What are your favorite Indie Games from the last 5 or so years?

Pyre - I know Hades is amazing but I honestly believe Pyre is Supergiants best game and its not even close. It's a game explicitly about revolution and solidarity, it surprises me it doesn't get mentioned on Hexbear more.

Return of the Obra Dinn - "Well that guy got stabbed, that guy got shot, THAT GUY HAD HIS ARM RIPPED OFF BY A GIANT SQUID AND WAS IMPALED BY A SPLINTERED ROWING PADDLE AND GOT SHOT IN THE HEAD WITH A CANNONBALL nobody has ever been MORE dead."

Balatro - You already know.

I'm also playing Pillars of Eternity again so that too.

I wanted to play pyre the other day but they never ported it to the switch :'(

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chants of senaar is decent entertainment for an afternoon
balatro, number go up
pizza tower, warioware clone but wilder
yomi hustle, TAS fighting game. Its a fun thought experiment that quickly devolved into which character had the unpatched unblockable loop

I'm a pedantic nerd and just wanna correct you a lil. Pizza Tower is a clone of Wario Land, specifically Wario Land 4. Warioware is a different series based on very quick mini games.

Yomi hustle is really good! Or it used to be, like you said. There aren't a lot of really good turn based multiplayer games and I wish there were. It's the only kind of multiplayer I can stomach.
+1 for Chants of Senaar. For anyone reading who hasn't heard of it, it's an isometric puzzle game based on linguistics. You control a person trying to climb this megastructure where each level has a different culture and language and so you have to figure out the various writing systems and syntaxes to find your way

I can't be arsed to figure out which of these are "actually" indie or just seemingly lower budget, so:

SIGNALIS - unmatched aesthetic & vibes, after finishing it the first time I kept thinking about it so went back for a second round on survivor/classic difficulty
Pizza Tower - it's just so peak
Nidhogg - I think this came out more than five years ago but I finally played it this year. Even though it's extremely basic and doesn't have a real campaign it's just so incredibly polished in its deceptively simple combat system that I kept coming back for more.
Return of the Obra Dinn - spent a wonderful Sunday afternoon solving this one sitting at my kitchen table with my steam deck and giant ledger notebook
Into the Breach - extremely fun, every single turn feels absolutely clutch; however you have to play basically perfectly in order to win so it is quite stressful
Night in the Woods - explicitly leftist game, one of the few
The Messenger - this one is really fun and has great music. My partner still remembers and talks about watching me play it.
Katana Zero - it's got that one hit kill/quick retry mechanic, excellent game. It's the game that Hotline Miami wishes it was imo.
Hyper Light Drifter - there are some massive unwarranted difficulty spikes but if you get around those this is a wonderful, beautiful game

Love SIGNALIS, the anticommunist slant is cringe for sure, but the story and game itself are fantastic. I cried at the "true" ending, and it still pops into my head from time to time.

Pizza Tower is definitely on the top of my list.

Thanks for the recs!
excited for the katana zero dlc to come out in 2043.
Hot take: The Messenger is a good version of Ninja Garden.

The Messenger/Sea of Stars and Hades

Disco Elysium, Pathos Nethack, Cultist Simulator, Slime Rancher but I think that's been more than 5 yrs on that one.

Of course the big ones like Hades, Disco Elysium, Slay the Spire, Balatro. A few lesser known ones that I really like and wish got more attention:

Griftlands: two-track deck building roguelite by Klei (Don't Starve, Oxygen not Included, Mark of the Ninja) with rich worldbuilding and good stories. Honestly criminal how little attention it got.
Streets of Rogue: Immersive sim roguelike with lots of cool characters and situations you can stumble into. Eagerly awaiting the sequel!
Shadows Over Loathing: stick figure rpg with a unique setting and humor that's actual entertaining. Overshadowed by the success of its predecessor West of Loathing, and perhaps not as good, but still very enjoyable.

The others like Disco Elysium and Signals have been said so I'll add Tunic! I love the artstyle and the puzzles in this game are insane, definitely not everyone's cup of tea but one of my favourites.

spoiler

decoding the Trunic language was one of the most accomplished moments I've had in gaming, along with solving the golden path. And then learning there's an entirely different hidden language in the music of the game is a whole other level of insanity

Tunic is a really special game, instant classic

Pizza Tower babyyyyy

On my list for sure!

