DualShockers’ 2025 Game of the Year Awards: Best Indie Games

2025 could easily be described as the Year of the Indies, with GOTY categories featuring titles made by companies outside the big publishers.

Even the AA industry did well, marking a notable shift in tastes worldwide. This is the year when the new Call of Duty was dethroned by ARC Raiders, showing just how much has changed.

Usually, there’s at least one breakout indie hit in the year, one that captures the imagination of players. 2025 was full of titles like that, living hope that the industry isn’t stagnating, and that the era of live service slop could be coming to an end.

It got to the point where narrowing down a top ten list of DualShockers’ favourite indie titles of the year was tough. There was just so much to choose from, with games that the staff had plenty of opinions about.

10 Despelote

Few things unite the world more than football (or soccer, as American heathens know it), and there has been no shortage of high-profile games based on the sport over the years.

Despelote focuses less on the sport itself and more on how it shapes its fans' lives. Set during the preparations for the 2002 World Cup in Ecuador, Despelote is an autobiographical story by its creator, a young boy at the time, who witnessed how the upcoming tournament influenced every aspect of his life and his country's.

Despelote can be finished in a few hours, but you’re experiencing an unforgettable time in someone’s life during the game. It’s a crystallized experience, and the kind that fans of narrative-focused experiences need to play.

9 Rift Of The NecroDancer

Cadence Is Back From Her Adventures In Hyrule

The original Crypt of the NecroDancer mixed roguelike RPG dungeon exploration with rhythm game dance elements. Its spiritual sequel, Rift of the NecroDancer, appears to be a more conventional rhythm title on the surface, but its gameplay loop is far more unique than it may appear.

Rift of the NecroDancer has three rows of descending icons/monsters, and the player needs to hit a corresponding button when it gets to the bottom. The twist that Rift of the NecroDancer adds is that each monster has its own unique mechanics for defeating it, such as needing to hit the button a different number of times.

The excellent soundtrack, coupled with cute visuals, a fun story mode, and minigames, results in a unique rhythm game experience that’s a blast to play.

8 Ball x Pit

The Breakout Hit Of 2025

Not every indie game needs to be some pinnacle of innovation. Just look at Ball x Pit, which mixed the block-breaking gameplay of Breakout with the endless enemy waves and RPG-style progression system of Vampire Survivors.

Ball x Pit is a genuinely addictive game to play, as the main goal is to survive each stage by reflecting balls of enemies and into each other. The game has tons of unlockable characters with unique abilities, special balls to earn, fusion items that combine ball powers, and a town management system for farming resources for upgrades.

Ball x Pit sits on that perfect line of being a game that you can enjoy for a single five-minute run, or for an extended hour-long play session, all while gagging for just another run.

7 Demonschool

Someone Dropped Tactics Into Persona

The calendar system of the Persona series is one of its highlights, and it’s shocking that few games have ever tried to emulate it. Demonschool not only utilizes the school setting and associated scheduling mechanics, but it throws a ton of Final Fantasy Tactics-style gameplay into the mix.

Set in the year 1999, Demonschool stars Faye, a demon hunter who enrolls in a college on Hemsk Island, where a prophecy claims that a demon invasion into the real world will happen. In order to combat this threat, Faye needs to team up with her classmates, smite any fiends that appear, while still staying top of the class.

Demonschool doesn’t quite match the heights of the Persona series, but it’s still a fun romp with a great cast, and will help scratch that Social Links itch.

6 Bionic Bay

Limbo Has Passed On The Torch

Platformers are a popular genre in the indie space, given how many developers were inspired by the classic Nintendo games of the 8 and 16-bit eras. This has led to many games that play with the genre's tropes, either through dark, depressing worlds or by messing with the established gameplay loop.

Bionic Bay does both of these things, with a gorgeous and moody world that’s beautifully cast in shadows, and with a ton of power-ups that make you constantly rethink your approach.

Bionic Bay gives the player access to a variety of abilities that alter the physics of the stages and the protagonist. Not only that, but these powers are switched out over the course of the game, forcing you to re-evaluate your toolbox and switch up accordingly constantly. Sure, it can be brutally hard at times, but that's part of the old FromSoftware-style thrill of overcoming its challenges.

