2024 has been absolutely stacked with incredible games, and we really have been spoilt for choice this year.
We’ve had the absolute pleasure of covering hundreds, if not thousands of amazing indie games this year, and what better way to wrap the year up, then by featuring some of our faves.
In this article we’ll be featuring 24 games we loved playing in 2024.
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Oddsparks
In the cutest automation game you’ll ever find, you’ll manage production lines of cute little sparks.
Oddsparks: An Automation Adventure, sees you explore a fantasy world, uncovering mysteries of the past, while building up your resources and army of sparks – tiny little woodland creature who are super helpful. You’ll uncover new crafting recipes as you progress, as well as different types of sparks to unlock, and leveling up the town will unlock more resource types too.
While still in early access, the game has already had a ton of extra content added like trains, and more biomes, so there is already so much to do and easily 30+ hours of gameplay.
With multiplayer functionality, you can join up with your friends to explore the land, recover the lost knowledge of the sparks and build the cutest automation lines around.
Creatures of Ava
You’ve heard of creature collector games, but have you heard of a creature saving game?
That’s exactly what you’ll find in Creatures of Ava, an adventure exploration game, where you journey to the planet Ava and attempt to save the animals and people who live there.
The planet has been infected by the Withering, a mysterious disease that is having some pretty nasty effects on the wildlife, and it’ll be up to you to try and save them all.
You’ll be bestowed with a magical staff, a remnant of the once mighty civilization that called Ava home, and you’ll use it to cure the Withering. Pair that with the flute given to you by the locals, and you’ll be able to tame the creatures and get them off of Ava safely, but is that the only way they can be saved?
Into the Emberlands
Set out on an journey to rescue lost Knacks in Into the Emberlands
In this cozy exploration sim game, you’ll become a lightbearer, capable of entering the mysterious Miasma, but your lightbearing abilities only stretch as far as your embers, so you’ll be limited as to how far you can go.
The world changes in each level, giving you new worlds to explore, and you’ll need to collect resources to upgrade and repair your village, find lost knacks, and ensure you make it back to the village before you run out of embers.
Find enough Knacks and resources to level up, in what is a cozy exploration game with a roguelike twist.
Core Keeper
Enter a mysterious underground world, where you’ll need to create tunnels and explore to survive in the multiplayer sandbox crafting game Core Keeper.
Making it’s 1.0 debut in 2024, this one is perfect for players who like to play without too much instruction, leaving you to work out exactly how to survive, craft and build in this weird underground world.
You’ll need to venture out and explore the world to gather resources, progressing through different tiers of crafting, and allowing you to craft stronger weapons, better shields, and other equipment and food. This will be essential as you venture out in the world to take down the epic bosses, which is essentially how you progress the main story.
This is a great co-op pick, that has a lot of variety in how you can play, and is a great survival crafter choice.
CopyCat
Prepare to have your heart ripped out and stamped on in CopyCat.
This emotional narrative game sees you step into the paws of a newly adopted stray cat, who struggles to find her place in her new home. Your owner is an older lady with her fair share of health issues, so not only with you be warring with your inner lioness, but also with some tough moral choices. Your place in the household is soon threatened by your owner’s daughter, and another cat who looks suspiciously like you. You’ll explore a vibrant neighborhood, completing different mini games to overcome different challenges, and finding your way back home.
This is a great cozy pick, but be sure to have the tissues on hand for this one.
Fabledom
If you’re looking for a cozy city builder, then look no further than Fabledom.
In this fantasy, fairy tale inspired game, you’ll build up your own kingdom complete with champions, dragons, and giants to contend with.
Your citizens, aka fablings, will all need adequate housing before you can set them to work, gathering resources to keep your kingdom fed, and allow you to expand.
City management is not the only thing you’ll have on your mind, as in this game you can also find true love for yourself, as you form relationships with your neighbouring kingdoms, which can be beneficial both to your heart, and to your resource stores if you know how to play it well.
