The Best Indie Games You Need to Play Right Now

In recent years, indie games have been taking the world by storm! Indie games offer players a diverse range of experiences that push the boundaries of traditional game design. Below is a list of the standout indie games we think you should be playing right now! 

Balatro 

Available on: PC, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch.

How to make poker more fun? The answer is Balatro! From the developer LocalThunk, Balatro is easily one of the most addictive indie games to come out in recent memory. At heart, it’s a deck-building rogelite, allowing players with a little knowledge of poker to get involved in on the fun. 

A standard deck of 52 cards is played and dealt out with which you must play a scoring poker hand. Whether it’s a simple pair, a flush, or a straight. Every winning hand scales the amount of chips you earn as well as a multiplier, whilst the jokers provide passive abilities to pump up your score! 

Cult of the Lamb

Available on: PC, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch.

Okay, how often do you get to play as a cute cartoon lamb where the goal is to lead a cult? Cult of the Lamb mixes several genres in a game where your task as a loyal follower of a demon is to grow a successful cult following. You’ll need to keep satisfying the needs of your followers, fight monsters and clear dungeons, including having to sacrifice someone. It’s an artistic and fun look at what it might be like to become a cult leader and mixes games like Stardew Valley and Hades. 

Dredge

Available on: PC, Mac, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox One & Series X/S, and Nintendo Switch 

An indie horror fishing game? Yep, you heard that right, we didn’t know we needed a game like this in our lives either. This 12-hour or so expedition through haunted open waters is both mysterious in nature and compelling enough for you to keep on pushing on through the storyline. 

Your boat starts small and slow, but over time you’ll upgrade it to scope out new and exciting places to discover and make it powerful enough to evade a bunch of dangers that will definitely rear their ugly heads at night. With scarce resources and every bump to your tugboat bringing you closer to sending you back to the dock, it’s a game full of tension as you sail the uneasy waters.

To play these brilliant indie games, go visit HypeDrop to win your own Gaming setup!

Undertale 

Available on: PC, Mac, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch.

One of the best indie RPGs to come out in recent years that includes an absolutely banging soundtrack. The 16-bit indie game revolves around a kid who falls into the world of monsters and tries to find a way to escape. The writing and storyline are consistently funny but also touching. Great, memorable pieces of dialogue go a very long way in any video game, and this one throws some absolutely compelling stories of both humanity and morality. 

The actual game mechanics, including fighting off enemies, are like one that has never been seen before. For example, you can go about the whole game and never murder a creature or monster by being a pacifist, where through non-combative options you give out hugs, chat with them, and even in a funny way, flirt your way out to avoid killing them. 

Mouthwashing 

Available on: PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and Nintendo Switch. 

Have you ever played a game that stayed with you for a while longer after finishing it? Mouthwashing is a short, sadistic, and genuinely scary indie horror game. As a crew member of the space freighter Tulper, you literally start the game in the middle of an emerging disaster as the ship hits an asteroid. Things quickly turn into madness with the crew going insane, with gameplay jumping back and forth between the past and present. With resources dwindling lower with each incoming day, the crew decides to open their confidential shipment to discover its contents are solely mouthwash. 

With its haunting visuals that are truly the stuff of nightmares, paired with the disturbing soundtrack, is what you want to see in a sci-fi horror indie game. You can describe it as a surreal exploration of social and mental deterioration as the characters hallucinate wildly, invoking the works of such greats as David Lynch and Dario Argento. One to definitely check out!