12 Unbelievable Indie Games That Deserved Your Attention In 2013

4. Terraria (PC, PSN, XBLA, iOS)

Let me be the first to point out that, yes, Terraria was strictly speaking not released in 2013. It did, however, make its debut on many consoles this year and arguably in a much more complete form than its long-time rival Minecraft ever has done. Not only that, the PC version of Terraria was revived after the developers initially announced that there would be no further updates. Slowly but surely, Terraria seems to be gaining its own foothold on the indie game scene and is becoming more respected by itself. If you didn't already know the concept of Terraria: think of it as a 2D Minecraft, but with some rather notable differences. Yes, you have to chop trees, build shelter, mine ores to improve your gear and kill monsters to survive - but on top of that, there's a much better NPC system, a wide variety of progression through boss battles and a steady difficulty curve that doesn't suddenly throw you off when you start. It's possible to start a game of Terraria not really knowing what you've got to do and making it all the way to the end with the same character. What has made Terraria stand out this year is the expansion on to consoles. Unlike Minecraft's expansion on to home and handheld consoles, Terraria's has been on a much grander scale. You effectively get the same experience of the game on every console that you play it on; even the version on iOS feels much more complete than the equivalent of Minecraft's Pocket Edition. It stands out as a fully fledged game on its own right, and as it looks like the game has been given some new life heading in to next year, there's every chance Terraria is now fully out of the shadows.