20 Awesome Indie Games You Should Play on Nintendo Switch
So you finally got your Nintendo Switch, just in time for Nintendo to start hinting that the Switch 2 (or Super Nintendo Switch or whatever they call it) is coming out next year . Well, don’t worry – falling behind the gaming curve can be good! You may feel like you’re years late with the game, but you’re actually in luck: you have over half a century to catch up, and the Switch library is one of the best in gaming history – especially if you’re looking at more than just your favorite in-house games , such as Mario, Zelda and Pokémon , but also a huge library of independent games available for download with one click. (And usually at a great price , especially if you’re expecting a big sale .)
Here are the top 20 to get you started, ranging from platformers to puzzles to RPGs. And you’re only scratching the surface.
Shovel Knight: Treasury
IGN Rating: 9
Have you ever played Mega Man ? Shovel Knight is just that. Have you ever played DuckTales ? Shovel Knight looks like him too. You play as a titled warrior (guess what weapon you have) on a quest to save your best friend from a group of villains who call themselves The Order Without Mercy. As you progress through each of their themed stages, you will navigate unique terrain and improve your skills, which you will need to defeat the boss at the end. And once you’re done playing as Shovel Knight, you can replay the game as one of the villains (most of whom turn out to be not as evil as they seem). It’s more than just reskins, it’s an (almost) brand new adventure with its own game mechanics and controls. I couldn’t stop playing until I finished all four of them. Read the IGN review .
Fes
IGN Rating: 9.5
Fez is one of the most mind-expanding games I’ve ever played, a platformer/puzzle hybrid where you play as a little dude living in a 2D world who suddenly gains the ability to see in 3D. As a player, this means that you have the ability to rotate the world on its own axis with the push of a button on your shoulder; when viewed from a different angle, platforms that once seemed out of reach are now easy to jump off, and hidden doors open around the back of a tree trunk. You’re embarking on a journey to explore your new, wider world – and save it – and you’ll need to use your new abilities to the fullest if you want to figure out how to do it. There are no enemies to defeat, just interconnected levels to navigate and overcome, and a few nearly unsolvable puzzles. There’s even an alien language you can learn to decipher (or if you value your sanity, you can just search the internet for clues). Also, the music is totally gushing.
Sayonara Wild Hearts
IGN Rating: 7.9
A great music video with rhythm game and slash interactive sounds like a dream (because, concept spoiler, it’s kind of a dream): you play as a young woman who is chasing (or running) from a group of stylish villains through forests and cityscapes, exercising their reflexes and button presses at just the right moment to a synth-pop soundtrack that sounds like Chvrches b-sides are worth the whole album. If you just want to beat it, you can beat it in about two hours, but the gameplay and melodies are so addictive that you’ll keep coming back for that high score.
Messenger
IGN Rating: 8
Like Shovel Knight, The Messenger takes one of the best games of the 80s and improves upon it, fixing everything that was broken or frustrating. This time around, the reference model is Ninja Gaiden , a classic NES platform game in which you play as a ninja fighting to avenge his father’s death by jumping, wall-climbing, and punching countless endlessly generated enemies. It was one of my favorite games growing up (I was so into the story that I even read the novelization), but I was never good enough to beat it, even with Game Genie, because it’s so damn hard. Messenger offers basically the same gameplay but with useful additions like more frequent save points and the ability to upgrade your armor and weapons. Sure, it’s easier, but it’s hardly easy – and the crazy storyline, rife with self-aware humor commenting on the inherent absurdity of games in general, only makes it better.
Iconoclasts
IGN Rating: 8.4
The product of one developer, Joakim Sandberg, Iconoclasts has all the platforming features of a game built by a large team, but also idiosyncratic quirks that suggest a unique vision in action. You play as a young engineer in a techno-dystopian world where mechanical know-how is outlawed and the ruling class controls access to energy-supplying ivory with a literal religious zeal. So, the story is a little confusing (I beat the game and barely understand it), but the gameplay is absolutely fantastic: Mega Man-influenced Metroidvania, in which you use your stun gun and wrench to blast and punch enemies and solve difficult environmental puzzles . I loved every minute of it.
door of death
IGN Rating: 9
If you love Zelda , Death’s Door is one of my favorites and one of the best games of 2021. In this isometric adventure, you play as a soul-collecting crow in the service of death itself. When your final harvest goes wrong, you become the unwitting investigator of a vast conspiracy that spans life and death as you make your way through three dungeons to gather enough soul power to open the “door of death.” The game offers a marvelous combination of exploration and combat – perhaps too much of the latter; if you’re not much better than me, you’ll have to fight your way through a lot of common baddies to upgrade your spells, defenses, and weapons until you’re strong enough to take on the big bosses. But the quirky humor, quirky characters, and melancholy atmosphere make it a treat.
