The Delicious Last Course, a downloadable Cuphead content extension.

BLENDO Games

Brendon Chung, an independent game developer, founded BLENDO Games soon after Electronic Arts purchased Pandemic Studios, his former company. Since then, the company has released well-known independent games such as Atom Zombie Smasher, Flotilla, and most famously, Quadrilateral Cowboy, a hacking simulation with a wonderfully analog aesthetic that took home the 2017 Independent Games Festival's Seumas McNally grand award. Skin Deep, Blendo Games' most recent release, is now under development.

Mobius Digital

With the publication of the sci-fi role-playing game Outer Wilds in 2019, Heroes star Masi Oka created Mobius Digital, which made a splash in the independent market. Outer Wilds began as a graduate thesis project by Alex Beachum, a former student at USC. Mobius Digital took over the project, and Annapurna Interactive released it. Since then, the game has won a few accolades, and it served as the inspiration for the independent gaming company's 2021 sequel, Outer Wilds: Echoes of the Eye.

Supergiant Games

The indie gaming firm Supergiant Games, founded by former EA employees Amir Rao and Gavin Simon, is the creator of the highly regarded games Bastion, Transistor, Pyre, and Hades. By 2020, more than a million copies of its 2018 game, Hades, a roguelike dungeon crawler based in the Greek legendary Underworld, had been sold. Hades became the highest-rated game ever on the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X in 2021, and it has won 19 gaming accolades since its debut.

Conclusion

Game development in 2025 now has a plethora of tools for a person or an organization to tinker around with. With the release of Black Myth: Wukong in 2024, people realized that it was possible for just a small team of developers to make a AAA game. And now with AI’s advent, game development has soared to new heights since anyone can now make a good, simple game with a few prompts. It has certainly helped a lot of indie startups to grow and hopefully will continue to do so.