The Best Upcoming Indie Games of 2022

While everybody watches the news of AAA titles and big gaming corporations, the real innovations come from the indie sector. Independent games are known for introducing new mechanics and touching new topics that go beyond usual fantasy, history, or sci-fi. Gardening and dating, friendship and mystics, and much more await. Let’s drop some names!

The Garden Path

It’s a garden life simulator that sends you to the wild forest where you recover the old household and befriend forest dwellers around you. It’s hard to not mention Animal Crossing when speaking on it, and if you are not a Nintendo fan, this title will deliver you that relaxed vibe and lots of fantastic missions and encounters.

Citizen Sleeper

If you like sci-fi set in space, you will enjoy this story about a worker at the space frontier living a dangerous life. The greatest danger is in your own body; it is artificial and the company that owns it wants it back. How do you protect your mind from erasing? This greatly designed and written game is a must-play if you like that golden-era cyberpunk style.

Call Me Cera

What is friendship? How does an adult make new friends? How to stay true to your way and your dream? The namesake heroine moves to a small town where she rebuilds her life and her soul. This social simulator includes jobs, therapy, informal relationships, and much more that you can see around you. Maybe this game will be an instruction on how to restructure your life; maybe just an unusual title in gaming.

 Frank and Drake

Don’t let regular names fool you: the titular heroes are obvious incarnations of Frankenstein’s monster and Dracula. One of them is worried about getting mad and never goes out at night, another is allergic to the sun, so they never get to see each other. And yet they have to collaborate in solving mysteries and puzzles. Doesn’t that sound intriguing?

 Spirit Swap

Are you tired of endless Match-3 games? Well, here is another take on this genre which introduces a completely different approach. In Spirit Swap, puzzles and actions go along a witchy, demonic narrative that is also openly queer and colorful. Along with dealing with the supernatural, you can have pizza parties and decorate your bedroom. Isn’t it fun?

 ValiDate: Struggling Singles in your Area

After a friendship simulator, here comes a dating one. Indeed, it’s an interactive visual novel that combines elevated romantic expectations with harsh realism. Neither of the characters embodies perfection, like neither of us does. 

 Norco

Point and click never get old. This Southern Gothic story with a futuristic twist has swamps and oil, androids and murders, and the mystery to investigate. You have never seen this side of Louisiana. But soon you may: the release is scheduled for March 24.

 Card Shark

How does it feel to be a card cheat in pre-revolutionary France? Wooden tables and sharp blades, wine and romance, duels and disclosures, and fantastically bright colors inspired by classic animation. Here is where the adventurousness of Dumas and Hugo comes alive to string music, shots, and coin drops.

Bear & Breakfast

So, you run a bed-and-breakfast, and you are a bear in the forest. But as your business grows, it turns out something is rotten in the state of the forest.  This project is a perfect new wind for Animal Crossing fans who want something else but similar. 

 Silt

Missed a good underwater adventure? Slit takes you deep down under the sea, to a monochrome world of darkness and light, where you uncover ancient mysteries. You will like it if you list Limbo and Inside among your favorites.

 Indiexation In Progress

These are just ten of all the indie games that are scheduled for release in 2022. But there are many more of them. Which titles do you anticipate the most? What other upcoming games would you like to mention? Drop some names and share your opinion in the comments if you please!