Indie games might serve up the most competitive category at The Game Awards
We’re almost at the halfway point of 2026 In fact, if we treat the year as a countdown to The Game Awards’ eligibility cutoff date in late November (and this is GOTY Watch, so we do), we’re well past the halfway point. So it seems like a good moment to take stock of how competition is developing in the various category fields, starting with perhaps the most interesting and consequential race outside of the race for Game of the Year itself: Best Independent Game.
This is a tough category to predict early, because both critical and commercial hits are harder to see coming, release dates aren’t shared that far in advance, and there’s always the potential for a game with zero pedigree and little hype to break through. It’s more than possible that something unheralded will come out and upend the apple cart. Still, it’s worth running down the strongest contenders that have come out to date and some of the hottest upcoming prospects.
The indie front-runners so far
- Mina the Hollower: Yacht Club Games’ perfect retro adventure is guaranteed a nomination and, as it stands, is a likely winner. It’s the best-reviewed game of the year to date on Metacritic, and sentiment toward the studio is very warm. Though in terms of sales, It’s not that big of a hit.
- Mewgenics: Edmund McMillen’s game of cat evolution and tactical combat was a sensation on Steam and has console versions coming on the back of strong critical support. The wrinkle is that McMillen’s edgy sensibility is ruffling some feathers in 2026.
- Cairn: The Game Bakers’ studied mountain-climbing adventure is technically rewarding, beautiful to look at, and has an unexpectedly emotional dimension to it. A quiet success, but one that critics will still feel fondly about at the end of the year.
- Esoteric Ebb: This wacky role-playing game does D&D by way of Disco Elysium, and has stolen the thunder of Zero Parades, the actual followup from Disco developer ZA/UM.
- Titanium Court: The winner of the coveted Seumas McNally Grand Prize at this year’s IGF Awards, the very meta Titanium Court definitely has the critical bonafides, although perhaps it’s too arch and meta to win over the more populist Game Awards jury.
The biggest upcoming contenders
- Big Walk (Aug. 4): This buzzy game evolves the “friendslop” social co-op genre in ways that will likely earn more game-design cred with critics than the likes of Peak, and it comes from the award-winning Untitled Goose Game studio House House.
- Orbitals (Sep. 3): A Switch 2-exclusive, retro-anime-styled co-op adventure in the style of GOTY winner It Takes Two, hopefully with better writing, and published by Kepler Interactive which cleaned up with Clair Obscur last year. This could even sneak into the main GOTY category if it reviews well.
- At Fate’s End (2026): Thunder Lotus blends the deep thematic storytelling of its Spiritfarer with Silksong-style action combat in an adventure where “your skill tree is your family tree.” Sounds like a winning combination in this category.
- Order of the Sinking Star (2026): A huge and apparently fascinatingly deep exploration of the sokoban genre by one of the deepest thinkers in puzzle game design, Jonathan Blow. But Blow is a complicated figure to say the least, and jury members might not feel like sticking up for him.
It didn’t pan out for these games
- Mixtape: Great reviews sadly won’t be enough to dispel the stink of poisonous discourse that, however frivolous, undermined the authenticity of this musical adventure. In this category, authenticity really counts.
- Zero Parades: For Dead Spies: Critics were surprisingly lukewarm on this Disco Elysium follow-up from ZA/UM, and the studio’s complicated and unpleasant history doesn’t help.
- Replaced: A much-hyped cyberpunk game with stunning pixel-art visuals turned out to be style over substance.
Wildcards that could mix it up
- Slay the Spire 2: The deck-building roguelike is a gigantic hit on Steam in early access and easily the best loved and most-played indie game of the year. If it reaches 1.0 before the end of the year, all bets are off.
- Schrödinger’s Call: The visual novel genre has a niche fandom and rarely gets recognition at The Game Awards, but this is one of the three highest-rated games of the year.
If I had to predict the five nominees now…
- Mina the Hollower (to win)
- Big Walk
- Orbitals
- At Fate’s End
- Mewgenics
The best games of 2026 (so far)
Approaching the halfway point, 2026 has been nonstop bangers
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