Slay the Spire 2 hit the shelves earlier this month and took over gaming. 4.6 million copies in just two weeks. That makes it the most successful Roguelike ever, an unofficial title previously held by the likes of Hades and The Binding of Isaac, both of which have sold an estimated 10 million copies to date.
It took Mega Crit‘s deckbuilder only a few weeks to achieve what the others have in years. It’s an unbelievable number for any indie game, but coming off the backs of Hollow Knight: Silksong and Mewgenics, it’s not even the first big hit this year.
The question is, are these big, back-to-back successes a coincidence? Just a result of being long-awaited sequels to beloved indies? Or is a new pattern forming? Are indie games hitting their stride, solidifying their place in the marketplace, challenging even triple-A games for their spot in the sun?
Indie Successes Have Always Pushed The Genre (Or Created New Ones)
Triple-A games can’t take risks. Investors don’t want to put a hundred million dollars on the line for an unproven idea. Indie developers are constantly taking these risks, making whatever sounds fun at the time. They experiment. They blend Rogue (1980) with The Legend of Zelda (1986) and set it in a Christian woman’s basement, then sell 10 million copies (The Binding of Isaac).
Balatro is another example of a game that performed really well. It was nominated for dozens of awards and even won the Game of the Year award at the 2025 Game Developers Choice Awards. The game has a very simple design, and in today’s gaming industry, even simplicity is a risky move. In Balatro’s case, however, it works wonders, and it’s almost like the Pinball or Tetris game of modern gaming.
Another title that really pushed the entire industry and even became the bread and butter of many content creators was Among Us. It brought together friends in fun ways and became the perfect way for streamers/content creators to collaborate. The game also showed the power of streamers compared to traditional marketing.
To this day, not many games have touched the level of hype that Among Us created in that sphere, and many continue to play the game with mods to introduce something fresh.
Indie Sequels Generate Their Own Hype
Silksong, ever since its reveal in 2019, has been a meme among gamers. Hollow Knight struck a chord with a certain sect of players, and Silksong couldn’t come soon enough. Maybe it was a small, vocal minority, but slowly but surely, the hype snowballed into inescapable mentions and jokes about Silksong come game showcase time.
Slay the Spire 2’s journey from its reveal to early access launch was not as dramatic, but it still remained more wishlisted than big names like Forza Horizon 6, 007 First Light, and Fable.
Their anticipation was evident from the fact that both sequels crashed online stores like Steam minutes after release. It took some players hours to finally get the games. Thinking back, it would have been very interesting to see what would have happened if they both launched in the same week.
But Why Are Indie Fans So Devoted?
Silksong and Slay the Spire 2 both have a ton of mechanics carried over from their predecessors. They don’t make things easy for new players just to cater to a bigger audience. Instead, either you love it or you hate it. These are games that require time and effort to learn, but once fans learn them, they’re hooked. Add their endless replayability, and you have a machine for making lifelong fans.
That is specifically why everyone loves them and can even recommend them to others as an introduction to their respective genres. Such titles embody a lot of what the genre represents, and if you don’t like the mechanics in them, chances are that you probably won’t elsewhere either.
Unlike big studios that are always trying to appease everyone to play their game, indie studios make a title that will find its way to the right audience, and the two become lifelong companions. So, if you enjoy Silksong or Slay the Spire 2, you would most certainly love everything else the genres have to offer.
These Indie Sequels Perfect The Genre
Team Cherry and Mega Crit had their cards right (pun intended), and they played them perfectly. Building on the scope of the series’ earlier successes, they effectively double the value of the games without increasing the prices.
Compared to triple-A games, Slay the Spire 2 and Silksong are a steal. The amount and quality of content they offer make the cost trivial. The games’ replayability also allows players to spend just as much time with the games as they would with a triple-A game.
Considering all that, it’s not too much to say that Slay the Spire 2 is the new face of roguelikes in the same way that Silksong is for Metroidvanias, the only question is what’s next?
Massive Success at Launch
Team Cherry‘s Silksong reached a concurrent player count of 587,150 shortly after release. It went on to sell over an estimated 4.2 million copies in less than two weeks.
When compared to Slay the Spire 2, the numbers are ridiculously similar. The sequel peaked at over 574,638 concurrent players, consistently hitting over 400,000 players every single day. Analysts have also estimated it to have sold over 4.6 million copies in its first two weeks.
Silksong and Slay the Spire 2 have both become one of the most successful games of 2025 and 2026, respectively. Indie games rarely do this well, and a big reason these two did is the foundation their predecessors had laid.
Hollow Knight performed exceptionally with over 15 million copies sold to date. It does everything well, platforming, combat, art style… You name it! It also has some “soulslike” elements, such as losing the currency upon death with only one chance to retrieve it, benches instead of bonfires as checkpoints, and environmental storytelling over the narrative. The difficulty spike and attack patterns also function very similarly to what a soulslike game would be.
Slay the Spire does something similar, but as a Roguelike deck-builder. It has just the right balance: difficult to learn at first and extremely enjoyable to master. The level of replayability it offers is something many others aspire to have. Although it had a slow start back in 2017, the game has sold over 9 million copies to date.
These titles brought something unique to the genre, and players at the time fell in love with it. Their success fueled the development of these sequels and provided the studios with the resources to make something of such quality. In fact, Silksong was initially supposed to be a DLC for Hollow Knight, but the scope simply grew over time.
Decades Of Ideas Coming To Fruition
Despite being much smaller in scope compared to big projects, there are many indie games that have decades of ideas and passion behind their development. Let’s look at Mewgenics for a minute. It was the main game that Edmund McMillen wanted to create, and he decided to experiment with The Binding of Isaac to improve his understanding of Roguelikes before moving on to Mewgenics.
His side project gained immense popularity, becoming one of the most influential indie games ever. Even though Mewgenics has a long way to go before hitting that benchmark, it is a result of the ideas and the passion Edmund had all these years.
Sure, there might be some games that were a developer’s first project and happened to sell millions, but there is almost always a story behind them. Being in the indie space allows them to be creative and take risks by experimenting. They can ‘fail’ multiple times before striking gold with a novel idea.
Lethal Company is a great example as a game that recently popularised the Friendslop genre. Many believe the game was a sudden success, but Zeekerss, the game developer, had created over a dozen games on PC and Roblox before developing Lethal Company. The industry is full of these games.
Slay The Spire 2 Might Have Even Higher Potential
Let’s go back to Slay the Spire 2 because we believe it has a ton more it can achieve in the years to come. And with how comparable the success and popularity of Slay the Spire 2 is to Silksong, we can confidently say that the Roguelike genre has another game that others can recognize from a mile away.
In many ways, Slay the Spire 2 has even more potential to achieve beyond what it already has. Due to its nature, it is one of the most replayable games out there. You might have hundreds of hours in Slay the Spire 2 already, but if you can’t get your cards right, even normal enemies can overwhelm you.
The Ascension mechanic is a core part of the gameplay, and it would take a lot to get the max ascension clear on even one character… and there are five of them. It’s a big reason why the game always has over a hundred thousand players online taking on this challenge.
Not to mention that the game is still in early access, and it is bound to get more content updates and ascensions. It will likely remain in this phase for another year or so. And the fact that you can do all of that in the multiplayer mode just takes the fun to another level.
So are these the best indie games ever?
That’s up to you. Silksong being the best-selling Metroidvania doesn’t make it the best Metroidvania subjectively. Nor do Slay the Spire 2’s sales.
In fact, with the medium and genres still so young, chances are that your favourite games haven’t even been made yet. That said, if you are looking for some recommendations, you might like to read one of our ‘best of’ lists: