While it was a dreadful year in terms of real-world events, 2020 was a fairly decent one when comes to video games; besides big name studio releases such as the Final Fantasy VII Remake, there have been a wide range of indie titles, such as Hades and Among Us, which have taken both the gaming community and social media by storm. The multiplayer indie games of 2020, in particular, let gamers to bond and connect with each other while stranded at home, and the single-player titles created vividly drawn characters with moving stories that've inspired fans to make their own artistic content online.
Gamers are drawn to indie games for a variety of reasons. Some like them for their culture prestige - the novelty of supporting developers not beholden to big, triple-AAA corporations. Indie games, thanks to their smaller budgets and teams of developers, also tend to be more focused on theme, disdaining cutting-edge graphics in favor of minimalistic, rewarding gameplay. There's a reason Among Us became a smash hit, despite having graphics similar to a browser-based Flash game.
The indie games below have been selected based on the following criteria: First, they were all released in 2020. Second, they're quite good. Third, they've resonated with a lot of people, thanks to interesting main characters, novel multiplayer interactivity, and powerful emotional themes.
Best Indie Games Of 2020 - Hades
Hades finally came out in September 2020 after years of development, and gamers generally agreed it was well worth the wait. Its rogue-like action RPG gameplay - centered around moving through foe-haunted labyrinths, dying, and gaining power and upgrades for the next attempt - meshed perfectly with the story of Zagreus, son of the Greek god Hades, and his stubborn attempts to escape from the Underworld. Hades is also a game with a story centered around relationships: the troubled relationships Zagreus has with his father and other gods/goddesses of the Greek pantheon, the nurturing relationships he has with the dead spirits of the Underworld, and the passionate romantic relationships he can have with the Fury Megaera and the death god Thanatos.
Best Indie Games Of 2020 - Among Us
One of the most iconic "find the imposters" video games to come out in recent years, Among Us has become a wildly popular party game on Twitch and other streaming platforms. In the game's suspenseful sci-fi premise, a group of cartoonishly rendered astronauts repairs the systems of a junky spaceship of facility, while "Impostors" try to catch the crewmates alone, murder them, and sabotage the repair efforts. The true heart of Among Us lies in the meeting segments, where various players accuse each other being Imposters and vote to see who gets thrown out of the airlock, a gameplay facet which has popularized the use of the memetic phrase, "That guy's pretty sus."
Best Indie Games Of 2020 - Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout
Among Us isn't the only party game of 2020 with with cute, pudgy player characters. Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout, released in August, is loosely modeled after obstacle-course game shows like Legends of the Hidden Temple, with teams of competitors racing through increasingly elaborate obstacle courses, team sports, and precarious death traps suspended over a long drop. Like in many obstacle-course game shows, the goal is for players to not get eliminated and survive to the end. The newest season of Fall Guys has introduced a new set of medieval-themed character outfits and castle-themed maps to run wild in - and yes, there is a Jester costume.
Best Indie Games Of 2020 - Spiritfarer
Described by developers at Thunder Lotus Games as "a cozy management game about dying," Spiritfarer is about a psychopomp named Stella who steers a ferry ship through a purgatory-like spirit world, collecting wayward souls and helping them pass on to the other side. Mechanically, Spiritfarer is centered around crafting food dishes, upgrading Stella's ferry, and learning the backstories of the animal-shaped spirit characters found throughout the world. Thematically, Spiritfarer is a weighty games that explores powerful emotions, such as the light-hearted humor of interacting with colorful personalities, the heartwarming joy of making others happy, and the poignant sorrow when someone says goodbye to their dying loved ones.
Best Indie Games Of 2020 - Blaseball
At first-glance, Blaseball is just a browser-based baseball sim in which players bet on the outcome of matches between fictional baseball teams, then spend their in-game currency to vote for rule changes or upcoming events. On closer inspection, players will discover Blaseball has a horror-fantasy game setting as weird as Fallen London or Welcome to Night Vale, where umpires can incinerate players with their minds, blood and peanuts rain from the sky, and entire baseball teams can get sucked into portals of hell. Blaseball is ultimately a game built on community and a love of sports - not just the shared camaraderie of spectators getting together to cheer on their teams, but the enthusiasm of online content creators who bring the oddly-named baseball athletes to life with fanart, fictional narratives, and cheerful speculation.