With an adorably magical aesthetic, this is a game that is full of enchanting fun, and is perfect for the cozy gamer
Duck Detective
You’ll play as a duck down on his luck in Duck Detective Secret Salami, a detective game where you’ll attempt to crack the case of the stolen lunch.
In this cozy, but hilarious, mystery game, you’ll need to interview suspects, fill in the blanks, and deduce who could possibly be behind such a heinous crime. this one uses some word based puzzles and your powers of investigation will be needed to work out what each clue could mean.
With a fully voice acted cast, first impressions are crucial to solving the case, and don’t forget a healthy dose of intimidation when interviewing your suspects. This is perfect for the animal game lover who also likes a bit of a detective spin.
Crab God
Dive into the depths of the deep blue sea and take a crab colony under your fin in Crab God.
In this wholesome side scroller strategy game, you’ll be in charge of protecting the next Crab God and successfully migrating your crab colony to deep enough in the ocean for it to hatch
With a cute colony of crabs at your disposal, you’ll need to attract sea life to perform rituals, gaining you important perks for your colony, and you’ll need to ensure you collect enough food for a successful migration
With enemies spawning each night, you’ll work hard to protect your next crab god, in what is a wholesome game, perfect for spending a few hours playing after work.
Paper Trail
Step into the shoes of Paige, a girl with the ability to fold the world to her will – quite literally – in the cozy puzzle game Paper Trail.
This adventure puzzle game uses origami style puzzles, requiring you to fold the world in different ways to navigate through each level. Navigating the world will get progressively harder as you venture further from home, and you’ll need to solve puzzles by matching up numbers and creating pathways for you to cross.
You’ll explore a variety of colourful world environments, each with their own quirky characters and challenges, as you venture across the pages of this vibrant world on your way to university.
Paired with a heartfelt story about family and growing up, this is a game that is perfect for the cozy puzzler, and is one of my all time favourite puzzle games
Lightyear Frontier
Blast off to a new frontier and start your own interstellar farm in Lightyear Frontier.
This cozy farming sim game sees you perform most of the typical farming activities like growing crops, taking care of animals, harvesting resources, and crafting new items, except you’ll do it all in a stunning space environment where everything is just slightly different to how it is on earth – oh and you’ll be able to do it all from the comfort of your giant mech.
The planet you’ve landed on was previously inhabited, so there’s some epic ruins to explore, but the planet has seen better days and a lot of the areas have been taken over by toxic waste and noxious weeds, so you’ll need to get to work to bring life back to the different biomes.
This is a great cozy farming choice, and is perfect for those who love a farming sim with a twist.
News Tower
Become the editor of a newspaper in the news tycoon game Newstower
You’ll need to fit out your offices, hire staff, and ensure they are happy to build the best newspaper in the city. You can choose which stories to cover, and design your print layout, optimising your pages for your readers and scoring printing bonuses for combos too.
You’ll unlock different audiences as you build your paper, and you’ll need to ensure you cover what they want to read to make record sales numbers. Complete side quests for the mafia, the mayor, and the high society to keep in their good graces, and get bonus perks, or face the consequences which can be – well interesting to say the least.
This one is still in early access, but has had quite a few major updates since it launched, adding a ton of content to the game and it’s up there with one of my all time favourite management sim style games.
CorpoNation
Sort mysterious genetic samples in your new job in the dystopian work simulation game CorpoNation.
Set in a futuristic world where companies now own entire states, you’ll live and work an elevator ride away, confined to your room, and at the mercy of the Ringo CorpoNation for all your social, aesthetic, and entertainment needs.
You’ll need to earn enough to pay your bills, as you toe the company line, but this line soon gets a little wonky as you interact with a rogue workers on the forefront of a rebellion
With a mix of puzzle sorting, old school gaming, and a dystopian narrative, this is a game that is perfect for the conspiracy lover.
Go Go Town!
Build up the ultimate town in your new role as the mayor in the town building simulation game Go Go Town!
