External Discovery
5 indie games in this list, released 2013–2025, from developers such as AdHoc Studio, Campo Santo, thatgamecompany. Pick one to read our editorial note and jump to its store page.
These are editorial pages. The developers and publishers are not affiliated with The Gaming Nest unless explicitly stated.
By AdHoc Studio · United States
Dispatch is an episodic adventure framed as a workplace comedy about superheroes. Robert Robertson III, once the hero Mecha Man, loses his suit and ends up working as a dispatcher coordinating former villains turned heroes. The story unfolds across eight episodes released in October and November 2025. It was developed and published by AdHoc Studio from the United States, and it sold more than 4 million copies.
By Campo Santo · United States
Firewatch puts players in the boots of Henry, a fire lookout spending a summer in Wyoming's Shoshone National Forest. His only link to the outside is his supervisor Delilah on a walkie-talkie, and the dialogue lines the player picks shape how their bond grows while an old mystery surfaces. American developer Campo Santo made the game, co-published with Panic in 2016, and it later won Best Narrative at the Game Developers Choice Awards in 2017.
By thatgamecompany · United States
Journey is a wordless adventure in which a cloaked figure crosses a vast desert toward a far-off mountain. Other players can appear along the way and help each other, yet they cannot talk or type, communicating only through a musical chime that also turns dull scraps of cloth vivid red and opens the path ahead. American studio Thatgamecompany created it, first for PlayStation 3 in 2012; Annapurna Interactive later brought it to Windows, with a reactive score by Austin Wintory.
By Galactic Cafe · United States
The Stanley Parable is a story-driven game in which players steer a silent protagonist named Stanley while a British narrator, voiced by Kevan Brighting, describes what he ought to do. Ignoring those directions is allowed and gets folded into the story, leading down branching paths to many endings before the game starts over. Davey Wreden and William Pugh rebuilt Wreden's Half-Life 2 mod on the Source engine as Galactic Cafe, a studio from the United States, releasing it in 2013.
By Giant Sparrow · United States
What Remains of Edith Finch is a first-person exploration game about seventeen-year-old Edith returning to her family's old house after seven years away. Wandering its rooms, she pieces together a string of deaths that brought down the family, each told as a separate vignette from a different perspective in a magical realist anthology. Giant Sparrow in the United States developed it on Unreal Engine 4, Annapurna Interactive published it in 2017, and it took Best Game at the 2017 British Academy Games Awards.