Sometimes, you come across that one indie game that grips you intensely, giving you one of the best, most engaging experiences you’ve ever had, only to let you go within a matter of a few hours.

On some occasions, though, you find that one game that is just as special to you as the rest, but it never seems to run out of that appeal, constantly remaining enjoyable and replayable no matter what.

I’ll be listing off ten of those indie games I find I can always come back to, dip in for another playthrough, and return to each part of it without ever feeling tired of it.

As a bit of a rule, half of this list will be roguelikes/roguelites, whereas the other half could be any other genre. Without this restriction, this list would essentially be almost entirely dominated by one genre, and that’s just not that interesting.

10

Stardew Valley

Farmed For Hours

While your initial reaction to playing a cozy farming game might make you think it’s one of those hundred-hour games you only play once, in reality, Stardew Valley is a hundred-hour game you could play a hundred times over.

From the insane potential of min-maxxing every fine detail to the multitude of challenge runs you can decide to overcome, there are a

million different ways to approach
the game, and it’s incredibly fun.

Every aspect of this game can be optimized and perfected, from figuring out the optimal gifts to give for friendship, to routing your fishing and foraging around completing the community center in year 1.

It transforms the experience from a chill farming game into an incredibly routing heavy experience centered around making the most out of your time and farming up as much as you can, and I love that.

9

Hades

Delve Into Death

As a Roguelite, Hades breaks past the typical expectations in the genre, as it doesn’t become boring to replay due to its permanent progression, instead only getting better as you gain more options.

Every new weapon you unlock feels like you’re playing as a brand-new character with an entirely new moveset, and the permanent upgrades to your stats mostly just make runs more consistent, but still challenging.

Once you’ve dived in a couple hundred times, you can go ahead and sign up

for the pact of punishment
, maybe even do a little bit of hell mode, and truly get your ass kicked until you’re sick of it.

There’s a bottomless well of different ways to play, and while most roguelites end up becoming disgustingly easy and boring, Hades never fails to be one of the most challenging games ever, if you let it.

8

Hollow Knight

Winding Routes

I think Hollow Knight may be the best map a Metroidvania has ever had, mainly because there are a hundred routes you can take through Hallownest, and all of them feel equally satisfying and intentional.

Right off the heels of Forgotten Crossroads, you can go to Greenpath, as is rather obvious, but you can also enter Crystal Peak, or even Fungal Wastes if you’ve got your sequence breaks down pat.

You can watch a blind playthrough, and after the City of Tears, their route through the world will look nothing like yours, and that’s an awesome way to make me want to replay and discover every new thing.

On top of that, the Pantheons are a great way to self-inflict frustration for a week or two, being some of the most challenging boss gauntlets ever made, with an endless amount of ways you can tackle them.

7

Dead Cells

Quite Roomy

I’ve played Dead Cells for quite some time, and I’m still not sure that I’ve seen all the unique areas scattered throughout the game. It’s essentially a roguelite metroidvania, and man, does it deliver on that.

Every step of the way, slashing through enemies is immensely satisfying, tearing through rooms like nobody’s business feels like you’ve become a cosmic force of destruction, and I love it all so much.

The unlocks all make the game open up even further, and none of them ever feel like I’m being forced into making the game easier, but rather that I’m slowly unlocking my full, complete toolset.

It feels like I could do a few hundred runs of this game, and I’ll somehow never run out of boss cells to do, content to explore, combinations of weapons and modifiers, and I love that ever-expansive feeling.

6

Rivals of Aether 2

Freedom Fighting

I think making a mechanically in-depth and fully realized fighting game is a surefire way to maintain a massive player base that never wants to put the game down, and Rivals of Aether 2 does that excellently.

Every character is incredibly distinct and offers some type of unique playstyle I haven’t seen replicated in a platform fighter, unless we’re talking about Clairen, in which case I’ve seen that play style in every platform fighter.

