“I’ve downloaded so many indie RPGs that I’ll never get around to playing.”
“I’ll never even get around to reading all the game PDFs I already have.”
“I’ve accidentally purchased or downloaded multiple copies of a game before because I didn’t realize I already owned it.”
If you identify with one or more of these statements, you may be a normal, typical indie TTRPG player! Having way too many games and way too little time to appreciate them appears to be a universal theme among fans of indie tabletop games, and I’m certainly no exception. So in 2025, I’m making an effort to read through all the games I have, appreciate them, write down my thoughts, and make a note of which ones I actively want to play!
My ground rules:
- This list is, quite literally, a peek into my computer’s Indie RPG downloads folder. I will cover any and all games with PDFs that can be found in F:/TTRPG/IndieGames and its subfolders, in chronological order by download timestamp.
- I will not cover any D&D supplements, nor any of my own work. (Those live in separate folders elsewhere in my file system.) I will include games that I contributed to, edited, and/or playtested, as long as the primary designer or writer was someone else.
- If I own several versions of a game (for example, both the playtest and full version), they’ll all be listed separately. Games sometimes change drastically over the course of development, and it’s important to acknowledge that!
- If you’re a creator and you like what I have to say about your game, you have blanket permission to use my words for marketing purposes! (If you’d like me to provide a longer testimonial, feel free to contact me.) And if you’d like me to change any factual details about your game, like correcting an author name or providing a different link to the game, please reach out to me.
Who am I and what are my biases?
I am not a professional TTRPG reviewer. I’m an indie TTRPG writer who’s coming to terms with the fact that, although my games have a combined total of over thirty thousand downloads at the time of writing, only a tiny fraction of those files will ever be opened and read, and an even tinier portion will be used for an actual playthrough. I’d like to encourage more people to get into the habit of reading and discussing the indie TTRPGs they’ve downloaded, and if I lead by example, perhaps you’ll even find a new game that interests you enough to download!
I’m going in with biases rooted in my past experience. I am primarily a writer of solo journaling games, which means I have many opinions on the style and substance of other solo journaling games. I got my start playing TTRPGs, as so many others did, with D&D, specifically 3.5, and have played many other GM-arbitrated group combat-adventure systems; I have less firsthand experience with GMless group storytelling games. I don’t understand OSR games and have bounced off several moderately-serious attempts to get into them. I don’t really understand lyric games as games, although I appreciate them as experimental writing. I don’t generally have a high opinion of one-page games as games meant to be played, although I appreciate them as pieces of deliberate craft. I also don’t generally have a high opinion of games that take an SRD word-for-word and fill in a few gaps with vague genre brushstrokes. I highly admire games that take an SRD and modify its mechanics in major and inventive ways, or cleverly combine multiple SRDs to create a powerful new system. I also admire strong narrative voice and cleverly playing with diegesis.
I am friends with, or social media mutuals with, some of the creators of the games on this list. (Naturally, I download and check out things made by my friends.) I may occasionally mention this when it’s relevant background to my thoughts on a game, but I will not be systematically disclosing it.
Because this is an accurate and unfiltered look at my downloads folder, I can’t promise that I wholeheartedly endorse all the games that appear on this list, but they all had some aspect or another that intrigued me enough to download them at some point.
And now, without further ado…
Kaiya’s Indie RPG Folder
- Games 001-025
- Games 026-050
- Games 051-075
- Games 076-100
- Games 101-125
- Games 126-150
- Games 150-175
- Games 175-???
Game Highlight Lists
This space is reserved for lists that may begin forming in the future, such as games I consider foundational to the history and development of indie TTRPGs, games written using the Aspire SRD, or games I’m actively looking to play.