Best Indie Games Like Ico

The best indie games like Ico are Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, Journey and Rime. Below are 6, each with the reason it is here — and, at the end, what filtering to indie costs you.

Why Indie Is a Good Answer for Ico

Filtering to indie means you want the answer a small team would give. It is usually the most interesting filter on this site, because small studios take the risks large ones cannot.

What you get: One strong idea, explored completely, at a price that makes trying it easy. Indies have no production to hide behind, so the design is exposed.

What made Ico worth playing in the first place is covered on the full list. This page is the indie part of that answer, and only the indie part.

6 Indie Games Like Ico

  1. 1. Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons

    Two characters on one controller — the companion is a control scheme, not an escort.

  2. 2. Journey

    Wordless companionship with a stranger, and the same restraint.

  3. 3. Rime

    Openly Ico-inspired: an island, a boy, environmental puzzles, no dialogue.

  4. 4. Inside

    Silent, bleak, and every puzzle explains the world instead of a tutorial doing it.

  5. 5. Papo & Yo

    A companion who is also the obstacle, in a game about something harder than it looks.

  6. 6. Little Nightmares

    Atmosphere and scale doing the work that dialogue usually does.

What This Filter Leaves Out

Polish and scale, sometimes. A few of these are rough at the edges, and a big-budget pick will always look better doing the same thing.

Specifically, these are strong answers for Ico that are not indie games, so they are not on this page:

  • Shadow of the Colossus — The same team's next game — same silence, same world, boss fights instead of puzzles.
  • The Last Guardian — Team Ico's direct return to the companion mechanic, with an animal that has a mind of its own.
  • Portal — For the sparse, confident puzzle design and the trust it puts in the player.

The full list is on games like Ico — 9 picks, no genre filter.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the best indie game like Ico?

Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. Two characters on one controller — the companion is a control scheme, not an escort.

Are all of these on the PlayStation 2?

No. Ico released on the PlayStation 2, but a recommendation is only useful if you can play it, so the picks above span platforms and eras. What they share is the genre and the reason.

What actually counts as an indie game?

Self-published, or published without a large publisher's money. It says nothing about the size of the game, which is why a forty-hour metroidvania and a two-hour art piece sit under the same label.

Why are indie games often better designed?

Constraint. Without a budget to hide behind, one idea has to carry the whole thing — and a small team can commit to something risky that a large one would sand down.

How are these chosen?

By hand. Each pick was written for the full Ico list first, on what the game actually does, and this page is the part of that list that is indie — never a genre tag lookup, which is how "best racing games like Super Mario 64" used to be a page on this site.

Other Angles on Ico

More Indie Games Recommendations

Or read the indie guide for where to start in the genre generally.