With both solo and co-op modes available, you’ll be handed the key to a rundown city, and it’ll be up to you to build turn it into a bustling town.
There’s a range of different shops to build, but you’ll need to make sure they’ve got things to sell, so optimising and automating your resource collection and crafting is essential to your towns success.
Build residential buildings to grow your towns population, and set your residents to work to keep the town running, and to keep the money flowing in.
This is a great co-op or solo pick, and it’s still in early access, with more updates to come.
New Cycle
Establish a city in a post-apocalyptic world in the industry focused city builder, New Cycle.
You’ll need to take care of your people’s basic needs, distributing food, water, tools, and clothes, whilst managing their work schedules and entertainment and medical needs.
You’ll build your city from scratch, with both freeform and grid-based building, and resource collection will be paramount, so you’ll need to ensure to establish plenty of the various types of resource buildings, staffing them appropriately, to survive
Your colony exists in an unforgiving world, so you’ll need to navigate various natural disasters, but that won’t be the only thing that poses a threat to your growing settlement.
You’ll need to carefully manage crises, unrest and other challenges that pose a threat to your colony, with your choices influencing your colonies success
This is a darker city builder, with steam punk vibes, and complex resource management, and is a great choice for those who love a challenging city builder.
Shapez 2
If automation games are you fave, then this game is for you. Shapez 2 is a sandbox automation simulation game where you harvest and manipulate shapes before delivering them to a giant vortex.
The sequel to the much loved Shapez game, takes similar mechanics but gives them a 3d upgrade, adding new perspectives and the ability to have multiple layers of conveyor belts stacked on top of each other. You’ll be able to cut, stack, paint, rotate your shapes and more, creating some really interesting designs and some interesting automation set ups to create them.
Not only will you have a lot more possibilities for routing and optimization, but this one is also set in space, requiring you to transport your harvested shapes from random floating asteroids to your main hub before you can deliver them.
This is one of the best automation games out there, particularly if you’re looking for a sandbox experience where you don’t need to worry about collecting resources to build, and is a great factory sim choice.
Lil Guardsman
If you’ve ever wanted the power to determine who can enter a city, well this game will let you live out that fantasy.
Lil Guardsman sees you become the guard on the gate, covering your dad’s shift and giving a 12 year old girl the ultimate control…what could possibly go wrong.
Utilising some point and click mechanics, you’ll, interrogate would be passers, use a variety of different tools to determine if they’re the real deal, and of course use your observational skills to fish out any flaws in their stories.
With a fun fantasy setting, a ton of hilarious dialogue full of pop culture references, and is a much lighter comedic take on a Papers Please like game.
Coffee Caravan
Live out your dreams of running your own coffee van, in coffee caravan
You’ll need to fit out your van, choosing which recipes you’d like to serve, and making sure you’ve got all the equipment you need to get the job done. Once the day starts you’ll need to serve your customers, ensuring they don’t have to wait too long to get their hands on a delicious cup of joe.
This one has a roguelite map, so losing will see you start at the beginning of your run, but you’ll keep any upgrades you’ve purchased in the shop sections which definitely comes in handy.
With different recipes to unlock, upgrades to purchase, and a cute and cozy graphic style, this is a great choice for the coffee lover.
Emberward
In this tower defense game, you’ll build mazes out of block cards in your hand, as you attempt to protect your ember.
Emberward is a roguelike deckbuilder slash tower defense game, where you’ll need to utilize limited blocks to build the ultimate defense system. You’ll use your tetris-like wall blocks to create mazes and stack them with towers to take down your enemies, and along the way collect ruin cards which can grant a much needed boost.
Each run sees you play different maps, tower compositions and mazes, so you know no two runs will be the same, and you’ll be able to play around with different combinations of towers to work out exactly what will mess the monsters up the most.
This is an interesting spin on a tower defense game, that makes for a really addictive game.
