Indie Games that Changed the Industry

I don't personally agree but I could see an argument for each of these.

This is more of a list of popular indies, they didn't really "change" the industry.

Where's Cave Story (2006) and Terraria (2011)
Silly publication

Celeste is most notable example of "pixel art indie game about depression"

yup list is right they changed the industry for the worst

Minecraft

Fair enoguh

Undertale

This is just earthbound in the modern era

Celeste

Difficult Platformer copycat

Stardew

Fair enough

Limbo

Its shit but it is one of the first major indies

Isaac

Fair enough

Super Meat Boy

Pioneered that genre

Hades

Fun but its just another roguelike

Journey

This thing spawned all these fucking "too deep for you" walking sims.
Terraria and FTL deserve mentions.

You don't have to argue that it changed the industry for the better. But that's a retarded take to say it changed nothing.

I really need a definition of "changed" because the more I think about all of these most of them don't apply.

Stardew

Fair enough

Lmao
Gets mogged by rune factory frontier and 4
Fucking stardew sas half baked for years until updates came around to fix it and tyr villagers, villager events and combat are still dogshit
The only plus it has is being moddable which isnt inherent to the genre, just a perk of being on pc

I'd argue "changed" means clearly inspired or influenced aspects of a sizeable amount of games.

So how was Celeste influential?

Gets mogged by rune factory frontier and 4

I'm not arguing Stardew Valley is the greatest game in the world smoothbrain. I'm just agreeing that it changed the industry and spawned a billion new indie farming shits.

Then I can agree with all of these games.

Stardew is an indie effort though, that's the point. Stardew launched a thousand indie farming sim ships that otherwise hadn't caught on.

ok heres my official critique of this fucking gay image

Minecraft

How?

Undertale

How?

Celeste

How?

Hollow Knight

Revived metroidvanias

Stardew Valley

I wanna say it heavily influenced more games to have romance

Limbo

How?

TBOI

Sent the standard for most rougelikes I guess

Super Meat Boy

How?

Hades

How?

Journey

How?

I won't read beyond your minecraft critique. You are trolling.

I don't agree it was. I'm just giving what I think the definition is.

What did it change

what did minecraft change about "the industry"

I'm going to be honest, I like metroidvanias but did not like hollow knight.

...the entire SEACOW genre?

It made every indie slop game add some shit that reads the name of your PC or closes your game.

What did binding of isaac change

He didnt see the billion isaac clones like undermine, ittle dew and gungeon, wizard of legend and shit like that

based, it's so insanely overhyped for being a standard metroidvania. Older and newer games in the genre did better

because it's lazy derivative slop with absolutely atrocious art and terrible controls

I don't personally like it so it didn't change anything.

This place is so autistic it's incredible.

Minecraft alone put indies on the map and changed youtube forever, remember youtube copyright strikes in almost any gameplay? Minecraft changed that

terrible controls

hollow knight

What game did you play?

Mention games inspired by celeste

I'm not endorsing the whole list dumbass.
But saying "hurr minecraft didn't change anything cuz it sucks" is beyond retarded.

games that nobody played besides gungeon? oh theres a billion? name 10 games directly "inspired by" isaac

The controls arent bad
But the game and combat are slow as fuck, simple ass spamming nail gameplay.
Explorarion is ruined by slow ass movement speed that needs 2 charms permaequipped to move at a decent pace thru the blocky and mostly empty environments.
no platforming challenges aside of super meat boys tutorial white castle
And all dlcs focus on the most barebones aspect of the game the combat.

celeste

hades

LMAO, good one

I think its the art style and overall feel of the game I did not like. That and the fanbase is one of the most annoying ones out there.

Excellent explanations, anon. Points well made.

the fanbase is one of the most annoying ones out there

I'll never get people that still care about shit like this.
I'd have never played half of my favorite games if I based the decision on the fanbase.

Undermine

Hades

Gungeon

Nuclear Throne

Wizard of Legend

Revita

Neon Abyss

Noita despite the game being utter dogshit that becomes a chore when doing anything but the regular ending.

Dead cells

Brotato

games inspired by older games changed the industry

Huh?

Never heard of Celeste
This, I don't think anything changed with those 4. Also don't think Isaac changed anything, but it's definitely a game of all time.

procgen hello?

Yes anon. It can literally revitalize a whole genre.

Where the fuck are FTL and Cave Story?
Why is Hollow Knight, Hades, and Fucking Journey there?

Journey and Limbo shouldnt even count as fucking indies since they were published by Sony and M$ respectively. Fuck off.

Obviously yes if they result in a trend starting

I think even Teleglitch and Knytt were more influential

2025... Cave Story is... forgotten

what did cave story change?

Literally put indie games on a spotlight

Cave Story is the one of the first major indies. Without its success indies wouldn't have been as successful

You guys think too much about mechanics holy shit

Minecraft

Good game (At the time), changed the industry for the worse

Undertale

Good game, didn't really change the industry at all, it was more like the most successful game of a long running trend

Celeste

Good game, also didn't change the industry at all. At least not yet.

Hollow Knight

Good game, also didn't change the industry at all. Again, another game that was just a successful version of a long running trend.

Stardew Valley

Mid game, changed the industry for the worse.

Limbo

Ok game, changed the industry for the worse.

The Binding of Isaac

Ok game that is extremely overrated to this day, definitely changed the industry for the better overall. Some excellent roguelites that came out of its success.

Super Meat Boy

Good game, had a decently good impact in the industry.

Hades

Good game, didn't change the industry at all. At least not yet.

Journey

Good game, didn't change the industry at all.

This is obviously missing Braid, which may not be a particularly good game, but was more impactful than Super Meat Boy and very influential in a genre that dominated indie games for many years to come.

