Choosing indie games that fit what you actually enjoy

Indie discovery fails because trailers sell mood and purchases depend on mechanics. Four filters below turn a wishlist of two hundred games into five you will actually finish.

Quick answer

• Read two negative reviews first.
• Check the median playtime against your own tolerance for short games.
• Watch ten minutes of unedited gameplay rather than a trailer.

Why this keeps happening

Mood is cheap to produce and mechanics are expensive, so trailers over-represent atmosphere. A game that looks beautiful for thirty seconds can be mechanically empty for thirty hours.

The second filter is scope. Small teams often run out of content before the systems mature, which is why many indie titles are strongest in the first three hours and thinnest at the end.

What to do, in order

1. Read two negative reviews first, and look for whether they describe the same structural problem.
2. Check the median playtime against your own tolerance for short games.
3. Watch ten minutes of unedited gameplay rather than a trailer.
4. Look at the developer's previous title, if any, and whether it was finished.
5. Wishlist rather than buy, and revisit after the first major patch.
6. Buy at most two at a time; a backlog of indies is a backlog of guilt.

How to measure it

Completion rate matters more than review score. A game with eighty percent positive reviews and a twenty percent completion rate is telling you something the score hides.

Mistakes that undo the work

• Buying in a bundle because one title looked good.
• Trusting a trailer that never shows the interface.
• Buying five games in a sale and finishing none of them.

Frequently asked

Read next

• Early Access: When to Buy In and When to Wait It Out
• Game Mods as a Back Door Into the Games Industry

Games worth trying

• Ocean Catcher fun
• racing portal
• Slime Run