Into Indie Games Awards 2023

Only the best indie games of the year make the cut for the Into Indie Games Awards. Here’s the winners for the year 2023.

Indie games shined in the year 2023 alongside their AAA counterparts, presenting experiences and adventures beyond our imagination. At Into Indie Games, we’ve curated some of the best of the best for this year’s awards, across several categories.

Here’s the winners below!

Best Original Concept – Viewfinder (Sad Owl Studios)

Viewfinder broke our minds and won our hearts when it released in July, offering a gameplay mechanic where pictures and photographs can be turned into real places.

Far from relying on one gimmick, Viewfinder explores its original concept thoroughly to deliver brain-twisting puzzles. It’s our pick for the Best Original Concept of 2023.

Be sure to check out our walkthrough guide for Viewfinder here.

Best Game by a Solo Developer – Storyteller (Daniel Benmergui)

Daniel Benmergui’s Storyteller may be a puzzle game, but it’s a game about building stories using a visual language. You build new narratives by dragging and dropping elements of a story into comic book-like panels, and watch the drama unfold.

Storyteller took 15 years for Daniel Benmergui to develop, and the result, released in 2023, is one of the best games we’ve seen developed by a solo developer.

Best Game You Haven’t Heard Of – The Banished Vault (Lunar Division)

Even if Bithell Games is a stalwart at indie games, their debut publishing attempt went under most people’s radar. The Banished Vault is a game about an interstellar gothic monastery called Auriga Vault.

Controlling the vault’s crew, you must explore solar systems, construct outposts, and search for artifacts, all in a very stark world inspired by Alien and The Book of the New Sun.

We hope The Banished Vault becomes less banished amongst indie game fans as time goes.

Best Game For Everyone – Tchia (Awaceb)

Tchia’s tropical adventure to rescue her father involved lots of climbing, swimming, gliding, and even taking control of animals and objects.

With vibrant visuals inspired by the landscape of New Caledonia, innovative gameplay supported by a physics sandbox, and an ukulele(!), Tchia is our pick for the Best Game for Everyone.

Best Debut Game – Cocoon (Geometric Interactive)

Cocoon is Geometric Interactive’s first game, but from the sheer polish and intelligently-crafted design, you wouldn’t know it. We picked up orbs, dove into those very orbs, used those orbs to power other orbs, carried the orbs on our backs, and learnt how to do all this without a single word of communication.

Cocoon is our pick for the Best Debut Game of 2023, and you can find our walkthrough for the game here.

Biggest Surprise – Lethal Company (Zeekerss)

Lethal Company is a co-op horror game about salvaging on abandoned, industrial moons and selling your scrap to “the Company”. Mysterious, ominous, and vaguely terrifying, Lethal Company became a tremendous hit among streamers and other players alike.

Given its magnificent blowing-up and the many entertaining clips that have come out of it, we award Lethal Company our award for the Biggest Surprise of 2023.

Indie Game of the Year 2023 – Chants of Sennaar (Rundisc)

Chants of Sennaar astounded us with its Obra Dinn-like gameplay that involved learning languages and validating the glyphs used to write them. We grappled with different grammar systems, explored vibrant but disconnected cultures, and ultimately, we strove to reunite them with the knowledge we’d gained.

With engaging, delightful puzzle gameplay that mirrors actual language learning, and a concept that’s all about bringing divided communities together, Chants of Sennaar is our pick for the Into Indie Games Award for the Indie Game of the Year 2023.

Playing the game already? Be sure to check out our walkthrough for the game here. Also be sure to read our deep dive into the game’s languages here.