Celeste
IGN Rating: 10
Celeste is a breathtaking platform game in which you play as a young woman who faces fears, both literally and figuratively, on her way to the top of a mystical mountain. There isn’t much to this story, but this award-winning game has one of the most gripping narratives I’ve ever seen, probably because in order to get to the emotional ending, I had to go through some of the well-crafted , a terribly difficult yet somehow never disappointing platformer that I have ever experienced. The game is built around a single, deceptively simple mechanic – your character’s ability to string multiple jumps together before your stamina drops and forces you to touch solid ground again – which you’ll have to master with precision if you hope to make it to the top. summit. Best of all, if you ever get stuck, the game will let you access a deep menu of accessibility options that can help you out of a tight spot. (Though I finally found clearing the screen after dozens or more deaths – my total death count for the whole game was in the thousands – so satisfying that I never turned them on.)
Hades
IGN review: 9
It’s number one on every list of the best indie games of the last decade, and for good reason. You play as Zagreus, the child of Hades (yes, the same one), on a hopeless quest to fend off the endless hordes of Hell, escape the underworld, and reunite with his mother on Earth. And when I say hopeless, I mean this: by design, you will die a lot while playing this game (constant failures are a hallmark of the “rogue lite” genre ; every time you die, you transfer some of your strength, loot and experience until the next playthrough). While a game designed to kill you over and over and over and over again can feel tedious, Hades makes it fun as every time you’re about to get killed, you’ll suck a little less and progress a little further. And that’s not even taking into account the fantasy story that slowly develops over time as you talk to (and sometimes kill) your fellow citizens of hell; the storytelling is unprecedented for the genre, presented by perfect voice acting and memorable character designs.
Cuphead
IGN review: 8.8
If Hades didn’t turn you into a glutton as punishment, Cuphead will finish the job. It’s a run-and-gun shooter where you play as a guy with a cup for a head. (Just deal with it – the game’s old-fashioned cartoonish visuals and humor are half the fun, and even spawned a Netflix animated series). You have accidentally sold your soul to the devil and you will have to work for him as a bounty hunter if you want to get it back. This entails 16 boss fights (90% of the game are boss fights), each more berserk than the last. As you progress, you can upgrade your weapons and get more health, and you’ll probably need it: getting the soul of each boss requires fast reflexes, a good memory for patterns, and a lot of determination – before I crash into a wall after a dozen or so victories, I died about 300 times. This is the hardest game I have ever played.
A little to the left
If you prefer a puzzle game that will put you in a zen state (or perhaps activate your obsessive-compulsive disorder), this recent release is a winner. Each of his many puzzles is a scene with cluttered objects – a cluttered toolbox or an overflowing bookshelf. It’s up to you how to put them in order. How you do this will depend on how your brain works and what it tells you about being “organized”; every puzzle has multiple solutions, and finding one that works is like scratching an itch – completely satisfying until it triggers another itch just to the left.
neon white
IGN Rating: 8
I don’t know how to describe this game and watching the video above will probably only help a little. But at your core, you’re an undead slayer demon, and you need to get through hundreds of precariously designed levels as fast as possible, using the powers granted to you by a mountain of weapons that you activate by burning through a deck of games. cards, hoping to win a place in heaven. By sacrificing a specific weapon/card, you will gain a special move, from an extra jump to incredible speed, that will help you cross dangerous terrain. The point is to finish as quickly as possible. No, I don’t understand either, and I’ve already played it. But once you get your bearings, it’s a good time and the story is fun too.
History of golf
IGN Rating: 7.5
A cold RPG built around golf wasn’t exactly on my list of must-haves when I got my Switch, and yet here we are. You play as a determined golfer who has one last chance to live out his dreams of lawn glory, but it will mean exploring, traversing and conquering eight unique courses that mimic the lands you would travel to in traditional fantasy. adventure. It’s just that this time, instead of fighting monsters and summoning demons to fight for you, you make the first strike and perfect your strike – in between side quests, you can take on to help the strange characters you meet along the way. Because while you might not expect much in terms of story from a supposedly sports game, this game doesn’t play around with the word “Story” in the title. This game is filled with fun humor and an otherworldly atmosphere that fans of Earthbound will love. Starew who?
