Editors Choice
Welcome to the Editor's Choice awards for the 2024 Indie of the Year Awards, where we show recognition to the indie games from the past year that we've found to be personally deserving of attention. Ranging from best singleplayer, to best multiplayer and several other specific categories, these games have gone above and beyond to create a unique and engaging experience for players this year.
One of those incredible solo-dev projects, which picked up from where the first game left off, by really perfecting the gameplay. Start playing this one and you'll find it hard to stop building space factories.
This game caught everyone by surprize when it dropped in early January, which was the product of a small team which had been fine tuning their formula with Craftopia and Overdungeon. Selling millions of copies, they mixed survival crafting with cute creatures, guns and collecting.
Most Creative
Chained Together
From: Anegar Games and Forceight
Often the most creative ideas, that lead to a lot of fun, unique and emergent gameplay are the most simple, which is exactly what Chained Together captured. A twist on the only-up style of game where you're bound by a chain to your playing companion. If one of you fall both of you fall which leds to plenty of tears, and hilariously agonizing moments.
Best Art-Direction
Bodycam
From: Reissad Studio
We realize it is a little bit of a cliché to pick a game whose sole purpose is ultra realism, but we have for a bunch of reasons. Firstly, when the trailers came out no one believed it was real and more impressively it was made by a tiny team who pushed Unreal Engine to it's limits of visual fidelity. Uncanny valley be damned.
Community Award
We love nostalgia at IndieDB, and way back in 2008 (if you've read your history) you may know IndieDB emerged from ModDB, after mod creators started submitting standalone projects they were working on. One of the earliest teams from that era was the Half-LIfe 2 mod No More Room in Hell, so to see it faithly continued by one of our favorite studios Torn Banner who are themselves mod creators turned pro warms our hearts. The game will also warm your heart and raise your pulse if you give it a play.
We love games which take big swings and attempt to push boundaries, which is why SinnStudio impressed up with their latest title. Hand to hand combat titles are very popular in VR as it's a lot of fun to hack and slash your way through medieval arenas. What Guardian of the Realms brings to the genre is the ability to battle in your living room using Augmented Reality technology from the latest Meta Quest 3 headset. It's something to experience.
Best Co-op (Online or Local)
Whether you are cooperating, or competing, or just downright lying, Liar's Bar captures the social deduction gameplay beautifully. If you are a fan of Werewolf, Coop, Secret Hitler or any board games like that, you'll have a lot of fun with this.
Best Narrative
If there is one game this year our team kept returning too, it was the intergalatic fight been waged in Helldivers 2. The galaxy is spinning out of control, and you must join the fight for freedom, against an unpredictable series of events, which is what makes the game so great. What better way to craft a narrative than to have a massive community of players do it for you, creating a sense of we're all in this together.
As someone who has played their fair share of hands of poker with friends, and other competitive card games, the competition is fierce and barrier to entry is high to pull me away from the experiences I already know. Yet the team at LocalThunk have delivered beautifully with Balatro.
For well over 10 years now, one of our goto games at lans to cleanse the palatte and also the planet of some zeds has been Killing Floor 2. Like many games we feel strong sentiment towards it began its life as a Unreal Tournament mod, and in 2025 we cannot wait for the next installment in the series to be released. If the trailers are anything to go by it is going to be as gory and action packed as ever.
Supported by mod.io
The 2024 awards are proudly supported by mod.io. Launch an official mod community for your game with powerful moderation, discovery, events, marketplace and metrics systems, using our cross-platform mod SDKs and plugins for Unity and Unreal Engine. Interested in adding mods to your game and finding out more? Reach out for a demonstration.
Which games would you have picked? Let us know in the comments and get ready for the next announcement in a few days, the most anticipated Indies and then the big one soon after that, the Top 10 Indies of 2024.