Hello everyone and welcome back to another blog post. Listen. We all know the drill. You fire up the latest “AAA” multiplayer experience, only to realize you are either (A) a wallet to be milked for $20 skins, or (B) a walking advertisement for the “Skill-Based Matchmaking” algorithm that apparently thinks you can guard LeBron James.
Fear not, you glutton for punishment.
The indie scene has spent the last decade proving that you don’t need a $200 million budget to make a good PvP game. While the big studios are busy adding battle passes to loading screens, these ten indie gems are actually trying to be fun. We tested them, we raged at them, and we only broke one keyboard.
Here are the top 10 PvP indie games that you need to play right now.
1. Lethal League Blaze – The Anthem of “What Did I Just Witness?”
Year: 2018
Developer: Team Reptile
Imagine baseball. Now imagine the ball moves at the speed of a fighter jet. Now imagine you can smack that ball into your friend’s face at Mach 5 while a funky hip-hop beat drops.
That’s Lethal League Blaze.
It’s a fighting game / rhythm game / anger management test rolled into one. The premise is stupidly simple: hit the ball, don’t get hit. But once the ball reaches speeds that break the sound barrier and your brain simultaneously, you’ll realize this is secretly one of the deepest PvP games ever made.
It looks like a cartoon for children. It plays like a nightmare for adults. You will lose. You will laugh. You will question why Mario Kart isn’t this chaotic.
2. Duck Game – The Only Game Where Quacking Is a Viable Strategy
Year: 2015
Developer: Landon Podbielski (aka “adultswim”)
You play as a duck. You wear a fedora. You pick up a laser gun, a net launcher, or a saxophone that somehow stuns people. You quack. You die instantly. You respawn. You quack again.
Duck Game is four-player platformer chaos that has absolutely no right being this polished. The controls are tight, the levels are destructible, and the mind games are brutal. It supports local and online play, and the community is still active nearly a decade later because nobody has made a better “dumb but actually smart” brawler.
If you lose, you cannot blame lag. You can only blame your pathetic quack timing.
3. Eternal Return: Black Survival – 18-player MOBA battle royale chaos (yes, that’s a genre now)
Imagine League of Legends and The Hunger Games had a beautiful, angry baby. That’s Eternal Return. You pick one of nearly 60 characters, get dropped onto an island with 17 other players, and then spend the next 20 minutes looting, crafting weapons, cooking food (yes, cooking), and avoiding that one psychotic kung fu master who somehow already has full legendary gear.
The final circle forces a chaotic multi-team brawl where your carefully crafted build either makes you a hero or a loot piñata. It’s free-to-play, fully released since July 2023, and developed by Korean indie studio Nimble Neuron . And before you ask — yes, you can play in duos or squads. So grab two friends and blame them when you die.
4. Rounds – The Roguelite That Ruins Friendships
Year: 2021
Developer: Landfall Games (the Totally Accurate Battle Simulator people)
Rounds is a 1v1 platformer shooter where each round, the loser picks an upgrade. That means if you win the first round, you get a small bonus. If you keep winning, you become a god. If you lose once, your opponent suddenly has homing projectiles and triple jumps.
The balance is intentionally broken. That’s the point.
It pretends to be fair. It is not fair. It is a snowball simulator where victory feels incredible and defeat feels like being robbed. The modding community is huge, so you can add even more absurd powers. Play with a friend you don’t mind losing.
5. TowerFall Ascension – The Party Game That Killed the Party
Year: 2013 (Ascension DLC 2014)
Developer: Matt Makes Games (now Extremely OK Games)
Before Celeste made everyone cry, the same developer made TowerFall, a 4-player archery battle game where you jump on tiny platforms and shoot your friends.
It looks like a warm, cozy pixel art game. It plays like a knife fight in a phone booth. Every arrow counts. Every dodge is life or death. There are power-ups like bramble arrows (they turn into walls) and drill arrows (they go through everything). The local multiplayer is legendary. The online mode (added later via fan patches and the TowerFall remaster) works well enough to ruin long-distance friendships.
If you die, it’s your fault. No excuses. Just respawn and try not to cry.
6. Crawl – The dungeon crawler where your friends are the monsters (and they hate you)
Developed by two people in Australia. Released in 2017. Still the best local PvP game nobody talks about.
Here’s the setup: one player is the hero. The other three? They’re ghosts. And those ghosts possess everything in the dungeon. Traps. Doors. Chests. That innocent-looking skeleton in the corner. Even a bloody cupboard can and will attack you. If a ghost kills the hero? They become the hero. Instant promotion. No job interview required.
The result is a four-player grudge match where alliances last about three seconds. You’ll spend the whole game screaming “KILL THE HERO” — until you are the hero, at which point you’ll scream “WHY IS THAT CHEST BITING ME” while your former allies giggle from the shadows.
It’s 100% local multiplayer (no online, sorry hermits), so you actually need friends in the same room. The horror. The graphics are pixel-perfect, the soundtrack slaps, and the boss fights require all three ghost players to temporarily work together just to ruin one person’s day. It’s $15, it’s on everything (PC, Switch, PS4, Xbox), and it will end friendships faster than Monopoly ever dreamed of.
Play it. Then apologize to your roommate.
7. Stick Fight: The Game – Physics-Based Violence for the Smooth-Brained
Year: 2017
Developer: Landfall Games (again—they’re good at this)
You are a stick figure. There are guns, swords, gravity hammers, and a snake that comes out of a bazooka (yes, really). The physics are janky on purpose. The maps are full of lava, spikes, and moving platforms that hate you.
Matches last about 30 seconds. You will die in hilarious, unfair ways. You will win by accident. You will lose because your character tripped over a pebble.
It costs less than a sandwich. It has provided more joy than most AAA games from the last five years combined. This is what Super Smash Bros. would be if Nintendo had no standards and we loved it for that.
8. Blazing Beaks – Gunfire, Ducks, and Regret
Year: 2019
Developer: Applava
A twin-stick roguelite where you play as a bird with a gun. You pick up “cursed” artifacts that hurt you but give you better loot if you survive. In co-op, you can accidentally kill your partner. In PvP, you just try to survive.
The art style is cute. The difficulty is cruel. It’s like Enter the Gungeon but with feathers and a lower price tag. The PvP mode is a chaotic free-for-all where the cursed items stack until you either win or explode.
9. Brawlhalla – The Free-to-Play Fighting Game That Actually Respects You
Year: 2017 (open beta 2015)
Developer: Blue Mammoth Games (Ubisoft, but ignore that part)
Yes, it’s free. Yes, it has cross-play on everything (PC, PlayStation, Xbox, Switch, mobile). Yes, it has 50+ characters (legends). No, you don’t need to spend money to win. Cosmetics only. The gameplay is a platform fighter like Smash Bros., but with weapons that drop on the ground and a damage system that actually makes sense.
It’s published by Ubisoft, yet it’s less predatory than most indie games. That’s either a miracle or a sign of the apocalypse. The community is huge, the netcode is solid, and you can play as a crossover character from Adventure Time or The Walking Dead for some reason.
If you lose, you can’t blame pay-to-win. You have to blame your slow thumbs.
10. Starwhal – Just the Tip (Of the Space Narwhal)
Year: 2014
Developer: Breakfall
You control a narwhal in space. You can only stab with your tusk. You flop around like a dying fish. You try to stab your friends’ hearts while protecting your own.
It is the dumbest, most brilliant PvP game ever made. The controls are intentionally awful (you move by flapping your fins). The levels are nonsense (moving lasers, shrinking arenas). The music is a synthwave dream.
You will play it for five minutes, laugh until you cry, and then never speak of it again until someone brings it up at a party. That’s the magic.
The “Git Gud or Go Home” Summary
Let’s be real. You don’t need another 100-hour grindy battle pass. You don’t need another “live service” that dies in six months. You need games where you can punch your friends in the face (virtually), lose spectacularly, and laugh about it.
These ten games deliver that. Whether it’s quacking in Duck Game, throwing a ball at Mach 5 in Lethal League, or building a death trap in Crawl, you will have fun. Or you’ll rage. Probably both.
Honorable Mentions (because you nerds will ask):
- SpeedRunners (grappling hook Mario Kart)
- Samurai Gunn 2 (sword fights with a gun that has one bullet)
- Screencheat (the FPS where everyone is invisible so you HAVE to look at your friend’s screen)
Now go play. And for the love of everything, stop blaming the lag. And if you want to try some of these games out, click here to visit the Steam store.