• Your Spider - I gotta mention this one again because it deserves far more attention than it got.
• 10 Dead Doves - One of the few games that made me want to play through a second time. Interesting story, some funny moments, emotional moments, good voice acting. I highly recommend this one.
• The Eternal Castle (remastered) - It’s a remake of a game from 1987, but the animation is great and the visual style is really cool.
• The Upturned - A cartoony horror-comedy game with a great sense of humor.
• Withering Rooms - The story is interesting and the atmosphere is great.
• Exanima - Read about the features. This one is more impressive than the screenshots make it look (at least for me).
• Praey for the Gods - This one is for anyone who’s looking for more games like Shadow of the Collossus.

Balatro

I got an amazing amount of content per dollar spent on Onirism, a third-person shooter where you play as a 10-year-old girl searching a dream world for her stolen stuffed animal. That premise sounds like it would make for a simple, cutesy kids’ game - but the main inspirations for the gameplay come from Serious Sam and Doom Eternal.

Tyrion Cuthbert: Attorney of the Arcane is one of the standouts of many indie games imitating Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney’s famous formula. At some point it even got an overhaul to the script of multiple cases.

Motorslice is a new one, most directly influenced by the classic Prince of Persia: Sands of Time series, having you leap around between obstacles to navigate a world of cement and evil construction machines.

Tainted Grail: Fall of Avalon is like Skyrim but with better combat and dar King Arthur themed.

Potion Craft is a game where you run an alchemist shop, entirely stylized to look like medieval paintings.

Buddy Simulator 1984 is a game about a digital companion that likes you too much.

I could give more, but I never see anyone recommend those, and you have a lot of recommendations in this thread already.

Here’s a couple unique ones:

Showgunners - Turn Based Strategy with some great art and setting.

Lonestar - Space based rogue like turn based with a surprisingly intricate combat system.

Project Wingman - Love letter to Ace Combat with a soundtrack that just DOES NOT miss.

Tactical Breach Wizards - XCOM with wizards. Funny as hell.

Battletech - Older title by Harebrained Schemes but still awesome. Giant stompy robots turn based. Great plot too. Actually had the original devs of Battletech on board.

I have been really enjoying Songs of Conquest recently.

Zero Ranger and Void Stranger if you’re into shmups and sokoban puzzle games respectively, and both back to back if you like putting together a puzzle of how the fuck how the two games are related

Mewgenics and Binding of Isaac are both fun pick up and play a round kind of games. The first is a turn based tactics roguelite and the second is a more actiony roguelite

Hypnospace outlaw is fake digital archaeology where you play as a forum moderator in a bizarro 1999 internet where users surf da web during their sleep. It’s fun. I’m pretty upset the sequel got cancelled :(

Pizza Tower is some sick (and fast) platformer fun. Grimy aesthetic, stressed out paisano MC doing sick taunt parries. feels like both Wario and Sonic the Hedgehog. good time all around. Haste is another good run fast jump high game, kinda makes me wonder what a 3d sonic could’ve been if it was good. Only downside is that the levels themselves aren’t terribly inspired. Fun though.

Look Outside is the best RPG i’ve played since Baldurs Gate 3. Something fucked up is happening outside and you’re just some schlubby guy named sam who is bored to tears of sitting around inside. Go see what fucked up things your neighbors turned into after looking outside.

Cyberpunk Dreams is a fully text-based RPG where you get dropped into Cinncinati in the grimdark future of like, twenty years from now. You gotta learn to survive in a world that fucking SUCKS, but you get to make friends with weirdos like a homophobic prostitute who cares, get stupid rich selling some gasoline you found out in the desert (for a second until you piss away all of your cash on clothes and cars), and be a mutant vampire with a horse dick??? caveat: it has one of those facebook games energy systems. that sucks. I still put 100 hours into it tho.

Gunner Heat PC is a great tank sim

Demon Tides (3d platformer, Mario Odyssey crossed with LoZ Wind Waker)

Bug Fables (Paper Mario-esque RPG)

Ultrakill (boomer shooter)

Session. Skate Sim (EA Skate but without EA)

Synthetik 1 & 2 (isometric futuristic rouge like)

Vall Halla (cyberpunk bartender visual novel)

Dungeons of Hinterburg (Dungeon crawling RPG with a Persona like social system)

Cairn (mountain climbing sim with a great story)

Tactical Breach Wizards (XCOM style game with wizards and defenstration)

Noita (magic based rouge like with a lot of secrets)

Cassette Beasts (Pokemon)

Signalis (classic Resident Evil/Silent Hill style horror game)

Dredge (fishing, but Lovecraftian)

Tunic (Legend of Zelda mixed with Dark Souls)

Neon White (movement based FPS with a goal to speedrun short levels)

SUPERHOT (FPS, time moves when you move)

VOID BREAKER (rouge like FPS with insane upgrades)

Baldur’s gate 3.

