Summary

  • Indie games on Xbox Game Pass offer innovative and daring experiences that showcase the passion and hard work of small studios.
  • Celeste, Amnesia: The Bunker, and Goat Simulator are some of the best indie games deserving of your time.
  • Inside, Dead Cells, and Stardew Valley are also standout indie games on Xbox Game Pass, providing immersive worlds and captivating gameplay experiences.

The diversity of games available on the Xbox Game Pass library is a true delight for all who subscribe to the service. And while flashy, triple-A titles are major draws, understated indie games should also garner attention from the masses. These titles provide experiences that are innovative and daring, showcasing what a small studio of dedicated developers can do with passion and hard work.

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It is truly gratifying to see these indie games shine like diamonds within the treasure trove of the Xbox Game Pass collection. Read on if you want to see which are the best indie games most deserving of your time.

20 Carrion

Carrion Monster Attacking

Platformer
Action
Indie Games
Puzzle
Developer(s)
Phobia Studios
How Long To Beat
5 Hours
X|S Optimized
No
File Size Xbox Series
373 MB (January 2025)

Billed as a reverse-horror game (and quite accurately), Carrion slips you into the sinuous tentacles of an unidentified mass of flesh, teeth, and eyeballs being studied in a secure research facility when — oopsie — you manage to escape containment and proceed to wreak havoc.

Carrion’s gameplay constitutes a slick metroidvania-like with a few tonally-appropriate turns. You’ll skitter and slide through the facility, chomping down on hapless humans to replenish health, grow bigger and sustain your gory sojourn to uncover your origin story. You’ll occasionally happen across DNA samples that increase and augment your abilities, giving you more options for dismemberment, consumption, or traversal.

All in all, yes, this makes for a relatively straightforward experience of relatively simple combat encounters and traversal puzzles, but it’s executed so well and stylishly that it really won’t ever surface as a negative. The fun’s in the smooth-yet-visceral moment to moment gameplay and clear homage to 80s and early 90s sci-fi horror, and it’s delivered in spades.

19 Still Wakes the Deep

Still Wakes the Deep official screenshot creepy corridor

Survival Horror
Developer(s)
The Chinese Room
How Long To Beat
5 Hours
X|S Optimized
Yes
File Size Xbox Series
10 GB (December 2024)

The indie space is where the horror genre truly flourishes, and Still Wakes the Deep is an example of this trend. Developed by The Chinese Room (known for making Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs and Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture), Still Wakes the Deep takes us to an oil rig in the middle of the tumultuous North Sea. The crew drills too far one day, and Cthulhu-esque hell breaks loose. With stellar vocal performances from the cast to guide you, you navigate through the crumbling rig, looking for a way off for you and your coworkers.

While it’s more on the walking simulator side of things than a puzzler or survival horror, it’s a gripping story that keeps you riveted to the inexplicable terror that’s visited upon you. Plus, if you have any sort of fear about being stranded in the middle of the ocean, the setting is absolutely prime for playing on that anxiety.

18 Sifu

Sifu combat

Roguelike
Beat 'Em Up
Developer(s)
Sloclap
How Long To Beat
9 Hours
X|S Optimized
Yes
File Size Xbox Series
19 GB (October 2024)

Difficulty is not a prerequisite to be considered an indie game, but if it were, you can bet that Sifu would make the list. This third-person brawler is one of the toughest games we’ve ever played. In it, you are a person whose family was murdered by a group of assassins. Your job is to take them all out, one by one, before you die of old age. The only problem is every defeat you suffer ages you on the spot. And if you’re too elderly by the time you get to the final boss, don’t expect to win easily.

Sifu’s combat mechanics are merciless, but precise. When an opponent lands a hit on you, it has the potential to end your current run. But if you master the fighting mechanics, there is no other game on Earth that will make you feel like a John Wick. Not even an officially licensed John Wick game.

