Quality is partly subjective, right? You can’t rip an arthouse game if you’ve only ever played RPGs. So, in order to give you quality AND to make sifting through a butt-load of games easier, we’ve divvied them up into 12 genre categories in our Indie Playground. Some are familiar, a few might be new, but they’re here to guide you to the best indie games.

If you’re new to indie games altogether, basically all you need to know is that they’re made by small teams (sometimes twenty people, sometimes one person). Because they’re small and they don’t often have huge financial support like the AAA titles (the 60hrs+ games with the highest quality graphics and animations, etc.), they have a lot of freedom to be experimental. They don’t always push for the best polish, but they absolutely push the boundaries of the expected to bring us fresh gameplay in every genre.

The Indie Playground is our tribute to the love we have for these teams and what they represent: creativity, passion, dedication, strong friendships, and potential. The risks some of these teams take to make their games and have their statement be heard is something we respect immensely. So go meet the devs, spend time talking with them and giving your feedback. You’re the whole reason they’ve come to show their games, they want to meet you too!

BTW: There’s an Indie Stage
Watch our indies take to the Indie Stage with fun presentations throughout each day of the festival. We give all of them a 15-minute window under the spotlights to give you a deep dive into their games and their motivations behind creating them—or to hand out goodies. At these talks, you can really get inside the mind of a game developer and then track them down afterwards, stalk them relentlessly, and message them on Discord at all hours until you get blocked (<– bad idea). Or you could just play their game at our show.