An Indie Backlog curated overview. We round up the best indie games on Nintendo Switch and how professional critics and players received each one — the scores below are theirs, linked to the source.
A tiny knight, a vast ruined kingdom, and one of the most beloved games of the last decade — the metroidvania by which all others are judged.
At a Glance
| Developer | Team Cherry |
| Release year | 2017 |
| Platforms | PC, Switch, PlayStation, Xbox |
| Subgenre | Metroidvania |
| Length | ~27 hours (main story) |
| Metacritic | 87 / 100 |
| Steam rating | Overwhelmingly Positive (~97%, 540,000+ reviews) |
| Steam Deck | Verified |
| Languages | 11 |
About the Game
Hollow Knight, from three-person Australian studio Team Cherry, drops you into Hallownest — a sprawling, ruined underground kingdom of insects, plague, and forgotten gods — as a small, silent, nail-wielding knight. There’s no map handed to you and almost no exposition; you piece together the story and the geography yourself, one hard-won discovery at a time.
It’s a metroidvania in the truest sense: a single interconnected world that slowly opens up as you earn new movement and combat abilities. The hand-drawn art is gorgeous and melancholy, the bosses are tough and unforgettable, and the feeling of getting lost — then suddenly understanding exactly where you are — is the whole magic of it.
It launched in 2017 to modest fanfare and became a word-of-mouth phenomenon, racking up over half a million Overwhelmingly Positive Steam reviews and a level of devotion few indies ever reach. On Switch, where it runs beautifully in handheld, it’s close to essential.
Screenshots
Screenshots: official Steam media for Hollow Knight.
Why It Made the List
Hollow Knight is on this list because it might be the single best indie game on the Switch, full stop. It’s enormous, gorgeous, brutally fair, and endlessly explorable — and it costs a fraction of what that much content usually does. The benchmark for the entire genre.
What the Critics Say
Hollow Knight holds a Metacritic score of 87, with critics praising its art, atmosphere, and the depth of its interconnected world; the rare reservation is that its hands-off design and difficulty can be daunting.
What Players Say
On Steam it’s rated Overwhelmingly Positive across more than 540,000 reviews — about 97% positive, one of the highest tallies of any game on this list. Players consistently call it one of the best-value games ever made.
Praise & Criticism
Praise
- Vast, beautifully interconnected world
- Gorgeous hand-drawn art and score
- Tough but fair, memorable bosses
- Staggering amount of game for the price
Criticism
- Deliberately hands-off — easy to get lost
- Difficulty spikes
- Backtracking can be heavy
Games Like This
- Hyper Light Drifter — atmospheric, combat-driven action
- Dead Cells — a roguelike spin on the metroidvania
- CrossCode — a huge action-RPG world to explore
Where to Buy
Plain store links for now — swap in your affiliate-tagged URLs once you’ve joined Amazon Associates and the eBay Partner Network. (Steam and the eShop have no consumer affiliate program; those links are for convenience.)
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