926 indie games in this list, released 2013–2025, from developers such as QCF Design, SFB Games, DESTINYbit. 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.
Desktop Dungeons is a single-player game that blends roguelike dungeon crawling with puzzle design in a condensed form. Players clear a monster-filled dungeon and face a final boss, working out how best to spend items, spells and upgrades while preserving their health. Made by the South African studio QCF Design, it won an Excellence in Design award at the 2011 Independent Games Festival, and a remake, Desktop Dungeons: Rewind, arrived in April 2023.
Detective Grimoire is a point-and-click adventure built around solving a murder in a swamp, with players questioning suspects and piecing together clues to reach the truth. It was praised for its mystery, animation, dialogue and lead character. SFB Games, a developer from the United Kingdom, created it; the mobile version appeared in 2014 and the studio later brought it to PC and Steam. A follow-up called Tangle Tower arrived in 2019.
Dice Legacy mixes city-building with real-time strategy, layering roguelike structure and survival mechanics on top of settlement management. That combination means runs carry risk and each attempt can end differently. It was developed by DESTINYbit, a studio in Italy, and released on Steam for Windows in September 2021. The game holds a Metacritic score of 70.
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.
Divinity: Original Sin is a role-playing game and the fourth main entry in the Divinity series, set as a prequel to Divine Divinity. Partly funded through Kickstarter, it ships with the same editor the developers used, so players can create solo or multiplayer adventures of their own and share them online. It was developed and published by Larian Studios from Belgium and released for Windows in June 2014, earning critical acclaim for modernizing the RPG genre.
Dome Keeper is a tower defense game from Bippinbits, a studio in Germany, published by Raw Fury and made with the Godot engine. You protect a glass dome from waves of alien attackers, then use the short gap between waves to dig for resources below. Those materials buy upgrades that strengthen your defences for the next assault. It launched on Windows, macOS and Linux in September 2022 to generally positive reviews.
Don't Starve is a survival game from Canadian studio Klei Entertainment, first released on PC in 2013. The player must keep the scientist Wilson alive, fed and sane in a gloomy parallel world called the Constant while fending off strange and supernatural creatures. An Adventure mode pits him against Maxwell, and the game is known for its distinctive art style as well as its difficulty and permanent death.
In Door Kickers, players command a SWAT unit belonging to Nowhere City's fictional police department, planning real-time tactical operations against criminals and terrorists. Romanian indie studio KillHouse Games developed and published it for Windows in October 2014, later bringing it to iOS and Android in 2015. A spin-off, Door Kickers: Action Squad, appeared in 2017, and the game holds a Metacritic score of 83.
Door Kickers 2: Task Force North puts special forces and paramilitary squads under your control for counterinsurgency missions across Nowheraki, a fictional Middle Eastern country. It builds on the 2014 original with similar core play and many fundamental improvements to its real-time tactics. Romanian studio KillHouse Games developed and self-published it, entering early access in 2020 and fully launching in February 2025 to generally positive reviews.
Dorfromantik is a strategy puzzle game in which you lay hexagonal tiles to build a peaceful rural landscape. Matching edges and completing fields, forests, villages and quests earns points and fresh tiles, and a creative mode allows free building. It was made by Toukana Interactive, founded in Germany by four students from HTW Berlin, and fully released in 2022. A board game version won the Spiel des Jahres in 2023.
Downwell is a vertically scrolling roguelike shooter and platformer with underground levels, drawn in a four-color palette that picks out gems, enemies and key items in red against black and white. Extra palettes can be unlocked to change those colors. It was made solely by Ojiro Fumoto under the Moppin name in Japan using GameMaker, and Devolver Digital published it in October 2015.
Draugen is a first-person mystery adventure set during the 1920s in a Norwegian fishing village. An American naturalist arrives to discover that every resident has disappeared, and players explore the settlement to learn what befell it while getting through the night. The game draws on the darker side of Norwegian folklore. It was developed and self-published by Norwegian studio Red Thread Games and released in 2019.