17 Citizen Sleeper

Citizen Sleeper - Talking to someone

RPG
Adventure
Developer
Jump Over the Age
How Long To Beat
7 Hours
X|S Optimized
Yes
File Size Xbox Series
1.53 GB (November 2023)

A handful of the games here are remarkable given the creativity behind their game mechanics. The other handful landed on this list due to their incredible narrative, and Citizen Sleeper settles itself solidly in the camp of the latter. The dice-rolling and text-reading that makes up the majority of its gameplay work solidly, but they’re nothing to cry home about. Citizen Sleeper’s story, on the other hand, is just so engrossing, it’s one of those games that will not only keep you up late into the night playing it, but will have you ruminating on its themes and implications long after you’ve finished it.

Without spoiling too much of this seriously awesome story, you play as a “Sleeper” whose body has an impending expiration date that weighs on all of your choices. Every interaction you engage in, every purchase you expend wages on, and every activity that sucks up your precious time, is a hard decision you have to make. And with themes like that, can you blame us for pondering on Citizen Sleeper years after its release?

16 Have A Nice Death

Have A Nice Death trailer screenshot showing a tired Death

Action
Platformer
Roguelike
Developer(s)
Magic Design Studios
How Long To Beat
10 Hours

As with most walking simulators, I have a soft spot for roguelites. So almost any game that fits in those genres piques my interest. If you’re like me and you have a fondness for delightful and skillfully made roguelites, then Have a Nice Death is a game to add to your must-play list. Not only does it feature solid combat reminiscent of Dead Cells, it’s absolutely coated in white-collar humor that anyone who has worked an office job will appreciate and relate to.

The narrative stars the Grim Reaper as a worn-down cog in the corporate machine that is life and death. And let’s just say that certain automatic processes have gotten out of control, so Death needs to buck up with a cup of coffee and get his work affairs in order before he and his staff are buried in paperwork and bad management.

The traversal, 2D platforming, is not complicated, and leaves the focus of the game on the combat. You can equip a handful of weapons or spells that assist Death on his journey to take back his company. It’s a short but fun venture that is death-damned delight for fans of the genre.

15 Dead Cells

Dead Cells protagonist standing

Roguelike
Developer(s)
Motion Twin
How Long To Beat
15 Hours
File Size Xbox Series
2 GB (November 2023)

Full disclosure. We should have added Dead Cells to this list ages ago. But it was one of the many superb indie games that was always on our “to-play” list, never our “have-played” list. But now, we can finally say, at the time of this update, Dead Cells is under our belts and on this list.

Dead Cells is a roguelite platformer that sees you take control of a sentient pile of goop that goes on runs through decrepit dungeons, shadow-filled sewers, and grim graveyards. There’s a loose story behind your runs; a decaying kingdom under siege from some sort of “malaise” and an Alchemist who ran numerous experiments on living beings. But the star of Dead Cells is its combat.

As you go through the game over and over again to varying degrees of success depending on what weapons you pick up, what permanent upgrades you’ve managed to apply, and your knowledge of enemy movesets, you’ll gain a mastery over Dead Cells’ rewarding combat system. You’ll learn which weapons suit your playstyle and which boosts fit these weapons. You’ll learn the timing of when to parry or dodge for each monster. And, most importantly, you’ll learn what the game expects of you.

Another part of Dead Cells that shouldn’t go unmentioned is its humor. There is an understated sense of humor throughout the title that’s perfectly embodied by your little-pile-of-goop-inhabiting-a-body character, who shrugs and shakes their head when they come across something mystifying. So as you play through Dead Cells, wondering why on earth you hadn’t played it earlier, it's this exact motion that’s your answer.

14 Superhot: Mind Control Delete

Superhot

FPS
Developer(s)
SUPERHOT Team
How Long To Beat
3 Hours
File Size Xbox Series
2 GB (May 2024)

Indies are where the creativity and ingenuity of games really shine, and a perfect example of this is Superhot. It takes a relatively oversaturated genre (the first-person shooter) and turns it into something truly unique. The slogan for Superhot: Mind Control Delete is that time only moves when you do. So when you’re placed into various scenarios of geometric-looking enemies approaching, even though your first impulse will be to rush in guns blazing, stopping to take stock of your environment is what will win you the encounter.

