BEST INDIE GAME STUDIOS RANKED 2024
34WHO IS THE BEST INDIE GAMING STUDIO?
You could obviously make a subjective list about the best indie studios around, but that would ruffle a lot of feathers and you would never be able to create a list that everyone could agree on. What if we made that list objective? What if we ranked these studios based on their history of producing high quality games and their consistency?
Back in 2021, we created this list for the first time using the same metrics and since then, there have been an overwhelming amount of amazing indie experiences, which makes this list a lot different from the first time around. It’s not a hyperbole to say that every year feels like the golden age of indie games.
We examined over “50” of the best and brightest indie game studios, made sure they were eligible based on the rules we laid out and then rated them against one another to find out who are the top five indie game studios. Before getting into the list, let’s go over the rules.
Rules
Rule 1: The studio must be independent and privately owned. While this might sound strange, there are plenty that seem like small indie studios but are owned by much bigger corporations like Campo Santo being owned by Valve, Night School and their recent acquisition by Amazon, and Klei who were acquired by Tencent.
Rule 2: No one hit wonders! We are only going to be including studios with at least two games developed. This would eliminate a studio like Team Cherry who have been hard at work on the ultra anticipated Hollow Knight SilkSong, but as of right now have only have Hollow Knight on their portfolio.
Rule 3: The studio needs to be fairly active, which means that only studios with at least two games over the past calendar decade will be included. Although a decade might sound like a long time, developing games is a long and slow process that takes many years to fulfill the original vision. This means a studio like playdead won’t be included since Limbo came out in 2010.
Rule 4: There will be a recency bias. This means that the last effort means the most and carries more weight towards the studios final score as this is more indicative of the studios current skillset. This will be achieved by adding a slight multiplier to the most recent release score by 1.1.
Rule 5: This list will be console focused meaning that the release of a game needs to be on multiple platforms. This means that no exclusive, VR, mobile or PC only games will be included.
Rule 6: Only Studios under 100 people will be considered as any bigger and you technically outgrown your indie competition and should now judged against bigger studios.
Rule 7: DLC is a slippery slope and as such, only fully numbered sequels or different games will count. This would mean that Dead Cells from Motion Twin would only be one release and Studio MDHR will only have one release on this list since The Delicious Last Course was just an add on. Both require the base game to play.
Rule 8: No collaborations. This means that a studio like Yacht Club Games won’t be eligible because they have only release one full game in the past decade that has been solely developed by themselves. Their last two games: Shovel Knight Dig and Shovel Knight Pocket Dungeon were collaborative projects.
Rule 9: The game must be a big enough release that it has over 25 critic reviews. This would mean that Deltarune wouldn’t be applicable because it only has 12 reviews likely due to its length and only being release in small chapters.
Rule 10: Possibly the most important rule of them all. People are human, mistakes happen and it’s almost guaranteed that we missed a studio or forgot to remove or add a game from a studio based on the rules.