So what did it change? Being being popular is not changing anything.

Don't spread degenerate shit here. If it's not your own opinion then keep it to yourself.

ok basically none of these are directly inspired by isaac and rely on just general roguelite/procedural generation stuff for their longevity
i will admit gungeon/nt are definitely directly inspired by isaac, the devs have said so
you didnt list risk of rain, which shows you either didnt play it or are a clueless newfag (the dev used to post here and cited isaac as a direct inspiration)

>Noita despite the game being utter dogshit that becomes a chore when doing anything but the regular ending.

damn, are you just a retard or what

Doom was an independent game.

Lethal Company and Day Z are both dogshit games but are more influential than anything on the list except Minecraft

Cave Story was the first real indie game with a following in the west, it put the idea on the map for a lot of people.

It's far more influential than everything here, as was Spelunky later.

We could say the same about undertale

damn, are you just a retard or what

Yes, I got the crown ans amulet in noita, so I am a complete retard for playing that dogshit game for that long
Game is only good to make good looking webms for anons that will never play it

It changed with inspiring people to push through with these games as one man teams or small teams of people that had little to no experience within the industry.

Day Z is a very good call.
With Lethal Company, I wonder. Should the credit go to Lethal Company or Phasmophobia? I don't remember if these kinds of games only started coming out after Lethal Company was a big success.

Depression quest should be on this list

Isaac

Ok game, Extremely overrated

Hades

Good game

Lmao. Hades literally has no business being a roguelike, its samey shit with little to no variety.

probably trans insertion influence

lol shut up
If anything, Braid would have been a far bigger influence since it'd have made every westerner go "I can make money off of this shit". And that was actually a genre that got copied over and over again by indie games.
Dumb weebs.

yeah fair enough. I'd have sooner put that up there than undertale anyways

no it didn't

yes you are right. undertale's "influence" is just toby fox become a japanese gaming industry celebrity. nobody other than him benefits or will see any change

The maker of Fez literally ripped off its artstyle while claiming he hated Japanese games. Just like you are.

Whatever influence Undertale and Delta have
Is just continuing the cancer Homestuck started.

day z

fucking seriously. isnt this where the whole battle royale thing came from? he modified the day z map and made it battle royale and then published battlegrounds, 2 guys (dean hall and brendan greene) are almost solely responsible for all of that open world survival and battle royale shit that happened for like 10 years
day z alone is more influential than ANYTHING on that list and it was a mod for arma 2

Correct, most of these didn't really change the industry at all.

Minecraft, Stardew Valley, Binding of Isaac, Super Meat Boy, Braid, Lethal Company/Phasmophobia, depending on which one actually influenced the wave of this genre, and then I guess you can put Cave Story and to a lesser extent Vampire Survivors as pity entries

changed

they're all derivative as hell

it should be "indie games that didn't really do much to change the industry"

Super Meat Boy

Pioneered that genre

??? explain, i can think of several "hard platformer" games that came before it

And DayZ, as the other anon said. That's a big one.

And Fez didn't influence jackshit either, retard. Which is why you were the first one to bring it up in this thread.

thankfully i have been meeting fewer and fewer people that know homestuck. it is almost buried

Id say I wanna be the Guy is the most iconic hard platformer that actually spawned a shitton of clones
And some of them sctually pretty good like Boshy

It should be "Indie games that embody the current broken industry"

Its the one most people default to when thinking of hard platformers.

day z might be arguably one of the most influential games ever made
i think that belongs to doom though

Yes, now instead you meet people obsessed with Papyrus and Le deep sans and Gaster lore
And whatever autism delta has.
Dropped the game halfway chapter 2

Literal high profile example of its influence in the early Western indie scene, you fucking tard.

I'm getting bad flashbacks to that bafta influential games thread a few days back. How do you even define 'changed the industry'? If anything I would say the majority of the list are more like refinements of existing ideas that were well received, not groundbreaking in any meaningful way.

I don't think journey was an indie game.

Well, I'm reminded that the Gamer continues to be even more worthless than chatGPT at this shit. I'm not sure why they even bothered. Be straight with me OP. Why the fuck did you even post this here?

Clearly they mean change as in cause people to transition.

exactly the "hard platformer" game i was thinking of, along with the classic kaizo mario

ok easy
doom: made fps games a thing

Braid was later, but yeah, that's also a good game to put on a top 10 list of "influential" indie games.

This slop list just reads like a who's who of what's popular.

Fez gets a pass since its one of the first instances of a faggot indie dev having a melty.

I honestly don't think that's very true anymore. SMB hasn't been relevant for over a decade

it's an improvement, honestly

Bastion was a far more influential super giant game than Hades

Also what about shovel knight?

Chrono Trigger changed the industry forever
It taught devs consumers will praise anything no matter how dogshit the game is.
As long as goku, and some big names are attached to it

The original DOOM is one of the most influential games of all time and the dev team was so small it would be considered "indie" by today's standards. But since it was 1993 people just treated it as normal.

Tell me why DOOM doesn't deserve to be called an Indie game.

You want an influential indie game that changed the entire ecosystem of video games? Here you go.

it definitely was an indie game

Chrono trigger was the first movie game
Cause the half baked piss easy braindead combat sure isnt what hooked people

I would keep

Minecraft

Stardew Valley

The Binding of Isaac

that's it, and for Stardew and BoI it's because they basically rejuvenated a genre that was lost to time. maybe younger anons don't remember but there used to be a time when there were very little roguelikes and very little farm sims

shovel knight?

This was popular, but I wouldn't say it was that influential. Bastion I can see.

Bastion was a far more influential super giant game than Hades

I mean, yeah, but neither was influential.