And before y’all start downvoting an indie game has nothing to do with budget. As long as it’s not made by a non-major publisher it is considered indie. Just like Mixtape and Expedition 33 are both indie games right along with schedule 1 and balatro.

Just don’t play mixtape. It’s terrible.

mouthwash

How small indie do you mean, like one person teams or teams of 5 ok?

• Dyson sphere project, is a great factory game in development for ages and one of my favourites by a 5 person Chinese team.
• Rift breaker by a small Polish group is like a cross between Diablo and Tower defence factory builder lite
• Criticality, is a fun incremental game that will keep you occupied for a few days, hit neutrons to create a chain reaction, basically bubble wrap
• “Lost wiki Kozlovka”, is a very unique find the clue by reading Wikipedia articles in early 90’s internet only about 2 hours long, highly recommended.
• Take a look at the “secret of weapstone demo”, DnD in hand drawn black and white
• Alan’s automation workshop, is good before it gets too hard it you like programming challenges, try the demo first
• Silicon dreams, is like a physiological interrogation, you are trying to determine if the people are human or malfunctioning Androids, again there is a demo
• Horripilant, is an interesting auto batteler, again with demo
• Terraformental, is an incremental text adventure where you build skills to survive a time loop
• A dark forest, was entertaining, currently free demo
• Cleared hot, it’s basically desert strike helicopter gunship game
• Tower wizard, fun for a few hours
• Little rocket lab, like factorio but you take over a town and it’s cute
  Kids recommend “look outside,” and “mouthwashing”, lobotomy corporation, lethal company,
• The signal state, another programming type game
  My youngest recommends "rainworld’ like a 2d dark souls
  That’s my list from the last couple of months. I tend to search demos by genre and wish list things that get my attention. No idea how any of them works under Linux

EDIT: had to fix up the formatting on mobile.
Edit 2: went through my review and added:

• “Town to city” like cities skyline but fun and cute
• IXION, nice little confined space city building game
• The crust, heaps of potential but waiting for them to finish it
• Shapez and Shapez 2, fun little puzzle factory games.
• Sandustry is more fun than it has any reason to e
• cataclismo
• space rock breaker, a cross between pachinco and asteroids

older games,

• TIS-100, like assembler but more limited
• papers please, love this one, love the aesthetic. If you don’t want to play it watch the live action video homage ~10 minutes

I’ve ignored VR games, let me know if you want those too.

I recently released a demo for my action platformer No More Mages! Hope you enjoy if you get around to it, more being added soon.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3993180/No_More_Mages/

CrossCode is one of my favourite indie games, well worth a try, long one though.

Gonna plug Withering Rooms again! @[email protected] 's review of it initially sold me on it so I’ll just paste it here!:

I finished Withering Rooms a few days ago, having done both a full first playthrough and a quick run through NG+ to get the ending exclusive to NG+. Since then I’ve been in that odd spot where I’m kind of having trouble moving on to the next game. I just keep thinking about Withering Rooms.

This game was so amazingly good, it is seriously unbelievable it is the work of a solo dev. Especially since he also composed pretty much all the music - and the music is as phenomenal as the game. I don’t think I’ve been this impressed with a solo dev since Lucas Pope and Obra Dinn.If you vibe in any way with what you see on the Steam page, I heavily encourage you giving it a shot.

It is one of the most unique games I’ve ever played, which is funny because it simultaneously wears its inspirations on its sleeves. But the influences never end up leading to derivative end product, instead they are just the foundation for the very distinctive artistic vision of an auteur developer that is doubtlessly doing his own thing.And it’s not just about the story and world building and art direction and atmosphere, but the gameplay and build variety is also really good. All the gameplay systems are so well designed, the puzzles are intuitive and the game has so many thoughtful little touches you wouldn’t expect from the first game of a solo dev, especially on the QOL front.

The combat itself is a little clunky, but you do get used to it and there are several ways to build both melee and spellcasting, there is a ranged weapon build that leans more into consumables, you can sneak around and place traps, you can be a summoner… Probably more that I didn’t think of yet. And using all these different tools is a lot of fun.Having played this I am unbelievably excited for the sequel, which enters Early Access this year.