Stardew Valley
IGN Rating: 9.5
Fine. I will mention this too; Stardew Valley is ostensibly a farming sim, but it goes much deeper than that. This is a game that can be played forever. As Brendan Hesse said on this site:
Players sew and grow crops, mine ores, fish, and even fight monsters in the surrounding wilderness, then sell their crops to upgrade their homes and tools. Along with the farm simulator and light action-RPG gameplay, you also go to the city to interact with the townspeople by completing errands and side quests for them. You can even date and marry multiple characters.
Developed by just one guy nicknamed ConcernedApe, this game has brought its creator about $30 million and he deserves every penny spent.
cave story
IGN Rating: 8.5
Don’t let Cave Story’s super-simple graphics fool you – this game isn’t a holdover from the 8-bit era, but a homage (and controversial improvement) to old-school adventure platformers like Metroid and Castlevania – and like Stardew Valley and Iconoclasts, it was developed and was programmed for five years by the same game designer Daisuke Amaya. You play as a robot who has lost his memory, and you have to travel through the underground landscape in search of salvation and unravel the mystery of your origin along the way. Controls that feel stiff at first end up being perfectly calibrated as you upgrade your weapons and get new gear that will soon have you racing back through the areas that kicked your ass the first time.
Overboard
Choose your own path interactive storytelling in which you play as a 1930s actress whose star is fading, a cruise ship passenger hours from the port in New York whose husband has gone missing…because you are his pushed overboard at night. It is up to you to steer the ship and talk to the other passengers so that your crime goes unnoticed until you go ashore. With a subtle sense of humor and a branching narrative that opens up multiple paths to victory, this is a cozy interactive puzzle you didn’t know you had.
Nameless goose game
IGN Rating: 8
In this game, you play as an inquisitive goose with a penchant for wreaking havoc in and around a former idyllic village community. As you hobble from place to place, you’re given checklists of random tasks to complete, from picking up an entire place from an open-air restaurant to locking a hapless gardener out of his yard. Figuring out how to accomplish them requires creativity and an understanding of cause and effect logic that borders on the absurd. And when it gets too annoying, you can take a breather and run around honking to the kids and stealing the store owner’s merchandise. It’s pure chaos with feathers.
What’s left of Edith Finch
IGN Rating: 8.8
The dark, rewarding psychological journey What Remains of Edith Finch is an interactive storytelling experience where you explore the family’s broken history through the generations, the story unfolding in episodic chapters as you explore the family home. It might be a stretch to call it a game, as you basically progress through it in a straight line without encountering any obstacles along the way, but wandering around the estate on your own yields a haunted story – perhaps involving a family curse that took a generation after another, a truly immersive quality.
Return of Obra Dinn
IGN Rating: 9.2
A decidedly lo-fi puzzle game that wears its gritty aesthetic like a badge of honour, The Return of the Obra Dinn is an atmospheric first-person detective game that puts you aboard the titular ship that has returned from a voyage without all of its passengers. . You have to explore the ship and find out everything you can about who was on board and what happened to them. Contrary to video game clichés, there are now glowing arrows or glowing objects to help you in your investigation, meaning you’ll have to be creative and meticulous in your search to unravel the mystery of what happened to the ship.
Tunic
IGN Rating: 9
This game was a lifesaver after I finished Death’s Door and was desperate for another similar experience. Like the previous contender game of the year, Tunic is a Zelda -style adventure starring a small, adorable animal who embarks on a magical adventure filled with pure atmosphere (if it’s not maddeningly challenging combat and challenging puzzles). A quirky twist here is that all of the in-game signs and speech are printed in an incomprehensible non-language, meaning you’ll have to work really hard to figure out how to navigate the ground and overcome the many roadblocks that stand in your way. It can be frustrating at first, but once you get the hang of it, the game opens up and becomes a truly fun action adventure game – familiar but completely different.
hollow knight
IGN Review: 9.4
With the exception of the original version of this list and its absence noted in the comments (as expected), Hollow Knight is one of the most successful and fanatically revered indie games of recent years, and rightly so. It’s an expansive metroidvania-style adventure where you play as a cute little bone knight exploring a post-apocalyptic world in search of his past, facing incredibly challenging environmental puzzles and fiendishly challenging combat. With a crafty aesthetic that feels like a cross between Tim Burton and classic Disney animation, it really is worth getting lost into (which is a good thing because it will take you dozens of hours to complete).
This article was originally published in December 2022 and updated in August 2023 to add new context, additional titles, and ratings and links to IGN reviews.