And also, if Hades was influential, we could be waiting for the influence to arrive. It's still within the timeframe.

I imagine Balatro could turn out to be hugely influential, for example. But it has been a little over a year. No time yet.

Trans people and underrepresented and DESERVE to be named

Balatro

Slay the spire already happened

List is missing Castle Crashers, Shovel Knight and FTL. You can argue vampire survivors and balatro for recent games

very little roguelikes

The present day? Roguelites aren't anything like Rogue.

Balatro can't be influential because it's just Inscryption with poker

Literally never heard of that shit

shit list
doesnt even have FTL

OP is a nigger

slay the spire is basically isaac progression but in a card game, except its fucking terrible shit slop unlike isaac. i will admit slay the spire rapes balatro though. balatro is just fucking trash

Hades

indie

wat
Obvious burger bias with this list, the absence of Cave Story and Yume Nikki is criminal

Balatro is an evolution of the VS fake game slop formula, I don't know if you could justify including both.

FTL had literally 0 influence on anything LMAO

Balatro is nothing like Slay the Spire, man. Slay the Spire actually takes skill :^)

What games were inspired by FTL? I think there's a couple clones, but at that point you can say that Banner Saga was a big influence.

Castle Crashers

wut? did people suddenly start making side scrolling beat-em ups again after that came out and I didn't realize?

Minecraft spawned the survival crafting genres

Hes less of a gamer than Soulja Boy

Lmao

It wasn't. It was published by Sony day 1. These incompetent shitpiles don't even know what independent means.

I'd say Shovel Knight influenced the resurgence of retro styled platformers, such as a lot of the inti creates games, games like cyber shadow infernax etc. There is a reason why a lot of games ay lip service to the knight

that would be day z fuckhead, literally nobody played minecraft hunger games

missing: Doom, Terraria, Disco Elysium (the clones are coming out soon), Dear Esther, Amnesia; Dark Descent, Among Us, Doki Doki Literature Club, DOTA All-Stars, Slay the Spire

cant understand your pedantic ESL rambling

retard alert

What do you think started the pathing and branching of roguelike games you absolute nigger faggot

I think the argument could be made for like Goat Simulator or Truck Simulator or something.
I don't necessarily love those games but they spawned a whole lot of other new similar shit.

Disco Elysium (the clones are coming out soon)

Oh, yeah, this is an excellent call. That game should literally be in the list already.

There's already been 3 Discolikes released in the past few years and there's gonna be around 20 Discolikes released within the next 2. It's crazy.

Dayz was exactly made after Minecraft influence on the industry

how new are you?

Doki Doki Literature Club

Damn yeah. Even though it's not my favorite, it really brought VN's into the public consciousness.

What did all of them do? Literally no effect on anything

as sad as it is to say, rogue legacy was the first big roguelite that billed itself as such
day z is inspired by dean being in the military. not minecraft

Balatro's influence comes from the developer himself not the game

You know all those kikestarter game scams? Yeah those wouldn't exist without FTL.

What? No. Balatrolikes are gonna come down. There's been like 3 Chess balatrolikes announced already.

I feel like Slay the Spire is getting overlooked here. Card game rouge-like (or games with card game esque mechanics) were everywhere for a time after the success of that game

It's not directly inspired by Minecraft but the concept is

it definitely was an indie game

Yet it's not on the list. Hades has over twice as many devs on staff than the original DOOM, is nowhere near as influential, yet still makes it onto the "Indie Games That Changed the Industry" list while DOOM doesn't.

It shows how arbitrary the "indie" label is and how game journalists don't know what the fuck they're talking about (but everyone already knows about that second point).

this is cringe i hope you are joking

never played any of them

I'm so proud of myself

The fuck are you talking about.
If that's the argument, then we're gonna get Broken Age in, not FTL.
Which hey, not a bad call.
Did anyone here play this piece of shit btw? lol

never played minecraft

you are a lying fag

Not even what's popular. Like some troon at the gamer looked in their steam library and shat this out.

Nubby's Number Game is a Balatrolike.

It's a new genre of game so retardedly easy that it practically plays itself, and the player is reduced to a decision box that just clicks the obvious best option every time.

He's right. It's basically the ultimate "Just RNG: The genre"
Ballamillionaires or whatever it's called is another one

it's popular so it must be bad, and thus, I'm the winner!

good job?

Wasn't FTL the first popular indie to come off kickstarter?

have to put the black guy on a tablet because he was late for the group photo

I feel like this piece of shit gets 0 credit for the torrent of "emotional indies" as well as paving the way for games like Undertale

Anon, Double Fine is what caused the wave of kickstarter slop. This is undeniable. FTL was a blip in the radar.

Eh, if we're talking making serious waves as far as influencing the industry:
-Hollow Knight shouldn't even be on the list (Great fucking game but it didn't actually cause change in future games) Swap it with Dwarf Fortress.
-Meat Boy is a product of the rage game genre and not an innovator thus should probably be swapped out with either QWOP or I Wanna Be The Guy
-Stardew Valley and Celeste should swap spots as Stardew caused the comfyslop explosion.
-Hades is a byproduct of the roguelike boom that Isaac caused and thus shouldn't be on the list.Swap it with something else, maybe Cave Story.

please stop saying balatrolike thats not funny
jesus fucking christ
people on here used to shit on me when i said balatro was literally just poker with more rng and half assed deckbuilder mechanics and now people are just doing that and making games that have thousands of fucking steam reviews fuck

Broken Age had a big name behind it. FTL was unique in that it didn't really have any names behind it.

It was a notable game, but I don't know if it was that influential. How many other games were that that did the whole kickstarter thing? Outer wilds?

Just because it existed earlier doesn't mean it influenced all that much.

