Indie Games Worth Your Attention: Hidden Gems of 2023

Beyond the flashy marketing campaigns and massive budgets of AAA titles lies a vibrant world of indie games created by small teams with big ideas. While mainstream releases often dominate gaming discourse, indie developers consistently deliver some of the most innovative, heartfelt, and creative experiences in the medium. In 2023, the indie scene is thriving more than ever, with games that push boundaries in storytelling, art direction, and gameplay mechanics.

In this article, we're spotlighting ten remarkable indie games released this year that deserve your attention. From puzzle games that will challenge your mind to narrative adventures that will touch your heart, these hidden gems offer experiences you won't find in mainstream gaming.

Hollow Knight: Silksong

The long-awaited sequel to Team Cherry's masterpiece has finally arrived, and it exceeds the already sky-high expectations. Hollow Knight: Silksong puts players in control of Hornet, the princess-protector of Hallownest, as she journeys through an entirely new kingdom with new abilities, enemies, and challenges.

Building on the foundation of the original, Silksong maintains the precise platforming and challenging combat while introducing a more agile protagonist with a distinct moveset. The hand-drawn art style is even more breathtaking, with vibrant new biomes and grotesquely beautiful enemy designs.

What truly sets Silksong apart is how it expands the rich lore of the Hollow Knight universe while telling a story that stands on its own. With a soundtrack that rivals the original's haunting melodies and over 150 new enemies to encounter, this game will easily consume 30+ hours of your life—and you'll cherish every minute.

Spiritfarer: Farewell Edition

Thunder Lotus Games has expanded their heartwarming management sim about death and saying goodbye with the definitive Spiritfarer: Farewell Edition. This complete package includes all previously released DLC plus new spirits to shepherd to the afterlife, new islands to explore, and additional story content.

As Stella, the newly appointed Spiritfarer, players sail a mystical sea, build and customize their boat, and help deceased spirits fulfill their final wishes before crossing through the Everdoor. The game balances resource management and platforming with deeply emotional storytelling that approaches death with remarkable compassion and warmth.

The gorgeous hand-drawn animations and soothing soundtrack create a meditative experience, while the relationships you build with each spirit—from a grumpy hedgehog to a deer-like ballet teacher—will leave a lasting impression. It's rare for a game to handle such weighty themes with this level of grace and emotional intelligence.

Neon White

One of the most innovative games of the year, Neon White defies easy categorization. Part first-person shooter, part platformer, part visual novel, and part speedrunning challenge, this stylish game from Angel Matrix and Annapurna Interactive is unlike anything else you'll play in 2023.

You play as White, an assassin from Hell selected to compete in a competition to eliminate demons in Heaven. The core gameplay revolves around collecting cards that grant specific weapons and abilities, which you can either use to attack enemies or discard to perform special movement techniques like double jumps or dashes.

Each level is designed to be completed in under a minute, encouraging you to find the optimal path and shave off milliseconds from your time. The Y2K-inspired aesthetic, pulsing electronic soundtrack, and anime-influenced visual novel sections create a complete package that's both style and substance. It's addictive, challenging, and utterly unique.

Dave the Diver

Dave the Diver from MINTROCKET is perhaps the most pleasant surprise of the year. This part diving sim, part restaurant management game has you playing as Dave, who explores a mysterious underwater trench by day and helps run a sushi restaurant by night.

During diving segments, you'll catch fish, discover treasures, and uncover the secrets of the Blue Hole. The ocean is gorgeously rendered with vibrant colors and diverse marine life, with elements of survival as you manage your oxygen and avoid dangerous predators.

Back at the restaurant, you'll prepare the fish you've caught, serve customers, and upgrade your menu and facilities. What makes Dave the Diver special is how it seamlessly blends these disparate gameplay styles with a charming story and characters. The game constantly introduces new mechanics and surprises to keep things fresh, from underwater photography challenges to rhythm-based cooking minigames.

Dredge

Combining fishing simulation with cosmic horror, Dredge from Black Salt Games creates a uniquely unsettling experience. As a fisherman arriving at a remote archipelago, you quickly discover that something is very wrong beneath the waves.

By day, Dredge plays like a relaxing fishing game as you catch various species, sell your haul, and upgrade your boat. But as night falls, the sea transforms into something sinister. Strange creatures appear, your sanity begins to waver, and what you dredge up from the depths becomes increasingly disturbing.

