The best indie games of 2026 (according to Metacritic)

Metacritic is the reference site for finding reviews of video games and films. That is why I have put together the ten best indie games of 2026 according to the general public. I want to make it clear that this is not my personal list, it is the average of what the press has scored.

Let’s take a look at the best rated indie games of the year and the score each one has. I hope you find one you like!

1. Big Walk

• Title: Big Walk
• Metacritic score: 91
• Developer: House House
• Publisher: Panic
• Genre: Co-op adventure
• Platforms: PC and Mac
• Release date: 4 August 2026

The best of the best indie games of 2026 has to be the new one from House House, the people behind Untitled Goose Game, which is not about causing trouble but about going for a very long walk with your friends.

Big Walk is a co-op adventure in a huge open world where you share out the puzzles and challenges. The clever part is the proximity voice chat. Voices fade with distance, echo down corridors and come through broken on the walkie-talkie. Every so often you lose your voice out of nowhere and have to invent another way of understanding each other.

Another lovely touch is that there is plenty of time to do nothing at all, watch the sunset or kick someone’s binoculars into the water while they are distracted.

2. Mina the Hollower

• Title: Mina the Hollower
• Metacritic score: 90
• Developer: Yacht Club Games
• Publisher: Yacht Club Games
• Genre: Action and adventure
• Platforms: PC, Mac and Linux
• Release date: 29 May 2026

The Shovel Knight team has gone for a Game Boy Color look to tell the story of Mina, a Hollower sent to save a cursed island. You fight with a whip, burrow underground to dodge monsters and keep picking up subweapons and trinkets.

The visuals imitate 8 bits with a lot of love, though with detailed animation and a widescreen format.

Critics have singled out how tight the controls feel and how brutal the bosses are.

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3. and Roger

• Title: and Roger
• Metacritic score: 90
• Developer: TearyHand Studio
• Publisher: Kodansha
• Genre: Interactive novel
• Platforms: Nintendo Switch 2, already available on PC and Mac
• Release date: 17 June 2026 on Switch 2, 23 July 2025 on PC

and Roger needs a caveat, because the 90 is the score for the Switch 2 version and on PC it has been out since July 2025.

It is an interactive novel of barely an hour, split into three chapters, where reality bends to its main character’s logic. The girl wakes up on an ordinary morning and instead of her father she finds a stranger asleep on the sofa, insisting she take a pill. She runs off without knowing who the man is. From there it is up to you to decide how much of what you see you believe.

4. Schrödinger’s Call

• Title: Schrödinger’s Call
• Metacritic score: 89
• Developer: Acrobatic Chirimenjako
• Publisher: SHUEISHA GAMES
• Genre: Narrative adventure
• Platforms: PC
• Release date: 27 May 2026

There are twenty-one nanoseconds left before the moon falls and everything ends. Mary wakes up with no memory in a strange room. A cat named Hamlet guides her until she becomes the world’s last confidant. All she has to hand is a telephone to listen to whoever calls from the other side.

The question the game asks is easy to put into words and very hard to answer. If the world were ending, who would you want to speak to one last time. It is drawn like a picture book and it reads with that same calm.

5. Well Dweller

• Title: Well Dweller
• Metacritic score: 89
• Developer: Kyle Thompson
• Publisher: Kyle Thompson, Top Hat Studios and Doyoyo Games
• Genre: Metroidvania
• Platforms: PC
• Release date: 22 September 2026

Next among the best indie games of 2026 is Well Dweller. It comes from the authors of Crypt Custodian and Islets, so the bar was very high.

It is a metroidvania with the air of a dark fairy tale where you play as Glimmer, a little bird armed with a match. His mission is to set fire to the wicked queen and save his family. He lives at the bottom of a well, deep in the forest. From there he opens up the map with new abilities.

Along the way he also meets a handful of characters scraping by among the ruins of the kingdom, like Toni, a mouse on the run from the queen’s claws.

6. Valheim

• Title: Valheim
• Metacritic score: 89
• Developer: Iron Gate AB
• Publisher: Coffee Stain Publishing
• Genre: Survival and exploration
• Platforms: PC, Mac and Linux
• Release date: 9 September 2026 for version 1.0

This one is not a new release either. It has been in early access since 2021 and what the critics scored is the 1.0 version, which arrived in September. It is a survival and exploration game for one to ten people, in a procedurally generated world with Norse mythology behind it.

In Valheim you craft weapons, raise enormous halls and sail the open sea looking for unknown lands. To progress you have to take down the Forsaken, the bosses of each biome.

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7. Denshattack!

• Title: Denshattack!
• Metacritic score: 88
• Developer: Undercoders
• Publisher: Fireshine Games and Boltray Games
• Genre: Arcade action
• Platforms: PC, PS5, Xbox Series and Nintendo Switch 2
• Release date: 15 July 2026

It is the only Spanish game on the list, made in Barcelona by Undercoders. The idea is so odd that it should not work. You ride a train that ignores gravity and pull off ollies, kickflips and grinds across Japanese cities, meadows, volcanoes and oceans. You chain combos to push the score up while earning the respect of an underground network of crews.

The bosses are giant mechs, walking castles and mechanical worms. It has passed 150,000 copies sold and 300,000 players, so I am not the only one it caught off guard. I am glad there is a Spanish game in this top ten.

8. Mewgenics

• Title: Mewgenics
• Metacritic score: 88
• Developer: Edmund McMillen and Tyler Glaiel
• Publisher: Edmund McMillen and Tyler Glaiel
• Genre: Turn-based tactical roguelite
• Platforms: PC
• Release date: 10 February 2026

Another of the best indie games comes once again from Edmund McMillen, the man behind The Binding of Isaac and Super Meat Boy. The developer had spent more than a decade turning this project over and it is finally out.

It is a turn-based tactical roguelite where you breed cats, put class collars on them such as fighter, tank or mage and send them off on adventures. The fights demand precise positioning, combos and using the terrain.

The genetics side is what really hooks you, because you cross whole generations to get the perfect feline army.

9. Welcome to Elderfield

• Title: Welcome to Elderfield
• Metacritic score: 87
• Developer: Chris Cote
• Publisher: Kwalee
• Genre: Life RPG with horror
• Platforms: PC
• Release date: 10 September 2026

A cozy life RPG where the strange is the norm. You run your homestead, decorate the house, fish, cook and make friends in town, and you can even marry one of them. At the same time there are supernatural beings watching you and the local news keeps getting stranger.

It is hand drawn with an unsettling manga feel and the soundtrack is dark lofi, composed by Dated. Whoever arrives in Elderfield rarely finds a way to leave.

The few negative reviews it has come from players who expected a cozy game with a horror theme, but it is more of a hardcore game with turn-based combat and farming mechanics.

10. OPUS: Prism Peak

• Title: OPUS: Prism Peak
• Metacritic score: 86
• Developer: SIGONO INC.
• Publisher: SHUEISHA GAMES
• Genre: Narrative adventure
• Platforms: PC and Mac
• Release date: 16 April 2026

To close out the best indie games of 2026, here is the latest release in the OPUS series, where you play a middle-aged photographer who has left a disappointing life in the city behind to go back to his roots.

An accident leaves him trapped in an ethereal mountain land, where he runs into a mysterious girl. All he has on him is an old camera, so the whole adventure runs through photographing what you see to gather clues.

Photography here is not decoration, it is how the main character looks at the world. Compared with the rest of the series, it is the most contemplative thing SIGONO has made.

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