Balatro isn't even poker. It's really just RNG.
I like it

star citizen

They also put the single women front and center of the entire group. But I'm sure that's just a coincidence right?

replace Celeste with Braide
remove Limbo and Journey holy shit

no fez?
creator deserves a beating, but regardless fez is a good game.

they ALL have big noses. that cant be a coincidence

Pillars of Eternity and it's kickstarter success revived CRPGs

how so? it proved lazy RPGMaker games could achieve commercial success

How many other games were that that did the whole kickstarter thing?

Reading this thread is making me feel old. Half the people ITT are like 23 years old at most.
t. 32 years old boomer

fez is completely irrelevant and influenced nothing. suck a dick phil, choke on it

Roberts was a big name, though. The indie fundraiser was different.

Same shit. I'm talking about indie games, shit without the perceived backing of a name, like FTL.

i would argue that fez was one of the first games to introduce the long-form ARG-esque puzzle

Limbo

Wasn't Fez a bigger deal in the industry?

If anything, Braid would have been a far bigger influence since it'd have made every westerner go "I can make money off of this shit". And that was actually a genre that got copied over and over again by indie games.

this is actually true and i agree
its funny that in my own hypothetical list i already can think of 2 games i hate that i'd put on there, braid and slay the spire

indie games that changed the industry

Doom, League of Legends and Runescape aren't topping the list

It's undeniable and immediately obvious. How could they be so blind? Fucking undertale?

kickstarter.com/discover/advanced?category_id=35&sort=most_funded

Pretty much all of these came about after Double Fine Adventure was a huge success. There was a bit of a knock off effect with some of these influencing others, but Double Fine is the undeniable big bang here. FTL was a blip in the radar.

cinematic platformer became it's own little genre; I don't know of any "rotate environment" platformers aside from fucking captain toad

agreed, braid itself was nothing special but it irrefutably initiated the indie gaming market on a large scale

Fucking undertale?

How is that the game you have an issue with?

Minecraft - Yes

Undertale - Yes

Celeste - No, being popular does not mean it changed anything

Hollow Knight - Yes

Stardew Valley - Yes and should be higher

Limbo - Eh sure I guess

The Binding of Isaac - Yes and should be higher

Super Meat Boy - Yes and should be higher

Hades - No, being popular does not mean it changed anything

Journey - Eh sure I guess

Also how the fuck do you have a list like this and NOT put Cave Story up there????

Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver Prequel Graphic Novel

8,836 backers pledged $1,496,557 to help bring this project to life.

Huh, I never really thought about it but I guess they would have been considered indie games of their time. Good point.

Balatro was the most influential game that came out in 2024 and mogged the remake of one of the most iconic games of all time. You may not like this fact, but its true

In reality the most influential indie games that changed the industry were probably some flash games you played as a kid.

Binding of Isaac walked so Nex Machina could run.

Too soon to tell, but probably.

tranny game

nuh-uh

3 people played it

but 1 of those 3 people happened to make the game that ACTUALLY changed the industry

Having lived through it, it felt like Limbo was the bigger deal as a game over Fez. But the Fez developer Phil Fish was a bigger deal than the game itself because he was in a documentary at the time and got Internet famous for being a huge asshole.

suck my dick. choke on it

tied up Kasumi from DoA changed the industry forever

Yeah but Limbo had and still does have the greater influence in future design, like in Little Nightmares and Reanimal

it definitely wasnt the first, uplink did that shit over 10 years before, tying stuff to real websites that players were using to try and solve a big ingame puzzle. the first really really major game ARG thing that i can remember though is ilovebees but i definitely wouldnt count that as "indie" because it was a viral marketing ARG for halo en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Love_Bees

Where the fuck do you think the crafting mechanic that has been in EVERY triple A game the past 15 years came from????

Limbo was the first big xbox arcade game I remember.
Really you could just say "xbox live indies" and cover most indie games up to ~2015

Super meat boy covers that anon.

If game A influenced one person into making game B, which itself influenced hundreds of thousands of people, then game B is the influential one.

As a perfect example: Minecraft is influential, not Infiniminer.

This is also to a lesser extent why weebs here are way overstating Cave Story's influence.

Barebones farming sim game but on pc

Oof, yike, even

undertale is the indie game that had the 2nd biggest impact on the industry

absolute morons

Are we really pretending the entire decade of Undertale clones/ Depression RPGs simply did not exist or were you just too young to notice?

I agree that it's not the 2nd biggest. But it's certainly up there.

Is Five Night at Freddys indie? That shit obliterated the entire horror genre space.

Literally the only ones on this list that changed anything are Minecraft, Stardew, and Isaac. Hades was after roguelites were already stupid popular. The rest didn't do a damn thing. TheGamer is retarded as always.

Amnesia is a bigger influence than half the games there.

oh shit, yeah that's the most influential indie ever

In terms of impact to the gaming industry sure Minecraft is the most important, but as far as the indie game industry specifically?
The release of Braid marked the turning point where XBLA and by extension the idea of digital paid indie games went mainstream. Before that indie games weren't commonly called indie games, through the early 2000's they were mostly shareware either sold on the developers website or repackaged into a 5-in-1 value pack from some garbage tier publisher in the PC game bargain bin at Walmart.
Think back on pre-Braid indie games, we're talking shit like Gish and Darwinia which while good games were extremely niche and never achieved much mainstream success outside of being one of the few native Linux games that cost actual money.

For something to have changed the game industry it has to be a source of inspiration for other developers. If a game introduces a new feature or way of doing things and it becomes convention, even if later titles see more sales, the original one is the one that changed the industry,

That's a good call, yes.
FNAF isn't even so much a game that influenced the industry as a genre influencer, like most of these, but rather as a methodology. Horror explicitly for kids.