Until Then
If you’re looking for a game that will get the tears flowing, this is a great choice
Until Then follows teenager Mark, going about his life in the Philippines after the area is rocked by some intense natural disasters. While getting off to an ordinary start, things soon start to take some interesting twists in this visual novel, and you’ll soon find yourself questioning Mark’s reality.
You’ll navigate a stunning pixel art world, mixing day to day activities like going to the mall or the local carnival, with some fun mini games like piano playing, and a ton of heartfelt and emotionally charged dialogue.
This is definitely a game that will mess with your mind, and is one full of wholesome storylines about friendship, growing up, and belonging
SCHiM
In this 3d platformer you’ll play as a shadow separated from your human, and you’ll need to navigate the world jumping shadow to shadow as you try to reunite with them.
SCHiM is a different take on a 3D platformer, changing your perspective so it doesn’t really feel like a platformer at all. With a pretty unique graphic style, you’ll need to carefully navigate shadows, timing your jumps right into moving shadows, and avoiding the light at all costs.
While there might not be any dialogue in the game, that doesn’t mean it lacks in story as there’s actually a heartfelt narrative that drives the gameplay and is told in a way that almost feels similar to shadow puppets.
This is one of the most unique and innovative games we’ve seen out of 2024, and is definitely a great play for those who love a good puzzle platformer.
Preserve
Combine different tiles to create thriving ecosystems in the cozy puzzle game Preserve.
You’ll bring land back to life, ensuring it’s got enough water before placing different biome tiles. Place 3 biome tiles together to create a habitat that you can fill with adorable different animals. Place 12 biome tiles together and fill it with 3 of the same animal, or even better, 3 different ones to score bonuses, and create the best biodiverse landscapes you can.
The challenge of this game really comes in the limited spaces you have, so you’ll need to make the most of your available tiles, scoring enough points to make it to the next benchmark and unlock more land and more cards.
This is a stunning cozy puzzle game, that is perfect for an afternoon of casual gaming.
Love, Ghostie
Spend your afterlife creating matches between residents of the manor you’re tasked with minding in the cozy matchmaking game Love Ghostie. You’ll play as the cutest little ghost, and you’ll float your way around the manor, learning more about each of the characters that have taken up residence.
Your job is to make all your patrons happy, and you’ll do that by setting them up with their perfect matches. Collect different items to gift to residents, pretending they’re from an admirer of course, and learn what each character prefers as you do. Set couples up on dates, and sit back and watch the magic unfold in the date cinema at the end of each day.
You can pair literally any couple in this game, and each has their own unique story, full of adorable and humorous dialogue. This is definitely a game that feels like you’re playing a rom com, and is a great cozy choice.
Enshrouded
If you’re looking for an epic multiplayer open world survival crafter game, then this game is one well worth picking up.
Enshrouded sees you step into the world of Embervale, a huge fantasy world full of stunning landscapes, interesting towns and villages to explore, and some epic creatures to go up against.
The world has been taken over by a mysterious shroud, which is toxic and full of deadly creatures, so you’ll need to grind resources and build the best armor and weapons to take on the monsters and push back the shroud.
Not only does this game have great exploration and combat, but it also has some pretty epic building functionality, allowing you to build massive structures, and even populate them with villagers too.
This is definitely not one for the faint of heart or poor of time, with it easily having 80+ hours of gameplay, and it’s still in early access with more to come.
Will you be able to survive the Shroud?
Pacific Drive
Enter the paranormal world of a reimaging Pacific Coast in the sci-fi horror game Pacific Drive.
You’ll be thrown into a restricted zone, cordoned off by the government after some experiments went wrong and with only a station wagon that is weirdly attached to you, you’ll need to scavenge for resources and explore the zone to try and find a way out.
Your station wagon really is your life source in this game, so you’ll need to look after it, repairing it, upgrading it, and making sure you’ve got enough fuel to complete your run.
With an immersive storyline, and a ton of different settings to customise how you experience the game, this is a great choice for those who want a more thrilling game.
That is a wrap on 24 games we loved playing this year!
Until next time, stay caffeinated.
