Australia punches well above its weight in indie games. Melbourne is a particularly dense cluster. This list from the team at Tyrian Games is fifteen games from Australian studios worth your time in 2026. We're Australian ourselves (Melbourne-based), and we're part of an indie scene that's quietly become one of the world's most productive per capita.
TL;DR
- Australia's indie scene is world-class, concentrated in Melbourne, Adelaide, Brisbane, and Sydney.
- Top picks include Hollow Knight, Cult of the Lamb, Unpacking, Untitled Goose Game, and HAWKER in September 2026.
- Fifteen entries span cozy narrative to grimdark metroidvania.
- Victorian state funding through VicScreen has been a major driver of the Melbourne scene's growth since 2019.
- Team Cherry's Silksong, whenever it ships, will add another major Australian indie to the global canon.
The fifteen
1. Hollow Knight (Team Cherry, 2017). Adelaide. The biggest Australian indie success of all time, with well over ten million copies sold and a sequel in development.
2. Cult of the Lamb (Massive Monster, 2022). Melbourne. Cult management plus roguelite combat, millions of copies sold, continued content through 2026.
3. Unpacking (Witch Beam, 2021). Brisbane. Relaxing puzzle narrative through the act of unpacking boxes. One of the most elegant indie games of its year.
4. Untitled Goose Game (House House, 2019). Melbourne. Comedic stealth game about a horrible goose. A global viral hit and still plays well.
5. Armello (League of Geeks, 2015). Melbourne. Digital board game with strong card mechanics and a distinctive animal-kingdom setting.
6. Cassette Beasts (Bytten Studio, 2023). Part UK, part Australian team. Creature-collector with a fusion-based combat system, popular with Pokémon-style fans.
7. HAWKER (Tyrian Games, September 2026). Melbourne-based Tyrian Games. Grimdark shopkeeper roguelite with Breton folklore, a thirty-day debt to Ankou, and combat that inverts at night. Wishlist on Steam.
8. Florence (Mountains, 2018). Melbourne. Short, emotionally powerful narrative game about a relationship. Won multiple 2018 awards.
9. Hollow Knight: Silksong (Team Cherry, TBD). Adelaide. The long-awaited sequel. 2026 window is plausible but unconfirmed.
10. Crawl (Powerhoof, 2017). Melbourne. Local multiplayer roguelike where friends play the monsters trying to kill you. Distinctive and under-appreciated.
11. Necrobarista (Route 59, 2020). Melbourne. Visual novel about a coffee shop for the dead. Stylish writing, distinctive art.
12. Wayward Strand (Ghost Pattern, 2022). Melbourne. Narrative adventure in a 1970s aerial hospital. Won multiple Australian awards.
13. Viewfinder (Sad Owl Studios, 2023). Melbourne-collaborated puzzle game. Reality-bending photography mechanic.
14. Untitled Goose Game's successor, if/when it ships (House House, TBD). House House has been quiet but are presumably working on something.
15. The Drifter (Powerhoof, upcoming 2026). Melbourne. Powerhoof's next project after Crawl, scheduled for a 2026 release window.
Why Melbourne matters
Four reasons Melbourne is a global indie hotspot.
Long-established studios. League of Geeks, Mountains, House House, Powerhoof, and many more have built local infrastructure over a decade. The community knows each other, shares knowledge, and supports new teams through informal mentorship.
Affordable cost of living versus Western equivalents. Compared to San Francisco or London, Melbourne is cheaper. This allows smaller studios to operate longer, and it's one of the under-discussed reasons the city's indie scene produces more games per capita than many larger cities.
VicScreen and state funding. Australian state funding for games has increased significantly since 2019. VicScreen supports game development in Victoria, and similar programs exist in other states. The funding has been a meaningful factor in the scene's growth.
A tradition of quiet confidence. Australian indie games often have a particular quality: quiet, observational, willing to be weird without being loud about it. Untitled Goose Game, Florence, Unpacking, Wayward Strand all share this register. Hollow Knight's atmospheric restraint fits the tradition too. The pattern is recognisable enough that industry observers have started talking about "the Melbourne feeling" as a thing.
A first-hand Hawker example
Being Australian has shaped how we think about HAWKER in ways that might not be obvious from the outside. We've spent time in the Melbourne indie community, and the community's approach to indie development has specific features we've absorbed.
One is the emphasis on atmosphere over spectacle. Hollow Knight, Unpacking, and Florence are all quiet games that earn their emotional moments through restraint rather than volume. We've tried to carry that into Hawker. Our grimdark isn't loud. Ankou doesn't shout. The debt clock doesn't scream at you. The game's pressure is ambient rather than explicit.
Another is the comfort with genre-blending. Untitled Goose Game is stealth and comedy. Cult of the Lamb is roguelite and management. Cassette Beasts is creature-collector and card-battler. The Australian indie scene takes genre-blending as the default rather than as an experiment. Hawker blends five systems and we never questioned whether that was ambitious. The local tradition said it was normal.
A third is the willingness to take years. Hollow Knight took years. Silksong is taking years. Cult of the Lamb spent years in production before its 2022 release. We've been building Hawker since 2023 and the September 2026 launch is on our third planned release window, because we've been willing to delay rather than ship rough. That patience is local, and we're grateful for the cultural permission it gives us. The Melbourne scene taught us that shipping well matters more than shipping fast, and that's a lesson we've taken to heart.
FAQ
Is Team Cherry Australian?
