30 indie games in this list, released 2015–2025, from developers such as Weappy Studio, Funatics Software, Whale Rock Games. 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.
This Is the Police 2 mixes story-driven adventure with strategy, putting you in charge of a small-town sheriff's department. You assign officers to incidents, make difficult calls and fight turn-based tactical encounters while the returning protagonist, now living as Warren Nash, hides from federal agents in the fictional town of Sharpwood in 1987. It is a sequel from Belarusian developer Weappy Studio, published by THQ Nordic in 2018.
Valhalla Hills is a city-building strategy game in which you guide a tribe of Vikings as they build up and sustain a settlement. Each map ends with the goal of reaching a portal at the top of a mountain that leads to Valhalla. Funatics Software, a studio in Germany, developed it in Unreal Engine 4, and Daedalic Entertainment published it in 2015. Two expansions, Sand of the Damned and Fire Mountains, later added new locations and enemies.
We Are The Dwarves is a real-time tactics game in which the player commands a trio of dwarves travelling through space on a mission to rescue their home world. Battles unfold continuously rather than in turns as the player directs the three heroes. It was made and self-published by Whale Rock Games, a studio based in Kyiv, Ukraine, and came out in 2016 for Windows, Mac and Linux, with Steam tagging it under action, RPG and strategy.
Hive and Seek is a free side-scrolling strategy and base-building game about retaking space stations overrun by monsters. Players rally robots, salvage resources, build defences and clear rooms one by one until every hive on the station is destroyed. Progress is room by room rather than open-ended. It is developed and published by Knight Owl Games, an indie studio from Alexandria, Egypt.
Project Athanor mixes factory automation with card building and arena survival. Players set up automated production lines that create and upgrade elemental cards, assemble a six-card deck from the results, then take it into survivor-style arenas where temporary power-ups help them last through escalating waves. The game has a Steam page with no release date announced yet. It is being made by COREGAME Studios, an independent game studio based in Qatar.
This Is the Police is a strategy adventure from the Belarusian studio Weappy Studio. You play Jack Boyd, a police chief in the fictional city of Freeburg who has 180 days left before a corrupt mayor forces him into retirement. Each day you assign officers to emergencies and investigations, while the story pulls you into crime and corruption along the way.