Players Choice - Indie of the Year
Welcome to the 2022 Indie of the Year results! After 10 days of top 100 voting, the results have been tallied and it's now time to announce this year's winners. Below, you will find the Top 10 Indie Games of 2022. Additionally, you can check out the Top 10 Mods of 2022, or register with IndieDB to add your indie game to the site and be eligible for participation and voting in the Indie of the Year awards for 2023.
The Mensional is a puzzle-platformer adventure game developed and published by Delil Timurtaş. Our lead character finds a time machine that, in turn, transports them into an unfamiliar realm of time distortions outside of their control. The only way out of here is to restart the machine and commence once more the normal flow of time.
A dark and violent meld of retro and modern action games, inspired by the classic 2.5D first person shooters of the 90s, with elements of modern looter shooters and rogue-lites. Tons of enemies are crammed in open-ended levels full of surprises and geysers of blood and treasure. Gold can be used to upgrade your character, with currency obtainable in a host of minigames each offering a different gameplay style (and each channelling their own Retro influence).
The AMC Squad is an epic story-driven FPS running on the Build Engine. It combines gameplay mechanics of retro-shooters with aspects of modern titles, complete with a story-driven narrative that spans over several episodes. Each episode is a full-length campaign featuring multiple varied locations to explore and many hidden secrets and collectibles to discover. Pick from more than 8 different character classes, each with a unique loadout of items, weapons and abilities, and fight a large selection of different enemy factions that threaten the safety of the world.
Bob: A thousand lives, is a dark themed platformer-action game, in which we control Bob, an abandoned boy, through his adventure. Along many challenges, Bob must overcome his consuming past. This materializes as an evil fog-creature which tries to disconnect him from the continuity in his timeline, preventing him from finding his eternal peace.
PlateUp! is a classic co-op cooking indie, with a wide selection of mains, sides, sauces, toppings, desserts, and starters to craft. Choose your equipment and setup your most efficient kitchen layout as you curate the dishes you intend to serve. Don't forget to tend to the front-end, helping customers find seating and placing them comfortably whilst ensuring they get their meals in a timely manner.
Lords and Villeins is a very lighthearted, approachable, yet complex city-building strategy simulation of medieval society where you shape the dynasty of the ruling family. In this game, you don't manage the daily life of every villager; instead, you deal with whole families and their descendants. At the heart of its design is an emotional journey - seeing your villagers grow, evolve, create relationships, go through struggles and challenges to shape their lives and stories in interesting ways.
Prodeus is a first-person shooter of old, re-imagined using modern rendering techniques and technology. Experience the quality you’d expect from a modern AAA game, designed with retro aesthetics and gameplay that invoke the tech-imposed limits of older hardware. The game features a hand-crafted campaign from industry FPS veterans, co-op and competitive multiplayer play drawing on classic modes*, a fully integrated level editor, and a built-in community map browser for instantaneous action with nearly limitless levels to play.
Turbo Overkill takes over-the-top to never-before-reached heights. Activate Hero Time, a new form of slow motion with a twist. Build incredible speed by wall-running and dashing. Slide on your chainsaw leg, eviscerating foes and opening up bosses for critical damage, and go car-surfing on the hoods of flying cars. Blast away with the Twin Magnums, which lock-on and instagib several foes, the Boomer Shotgun and its attached grenade launcher, or the Telefragger sniper rifle, which teleports Johnny inside an enemy before they explode from within. The FPS genre is about to get wild and fun again.
Vampire Survivors is a time survival game with minimalistic gameplay and roguelite elements. Hell is empty, the devils are here, and there's no place to run or hide. All you can do is survive as long as you can until death inevitably puts an end to your struggles. Gather gold in each run to buy upgrades and help the next survivor. Vampire Survivors is the supernatural indie phenomenon that lets you be the bullet hell!
This year, 1st place for the awards goes to Isonzo - which, appropriately, placed in last year's awards for Best Upcoming! Isonzo is a gritty World War One shooter and the sequel to the well-loved Verdun. Transporting players into trenches initially, Isonzo expands to various Italian battlefronts with an emphasis on mountainous environments. Care has been taken to ensure every detail in Isonzo is as authentic as possible, including the obvious examples like period specific weaponry, but even details in the actual environments (which were facilitated by real-life field trips to the right locales). All this proves not an inch of passion was given up when moving on from Verdun, and we're excited to see Isonzo develop further into 2023.
Honorable Mentions
It's been an incredible year for indie gaming, and while the Top 10 winners are locked in, we want to take a moment to bring your attention and recognition to some games which warranted a honorable mention. A honorable mention is given for polling strongly in the awards, but being ineligible due to placing higher in a previous year, or if a significant update was not released in 2022:
