Hello everyone and welcome back to another blog post. Oh, wonderful. You read that other list. The one with the silent travelers, the anxious mountain climbers, and that lamb with a surprisingly robust cult management system. You probably felt things. You probably cried a little. You probably added seventeen games to your backlog you’ll never actually play.
Well, guess what? Indie developers don’t sleep. While you were busy feeling feelings over the last decade, they created dozens more protagonists who are weird, broken, hilarious, or just plain furious enough to haunt your dreams. And since we know you love a good list (and love arguing about them even more), here’s our completely objective, definitely-not-just-made-up ranking of ten other indie main characters—from any year, any genre, any level of emotional damage.
Consider this the B-side. The director’s cut. The “we forgot about these gems the first time, and so did you” edition. These are our 10 More Indie Game Protagonists Who Deserve Your Time (And Therapy Bills)
A quick note before the rage comments roll in: No, we won’t be repeating anyone from that previous list. No silent robe-wearing travelers. No tiny bug knights. No anxiety-fueled mountain climbers. No rebellious Greek princes. No cult-leading livestock. These are ten fresh faces. You’re welcome.
10. The Goose (Untitled Goose Game)
The Pitch: Honk.
You wanted deep characters? Here’s a goose. A horrible goose. No backstory. No redemption arc. No dialogue except the sound of absolute malevolence. And yet, this feathery terrorist is one of the most memorable protagonists in indie history because the gameplay is the personality. You don’t play as a goose—you become the goose. You steal keys. You honk at children. You trap a hapless gardener in his own yard for hours. It’s pure, unadulterated chaos, and it’s glorious. The Goose proves that character development isn’t about tragic monologues—it’s about whether you can ruin someone’s picnic before lunch.
No trauma. No dead parents. Just vibes. And theft.
9. Lea (CrossCode)
A silent, avatar-style girl trapped in a fictional MMO who can’t remember her past but can parry a laser beam with a charged sphere of pure spite.
Lea communicates almost entirely through emotes and one-word phrases (“Hi!” “Lea!” “…cake?”). On paper, that sounds annoying. In practice, it’s heartbreaking. Her limited speech isn’t a gimmick—it’s a disability coded into her very existence. Over 50+ hours of tight, Zelda-like puzzles and lightning-fast combat, you watch her slowly learn to express herself, form friendships, and rage against the digital gods who made her. She’s proof that a character can say almost nothing and still make you cry harder than a Shakespearean tragedy.
She also has the best “confused” face in gaming history. Use it often.
8. The Penitent One (Blasphemous)
A man in a cone-shaped helmet that looks like a medieval dunce cap—except the dunce cap is also a punishment for a sin you don’t understand, and the world is a grotesque Catholic fever dream where everything wants to eat your face.
The Penitent One is aggressively silent. No grunts. No sighs. No dramatic cutscene speeches. Just the wet thunk of his sword hitting yet another screaming, flesh-monster heretic. His character is told entirely through his design (that helmet is doing work), his brutal animations, and the suffocating world he trudges through. He’s not a hero. He’s not even particularly willing. He’s simply doing it—whatever “it” means in a world where guilt is a physical substance. It’s grim, gorgeous, and weirdly compelling.
Finally, a protagonist whose fashion choices are as punishing as the gameplay.
7. Fran (Fran Bow)
A ten-year-old girl who watches her parents get murdered, gets locked in a mental hospital, and then escapes to find her cat. Her cat. With the help of hallucinations and a magical medicine bottle.
Fran Bow is disturbing in the best way. She’s a child protagonist who acts like an actual child—curious, scared, creative—while navigating a world that looks like Tim Burton and David Cronenberg had a nightmare baby. Her willingness to befriend ghosts, cut open stuffed animals for clues, and casually discuss her mental health meds makes her one of the bravest, strangest, most wonderful characters in indie gaming. She’s not tough. She’s not a fighter. She’s just resourceful in the face of absolute horror.
She loves her cat more than most people love their families. Respect.
6. The Beheaded (Dead Cells)
A headless, immortal slime-thing possessing a random dead body in a dungeon. It doesn’t know why it’s here. It doesn’t care. There are weapons to swing and things to kill.
You want a protagonist who respects your time? The Beheaded has backstory? Boring. Character development? Who cares. This green abomination exists for one reason: fast, fluid, brutal combat in a procedurally generated castle that hates you. Every run is a fresh corpse, a fresh set of weapons, and a fresh opportunity to die to a spinning spike ball for the 50th time. But here’s the sneaky part—between the chaos, you piece together fragments of a tragic kingdom, a failed alchemist, and a plague that destroyed everything. The Beheaded doesn’t save the day. It just keeps going. And somehow, that’s more inspiring than any heroic speech.
It also has the best “I have absolutely no idea what’s happening” energy since the Goose. Except with more fire bombs.