Sunless Skies!

-HESUNTHESUNTHESUNTHESUNTHES-

How has no one mentioned Outer Wilds yet? That's usually right on up there in these kinds of threads, because it's great. An absolute masterpiece of a game.

Pathologic 2 is also a masterpiece, but a (purposefully) miserable game to play. It's so beautiful and the world is so rich, but it definitely demands perseverance to make it through, because it will do everything it can to make you hate it.

A Short Hike isn't quite as narratively satisfying as the other two, but it's short and fun and extremely adorable. Just a pleasant little world to spend an afternoon in.

+1 on Outer Wilds! It's incredible
Outer Wilds is brilliant, and my favorite game of all time.

I actually own Pathologic 2, I have just been too daunted by it to play it, haha.

SIGNALIS and SYNTHETIK/SYNTHETIK 2

Theres just something about isometric retrofuturist german games that have titles stylized with all caps y'know?

Love SIGNALIS, the anticommunist slant is cringe for sure, but the story and game itself are fantastic. I cried at the "true" ending, and it still pops into my head from time to time.

Will have to check out SYNTHETIK, thanks for the recs!
- I went into SIGNALIS totally blind and expected it to turn out to be queerbaiting. That scene after the false ending literally made my jaw drop. Agreed on the anticommunist slant, but atleast its not totally obnoxious and mostly says "people shouldn't be brutalized by the systems they inhabit" so I elected to reinterpret it as anticapitalist lol.
  
  One little bit about SYNTHETIK: either game is a blast and SYNTHETIK 2 is finally in a state where it is as fleshed out, if not more so than its predecessor. S1 is remarkably lightweight and runs beautifully however S2 has some issues with Proton and I have to periodically restart the program to prevent it from crashing my whole-ass system (Linux Mint). SYNTHETIK 1 has a freeware version called SYNTHETIK: Arena which will let you check out the mechanics to see if you like them, Arena also supports CO-OP play much like the base game! (I really like SYNTHETIK c: )

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I really enjoyed Sable, cool exploration game with a lovely artstyle and my favorite soundtrack in years.

Also really enjoy Balatro, Void Stranger, Norco, Last Call BBS, and Cloudpunk. (Really looking forward to Nivalis!)

Sable was a lovely little story
20th century food court from last call bbs was really good

CrossCode ZeroRanger Hades Rabbit & Steel

ZeroRanger is 10/10, a must-play for anyone into shmups

Ooblets. It is the game equivalent of a warm hug. Charming, polished, anti-capitalist.

Love me some Noita. Falling Sands physics and coding-like wand building in a world far vaster than the provided path suggests. Difficult as fuck tho. Part of that might be my insistence on always making a wand with every explosive I find stuck in a single trigger which I inevitably misfire.

CrossCode, Unsighted, Ultrakill, YOMI Hustle, Animall Well

Enter the Gungeon, Atomic Crops, Hades, slay the spire, hardspace shipbreaker

Shrinking back into an infant upon realizing that spire only came out officially in 2019. Feels like it's been around forever
- Well it was in early access for like 2 years I want to say, so maybe that's stretching the parameters of this post, but I've continued to play hours of it even now. One day I'll get to ascension 20.

Kor

I'm a big fan of Pathologic 2. Had been aware of Pathologic for years but finally played the remake after learning of it from this Hbomberguy video.

Calling it survival horror doesn't really communicate what the game is but it's a start. It's heavily dialog driven, and very deeply thought out. Reading the artbook I noticed references to internal contradictions as sources of tension and evolution, which was neat.

I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:

yewtu.be

inv.nadeko.net

yt.artemislena.eu

piped.video

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Try Pseudoregalia if you like 3D platformers! Super fun.

Buckshot Roulette, Darkest Dungeon II, and Hades.

Probably not favorite-favorite (many of those have already been mentioned), but Children of Morta needs some love. A solid action roguelike with a very well done narrative and great atmosphere.

Balatro and Vampire Survivors are natural picks because number goes up dopamine hits, but I gotta give a huge shoutout to Lunistice. 3D platformer with extremely tight controls, possibly the tightest I’ve experienced. I even got 100% achievements, which I never do, because it feels just that good to play.

Honorable mentions to House Flipper 2 and Powerwash Simulator for good games to relax while feeding that perfectionism itch.

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