The self-publishing video game marketplace Itch.io is unique for its huge array of user-created video games spanning all styles and price points. There's little moderation or editorialization of the listings, unlike Steam or Epic Games, so users can publish whatever they like (barring illegal or similar content) and have full control of the monetization of their work.

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Developers can even choose to make their games free. While this can be used to release free versions of paid games, like a trial version, many developers choose to release full-fledged projects for nothing at all. This makes them some of the more popular games on Itch.io, but only a few are actually worth playing.

10 Friday Night Funkin'

Friday Night Funkin' is one of the most popular indie rhythm games ever released, and for good reason. It's got a huge amount of customization, the controls are perfectly intuitive and responsive, and the game's variety of mods and custom tracks make it nearly infinitely replayable.

If gamers haven't already seen this game in action, it's well worth checking out for the art style and music alone. It's regularly updated and has a huge following, despite being made by a tiny team.

9 Juice Galaxy

Juice Galaxy is a mind-bending exploration sandbox with an art style reminiscent of the PlayStation One and fluid physics-based animations and models. It's a really wacky game that might take some time to get used to, but it's worth it.

The game has RPG elements and a large and varied enough world to keep the player engaged for a few hours. It still receives regular updates, with the 1.10 update having been released on 11 May 2021.

8 Doki Doki Literature Club

Doki Doki Literature Club is an innovative game, despite appearing like a normal Japanese visual novel. Without going too far into spoilers for the game, it's much different than most people expect and well worth going in blind for.

If the visual novel gameplay bores players, just give it half an hour to an hour to really get going. It's worth the ride, and the game's popularity on YouTube and streaming platforms is a testament to that fact.

7 We Become What We Behold

We Become What We Behold is a satirical game that puts its sights on the endless news cycles we experience all around us. It's an extremely short game, but a great 5-minute experience for its commentary on how the media influences mass behavior.

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Taking pictures of people doing different actions affects the mini-society, and even gets into some harsh subjects subtly. It's hard to explain, but it's as intuitive as it is ingenious.

6 Baldi's Basics In Education and Learning

Baldi's Basics in Education and Learning is a horror game free on itch.io that creates its scares through the incredibly off-putting main character, Baldi, and the nightmarishly bizarre world the game takes place in.

It poses as a simple badly designed children's educational game, but after just a few minutes in-game the player finds it to be a much, much more sinister experience.

5 Gacha Life PC

Gacha Life is a very popular mobile game on both Android and iOS that functions as a blend of a virtual dollhouse and a social experience. Players can customize up to eight chibi-like characters with a variety of accessories and take part in online chat rooms with NPCs and other people alike.

The PC version of the game is much more limited than its mobile counterparts, though, and functions as more of a demo than a full-fledged game.

4 Terra Nil - Reclaim the Wasteland

Terra Nil is one of the most innovative and unique simulator games ever made, and unbelievably it's a name-your-own-price game on itch.io. Terra Nil doesn't task the player with building a city, managing a home, or living a normal life as other simulation games do. Instead, the player must rebuild nature in a classic early 2000s pixel art world.

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The player takes the control of an ecosystem under reconstruction with the goal to turn a barren wasteland into a paradise. Free Lives, the development team behind the game, plans to release it on Steam eventually.

3 Stick It To The Stickman

Stick It To The Stickman is a hectic single-player brawler with fluid stickman animations in a physics-based world. The game is a self-described rogue-lite where progress is reset after death, but some permanent upgrades stay between deaths.

It's another game made by Free Lives, the creators of Terra Nil, and just like all of their games, Stick It To The Stickman is surprisingly deep for being a free indie game.

2 A Firm Handshake

A Firm Handshake is a short yet open-ended game with no real focus. The game tasks the player to shake hands with various people in an off-brown world, and things get a little bit weirder as the game goes on.

It's hilarious, it's got a good art style that exemplifies its simplicity, and it's one of the few surreal games that actually make some kind of sense.

1 Coming Out Simulator 2014

There have been a few games on itch.io that use the subject of Coming Out as an LGBT individual. The game Coming Out Simulator 2014 by Nicky Case, though, stands apart from the rest for its brutal honesty about "half-truths".

The game puts the player in control of the game's creator on the night of their coming out to their parents. The player can choose what to say and how to react to experience what it's like in such a nerve-wracking moment, and it gets across those feelings of apprehension and judgment perfectly.

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