Alongside our Game of the Year top 10 list and personal picks from the Push Square editorial team, we are recognising the best PS5 games of 2025 in select categories. Today is the turn of the best PS5 indie game of 2025.
Bronze Trophy: Skate Story
Forget about Tony Hawk for a second; you'll find this year's most unique and stylish skateboarding game in Skate Story.
You play as a demon tasked with swallowing the moons of Hell, and you'll accomplish that by skateboarding around a series of open areas, taking in the graphical splendour and performing tricks. This is one of those visual and auditory experiences you've simply got to play for yourself, and you can do a kickflip along the way. What's not to love?
Read our Skate Story PS5 review through the link.
Silver Trophy: Absolum
Roguelites are common in the indie scene nowadays, but this list proves there are still new, tantalising takes on the concept worth playing. Absolum is one of them, a side-scrolling beat 'em up that comes with tight, excellent combat and fulfilling loops to make another run worth it. With a strong soundtrack and striking visuals on top, Absolum will have you gripped from start to finish.
Read our Absolum PS5 review through the link.
Gold Trophy: Ball X Pit
Probably one of the most addictive PS5 games released this year, Ball X Pit marries Vampire Survivors and Breakout to seriously impressive effect. You blast legions of enemies, then manage and build up a town, all wrapped in a roguelite coating. With runs short enough that you always have the urge to start another and engaging upgrades, Ball X Pit might seem unassuming, but dig a little, and you'll find one of PS5's most gripping experiences.
Read our Ball X Pit PS5 review through the link.
Platinum Trophy: Hollow Knight: Silksong
With expectations set so high, things could have gone awfully wrong for Team Cherry and its Hollow Knight follow-up.
Fortunately, though, after more than seven years of development, Hollow Knight: Silksong delivered and then some. The colossal Metroidvania is an incredible achievement of gameplay satisfaction, intriguing exploration, and utterly brutal boss fights and enemy gauntlets. It's not for the casual player, but those who conquer its quest are rewarded with one of the most satisfying experiences in all of gaming. Hollow Knight: Silksong is the indie scene at its unequivocal peak.
Read our Hollow Knight: Silksong PS5 review through the link.
Do you agree with our picks for the best PS5 indie game of 2025? Share your thoughts in the comments below and check out more of our Game of the Year coverage through the link.
What was your favourite PS5, PS4 indie game of 2025? (512 votes)
- Absolum
- Baby Steps
- Ball X Pit
- Blue Prince
- Hollow Knight: Silksong
- Skate Story
- Sword of the Sea
- Other (let us know in the comments)
Comments 56
Absolum purely because it has Mick Gordon on the soundtrack
Blue Prince was an extraordinary experience. I had so much fun writing in notebooks to keep track of and uncover the puzzles within puzzles. Loved it.
Blue Prince was so captivating. I loved the way you gradually exposed new levels of game play..
Silksong really is overrated and is carried by hype. I'm willing to bet the upcoming years won't be kind to it.
Ball X Pitt is my Indie of the year. Its utter perfection and addictive as crack.
Silksong and Ball x Pit were both excellent fun this year. Never got round to Blue prince but I shall one day.
Absolum slipped past me! I'll have a look into it!
No Blue Prince? How disappointing.
Absolutely disgusting leaving Sword of the Sea off the list. You should be ashamed.
Indies have been the breath of fresh air we all needed, IMO. I've always been an indie buff, but I think this year was a particularly good one for the smaller companies.
Silksong is my Game of the Year. Incredible experience
@DennisReynolds Totally disagree. Silksong’s a bonafide classic. One of the best games I’ve ever played. I don’t think it got enough credit for what it was. Feels like the “it’s too hard” movement sort of killed the game’s momentum and it deserved better than that.
@somnambulance The game isn't hard its just really tedious and monotonous. Its easily one of the most metrovanies out there and has learnt nothing in the years since Hollow Knight. It was originally an expansion to HK and those origins are painfully obvious. Its not a bad game far from it but if it was something new from a new indie dev and wasn't connected to HK no one would give a damn about it. Give it 2 years i expect "let's face it Silksong was kinda mediocre and overhyped" will be a popular way to farm likes.
Silksong for me. I didn’t like the original Hollow Knight, but its sequel is one of my all time favorite games. It’s crazy how drastic the difference is for me personally. With that said, Absolum and Ball x Pitt are exceptional as well.
Lumines arise
Halls of Torment
Sword of the Sea is my pick. Silksong is an incredible game that might just be out of my league but I’ll keep chipping away at it when I’m feeling optimistic.
I was put off Silksong due to the hype, followed by the talk of its punishing difficulty but I picked it up on a whim and whilst it is brutally difficult its still probably the best game I've played all year.
It's impeccably designed from level and creature designs, art direction, sound design and combat and traversal mechanics that all combine to create a world that invites curiosity and wanderlust that makes the brutal difficulty and punishing runbacks tolerable...if not always forgiveable.
For me the best indie game is Expedition 33 after background AI textures got patched.
Shinobi art of vengeance is the best indie game.and absolum is incredible. Word up son
Baby Steps was interesting from what I tried with "Trial" but I won't ever go back to it. Blue Prince was boring af after a few runs and rng killed all the will I had which wasn't that big tbh. I liked Silksong and plan to continue in the new year but I can't see the appeal other than it being a good game and not anything special.
Currently playing and loving Hades II. Why on earth is that not here?!
Ball X Pit was like the pleasant surprise of the year. Looking forward to the inevitable new/DLC content that gets added later.
@playthedangame Because it is only out on Steam and Switch at the minute.
@Jey887
Ah of course, easy to forget it's not on all consoles.
Hades II by far
I restarted Blue Prince after loosing 200 hours of gameplay due to a file corruption. Gotta be Blue Prince for me
Knew nothing about Ball X Pit, assumed it was some kind of shovelware so ignored it. But now I'm thinking that as it has a trial and 20% off in the sale, I'll give it a whirl.
I've not played all of this but so far it's Skate Story over Blue Prince (I think I gotta give that one some more time)
@wilky2988 They already announced its getting 3 free updates next year that add a ton of new content
I haven’t played Silksong yet, because I wait for the physical version for Switch 2. But this whole hype about it (no preorders etc.) turned me off a bit.
And then I read the review in Edge, where it got the score 8/10 (Hollow Knight got 9/10). The main complaints were 1) a less interesting lore and 2) an unbalanced difficulty, which is higher in the first half of the game.
Long story short, I‘m still looking forward to play it in 2026. But after so many years, my expectations were higher.
Can you confirm these two points? What were your impressions?
@1970sGamer Nah dude, it’s legit really fun. It’s kinda Vampire Survivors-esque, if you played that. A bit different too, tho. I platinumed it in 30-40 hours or something.
I would vote for Absolum, Sword of the Sea, or Skate Story but i'm not yet played them.
And there's no NG Ragebound and Shinobi choice but i forgot KT and Sega are the publishers.
Also, is Tormented Souls an indie game? I just bought the 1st one from January Sale and so far i'm really enjoyed it. It looks and plays like classic survival horror, a mixed of old RE & SH but it also has it's own twist.
Silksong is overrated af. It’s a generic metroidvania just like the first game
No E33...so we all agree it's not indie then. The Game Awards getting things wrong again.
@DennisReynolds amen. BallxPit was very impressive; it’s hard to call SilkSong indie with the budget and time they had. We need a better definition of indie games. To me SilkSong hits levels of AAA Metroidvania development.
@Oram77 It was on my "might buy over Christmas" list, but with that info it's a definite sale now
My two favorite indie games this year are Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon and Eternal Strands. The 2nd one in particular gets no press whatsoever and is truly a hidden gem.
Monster Train 2 is mine - seems to have glided right under the radar somehow, but it’s every bit as good as the original while feeling fresh
Sword of the Sea was great. Bounced off Blue Prince. Simply don’t understand the gushing love for that game
@DennisReynolds You could say that about any game though. Same videos will exist for Clair Obscur too. And they’ll probably come in the first half of next year. It’ll be all the people farming clicks for trashing Metroid Prime 4.
