Indie games offer the opportunity for game developers to break free from the constraints of the AAA formula—with its execs and shareholders—and focus on the important things.
Be it a singular gameplay idea, aunique art style, or a story that needs to be told, indie games have been at the forefront of innovation in video games for the last 15+ years.
But, say you still want great bang for your buck in terms of hours spent in a game? Well, indie games encompass the full range of gameplay times, from short 30-minute experiences to 100-hour epics.
What Can Indie Games Offer That Big AAA Games Fail To Deliver On?
From brand new types of gameplay that take risks to unique animations outside the mainstream, Indie Games continue to delight us thanks to their ability to try new things. In your opinion, what can indie games offer that AAA games fail to deliver on repeatedly?
These are the ones we’ll be focusing on today, with the best indie games with over 100 hours of content. The games will be ranked from shortest to longest and won’t include games where there’s no end point—for example, Mount and Blade: Warband or Space Engineers.
All playtimes are fromHow Long To Beatunless otherwise stated.
10FTL: Faster Than Light
FTL: Faster Than Light
FTLis a roguelite set in space whereby you control a crew made up of a mix of humans and aliens. The main objective of the game is to warp through 8 sectors of space, made up of roughly 20 waypoints in each sector.
The problem is, you don’t normally know what you’re going to be warping into, and if an enemy shows up, battle commences.
The game then becomes an RTS, with you sending the crew to focus on different areas of the ship, be it shields, weapons or other rooms.
If you lose, then that’s it. Your ship is lost, and you have to start over with a new ship and new crewmates.
Beating the game then involves a steep skill curve and, with 10 ships in total to unlock alongside a myriad of achievements, you may easily play the game for over 100 hours.
9Stardew Valley
Stardew Valley
InStardew Valley, after being dissatisfied with the office grind, you decide to move to the titular valley to revitalise your grandfather’s farm.
Along the way, you can engage in many different activities, from fishing to mining and, of course, growing many different types of fruit and veg.
You will also engage in the town’s social calendar, from festivals torelationships,and even help participate in a bit of magic, as well as help a mouse gain its livelihood by selling hats.
All in all, there’s a lot to this game, but it’s never overwhelming, with the game allowing you to sit with a system until you understand it before adding a new one.
Overall, the game could take over 150 hours to complete, although really, a farmer’s work is never done.
8Baldur’s Gate 3
Baldur’s Gate 3
Fextralife Wiki
Before you ask, yes, Larian is anindependent studio, although you wouldn’t guess it given the production values on display inBG3.
An in-depth RPG adventure rivaling the best a Dungeon Master can come up with, BG3 has multiple choices throughout the game, from how you approach combat to who you romance, all leading to 4 major endings and over 17,000 different alterations to these endings.
With Patch 8 adding even more content, including12 new subclasses, now is the best time to jump into this grand adventure.
All in all, you can sit in the world of Baldur’s Gate for over 150 hours, and that’s before you get intothe wonderful world of modding.
7Slay The Spire
Slay the Spire
InSlay The Spire, you control one of four characters in a roguelite adventure. However, unlike in FTL, this game also hasdeckbuilding, with more than 730 cards to unlock.
You battle through various enemies, across three acts and 51 floors, unlocking cards, potions, and relics as you go.
Potions are one-time-use items which can help you in a pinch, from providing extra Block to Exhausting your hand.
Relics are powerful items which can bestow special passive effects, from being able to skip floors to providing extra energy.
As with most roguelites, you can technically beat this game quickly, with HLTB giving 12 hours as the target for the main story. However, to unlock all the game has to offer, including 20 difficulty levels, will require nearly 200 hours of playtime.
Terrariais a sandbox game, whereby you control a character who explores a 2D, procedurally generated world. You can then find resources, defeat enemies, and recruit NPCs as villagers.
While the game is procedurally generated, there are certain activities tied to progression, namely, defeating certain bosses. Defeating these bosses will unlock new biomes or increase the difficulty of the world.
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Building something pretty next to your friend’s dirt hut has never been easier than with these games.
The game also incorporates RPG elements, with your character being able to increase their health and mana through the use of equipment.
Overall, the game can be played endlessly, much like other sandbox games, but getting to the end credits will take you anywhere between 50-200 hours.
Factorio is a city builder, in which you’ve crash-landed on an alien world and need to rebuild your ship to escape. To do this you need to build ever-more-complicated factories.
Soon after you start terraforming the world for your use, the aliens will start to appear. You’ll need to defend yourself, firstly with guns on your person and then with sentries and towers built up around your factory.
The game encourages you to move around, at least in the early game, to get the best resources and reengineer your factories to be more efficient.
As with Terraria, the game can technically be beaten in around 50 hours, but if you want to unlock all the achievements and reach peak efficiency, then you’ll be playing for over 200 hours.
In Balatro, you play hands of poker, attempting to score a certain number of points. To help you, you’re able to play Joker cards, which offer a variety of effects and multipliers.
Other special cards like Tarot cards, Spectral cards, and Planet cards can also be played, all of which offer different effects and change synergies, allowing for new poker hands to be played, such as Five of a Kind.
Like the other deckbuilders on this list, one single run can be completed in under an hour.
However, to unlock all the Joker cards and get to the final level of 38 antes, after which the game becomes unwinnable due to an overflow issue in the code, will take over 200 hours.
RimWorldis a management/city-builder, in which you control a colony of humans in a RimWorld, a planet in the frontiers of known space.
You don’t normally control the colonists directly; rather, you give them tasks to do, from building walls to interacting with other colonists. In combat, you are able to ‘draft’ the colonists to allow them to be controlled directly.
The main idea behind RimWorld is that the story events are procedurally generated depending on your actions, the difficulty setting you’ve set, and the ‘AI storyteller’ you’ve picked.
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You could have Cassandra Classic, who implements story events following the classic storytelling technique of rising tension, climax and fall, Phoebe Chillax, who allows for a bit more downtime, or Randy Random, who, you guessed it, just chucks in story beats at random.
To complete the game, you have one of four goals depending on the DLC installed, from building a ship to awakening ancient evil. This can take anywhere between 60 to well over 300 hours.
2Bloons TD 6
Bloons TD 6
Bloons, a long-time partner for bored high-school kids on the school commute, is a tower defence series, whereby you place down towers in the form of monkeys to defend against ever-increasing waves of ‘Bloons’.
In the sixth entry, the series has transitioned from 2D to a 2.5D perspective, with new gameplay mechanics including Paragons, powerful final upgrades to some of the towers, and even a roguelike DLC mode.
For each map, there are multiple modes depending on the difficulty unlocked, from modes that restrict the types of towers you can use, to CHIMP mode, which stops you from using continues, hearts, income, Monkey Knowledge, powers, or selling.
With over 68 maps to complete, there’s easily over 500 hours of content in this game, with more being added on a semi-regular basis.
1The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth
The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth
The Binding of Isaac: Rebirthis a roguelike shooter whereby the player takes control of Isaac, or one of 34 playable characters, to descend the depths of the basement to defeat Isaac’s mother.
The game’s rooms are procedurally generated, and the game contains over 719 items with which to equip yourself with, changing your playstyle drastically.
Some items will help you passively, give you new moves, or change your appearance, while some only activate when you use them.
Counting the DLC from Afterbirth to Repentance, the game has a staggering amount of play options, 22 endings, and nearly 600 hours of content.
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