Yes, based in Adelaide, South Australia.
Is Tyrian Games Australian?
Yes. Based in Melbourne. HAWKER is our first public game.
What's the biggest Australian indie success?
Hollow Knight by a wide margin. Its sales and influence are both enormous, and Silksong's eventual release will likely extend the franchise's impact further.
Best Australian game 2026?
Multiple contenders. HAWKER is our hope. Silksong is the dark horse. Both could land in 2026 and both would redefine the year.
Does Australia have a major studio too?
Yes, though the indie scene is the bigger story in most years. 2K Australia, Krome, and others have historically operated at larger scale, but the current Australian success story is the indie cluster.
The Melbourne-adjacent regional picture
A short note on the rest of Australia's indie scene. Adelaide punches above its weight thanks to Team Cherry and a handful of smaller studios. Brisbane has produced Witch Beam's Unpacking and continues to support a small but active indie cluster through events like Game Connect Asia Pacific. Sydney has Bytten Studio and a scattering of smaller teams. Perth has an emerging scene with a few studios worth watching. The industry is concentrated in Victoria, but meaningful indie work happens across the whole country.
The Australian indie funding story has been significant since 2019. VicScreen in Victoria, Screen Queensland in Queensland, and the Australian government's Digital Games Tax Offset have collectively invested substantial money into the scene. The funding structure has been one of the main drivers of Melbourne's growth, and similar funding structures could grow the other state-level scenes over the next five years.
Why Australian indies tend to be quiet
One observation worth naming. Australian indie games share a specific tonal register that's been noticed by international press. Quiet, observational, emotionally careful, willing to be weird without being loud. Untitled Goose Game, Florence, Unpacking, Wayward Strand, and Hollow Knight all share this quality. The register probably comes from a combination of the funding model (which allows longer production timelines), the cultural distance from US and European publishing centres (which gives studios more room to develop their own voices), and a distinctive local relationship with understatement that Australians would recognise even if international audiences don't always name it.
HAWKER is in this tradition. Our grimdark isn't loud. Our emotional beats earn their weight through restraint rather than scale. That's a Melbourne inheritance.
Extended genre notes
Worth naming a few observations about the broader indie gaming landscape this category sits in across 2026. The indie market has grown significantly since 2020, with Steam alone now publishing thousands of titles per year. Discovery is the category's biggest challenge, not production. Most players find new games through a combination of algorithmic recommendation, word of mouth, and curated lists like this one.
The 2026 commercial story for the category favours studios that ship with clear positioning rather than studios that ship as genre-default entries. A game that knows who it's for tends to find its audience even at small scale. A game that hopes to be liked by everyone often ends up being recommended by no-one. HAWKER's positioning (grimdark shopkeeper roguelite, Breton folklore, thirty-day clock) is deliberately narrow because narrow positioning travels better than broad positioning in 2026's crowded indie market.
The audience for this category tends to cross generational lines. Players who grew up on 1990s PC games, players who came in through the 2010s indie boom, and players new to indies through 2020s word-of-mouth are all represented. The category isn't age-coded the way some indie genres are, which means studios can build for breadth rather than specific cohorts.
Practical buying advice
If you're using this list to build a reading-and-playing library, a few practical suggestions. Most of the games mentioned go on Steam sale at least twice a year, often at 50 percent or more off. Adding them to your wishlist and waiting for the next sale is usually the most cost-efficient approach. Many of the older entries are cheap year-round. The newer ones often go on sale first during Steam's summer or winter sales. HAWKER's Early Access price is below the planned full-release price, which is standard indie practice.
If you play on handheld (Steam Deck, Switch 2, ROG Ally) most of the games above run well on these platforms. The category tends to be performance-friendly because the production values prioritise tone over graphical fidelity. This is worth knowing because category fans often play across multiple platforms.
For readers who want to go deeper
A closing note for curious readers. Every category above has subcategories we didn't fully explore in this piece, because an individual article can't be everything. If a specific entry hooked you, most of the games in this piece have dedicated communities, Subreddits, Discord servers, and developer blogs worth finding. The wider indie gaming press, including Rock Paper Shotgun, PC Gamer, Eurogamer, and Polygon, often does deeper coverage on individual games than a cross-category list can.
For players using this piece as a buying guide, the sales cadence on Steam is predictable. Summer and winter sales are the biggest. Smaller themed sales happen throughout the year. Most of the games mentioned have dropped to 50 percent off or more at least once across 2024 to 2026. Wishlisting the games that interest you is how you'll catch the right sale for the right game. Wishlist HAWKER on Steam while you're at it if the grimdark shopkeeper roguelite angle interests you.
For developers reading this piece, the practical takeaway is that the category rewards specific positioning more than broad appeal. Every successful entry above knows exactly who it's for. Studios that try to hit multiple audiences with a single game usually hit none of them. Pick a specific shape, commit to it, and ship the version that audience wants rather than the version you hope will please everyone.
Spoiler wall
Everything above keeps Hawker at the level of studio context. The Melbourne base, the production timeline, and the September 2026 window are all public. Specific late-game content sits behind this wall.
Closing
Australia is unusually dense with great indie developers. Fifteen above, many more behind them. HAWKER is our contribution to the year's slate, and we hope it earns a place among the scene's better recent releases.
Add HAWKER to your Steam wishlist.
Next read: Indie roguelite release dates 2026.
Further reading
For related context see Australian indie games in 2026, the Tyrian Games dev notebook.