I know minecraft spawned a lot of copycats but the other 9 games don't ring a bell for me. I've seen their names mentioned but I can't think of a single thing that they would've changed about games industry

diamond mine flash game has influenced most of the shit in the modern mobile games industry considering it spawned billions of flash games once people started seeing how much money popcap was making off of it, and the amount of flash games that have been straight up copied into being mobile games is staggering

Stardew crushed a genre, spawned a bajillion farming sims, sold over 40 million copies and keeps going strong today. It's safely the second most influential game on that list behind only Minecraft. It might not have been the first to make a farming game, but that is its undeniable impact.

If a game introduces a new feature or way of doing things and it becomes convention, even if later titles see more sales, the original one is the one that changed the industry,

No because Minecraft is what actually caused the wave and Infiniminer wouldn't have done jackshit if it didn't inspire Minecraft.

he thinks undertale clones are the SECOND BIGGEST CHANGE indie games have made to the industry

furfag delusion painted and framed

man i played teh fuck out of gish
the underage here today have never even heard of that shit

still hung up on the #2 ranking part for some reason

In no particular order here's my top ten Indies that changed the industry
(Note change means either it introduced mechanics that the rest of the industry took or a huge wave of indie clones followed trying to capture its success. Being popular isn't enough. Hollow Knight was popular but didn't really change anything. Same with Five Nights At Freddy. Therefore they are not on the list.)

Minecraft

Undertale

Cave Story

Braid

Stardew Valley

Super Meat Boy

The Binding of Isaac

DayZ

Limbo

Yume Nikki

Honorable mentions are Terraria, Amnesia, Bastion, FTL, Spelunky, really too many to name

ranking the impact of games in a thread discussing the impact of games with an image showing someone's top 10

responding to someone who is commenting on the ranking in particular

truly bizarre

Limbo is the only one I don't really agree with. It was a unique cultural oddity at its time, but industry redefining ? Not sure. Subjectivity is implied.

1. Tetris
2. Doom
3. Minecraft
4. SimCity
5. League of Legends
6. Stardew Valley
7. Dwarf Fortress
8. Nethack
9. Wordle
10. To The Moon

Ah shoot I actually wanna correct something, I meant to put Journey, NOT Five Nights At Freddy's for indie games that were popular but didn't change much
FNAF did do a lot for the horror kids genre

ed mcmillen > jonathan blow
ed is the most influential ACTUALLY INDIE dev ever to do it
jonathan sucked the microsoft dick earlier than anyone so thats what his faggot legacy can be
unless we're counting john carmack, but nobody considered doom an "indie game" even if thats exactly what it was back then

that game was always a fucking joke

youtube.com/watch?v=gWqnz-7iQbY&pp=ygUQc291bGphIGJveSBicmFpZA==

Honestly I don't think Terraria was very influential

youtu.be/gWqnz-7iQbY

hollow knight didn't change anything

stardew valley still on the list

I'd like to know your thought process, seems a bit contradictory

god i hope hes reading this
ed is ten times more influential than you jon

Only Minecraft and Super Meat Boy should be on that list.

Hollow Knight didn't bring about a revolution or revival of Meteoidvanias. That genre has never died out.
Stardew Valley came out and suddenly everyone and their mother wants to do farming simulator indie games, to the point where that Nintendo direct happened a few years back where people made fun of how sick they were of farming simulators being the new hot thing

how did hollow knight change anything?

Are people itt so young they don't remember the farming Sims that exploded after 2016?

Stardew crushed a genre

Yeah, by making a half baked harvestoon clone with probably the most barebones village since the snes entry and the shittiest mines iteration ever.
Face it, stardew isnt particularly good at anything other than being accessible

to the people saying hollow knight isn't influential:
Death's Gambit
Blasphemous
Blasphemous 2
Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Knights
Record of Lodoss War: Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth
Salt and Sacrifice
Moonscars
Rusted Moss
The Last Faith
Nine Sols
Momodora: Moonlit Farewell
Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown
Animal Well
Ender Magnolia: Bloom in the Mist

Are we really pretending the entire decade of Undertale clones/ Depression RPGs simply did not exist or were you just too young to notice?

Cant believe no one called you out on your retardedness but
DO YOU FUCKING ACTUALLY THINK RPGMAKER GAMES DIDNT EXIST BEFORE UNDERTALE?

It's a shame he's such a fucking egomaniac. I actually like the puzzles in Braid and The Witness a lot but their "story" and every word out of Blow's mouth is extremely pretentious.

I say it inspired Stardew Valley and Noita

Hades

Indie

Bastion arguably gets the indie title, but everything else by supergiant afterwards is plaintively AA

Ah, I misread your original post and missed the part about spawning copycats being a qualifier. My b.

Hollow Knight didn't bring about a revolution or revival of Meteoidvanias. That genre has never died out.

But you can absolutely see its influence in many metroidvanias that came out after it

I said nothing about RPG maker
Can you point out where I said that sir? I'd like to know where exactly I said that.

8/10 bait
Bastion is literally their only game not independently published

WOW A BUNCH OF SHIT NOBODY PLAYED
WOW

This is like saying Super Meat Boy isn't influential because hard platformers existed before it
You need to sit down in the corner with the dunce hat while everybody laughs at you dumbo

By this logic Shadow Warrior was also indie. Dev teams were just smaller back then depending on the projects. It was still practically the costs of AAA development was it not? I'm not sure it can be called indie because it was a different time.

Nobody has heard of most of this gay faggot tranny shit other than minecraft and hollow knight.

Salt and Sacrifice

That's hilarious. You're such a troll.

