The 15 Best Indie Strategy Games To Play In 2026

5 – Into The Breach

Into The Breach turns 8 years old in 2026, and it feels like it has released just a couple of months ago, a testament to its timeless design. A turn-based tactical roguelike that pits a squad of three time-travelling mechs against the Vek, a swarm of giant insectoid monsters. Unlike many of its peers, the game operates on a compact 8 x 8 grid and provides “perfect information,” showing you exactly how the enemy will move and attack before you take your turn. While FTL was about managing chaos, Into the Breach redefined the “Strategy” genre by stripping it down to its most elegant, essential parts. Into the Breach pivoted from the “hit-or-miss” percettrnages of games like XCOM, and opted for a sort of deterministic logic puzzle, where everything is pre-defined, and it’s up to the player to change those outcomes by using the capabilities of their mechs. The game ends up feeling more like chess with mechs, and less about managing the RNG of hit-percentage games.

4 – FTL: Faster Than Light

If there was ever an “original” indie strategy game that broke boundaries and crossed into the mainstream discourse, it would have to be FTL: Faster Than Light. Released in 2012, FTL was one of the first major success stories for crowdfunding, by raising over $200,000 on a $10,000 goal, alongside a similar success story with Broken Age, from Double Fine Adventure.

FTL also led to the resurgence of “roguelikes”, often seen as impenetrable, ASCII-based dungeon crawlers. FTL streamlined the rogue experience by modernizing the UI and the gameplay loop, creating short sessions of 30 to 60 minutes runs (if you managed to get to the end), and started to use permadeath as a narrative and a tool to teach players. The minimalist art style and Ben Prunty’s soundtrack, composed of lo-fi chiptune and ambient synth, also became a staple.

3 – Darkest Dungeon

Ah, the Dark Souls of strategy games. In 2026, it will be to understand just how popular Darkest Dungeon was when it first hit Steam’s Early Access program. For a time, it seems that every Twitch streamer, YouTuber, and gaming publication, all of them, just played and talked about Darkest Dungeon. No doubt because it came out during a time when the Souls series was hitting its cultural peak, and the dark mood, excessive difficulty, complex gameplay, and Lovecraftian setting of Darkest Dungeon made it seem like Dark Souls had jumped genres and was not a turn-based RPG. Add to that a whole host of new mechanics built around the idea of stress, trauma, and insanity, something no other game dared touch at the time, and Darkest Dungeon became a beloved turn-based classic from the moment it released.

2 – RimWorld

For the longest time, the concept of colony sims seemed relegated to the fringes of gaming, with legends told online of Dwarf Fortress- an amazingly intricate, brutal, and almost true-to-life simulation of what leading a colony of mine-dwelling dwarves could actually look like. However, it came with a difficulty curve equally as brutal, ASCII graphics, and it always felt more like the kind of game that I would rather read about than to play. I would argue that it wasn’t until the massive, mainstream success of RimWorld that the colony-sim genre exploded, and now it is amongst the most popular games around, with Songs of Syx, Oxygen Not Included, and Space Haven becoming fan-favorites as well.