The most ambitious indie video game

Indie games, games made without the financial or technical backing of a major game publisher, enjoy great popularity from fans who can see the passion of the creators shine through, creators they feel they can support more directly. Especially since many of these games are incredibly ambitious in scope and strive for the same quality as AAA games without the same budget or resources.

If you've ever thought about making 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 a die-hard gamer, take a moment to appreciate how much passion and dedication it takes to achieve development goals that may seem nearly impossible on paper.

9 No Man's Sky

Although the post-release gameplay fell short of the game's ambitions, it certainly had a lot of great ideas for a team of just 15 people to create. They wanted to create an endless game. They wanted players to be able to explore a space full of procedurally generated worlds forever and never reach its end.

However, despite this disappointing release, the team behind the game, Hello Games, worked tirelessly to bring the game up to the standards players expected and has since come a long way. At the end of the day, there is an amazing amount of commitment to a very big idea.

8 Minecraft

Although it was bought by Microsoft in 2014, the undeniably hugely popular game Minecraft began as an independent project that was designed as an endlessly playable sandbox game. The creator, Markus “Notch” Persson, designed the initial game, the “Java Version”, very quickly, but then updated it himself for the next three years until it reached the version we know better.

The more money those versions of the game made, the more money he put back into updates, eventually quitting his day job and founding Mojang to make the game even better. Notably, the lead designer role was transferred to Jens “Jeb” Bergensten, who continued to independently expand the scope of the game until the acquisition.

7 Undertale

If you haven't heard of Undertale yet, do yourself a favor and enjoy the amazing experience of playing blind. For everyone else, you've more than likely at least heard of this indie darling that revolutionized the way the medium handled meta-narratives and challenged the way violence was used as a tool in games.

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

6 The surviving vampires

Apparently, the creator Luca Galante should have resigned from 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 a video game designer. Its early access version was released on itch.io with little fanfare (and it caught COVID), but thankfully it survived.

The game's high-energy “bullet hell” style has spawned several clones since then, but this is the game that started the wave. An impressive feat for one man. Now that he's making better money from the game, he's able to bring in more people to make the game an even more perfect and evolving experience.

5 Hades

Supergiant Games, a 20-person team at the time, wanted to create a game based on extensive user feedback that could be played in short bursts, but still had an interesting story that kept players engaged. What they settled on became the highly regarded roguelike Hades.

What makes this game so ambitious is that advancing the story through multiple playthroughs meant planning and writing hours worth of branching dialogue for the NPCS. And during the creation of this game, the team even decided to completely rewrite the custom game engine they used in previous titles to give it the technical capacity to achieve their vision.

4 Disco Elysium

Disco Elysium has put a lot of work into becoming the game the creators envisioned. The founder of ZA/UM who developed the game was a novelist who had no experience creating video games prior to this game. He envisioned an in-depth, isometric CRP game that drew on D&D, 1970s cop shows, and a steampunk setting, among other things.

When work on this game began, the local team involved literally lived in a squat, constantly looking for new artists to contribute. Eventually, the team raised more funding and eventually reached over a hundred contributors, resulting in an impressive game that you can now play.

3 Hollow Knight

Two of Team Cherry's game developers, Ari Gibson and William Pellen, started this game with two failed games before coming up with 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.

Gibson impressively hand-drawn a lot of the art seen in the game, which was then scanned directly into the game engine. It was funded on Kickstarter and a sequel is in the works.

2 Stardew Valley

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

In fact, there is only one person behind Stardew Valley: Eric “ConcernedApe” Barone. 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 a half years of work, it became much more. For a while there, he worked on the game ten hours a day, every day, and the effort paid off.

1 Cuphead

Cuphead, a challenging platformer, took its aesthetic inspiration very seriously, and that meant the creators put more work into making boss fights difficult. The Moldenhauer brothers first tried to make this game in 2000 but couldn't quite achieve what they wanted, they tried again in 2010 and spent four years working on the development.

Part of what makes this game so incredibly impressive is that all game assets have been created using hand-drawn animations to authentically capture that old cartoon feel. This attention to detail extends to every part of the game, even the soundtrack written and recorded using a full jazz ensemble.