Really? Haven't played many Metroidvanias the last few years so I wouldn't know

Oh, of course my dear retard let me point it out so you can understand it

Depression RPGs

Got it now? Or should I bring crayons?

3.3

Nah: Noita was inspired by falling sand games, that's where the 2D perspective comes from

That says depression RPGs.
Again I'd like to ask where I said RPG maker games
Perhaps if you weren't so blind you'd be able to point it out this time correctly

Undertale is just homestuck and furro pandering: the game
With a side of spec ops the line
Not even the most notable indie rpg

Yeah it's Terraria with sand physics and permadeath

Oh you're trolling, nevermind I thought you were serious for a sec

no its fucking not. its a cave flyer like liero and wasnt even originally designed to be that way, it was supposed to be a god game like black and white or something, you didnt even control a character originally

Anon doesnt know about the million rpgmaker games that toby fox just copied

Ah, I need the crayons, I see.
Wait for me here until I bring them.

Based

Braid didn't fucking matter. Nobody played that shit.

CASTLE CRASHERS, however...

my girlfriend made me aware of homestuck, never really knew about it until she mentioned it

But to be fair, meat boy is a jumper derivative, which was first developed by the creator of Celeste long before meat boy

Would Vampire Survivors be a valid inclusion? I feel like any game that practically births its own subgenre is a gamechanger.

this list proves that the average game consumer is a fucking retard, because they think just like this. they think they're creating some list of facts and then by the second entry they're picking emotionally.

that "genre" is already burnt out, didn't even last 2 years

Is Rollercoaster Tycoon 1 considered an indie?

So by your logic Super Meat Boy isn't influential. Many hard platformers existed by then of course.
Binding of Isaac wasn't the first of its kind either so it's not influential
Normally I'd ask do you see how stupid you are but like that other anon said you're just fishing for (You)s so goodbye

VS is derivative of magic survival
play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.vkslrzm.Zombie

Ehhh published by Hasbro

His argument changed completely from

Undertale inspired a decade of clones / depression quest rpgs to

Undertale wasnt really influential but it was an outlier

Another ez win

That's 6 people and it looks like a good amount of their budget just goes to all the soda behind them to keep them caffeinated and awake during long nights of coding. Compare that to something like this:
instagram.com/aringoldsmith/reel/DATmCZHvrl_/

Modern dev teams are in the hundreds and involve girls like that which barely accomplish jack shit and have so much free time they can create vids to post on Instagram. Do you think the DOOM devs or the Shadow Warrior devs or any random india dev is hiring "Talent Marketing Specialists" like in the above link?

really good thread OP

Hollow Knight is only praised because it had a 7/10 story and a good amount of content and polish for a genre that is notorious for being full of low-effort dogshit. It's a good game, but viewed from the lens of gaming as a whole, it's not particularly exceptional or innovative. It'd be like saying that a badly-translated Chinese VN is amazing because it's the only Princess Maker-like game of any substance we've gotten in years.

or any random india dev

Sorry saars I meant "indie dev".

It's especially egregious since Supergiant's first game, Bastion, arguably saved Xbox Live Arcade after the hype over literal nothing games like Braid and Limbo died off.

I don't like defending trannies, but Celeste man made this game starring ogmo and a sequel years before super meatboy. Meatboy copied it. Meatboy is much more influential, but Celeste is not derivative of super meatboy, as super meatboy is actually just a clone of a game made by Celeste developer

devs team were just small

The only thing that matters is who funded them dumb dumb.
A game like Dark Reign is not indie because it was bankrolled by Activision and the soundtrack and movies were all handled by Activision companies while the game itself was built by like 5 aussies.

Forgot to attach pic

What does changed the industry mean? Minecraft basically kickstarted a whole new genre since there wasn't anything quite like it before, and you could argue it was a before and after for indie games by showing even a cheap one-man project could become hugely successful. Stardew Valley definitely inspired a new wave of "farming life sims" but it really didn't do anything revolutionary in regards to the actual gameplay and it owes a lot to the games it takes inspiration from.

the op pic looks like it's meant to be an info graph when it's really just someone picking their le favourite indie games.

the truth is that the real list wouldn't look pretty. pic related.

I don't understand how stardew valley is any different from harvest moon games.

metroidvania

The genre is called Hollowlike.

Its the first one on steam
Thats it.

I'd argue it was, since it was literally one guy doing 70% of the work in fucking assembly language. RCT2, no. It got a much larger push but wasn't nearly as successful (it's still a better game but the magic had died off and people moved on).

It's kind of insane to me as someone who lived through the time of late 90s and early-to-mid 2000s PC gaming that people just don't remember how big RCT, Garry's Mod, The Sims, and Command and Conquer were. People here act like Doom released, and then there was a sixteen year gap before League of Legends came out where the only PC game of note that released was Half-Life 2.

This. Despite it being a shit game, it actually brought change to the gaming industry.

Half-Life 1

Black and White

Neverwinter Nights

CSS

All of Sierra's games

I WANT TO GO BACK.

There were already a shit ton of indie farm sims out there.

>All of Sierra's games

take me home

9 and 10 haven't really changed anything.

i just wanna go back

WAKE ME UP

CAN'T WAKE UP

pic related

are probably my favorite indies. I don't care how "important" or "influental" they are, it means nothing to me.

this unlocked a core memory in me, holy shit

I cannot fucking believe this series turned into Tribes. I still cannot fucking believe they killed Tribes.

I will NEVER stop being mad about it.

Regardless of whether you think it's good or not, that's what it did. I don't like minecraft, but I'm not going to argue it wasn't hugely influential.

Doro also changed the industry

ok thanks nobody asked and your taste is shit go play noita

Dark Souls isn't even on the list, meanwhile multiple games on the list are clearly influenced by Dark Souls. You don't need to like the game to know it's been influential as shit.

