The challenging Metroidvania took home the honour at this year’s Golden Joystick Awards.

The challenging Metroidvania took home the honour at this year’s Golden Joystick Awards.

Challenging action-platformer, Dead Cells took home the accolade of Best Indie Game at this year’s Golden Joystick Awards earlier this week. Motion Twin’s rogue-lite adventure has only gone from strength to strength since leaving early access gaining critical acclaim and even a little controversy along the way. It seems platformers might not be dead after all, especially after it was announced indie platformer, Celeste would be up for Game of The Year at the Game Awards this December.

Dead Cells is a Metroidvania inspired, action-platformer which our reviewer described as a ‘nightmarish fantasy’ in which you explore labyrinth-like castle fighting and dying in a souls-like loop of frustration and satisfaction. It’s easy to see why it won, the game just has the right mix of challenge and style. If you haven’t checked it out yet now might be just the right time.

Indie games didn’t see many other victories in the open categories apart from Unknown World’s Subnautica, which picked up the heavily contested award for PC Game of the Year with the development team themselves picking up the Breakthrough Award – so, a good night for them all around. Subnautica is an underwater survival sim that also found its feet in early access with the team substantially expanding the game since its full release. Certainly, a well-deserved achievement given all the hard work that has clearly gone into the game over the last year.

That’s it for indie games at the Golden Joysticks this year. It’s been a strong year for indies overall with so many solid titles releasing, but it certainly doesn’t make our job any easier when it comes to compiling our best of 2018 shortlist. For now, why not check out our Top 100 Indie Games of All Time and stay tuned for our best of the year selections in December.