The game's strength lies in its atmosphere and pacing. It never relies on jump scares, instead building dread through environmental storytelling, eerie sound design, and a gradual revelation of the island's dark history. If you enjoy games that make your skin crawl without resorting to explicit horror, Dredge is a catch you won't want to throw back.

Slay the Princess

From the creators of Neocab comes Slay the Princess, a narrative horror game that deconstructs storytelling tropes in fascinating ways. The premise is deceptively simple: you must slay a princess locked in a cabin in the woods to prevent the end of the world. But nothing is as it seems.

Each playthrough takes about 30-45 minutes, but the game is designed to be replayed multiple times as your choices create branching narratives that reveal new aspects of the story. The princess herself transforms based on your interactions, appearing sometimes as a monster, sometimes as a victim, and sometimes as something else entirely.

The hand-drawn art style shifts between beautiful and disturbing, complemented by exceptional voice acting that brings the limited cast of characters to life. As you progress through multiple playthroughs, the meta-narrative becomes increasingly complex, questioning the nature of choice in games and the relationship between player, character, and story. It's a thought-provoking experience that will stay with you long after you put down the controller.

Cocoon

Created by Jeppe Carlsen, the lead gameplay designer of Limbo and Inside, Cocoon is a visually stunning puzzle game built around a brilliant core mechanic: worlds within worlds.

You control a small insectoid creature that can carry and jump between orbs, each containing an entire world inside. These worlds can be entered, explored, and manipulated, then brought into other worlds to solve increasingly complex puzzles. For example, you might find an object in one world that needs to be used in another, or position one world inside another to align mechanisms across dimensions.

The game never explains its mechanics directly, instead teaching through carefully designed levels that build upon each previous challenge. The alien environments are gorgeous abstract landscapes with a biomechanical aesthetic, complemented by a subtle soundscape that enhances the otherworldly atmosphere. Cocoon achieves that perfect balance where solving its puzzles makes you feel simultaneously clever and guided by intelligent design.

Citizen Sleeper

Citizen Sleeper from Jump Over The Age combines elements of tabletop RPGs with a compelling sci-fi narrative set on Erlin's Eye, a lawless space station at the edge of an interstellar capitalist society.

You play as a Sleeper, a digitized human consciousness in an artificial body owned by a corporation you've escaped from. Each cycle (day), you roll dice that determine your ability to take actions, from working jobs to building relationships with the station's diverse inhabitants.

The game excels in its writing, presenting complex themes of labor exploitation, identity, and community through characters that feel genuinely alive. Your decisions matter as you navigate multiple storylines, choosing which factions to help and relationships to develop while managing your deteriorating synthetic body.

With its evocative art style, atmospheric electronic soundtrack, and systems that elegantly represent precarity and resilience, Citizen Sleeper delivers one of the most thoughtful narratives in gaming this year.

Venba

Cooking games are nothing new, but Venba from Visai Games uses the preparation of food as a lens to tell a powerful story about family, immigration, and cultural preservation.

Set in the 1980s, you play as Venba, an Indian woman who immigrates to Canada with her husband and eventually her son. Through cooking traditional South Indian dishes, you connect with memories of home and pass cultural knowledge to a new generation.

The cooking mechanics involve solving puzzles to reconstruct recipes that have been partially lost or damaged, learning about the history and significance of each dish along the way. Between cooking segments, narrative vignettes explore the family's challenges and relationships over several decades.

With beautiful hand-drawn art, an authentic soundtrack featuring Tamil music, and a story that balances specific cultural experiences with universal emotional resonance, Venba demonstrates how games can meaningfully represent underexplored perspectives.

Hi-Fi Rush

Perhaps the most surprising release of the year, Hi-Fi Rush from Tango Gameworks (known for The Evil Within) was announced and released on the same day, immediately becoming a word-of-mouth sensation.

This rhythm-action game puts you in the shoes of Chai, an aspiring rockstar who accidentally gets a music player fused to his heart during a corporate procedure gone wrong. The entire game world moves to the beat of the soundtrack, from enemy attacks to environmental animations, creating a uniquely synchronized experience.

Combat involves timing your attacks to the music for maximum effect, with increasingly complex combinations and special moves as you progress. The cel-shaded visual style pops with color and personality, while the licensed soundtrack featuring bands like Nine Inch Nails and The Black Keys drives the action.

What makes Hi-Fi Rush stand out isn't just its innovative rhythm mechanics, but its heart. The story is surprisingly touching, the characters are genuinely funny, and the whole experience exudes a joyful energy that's infectious. It's a reminder that games can still surprise us with new ideas executed flawlessly.