In that sense, Superhot almost feels more like a puzzle game than an FPS game. You have to look around, plan where you’ll move, anticipate where bullets will be flying past you as your opponents open fire, and fight back accordingly. As you start out, it’s a bit of a trial-and-error style of play. At least that’s how it was for me.

But as you get used to the measured flow of combat, you'll soon find yourself mowing through encounters like there’s no tomorrow. And the cherry on top is getting to rewatch the action in real-time clips afterwards. Makes you feel like a total badass. And there’s no other game that accomplishes this quite like Superhot.

13 Firewatch

a screenshot of gameplay from Firewatch. It shows a world during golden hour.

Adventure
Developer(s)
Campo Santo
How Long To Beat
4 Hours
File Size Xbox Series
3 GB (November 2023)

Firewatch is a first-person 3D narrative experience — that’s walking simulator, if you’re less into verbose nomenclature — that has the player filling the shoes of Henry, who has taken a job as a fire lookout to get a bit of distance from his home life after it takes a series of heartwrenchingly tragic turns. Shortly after arriving at his solitary lookout tower in the middle of the expansive Shoshone National Forest, Henry is contacted by his supervisor, Delilah, via his handheld walkie-talkie. She’s stationed in another tower, but you never really conventionally “meet” other characters in-person, save for a few odd encounters.

Focusing most of the game’s narrative and plot development into such a remote form of communication helps reinforce the game’s contemplative, solitary thematic elements — and it proves quite effective as events around the forest become increasingly unnerving and uncanny. Firewatch is a delightfully off-beat indie experience altogether, and though most of the core “mechanics” simply revolve around choice-based dialogue tree interactions, it never fails to keep you immersed with its flair for visual design and excellent character writing.

12 Cocoon

cocoon bug and orb worlds

Puzzle
Adventure
Developer(s)
Geometric Interactive
How Long To Beat
5 Hours
File Size Xbox Series
3 GB (November 2023)

Made from some of the brains behind Limbo and Inside, Cocoon is a mind-bending puzzle game that exceeds all expectations. It strikes the perfect balance between being challenging and enjoyable, and exhibits how indie games are where innovation is truly taking place.

Personally took me about six hours to complete, but I was spending a lot of time running around trying to find the Moon Ancestors.

Cocoon has you solve a variety of puzzles that revolve around the concept of a recursive world. Even talking about the concept of recursive worlds can be difficult to explain, so it’s a sign of genius that Geometric Interactive not only made this approachable, but built its entire game around it. 2023 is a year where games like Tears of the Kingdom, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, Baldur’s Gate 3, and Starfield came out. And yet, Cocoon outshines them all when it comes to the fascinating gameplay loop that keeps you jumping into (and out of) its worlds.

11 Celeste

Madeline running past flags in forest in Celeste

Platformer
Developer(s)
Extremely OK Games
How Long To Beat
9 Hours
File Size Xbox Series
1 GB (November 2023)

Celeste is a game about overcoming obstacles, whether they be facing your personal anxieties or scaling a snowy mountain. This platformer might look like your average, pixelated indie title, but its themes carry the narrative straight into the hearts of players. As a matter of fact, the difficulty of facing these platforming challenges ties in to the difficulty of fighting your inner demons.

Celeste gained widespread recognition, even winning Best Independent Game at the 2018 Game Awards. Though its trials might be daunting, seeing your way through to its conclusion is a reward that goes beyond simply completing a game.

10 Goat Simulator

Goat Simulator Cover Art Without The Title

Action
Simulation
Developer(s)
Coffee Stain Studios
How Long To Beat
6 Hours
File Size Xbox Series
3 GB (November 2023)

Goat Simulator takes the wild proposition of playing as a goat and just runs with it in one of the most delightful indie sim games ever made. While it is most definitely not an accurate depiction of what a real goat’s life is like, it is one of the most entertaining “simulator” games available, and it is an utter joy to see it as part of the Xbox Game Pass’ library.

In Goat Simulator, being a goat means wreaking absolute havoc wherever you go. Bleat people into oblivion, lick random objects and carry them with you with your prehensile tongue, or headbutt cars until they explode. All of these activities are valid.

9 Darkest Dungeon

Darkest Dungeon Best Party Compositions featured image