Our indie games of the year, 2022

2022 might be the strongest year we ever covered, and it is the year our December argument got genuinely tense. Everyone had a hill they were ready to die on. Here is where we landed.

The shortlist

Vampire Survivors was the year's great time thief and the star of our first community night. Cult of the Lamb made cult management weirdly cosy. Stray let us be a cat in a beautiful drowned city. Neon White turned first-person platforming into a speedrun card game and quietly stole a lot of hours. And then there was the fox.

In the end it was not close. Tunic ran away with it.

Game of the year: Tunic

Tunic won because it did something none of the others tried: it made not understanding fun, then made understanding feel like a reward you earned. The in-game manual is one of the smartest ideas we saw all decade, and the moment a page finally clicks stayed with all of us. Read the full review if you want the argument in detail.

For where our taste went next, the 2023 list is right here, and the full shelf lives on the reviews page.