"Influential" doesn't even mean "good". I don't like PUBG but I know it's more "influential" than the random little indie game I just played.

DayZ started out as a mod for Arma 2. I wouldn't consider the standalone version as indie.

If you actually think noita is good you are the retarded one

Every single run starts as a fucking slog for the first 30 minutes

If you go for anything but the regular bitch ending runs take +6 hours where 80% of it is downtime of you nust waddling / tping around while enemies dont even aggro you because perks eliminate 95% of damage sources and mechanics from the game

nine turboslops and a sony game

yeah i guess them changing the industry is why it's so shit now

Too complex of a topic to make an objective list. Why aren't Touhou, DOOM, Rogue, Dwarf Fortress, Interactive Buddy, or Tsukihime ever included in these lists?

btw Braid is WAY more important and influential than Celeste, Hollow Knight, and Limbo by virtue of the fact all of those arguably take from that game.

youtu.be/4MLDC55grt8

SHAZBOT

Oh, I'm sorry anon. I thought that people here play games.

i think you have a low iq

they aren't made by their troon buddies so they are never included in those lists or known to journos

take Celeste, Hollow Knight and Hades off. I'm not saying they're bad games but they didn't have anywhere near the level of impact on the industry the others did. Celeste and hollow knight are derivative and typical entries in their respective genres that already exisyed before they were made, Hades isn't anything special compared to the rest of the dev's catalog, if you had to put one of their's on there it would be Bastion easily.

He's correct though, none of finngol games were ever good and autistic death simulator where most of the playerbase won't ever be able to see most of the game is one of them

God. Take me back. I want to go back. Please.

youtu.be/_dEsp_7nStI

if anything blasphemous is ripping off castlevania symphony of the night just as hollow knight did

A midwitthat thinks hes smarter than someone actually smart
So the perfect audience for Noita

based

none of them, "the industry" is still spiralling down the toilet

Hades isn't anything special compared to the rest of the dev's catalog

It's quite special actually, a warning story how bending to libturd mental illness can turn you from a company with spotless reputation and games insta-bought to yet another tranny slopmakers basically overnight

I thought about mentioning touhou but really, it hasn't revived/maintained interest in shmups as a genre, it didn't revolutionise shmup mechanics either and it's not like cute girls in shmups is something no one else had done before or anything. I don't know enough about the Japanese indie space to know how big of an impact touhou has on that scene so maybe it has a much more tangible effect over there than it does in the west.

goes into thread about indie games that have changed the industry

says, "erm well idk anything about that but i like these games"

gets told to shut up

starts whining and crying

TOP

Touhou is more notable for, along with Vocaloid, singlehandedly keeping communities of Japanese creatives alive under hilariously restrictive copyright laws because they were the only popular franchises of note that wouldn't sue you into oblivion for drawing pictures or making content about them.

Since you are so desperate and 1 reply was not enough...ok, I'll bite. In what way is a game such as Hollow Knight "important" and how did it change the industry?

the only bad part of noita is how complicated and unintuitive the deckbuilder wand crafting is, the learning curve on that shit is steep as hell and probably takes something away from it. but its also the primary thing that gives the game the longevity that it has, so its probably just a matter of you getting good. anything else you encounter that you find difficult is just you being unpracticed and terrible
you called the early game a slog, you dumbass. the early game is where it shines the most. any fucking idiot can build a machinegunning trigger payload and trivialize everything once they understand how to build a wand. the game is being able to get to that, knowing how to make the best of what the game gives you and actually get to a game break consistently. can you do that? or are you one of these fags that talks a lot of shit but rips half or more of their runs to something completely inane

Didn't Blow shit on journos for being too dumb to understand his genius?

Every game on the list was influenced by Dark Souls.

he thinks he's talking to someone else now

add 'developing paranoid delusions' to the bottom of that list

Does that mean you can't answer?

By ruining metroidvania subgenre so every stupid fucking shit starts hollow knight comparisons the second they see one

Undertale autists are delusional beyond hope

Minecraft is literally the only game on this list that had any relevant influence whatsoever. Most of these are just derivative of older AAA titles like every other indie game.

minecraft sucked!!

Anon Babble is so consistently terrible when it comes to inputs on other things

minecraft sucked

YES.

why the fuck would dark souls be on a list of indie games?

no terraria

aaaand into the garbage that list goes

retarded noita shill doesn't even realise that having to "break" it instead of just playing it like every normal game is already a bad thing

this whole list

no fez or braid

who ever made it is a retard, but that was obvious just from having celeste on it and that high

no terraria

no cave story

no limbo

no OFF

shit tier list

for same reason a sony game is there

this but to be fair im actually impressed they got limbo, it didnt change anything but it was an extremely popular ''shitty' xbox arcade tier title and was universally liked so im surprised game journalists making lists (who dont play video games) managed to get that, someone behind OP image must know atleast a little about video games

i literally said the early game and working toward a game break is where it shines, you dont *have* to do anything, it's a choice. i wish i could erase everything i know about the game and go back and learn it all again because that process was completely amazing to me. there's so much stuff i couldnt begin to scratch the surface in 2000 characters. but anyway im telling you how you can play the game for 1k+ hours and have it not get boring

don't call them autists, you do us a disservice. they thrive on telling themselves 'geez such a freakin autist sometimes X3 XD"

undertale

Funny, things did get a lot gayer after this game came out

It would have been better to realize you made a mistake and choose not to defend it instead of doubling down by highlighting somone else's mistake

i blame heavy rain and the last of us for that (and by extension kojima nigger for paving the way for such shit slop)

limbo is literally on the list retard

cave story

off

influenced literally nothing and nobody except rpgmaker incels

What games were inspired by FTL?

slay the spire for one.