5. Miriam (Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night)
A gothic amnesiac with a crystal-growing curse who wakes up, yawns, and decides to fight her way through a demon-infested castle using shoes that are also swords.
Miriam is the spiritual inheritor of every Castlevania protagonist, but with one crucial difference: she’s chill. Impossibly, delightfully chill. While the world crumbles around her and her body slowly turns to crystal, she cracks dry jokes, collects silly hats, and beats demons to death with a flying sword that’s also a chair. Her arc is subtle—learning to trust again, to fight for something beyond survival—but it’s there, buried under layers of gothic loot-grinding. She’s proof that you can be a tragic gothic heroine and still have a sense of humor.
Her fashion sense is “Victorian vampire meets anime convention,” and it works.
4. Zero (Katana Zero)
A samurai assassin with PTSD, a drug addiction that lets him see the future, and a therapist who may or may not be lying to him. Also, time rewinds when he dies. Messily.
Zero is the “gruff action guy” trope taken apart and rebuilt as a tragedy. He’s sarcastic, violent, and deeply, profoundly broken. Every mission is a one-hit-kill ballet of gore, but between levels, he sits in his apartment, watches static on TV, and struggles to remember his own past. The genius is in the dialogue—fast, snappy, and hiding an ocean of pain. You play as a killer, but the game never lets you feel cool about it. It just asks, “Is this really who you want to be?” And then it hands you another sword.
He also has the best “I’ve seen this timeline already” attitude in gaming.
3. Slugcat (Rain World)
You are a slugcat. Not a cute platforming mascot—an actual, fragile, bottom-of-the-food-chain slugcat in an ecosystem that actively hates you.
Slugcat has no special powers, no heroic destiny, and no dialogue. What they have is survival. Rain World throws you into a procedurally-animated nightmare where every lizard, vulture, and floating jellyfish wants to eat you. The character’s personality isn’t written—it’s earned. The first time you escape a predator by the skin of your teeth, hide in a pipe, and watch it slither past, you feel real fear. The first time you tame a lizard, you feel real triumph. No cutscene could match that. Slugcat isn’t a hero. Slugcat is lunch that refuses to be eaten.
You will die. A lot. Slugcat has no emotional arc because Slugcat is too busy not dying.
2. White (Neon White)
A dead assassin competing in Heaven’s reality TV show—a speedrunning competition where the winner gets to stay in paradise. Everyone wears explosive collars. The angels are passive-aggressive. And White? He’s a sarcastic disaster who can’t remember his own past but can double-jump off a playing card he just threw.
White is what happens when you give a himbo assassin a voice actor with perfect comedic timing. He’s snarky, oblivious, and deeply traumatized, but the game never lets the angst overshadow the fun. The core gameplay loop is “beat each level as fast as humanly possible,” and White’s personality matches that energy perfectly. Between levels, you get visual novel segments where you hang out with other Neons, flirt awkwardly, and slowly uncover why everyone in Heaven seems to recognize you. The writing is sharp, the dating-sim elements are surprisingly heartfelt, and White’s journey from “amnesiac jerk” to “amnesiac jerk with feelings” is genuinely moving.
He also has the best one-liners in the business. “Cool. Cool cool cool. I’m going to throw you off a building now.”
1. The Princess (Slay the Princess)
You are in a cabin. There is a princess in the basement. The narrator tells you to kill her. She says you should let her out. Someone is lying.
The Princess is not a traditional protagonist—she’s technically the antagonist? Or is she? That’s the point. Slay the Princess is a psychological horror visual novel where every choice reshapes who the Princess becomes. Refuse to kill her? She grows more desperate. Try to save her? She becomes a monster. Actually slay her? You’ll regret it. The Princess is a mirror for the player, shifting form, voice, and morality based on your actions. She’s one of the most brilliantly written characters in any medium—not because of who she is, but because of who she could be. And the final twist? We won’t spoil it. But you’ll never look at fairy tales the same way again.
She also has more distinct voice performances than most AAA games have characters. Absolute masterclass.
Honorable Mentions (Because You’re Already Typing Angrily)
- Rusty from SteamWorld Dig 2 – a cheerful mining robot who accidentally saves the world while looking for her friend.
- The Little Knight from Tunic – a tiny fox in a green tunic who reads a manual in a language you don’t understand. Pure joy.
- The Detective from Disco Elysium – didn’t make the main list because he deserves his own top ten list. Yes, he’s that good.
So… Who Did We Miss?
Go on. Scream into the comments. Tell us how we forgot literally anyone from Signalis (look, we had to make cuts). Tell us why Jimmy from Mouthwashing should be here (please don’t, we have nightmares). Tell us about that one character from that one game you played during a Steam sale in 2019 and never recovered from.
The beautiful thing about indie games is that for every character we list, there are ten more waiting in a Steam sale, ready to wreck your emotions. So go find them. Play them. Cry a little.
And then come back here and tell us why we’re wrong. We’ll be waiting. Probably playing as that goose again.
Honk.