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Larian is about as passionate as a team can get about the games they make, it's hard not to love them.
Deck 13 went from making a crappy Dark Souls rip-off to making really good games.
Gunfire Games knocked it out of the park with Remnant and is now releasing a sequel that every preview seems to love.
Team Cherry made Hollow Knight, probably the best indie game ever made, maybe one day they'll bless us with Silksong.
Valve, by a far stretch. Also they support their games for a long time. Sadly they don’t make as much games as they could, because of the money printing machine that is Steam.
Supergiant
just hit after hit with them.
I just really wish they'd kept up their track record of always trying something new rather than falling back on the money printer that doing a sequel to Hades is sure to be. I know Hades II will be good and all, and it'll surely have their incredible level of polish and an absolute banger of a soundtrack, but... what else might we have gotten instead, y'know?
Larian should be up for consideration
New Blood Interactive. Published games like ULTRAKILL, Dusk (made by same guy as Iron Lung), and Amid Evil. Also, iirc the owner is pro-union.
Additionally, these aren't studios, but my favorite games lately have been The Long Drive, Voices of the Void, and Cruelty Squad.
Cruelty Squad is a stellar immersive sim that's also about as visually offensive as you can get, which only makes it better. The premise is that you're a hitman in a gig economy that exists in a world overrun by wall street investors and cryptobros. Death isn't permanent, morality doesn't exist, and everyone is evil. Cruelty Squad is fucking art.
Voices of the Void is a game where you play as a astronomer at an isolated radio observatory, looking for messages from the sky. It's good. It's fun. It's spooky. It's silly. There's a ton of secrets and places to explore. It's also free. You have no excuse, check it out.
The Long Drive is "streamer-bait" which also happens to be the best driving game I've ever played. No, it's not the best racing game, nor the best car game, but it is the best driving game. No, seriously, it really is. It's a survival game where you get a letter from you mother asking you to come to her house. There's only one problem. She's 5000km away and you have a shitty, beat up car that can barely hit 60km/h. Oh, and the world ended in 1979. So it's you, your car and 5000km of road with the occasional pit stop for supplies and better parts. My favorite thing is that any car/bike can fit any engine or wheels. You can absolutely pull a diesel out of bus and put it on a moped.
Edit: oh, if you like horror games:
I've heard Chilla's Arts makes really good lo-fi horror games.
If you want low-budget slasher movies in game form, check out Puppet Combo. Just make sure to turn your sound down because sometimes the jumpscares are loud. When I say loud, I mean loud.
If you wanna see what the indie horror scene is up to in general, check out the Dread X collections.
Edit 2: oh, I've also been looking forward to Team Reptile's Bomb Rush Cyberfunk. It's a spiritual successor to Jet Set Radio and will be featuring new works from THE Hideki Naganuma.
Cruelty Squad is such a bizarre beast. It's an ugly, unpleasant, and overstimulating game that feels hostile to somebody trying to play it. And despite that, it lives in the back of my head as one of the most unique gaming experiences I've had in ages.
The game fucking rules. 10/10 I am a flesh automaton animated by neurotransmitters
Annapurna Interactive (outer wilds, what remains of Edith Finch).
Annapurna is the publisher of those games. Outer Wilds was developed by Mobius Digital, whereas What Remains of Edith Finch was developed by Giant Sparrow.
You are correct. I guess Annapurna can be considered a "publisher with good taste".
I have a soft spot for "one man kiosks" like Hempuli (Baba Is You), Lucas Pope (Papers Please, Return of the Obra Dinn), panstasz (World of Horror) and Miro Haverinen (Fear & Hunger).
Gotta shout out Larian and The Game Kitchen as well, their work is phenomenal.
I don't know about truly independant, but nearly every single time I see the devolver digital publishing logo I expect the game to be good, even if it isn't for me. They kinda just don't miss.
Is Coffee Stain indie?
Subset Games (FTL, Into the Breach)
What exactly are we counting as independent? Like a developer whose game is published by a publisher, but they aren't like one of the REALLY big publishers. Or is it just purely independent, self-published studios?
Dwarf Fortress, technically speaking, the Steam version isn't independent, but it seems ridiculous to not include them here.
Subset games, ghost ship games, team cherry, hello games,