JAAAAASOOOON!

the game that invented an entire gameplay mechanic. the press X to Jason, or ``Quick Time Event`` as normalnigs call it

a part where you have nothing, die instantly before abusing the mechanics to break the game and which is exactly the same is le good

least deranged noita shill

QTEs have been a thing before Heavy Rain.

wrong faggot its a part where YOU die instantly because you suck shit. noita is a game that requires you to learn to play. you're incapable of appreciating one of the best singleplayer games of all time because of a deficiency you earned at birth. congrats and i feel bad for you

sure thing kid

I think that list is full of errors why would I answer a question like that?

kojima is such a genius guys
press X to not cum
did you know you can press the same button way faster if you use multiple fingers? what a crazy game!!! i hope i dont get seen by the guards and cameras that telegraph their line of sight on my minimap!

you're a worm

no cave story

no shovel knight

opinions discarded

it's not the same at all you have to mash to survive the torture.
in Heavy Rain you have to press X to Jason. only a single X press. not multiple, not mashing.
Kojima can fuck off

Nigga haven't heard of shenmue

i know its not the same i just wanted to take a diarrhea dump on kojima

celeste/undertale higher than stardew valley

lmao

what did shovel knight do?

ASS

was getting over it the first of its kind?

based fuck hackjima

i invented camera controls

i invented gameplay

i invented consoles

fuck that gook

what did shovelware knight change?

inb4 i like it so it's important

no, he made sexy hiking way before it and it was practically the same game but 2d

inb4 i like it so it's important

not a bad prediction since 1/4 of the thread is people confusing "idnie game that changed the industry" with "indie game I liked"

oh wait i just looked it up he didnt make that game someone else did

That's just a list of popular games not impactful games.

fucking this.
/thread

Celeste

Limbo

Hades

These do not belong.

ah well that one had some amount of impact on games. Jump king, Getting over it, Get to work and probably some others i've missed.

yeah, only up, chained together, theres a ton of those streamer bait physics climber games now

I think it was QWOP

No AAA game has Minecraft crafting mechanic. In fact, I don't think any game has it. We are of course talking about the mechanic where you place material in different spaces on a grid to determine the end crafting product.

getting over it inspired thousands of streamers to do stupid angry grrr i'm mad rage streams + countless games in artificial difficulty climbing rage bait genre
but all of this wouldn't exist without sexy hiking so that's the truly influential title

The only 2 games on this list should be Minecraft (self explanatory) and Meat Boy (pioneer of Indie games)

I don't see World of warcraft or Diablo 2 anywhere on that list.

Have you played Recettear, the game that Moonlighter is a knockoff of? It's much better.

terraria can go fuck itself I guess

where the hell is FNAF? it and it's endless ripoffs have been ruining the horror genre for over 10 years at this point.

It's weird because half of these I could see how they were pretty foundational in either creating or codefying a genre of indie games but then you get shit like Celeste or Hades which were neither the first nor even really the best. Celeste in particular feels like a mash up of basically every pre-established indie platformer trope right down to the gay, sappy story. By contrast The Binding of Isaac and Minecraft were like, decade-defining games.

Was Rogue an indie game? Surely that's gotta be on the list if it was

The "I've got into video games 5 years ago" list, holy shit. With Journey and Limbo being wild picks, probably AI suggested.

imagine putting these c tier slops next to Minecraft.

were underrated good games like minecraft too.

hell no.

and where tf is factorio?!? instead random bunch of lucky platformers.

Rogue had a publisher but it was a pretty small one and it was initially developed by an independent team of students. Not like it really matters, this list is stretching the definition of "Indie" to the breaking point. I mean Journey was published by fucking Sony Entertainment. When people say "Indie" they really just mean non-AAA budget games.

Celeste didn't change shit. It's just a decent game

even fucking angy birds would probably fit the tittle description more than some of those. for better or (lot) worse

No, I haven't. Thank you for this recommendation, anon.

This list not having Slay the Spire marks as a popularity contest more than anything. EVERYONE was doing branching paths or card games after that game came out.

These games (and Hollow Knight) were inspired by Dark Souls.
It's obvious when you consider that Salt and Sanctuary and Momodora Reverie came out before Hollow Knight.
You can also just look at the dev interviews citing Souls games as their influence and not Hollow Knight.

ENTER

Celeste shouldnt be on this list.

It brings me no pleasure to say it but FNAF should be on there
Also Hotline Miami

None of these games bar Minecraft significantly changed the industry

AI-generated list, move on.

Skimming through the thread here's Anon Babble's list in no particular order

Doom

Rogue

Binding of Issac

Minecraft

League of Legends

FNAF

Factorio

Super Meat Boy

Rust

Terraria

Runescape

Look another faggot retard who thinks that every metroidvania is le hollow turd copy, especially the ones ripping off dark souls just like hollow turd did
Guess silksong is ripping off celeste because you are climbing the faggotry mountain in both, i wish your kind died already

People nowadays just use indie as shorthand for "low budget game that doesn't actually compare to AAA". You won't see anyone applying it to Doom despite it being an independently developed and published game, because Doom was cutting edge. The AAA/indie dichotomy is so deeply ingrained that they can't even imagine that it used to be possible for a small team to produce industry-changing tech without publisher funding.

fnaf changed everything. for the worse. but it did change everything

Seethe harder, Troon Faggotry cocksuckers. Marvelous single-handedly ran the genre to the ground with cashgrab slops. Fortunately, a single indie dev managed to restore it to its former glory.

stardew valley unleashed thousands of 2D "cozy" farming games on the industry