On top of the

already solid base mechanics
, the fact that we’re constantly getting fed new characters, modes, skins, and whatever else means this game is an easy way to rack up a few hundred hours.

I’ve run through the classic mode campaigns way too many times, and I can’t wait to do that same thing with story mode. The movement is crisp, and optimizing your times is way too enjoyable.

5

Balatro

Absolute Cinema

If you’re an absolutely based gambling enjoyer, you probably have a few hundred hours in Balatro already, but if you don’t, you might want to hop on the most addictive video game ever put on this earth.

There’s something so entrancing about this game. The music is the same song throughout the entire experience, yet I’ve never gotten tired of it, and it enhances my desire to play just a few more runs before I stop.

Unfortunately, 99% of gamblers quit before their big win, so most people don’t even find out that this game has hundreds and

hundreds of hours of content
from unlocking everything alone.

Trying to get to gold stake on all the decks is a massive task that takes a massive number of attempts, even if you’re always successful, which you won’t be, because the game didn’t feel like giving you that fifth diamond for the flush.

4

Celeste

Super Extended Hyperdash

Just earlier this week, completely unrelated to writing this list, I was replaying Celeste just for fun. It’s an

awesome precision platformer
, and the difficulty combined with the incredible level design just makes it incredible.

The abilities you have are all incredibly simple, just jumping, dashing, and climbing. Yet, you can combine these three things in a myriad of different ways that makes this game one of the best speedrunning titles ever.

It’s incredibly fun to wavedash through levels far quicker than you played them the first time, or even go through the entire game as quickly as you can, never mind the massive modding community with thousands of custom levels.

This game is incredible, and I revisit the entire thing once a year at the bare minimum. It’s about as replayable as a completely linear 2D platformer can get, with all the techniques and tricks you’d ever want.

3

The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth

Virtual Insanity

Most roguelikes with unlockables for future runs usually go with a couple new characters, a good handful of new items, and some stages, but The Binding of Isaac was bold enough to test the limit of how much content could be in one game.

There are a little over 700 unlockables in this game, most of that number taken up by the massive amount of items with extremely specific unlock conditions and achievements tied to them, making for a hell of a 100% run.

I genuinely don’t think you can get through the base game with all the DLC and have everything unlocked within a hundred hours, and it’s practically impossible to run out of new stuff to do in this game.

It would already be incredibly replayable through the merits of being a great roguelike with fun mechanics and bosses that make the average person wish to commit a felony, but this makes the game infinitely replayable.

2

Terraria

Keep Digging

I have roughly 2000 hours in Terraria, and frankly, once the next update releases, I’ll gladly get through a few hundred more. It’s one of the best Sandbox RPG experiences, and it only ever gets better.

Every update provides a ton of new stuff while never being too scared to overhaul and change all the old stuff for the better, and I personally think it only gets more enjoyable as you get more skilled.

Everything has some sort of counter, some arena you can build to combat every boss, some combination of armor to give you the best stats for that point in the game, and there’s always a bigger fish to fry.

Playing this game vanilla has always been great, and since TModLoader is an official DLC on Steam,

playing mods has become far easier
and makes it so I can never escape Terraria before it consumes me entirely.

1

Risk of Rain 2

Viscious Cycle

I believe my biggest stint of playing a single game every single day was when I discovered Risk of Rain 2 back in 2023, then managed to log 200 hours in just a few months, as it’s genuinely addicting.

Every character is incredibly unique and interesting with fun kits that make them feel great, all the items have other items to synergize with, and the scrapping system puts any luck back into your hands.

It has the most skill expression of any roguelike I’ve ever played, and it’s no coincidence that it’s easily the roguelike I’ve played most, and even after getting all the achievements, I’m still not done with it.

There are so many logs to get, so many eclipse climbs to overcome with each character, and so many more runs that all feel unique from each other, and I can’t wait to jump back in a few hundred more times.