Supergiant

Larian is about as passionate as a team can get about the games they make, it's hard not to love them.

Deck 13 went from making a crappy Dark Souls rip-off to making really good games.

Gunfire Games knocked it out of the park with Remnant and is now releasing a sequel that every preview seems to love.

Team Cherry made Hollow Knight, probably the best indie game ever made, maybe one day they'll bless us with Silksong.

Subset Games (FTL, Into the Breach)

Larian should be up for consideration

Is Coffee Stain indie?

New Blood Interactive. Published games like ULTRAKILL, Dusk (made by same guy as Iron Lung), and Amid Evil. Also, iirc the owner is pro-union.

Additionally, these aren't studios, but my favorite games lately have been The Long Drive, Voices of the Void, and Cruelty Squad.

Cruelty Squad is a stellar immersive sim that's also about as visually offensive as you can get, which only makes it better. The premise is that you're a hitman in a gig economy that exists in a world overrun by wall street investors and cryptobros. Death isn't permanent, morality doesn't exist, and everyone is evil. Cruelty Squad is fucking art.

Voices of the Void is a game where you play as a astronomer at an isolated radio observatory, looking for messages from the sky. It's good. It's fun. It's spooky. It's silly. There's a ton of secrets and places to explore. It's also free. You have no excuse, check it out.

The Long Drive is "streamer-bait" which also happens to be the best driving game I've ever played. No, it's not the best racing game, nor the best car game, but it is the best driving game. No, seriously, it really is. It's a survival game where you get a letter from you mother asking you to come to her house. There's only one problem. She's 5000km away and you have a shitty, beat up car that can barely hit 60km/h. Oh, and the world ended in 1979. So it's you, your car and 5000km of road with the occasional pit stop for supplies and better parts. My favorite thing is that any car/bike can fit any engine or wheels. You can absolutely pull a diesel out of bus and put it on a moped.

Edit: oh, if you like horror games:

I've heard Chilla's Arts makes really good lo-fi horror games.

If you want low-budget slasher movies in game form, check out Puppet Combo. Just make sure to turn your sound down because sometimes the jumpscares are loud. When I say loud, I mean loud.

If you wanna see what the indie horror scene is up to in general, check out the Dread X collections.

Edit 2: oh, I've also been looking forward to Team Reptile's Bomb Rush Cyberfunk. It's a spiritual successor to Jet Set Radio and will be featuring new works from THE Hideki Naganuma.

Valve, by a far stretch. Also they support their games for a long time. Sadly they don’t make as much games as they could, because of the money printing machine that is Steam.

What exactly are we counting as independent? Like a developer whose game is published by a publisher, but they aren't like one of the REALLY big publishers. Or is it just purely independent, self-published studios?

Dwarf Fortress, technically speaking, the Steam version isn't independent, but it seems ridiculous to not include them here.

Team17

I don't know about truly independant, but nearly every single time I see the devolver digital publishing logo I expect the game to be good, even if it isn't for me. They kinda just don't miss.

Annapurna Interactive (outer wilds, what remains of Edith Finch).

Does Remedy Studios count? I’m not sure if they have a parent company

Subset games, ghost ship games, team cherry, hello games,

the glory society because it’s a worker coop

I have a soft spot for "one man kiosks" like Hempuli (Baba Is You), Lucas Pope (Papers Please, Return of the Obra Dinn), panstasz (World of Horror) and Miro Haverinen (Fear & Hunger).

Gotta shout out Larian and The Game Kitchen as well, their work is phenomenal.

I nominate Zachtronics, Subset Games, and Mega Crit.

I liked Klei when they were independent, but I won't touch them now that they're part of Tencent.

boneSAW games