5 Sword of the Sea

A Totally Rad Adventure

A new game from the people who worked on Journey and Abzû comes with a lot of expectations, considering the acclaim those titles earned at launch.

Luckily, Sword of the Sea lived up to its pedigree, being just as beautiful and intriguing as its acclaimed spiritual predecessors. Sword of the Sea stars a Wraith who rides around gorgeous landscapes while using a sword like a magical mixture of skate and surfboard.

Sword of the Sea is one of the most beautiful exploration games ever made, one where you just experience its gorgeous world. Unlike other games of its ilk, there is also a fun gameplay loop here, with monsters to face and secrets to uncover. This is all wrapped by one of, if not the best, soundtracks of 2025, with haunting and uplifting songs accompanying you throughout your unforgettable journey.

4 Dispatch

Who Knew Running The Thunderbolts Was So Fun?

Few games captured the imagination of fans in 2025 more than Dispatch. This superhero management sim/Telltale narrative-focused story game follows a worker at a superhero dispatch agency, who must send out the right capes for the job. Unfortunately, this team isn’t exactly The Avengers: it’s a bunch of former crooks looking to change their ways, and doing a bad job of it.

Dispatch is very much in the vein of the old Telltale games, which makes sense, considering its studio consists of people who worked on games like The Wolf Among Us. What makes Dispatch superior to the Telltale library is that it has an actually fun gameplay loop, with the superhero management sections and their RPG progression system being a blast to experience.

The real reason people clicked with Dispatch is the characters, all with an amazing voice cast. The “Best Girl” debates surrounding Blonde Blazer and Invisigal are what helped sell Dispatch to the public, with arguments still raging online to this day.

3 Blue Prince

Those Contractor Bills Must Be Huge!

It’s rare in 2025 to play a game and feel like you’ve just experienced something truly unique. Blue Prince is one such title, a roguelike puzzle game that actually makes sense: the player builds a house from blueprints (get it) to solve the mystery of its creator.

Blue Prince stars Simon P. Jones, who has been given ownership of the Mt. Holly Estate through his great uncle’s will. Unfortunately for Simon, this isn’t a quick flip and sell job, as the mansion consists of ever-shifting rooms, which the player lays out with special blueprints. Each room has a unique function and information about the mansion’s creator.

Blue Prince is the kind of game that needs to be experienced without any prior knowledge. Go in and work out its puzzles without checking any online walkthroughs to get the most out of it. Master the manor at your own pace, and you’ll be richly rewarded.

2 Hollow Knight: Silksong

The Hornet Was Worth The Wait

It’s strange to think that Hollow Knight: Silksong is here. You can play it right now if you choose. Fans waited for nearly a decade for the chance to experience Hornet’s adventure, and it’s at your fingertips.

Luckily, Hollow Knight: Silksong was worth the wait. Not only does it offer a distinct, yet familiar experience from its predecessor, but it does so in a gorgeous world full of charming characters.

The only reason it didn’t steal the top spot is due to some particularly nasty difficulty spikes and boss fights. Hollow Knight: Silksong is a game that demands a lot from players, and not everyone was able to reach its skill ceiling.

1 Hades 2

This Game Is Heavenly To Play

There was one clear winner for DualShockers’ best indie game of 2025, and that title goes to Hades 2. This action RPG blew people away, earning a 10/10 review score here and marking it as a modern masterpiece.

Hades 2 follows Melinoe, the sister of Zagreus from the original Hades. The gods of Olympus are at war with Chronos, the Titan of Time, forcing Melinoe to be spirited away and raised by witches in order to train her as an assassin, with the aim of her slaying this threat to the pantheon.

The original Hades was a classic in its own right, but it lacked content and variety. Hades 2 not only improved upon the stellar gameplay of the original but also added a ton of exploration and diversity in its dungeons. Cutting through hordes of enemies never gets old, and the fact that there are endless upgrades to unlock and buffs to earn on runs means every playthrough feels unique.