The Most Ambitious Indie Video Games

Independent games, games made without the financial or technical support of a large game publisher, have been getting a lot of love from fans who can see the passion of the creators shining through, creators that they feel they can support more directly. Especially since a lot of these games are incredibly ambitious in their scope, striving for the same quality as AAA games without the same budget or resources.

If you’ve ever thought about creating your own indie game, maybe these games will give you the inspiration you need to put in the impressive amount of work these creators have. If you’re strictly a player of games, take a minute to appreciate just how much passion and dedication it takes to embrace development goals that can look almost impossible on paper.

9 No Man’s Sky

Though the gameplay upon release fell short of the game’s ambitions, it certainly had a lot of big ideas for being created by a team of only 15. They wanted to make an infinite game. They wanted players to be able to forever explore a space filled with procedurally generated worlds and never reach the end of it.

Despite that disappointing release, however, the team behind the game, Hello Games, has worked tirelessly to bring the game up to the standards that players expected and has since gained a lot of ground. At the end of the day, it houses an astonishing amount of dedication to a very big idea.

8 Minecraft

Though it was acquired by Microsoft in 2014, the undeniably and wildly popular game Minecraft began as an indie project, designed to be an infinitely playable sandbox game. The creator, Markus “Notch” Persson, designed the initial game, the “Java Version,” very quickly, but from there he would update it himself for the next three years until it reached a version we’re more familiar with.

The more money these versions of the game made, the more money he put back into the updates, eventually quitting his day job and setting up Mojang to improve the game even further. Notably, the role of lead designer was passed on to Jens “Jeb” Bergensten, who continued to independently expand the scope of the game until acquisition.

7 Undertale

If you haven’t heard of Undertale by now, do yourself a favor and enjoy the wonderful experience of playing it blind. For everyone else, you’ve more than likely at least heard of this indie darling, which revolutionized the way the medium handles meta-storytelling and challenged how violence is used as a tool in gaming.

What makes this game’s success so impressive is that the creator, Toby Fox, had very little game design experience before committing to such an ambitious project. Crowdfunded via Kickstarter, Fox enlisted the help of freelancers when sourcing artwork, animation, and sprites. Otherwise, he worked for almost three years on the project (writing, composing, programming) by himself.

6 Vampire Survivors

By all accounts, creator Luca Galante should have given up on this game. He was unemployed, spending his own money to fund the early access version, and had experience as a programmer for the gambling industry, not as a video game designer. His early access version was released on itch.io, to little fanfare (and he caught COVID), but, luckily, he persevered.

The game’s high-energy “bullet hell” style has since spawned several clones, but this is the game that started the wave. Impressive work for one man. Now, making better money off the game, he’s able to bring in more people to make the game an even more polished, evolving experience.

5 Hades

Supergiant Games, at the time a team of 20, wanted to create a game based on extensive user feedback that could be played in short bursts but still had an interesting story that drove player engagement. What they settled on became the highly acclaimed roguelike Hades.

What makes this game so ambitious is that the advancement of a story through multiple play-throughs meant planning out and writing hours worth of branching dialogue for the NPCS. And, in the course of making this game, the team even decided to completely rewrite the custom game engine they had used for previous titles to give it the technical capacity to achieve their vision.

4 Disco Elysium

It took a lot of work for Disco Elysium to become the game the creators envisioned. The founder of ZA/UM, who developed the game, was a novelist who had no experience in video game creation before this game. He envisioned an in-depth, isometric CRP game that pulled from D&D, 70s cop shows, and steampunk settings, among other elements.

When work started on this game, the local team involved was literally living in a squat, searching for new artists to contribute all the time. Eventually, the team gained more funding and eventually reached over a hundred contributors, leading to the impressive game you can now play.

3 Hollow Knight

Two of the game developers for Team Cherry, Ari Gibson, and William Pellen, began this game with two failed games before they hit on this winning idea. They wanted to create a game inspired by the mechanics of Mega Man X, and with a large, explorable world that promised a sense of wonder and discovery.

Impressively, Gibson hand-drew a lot of the art seen in the game, which was then scanned directly into the game’s engine. It was funded by a Kickstarter, and there is a sequel in the works.

2 Stardew Valley

One of the most popular cozy farm simulation games ever made, Stardew Valley is well-known for elegantly balancing farming, adventure, and NPC interactions. Between the smoothness of the art style and gameplay, the updates, and the length the game takes to full beat, you’d be forgiven for thinking there was a massive team behind it.

In reality, there’s only one person behind Stardew Valley: Eric “ConcernedApe” Barone. As a programmer, with a degree in computer science, Barone initially started the game as a project to add to his resume, but after four and half years of work, it became much more than that. For a while there, he worked on the game for ten hours a day, every day, and that effort showed.

1 Cuphead

A challenging platformer, Cuphead took its aesthetic inspiration very seriously, and that meant that the creators were putting in more work than making boss fights difficult. The brothers Moldenhauer first attempted to make this game in 2000, but couldn’t quite achieve what they wanted, trying again in 2010 and working four years on development.

Part of what makes this game so incredibly impressive is that all in-game assets were created using hand-drawn animation, in order to authentically capture that old-timey cartoon feeling. This attention to detail extends to every part of the game, with even the soundtrack written for and recorded using a full jazz ensemble.