For me, Silksong was sort of perfect. It was very obviously a sequel that started as an expansion, but its larger and more expansive and open version of the original Hollow Knight, in my opinion. It might have been the most fun game I’ve played this year. I typically play about 5-10 metroidvanias a year and it’s my favorite one I’ve played since probably Metroid Dread. I think, if it didn’t have the Hollow Knight connection, it probably would’ve found similar success to Nine Sols, which still did pretty well for itself.
That SotS didn't make top 5 staggers me. It was between that and BallXPit for me.
@wilky2988 @1970sGamer Yep bought it and loving it, really addictive and easy fun.
@somnambulance We're see but frankly imo Silksong is just more Hollow Knight with nothing new added and nothing improved or fixed its just HK under a new skin and HK has been bettered many times since. Silksong in a lot of ways is actually worse then HK imo because it gets off being more tedious and wasting your time more. God knows how it took them this long to make the game.
@DennisReynolds I’d say it’s like an Ori and the Will of the Wisps type of sequel. It doesn’t reinvent the genre, but it refines what made the original so strong, just by adding more flexibility to the gameplay and progression. Silksong, however, is far more customizable than even Ori and the Will of the Wisps. As far as I’m concerned, Ori and the Hollow Knight games are the Castlevania and Metroid of the current era.
Truly glad the genre is still doing as strong as it is, given how so many genres from the NES/SNES have vanished.
Since e33 and Dispatch apparently don't qualify I went with Blue Prince. Never did finish it, but of the games listed I would say Blue Prince and BallxPit were my favorites.
@somnambulance For me Metroid Dread and Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown are the best of the genre of the past 10 or so years though i do agree the Ori games are high up there.
@DennisReynolds Lost Crown is also fantastic. Might be the best game Ubisoft has ever made.
Positions 2 to 4 are the most indie aesthetic indie games I've ever seen on a list like this
It was another excellent year for indie games, so there were always going to be some great games that had to lose out. For me personally, Silksong is my overall game of the year so I obviously agree with its placement.
It's not without its frustrations, but despite those it's a fantastic game that has some of the best movement and combat in the genre, sublime world design, incredible enemy variety, an absurd amount of secrets to discover and all time great boss design. More than worth the long wait.
Skate Story is a bit overrated tbh. Yeah it's cool and has some imagination, but the overly descriptive dialogue tries to mask a lack of substance, and the controls are iffy.
Lovely list, such a strong year for Indie games, though surprised Blue Prince didn't make the list.
Also @LiamCroft just wondering what is YOUR criteria at Push Square for "indie" and why something like Baby Steps,Skate Story & Ball x Pit (all published by Devolver Digital) or Absolum (published by DotEmu) gets on the list but Clair Obscur (published by Kepler) didn't. Not criticising btw, perhaps E33 didn't make your list, just looking for clarity of where you at Push Square subjectively draw the line.
Only one I’ve played so far this year is Clair Obscur Expedition 33.
I plan on getting Hollow Knight Silksong, Shinobi Art of Vengeance, Tails of Iron 2 and Croc either after Christmas or after January next year though
Blue Prince should easily be top 2 here (Considering that Hades 2 is not available yet in PS5)..
But yes, Silksong takes the crown here
I voted for Ball Pit, not because it's the best, but was the only one from the list, that I dug deep enough to give any kind of opinion for...
I tried Blue Prince (comes with my PS subscription), but had a couple of other (new) games at the time to pay attention to and...just gave it a spin around the block. I did like it - probably deserves what it got in Push Square's GOTY.
As for Hollow Knight and the "first-first" place - no wonder. All of them "Hollow" games were harvesting loads of positive energy through the years. I did play only the first one (seems like) eons ago!
Blue Prince for me. Mysteries within mysteries. Early on, when you haven’t learned how to affect RNG, you have so many options for what to explore further that you can gain some knowledge no matter what the game decides to give you.
Other:
I'm completely torn between Islanders: New Shores
Or
Lonely Mountains: Snow Riders
They're absolutely incredible
As someone who could never get into Hollow Knight, Silksong somehow became a top 10 game of all time for me.
The tightness of the movement, soundtrack (that wasn't anywhere as depressing as HK), vision, and attention to detail made this an experience that is close to perfect. I know it's not a game for everyone. It is my GOTY.
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