Dream Engines: Nomad Cities is a survival city-builder in which your city flies, travelling between procedurally generated maps. Players build and automate production and defend the settlement across a quirky post-apocalyptic world filled with nightmares, odd science, and dreams. It comes from Suncrash, an Israeli studio, was co-published with Gamirror Games, and was released on Windows in May 2024, with Steam also tagging it as an RPG.
Dreamcore is a first-person horror game built around getting lost on purpose. Players wander sprawling, non-linear liminal spaces that twist back on themselves, searching every level for the way out with no map or guide to lean on. Its presentation mimics body-camera and found-footage recordings, which gives each corridor an unsettling, grainy feel. Argentine studio Montraluz made it in Unreal Engine 5, and Tlön Industries published it in 2025.
Dreamfall Chapters is an episodic 3D adventure focused on conversations with characters, exploring the world and solving puzzles. It continues The Longest Journey series, following Zoe Castillo across the cyberpunk Earth of Stark and the magical realm of Arcadia. It was made by Norwegian independent studio Red Thread Games, founded by series writer Ragnar Tornquist, and funded partly through a Kickstarter that raised more than 1.5 million dollars.
In Driftland: The Magic Revival, players build up an empire across a fantasy world that magic has badly damaged, in a real-time strategy design that borrows ideas from 4X games. Polish studio Star Drifters developed and published it in 2019 using Unreal Engine 4. Steam lists it under strategy, simulation and RPG, and it holds a Metacritic score of 76.
Druidstone: The Secret of the Menhir Forest, a tactical role-playing game, comes from Ctrl Alt Ninja, a developer based in Finland that also handled publishing. Its Steam listing places it across the adventure and strategy genres, pointing to squad-based tactical encounters wrapped in a fantasy quest. The game was released for Windows in May 2019 as a self-published PC title from the Finnish team.
Dude, Stop is a comedic puzzle game that knows exactly what the right answer is and dares you to ignore it. Every stage can be cleared the normal way, but the fun comes from finding wrong solutions that trigger unique results, secret achievements and an increasingly exasperated narrator. It was made and self-published by Latvian developer Team HalfBeard and launched in June 2018. Critics liked it and often compared it to WarioWare.
Dungeons of Hinterberg is an action role-playing game set in Hinterberg, a fictional town in the Austrian Alps. It combines combat-focused dungeon crawling with social simulation, so time spent exploring dungeons sits alongside life in the village. The game was developed by the Austrian studio Microbird Games, published by Curve Games, and launched in July 2024 on Windows and Xbox Series X/S.
According to its genre listings, this Snowbird title, Eador: Masters of the Broken World, leans mainly on strategy while mixing in role-playing elements. It is a remake of an earlier title, Eador: Genesis, and available sources say little more about how it plays. The game was made by the Russian company Snowbird Game Studios and released in 2013, and it holds a Metacritic score of 74.
Éalú, whose title means escape in Irish, is a stop-motion point-and-click adventure. It is conceived as a spiritual successor to Tomcat Disposables, a song by American musician Will Wood, from In case I make it, his 2022 album. The game was created by Beyond The Bark, an indie studio in Limerick, Ireland, with Orr Games also credited, and arrived on Windows on October 2, 2025.
Earn to Die 2 is a driving action game in which players push a vehicle through zombie-filled cities, aiming for checkpoints and the finish line of each level. It follows the original Earn to Die, a flash and mobile title, but trades that game's desert backdrop for urban streets. It was developed by the Russian indie studio Toffee Games and published on Steam by Not Doppler in 2016.
Earth Atlantis is a post-apocalyptic 2D shooter in which the action scrolls sideways as the player battles through hostile territory. The focus is squarely on shooting enemies while navigating each area. It was built and self-published by Pixel Perfex Studio, an indie team from Thailand, and first launched in 2017 on Windows as well as three home consoles. The Steam version is listed with a January 2019 release date.
ECHO is a 2017 stealth game from Ultra Ultra, an independent studio in Denmark, built in Unreal Engine 4 and released for Windows that September. Drawing on stealth, action-adventure and science fiction genres, it centres on careful, sneaking play rather than open confrontation. The game was received positively by critics, but it did not succeed commercially, and it ended up being the only title Ultra Ultra shipped before the studio closed its doors.