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.
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. Jesse Faden (Control)
The Pitch: A woman walks into a brutalist office building looking for her missing brother and accidentally becomes the boss. The office building is also haunted. By a refrigerator.
Why They’re Here: Jesse is what happens when you take a stoic action hero, give them a deadpan internal monologue, and drop them into the most beautifully confusing fever dream ever coded. She’s not quippy like Zagreus or weepy like Madeline. She’s just… done. Done with the hiss. Done with the floating corpses. Done with the janitor who might be a Finnish god. And yet, she powers through, levitating desks and throwing forklifts like it’s another Tuesday. Her arc isn’t about becoming a hero—it’s about accepting that the universe is nonsense and that’s fine, actually. Relatable.
Sarcastic bonus: Finally, a protagonist who understands that office politics are the real horror genre.
9. The Goose (Untitled Goose Game)
The Pitch: Honk.
Why They’re Here: 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.
Sarcastic bonus: No trauma. No dead parents. Just vibes. And theft.
8. Lea (CrossCode)
The Pitch: 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.
Why They’re Here: 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.
Sarcastic bonus: She also has the best “confused” face in gaming history. Use it often.
7. The Penitent One (Blasphemous)
The Pitch: 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.
Why They’re Here: 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.
Sarcastic bonus: Finally, a protagonist whose fashion choices are as punishing as the gameplay.
6. Fran (Final Fantasy XII? No. Fran Bow.)
The Pitch: 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.
Why They’re Here: 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.
Sarcastic bonus: She loves her cat more than most people love their families. Respect.
5. Miriam (Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night)
The Pitch: 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.
Why They’re Here: 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.
Sarcastic bonus: Her fashion sense is “Victorian vampire meets anime convention,” and it works.
4. Zero (Katana Zero)
The Pitch: 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.
Why They’re Here: 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 a 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.
Sarcastic bonus: He also has the best “I’ve seen this timeline already” attitude in gaming.
3. The Knight (Rain World)
The Pitch: 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.
Why They’re Here: The Knight (or “Survivor,” as the game calls them) 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.
Sarcastic bonus: You will die. A lot. The slugcat has no emotional arc because the slugcat is too busy not dying.
2. Subject 6 (Neon White)
The Pitch: A dead demon-hunter competing in a heavenly speedrunning competition to earn a second chance at life. He’s also a massive jerk. Lovably.
Why They’re Here: Neon White is a dating sim, a visual novel, and a first-person platformer rolled into one caffeinated package—and Subject 6 (just “White” to his friends) is the perfect chaotic center. He’s sarcastic, selfish, and occasionally shockingly sincere. The game’s dialogue is lightning-fast and hilarious, with dating-sim mechanics that let you annoy or charm a cast of fellow assassins. But underneath the speedrunning and the jokes is a surprisingly touching story about guilt, memory, and whether you deserve forgiveness. White earns his spot because he’s fun—genuinely, unapologetically fun—without sacrificing depth.
Sarcastic bonus: He also has the best one-liners. “Cool. Cool cool cool. I’m going to throw you off a building now.”
1. The Princess (Slay the Princess)
The Pitch: 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.
Why They’re Here: 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.
Sarcastic bonus: She also has more distinct voice performances than most AAA games have characters. Absolute masterclass.
Honorable Mentions (Because You’re Already Typing Angrily)
- The Batter’s less-famous cousin? No. But try: Rusty from SteamWorld Dig 2 – a cheerful mining robot who accidentally saves the world while looking for her friend.
- The actual best non-speaking performance: 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.
- Most likely to ruin your sleep schedule: The Detective from Disco Elysium – but we didn’t include him 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 The Prisoner from Ghostrunner. Or The Slug from Rain World (wait, we did that one). Or literally anyone from Signalis (look, we had to make cuts).
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 a goose again.