Check out all of our Best of 2014 coverage here and Worst of 2014 coverage here.

Independent game development is the foremost frontier for exploring new ideas and concepts in a medium too often hampered by a need to retread the same ground. 2014 brought with it a surge in early access releases and the first big fruits of the crowdfunding craze, making the creation and release of these indie titles often as experimental or temperamental as their subject material.

• Mac gamers, contrary to popular belief, have plenty of top games titles to choose from these days - indeed, the most difficult part is narrowing down the options, and then finding the money to buy.
• Best free Mac games. Read our roundup of the best Mac games. This indie darling is best known in remade form on Xbox 360 and PS Vita, but its.

10 Best Indie Games of PAX East 2014. PAX East’s show floor is so dominated by the next big mainstream titles that it’s easy to overlook the small booths where independent designers show off their passion projects.

We waded through the releases of this past year and selected the 15 sharpest, most creative, and most addictive indie games of 2014, listed below in order of release date. We only considered those games that had a full release. Playable alphas or early access builds for titles like The Forest, Rust, Superhot, or Broforce were often interesting, but they were not eligible. Feel free to let us know in the comments what you think about the games we did profile. And tell us what you would have added or taken away if this was your list instead of ours.

Nidhogg

Above: Nidhogg tested player reflexes like no other game this year.

Developer/Publisher: Messhof

Platforms: PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, PC, Mac

Release Date: January 13, 2014 (PC)

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No one-on-one game better tested your twitch reflexes this year than Nidhogg, a fencing game where a single direct blow was fatal and blocking was a matter of pixel-precise timing. One player achieves victory by reaching the far end of their opponent’s side of the stage. Slicing down or otherwise killing your enemy gives you a few seconds to run forward before they respawn. Your reward for reaching the far end is the honor of being summarily devoured by a horrible-looking Norse dragon.

Each battle was a series of quick, fatal matches across multiple sparse screens, your character’s small but deadly fights playing out against backdrops with massive swinging chandeliers or cascading waterfalls. But Nidhogg was at its best when it stuck you and your opponent on the opposite end of a narrow corridor, where your excuses for failure were just as slight as your fencer’s breathing room. If you wanted simple but undeniable proof of your domination over any of your gamer friends or foes, you couldn’t find a more dispassionate judge of talent than Nidhogg.

Banner Saga

Above: Everything in Banner Saga, from combat to decision-making, was a deliberate process.

Developer: Stoic Games

Publisher: Versus Evil

Platforms: PC, Mac, iOS, Android

Release Date: January 14, 2014 (PC)

If every crowdfunded game came out as pristine as The Banner Saga, the economic model of the industry would effectively be split in two. This long caravan trek through the harsh mountains toughened players up until they could stand hand-in-calloused-hand with the towering Varl men they fought beside and against. You guided this ragtag ensemble in hope of finding a weakness in the Bellower, the leader of the war-hungry Dredge. Civ v game crashed mac. The inescapable, tough decisions the player had to make on behalf of the caravan where often more brutal than the deliberate, turn-based battles that defined the Banner Saga’s bleak but beautiful campaign.

Above all of that is a triumph of aesthetic design on nearly every front. Journey composer Austin Wintory brought in a couple of famed Youtube singers in addition to the Dallas Wind Symphony to create a lush, often harsh score. The hand-drawn characters felt vibrantly alive, even as we struggled to bring down a heavy axe upon their heads. The Banner Saga had only a few rare moments where it wasn’t gorgeous to behold, drawing us into a desperate but hearty world that was painful to leave.

Octodad: Dadliest Catch

Above: Octodad’s flailing attempts at normalcy were always charming.

Developer/Publisher: Young Horses, Inc.

Platforms: PlayStation 4, PC, Mac, Linux

Release Date: January 30, 2014 (PC, Mac, Linux)

Never underestimate the appeal of a goofy dad. While the original Octodad had its enthusiastic supporters (myself included), the sequel proved that the tech demo of a clumsy Octopus faking his humanity by trying to perform everyday tasks could be made into a full game. Like the impossible-by-design runner QWOP, in Dadliest Catch you have to wrestle with purposefully obtuse controls to make a single movement. The later stages of the game focused too heavily on making a precise game out of these mechanics, but user-generated content has kept our love for the bumbling mollusk alive.

That’s possibly because that, beneath the awkward controls and made-for-Youtube schtick, there was a familial sense of desperation. You weren’t just an Octopus, you were a dad. You weren’t saving the world by flailing toward a nuclear launch facility, you were trying to grill a few burgers for your somehow human kids and wife. All while keeping your suction-cupped identity a secret, of course. The struggle of a father is not one we embark on often in games, probably because they all can’t be as caring as Octodad.

Threes

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Above: Threes destroyed more free time than pretty much any other game in 2014.

Combat is kinetic, exciting, and rewarding, and swinging from building to building to traverse a stunning recreation of New York is like something from our childhood dreams. Mac free single player online action war games online. Marvel's Spider-Man(Image credit: Insomniac Games)Taking one of the world’s most iconic characters and handing the reins to one of the most consistent developers in gaming turned out to be a match made in heaven for PlayStation fans.Telling an (excellent) original tale in a non-MCU Spider-Verse, is anchored by fantastic performances from Yuri Lowenthal and Laura Bailey as Peter Parker and Mary Jane. An unmissable experience. That’s to say nothing of new versions of the Wallcrawler’s rogues gallery and surprising relationships explored with longstanding characters.Thankfully, the gameplay is more than up to snuff, too.

Developer/Publisher: Sirvo

Platforms: Xbox One, iOS, Android

Release Date: February 6, 2014 (iOS)

For all of the visual panache and mechanical flair of the other games on this list, Threes is one many of us have played the most. By far. The simple puzzler, where you slid tiles on a grid in order to add up to three or the multiples thereof, is on the shortlist for the addicting mobile hall of fame. If seeing mathematical equations everywhere wasn’t already a known phenomenon, Threes would be one of the few games since Tetris to have some players seeing its patterns and images everywhere outside the screen.

Threes managed to further simplify the satisfaction of math problem-solving found in sudoku and blend it into the sliding block puzzles we all seemed to have when we were kids. All it needed then was a leaderboard, and the world never stood a chance.

Goat Simulator

Above: Goat Simulator proved just how profitable stupidity can be.

Developer: Coffee Stain Studios

Platforms: PC, Mac, Linux, iOS, Android

Release Date: April 1, 2014

Goat Simulator is a joke. It was released on April Fool’s Day. It has no connective design tissue beyond its few interactive elements. It’s a genuinely ugly game, and it’s not even that funny. But Coffee Stain Studios isn’t making a massive, faux-MMO expansion for a game that didn’t get set certain corners of the Internet on fire.

Like Octodad: Dadliest Catch (and another game further down our list), Goat Simulator exists largely thanks to the staggering popularity of Let’s Plays, gameplay videos recorded – and often spoken over and riffed on – by commentators. Youtube commentators snatched up early access codes for Goat Simulator and licked, kicked, and headbutted everything in sight. The economy of bemused hatred is often just as great as that of genuine interest, and Goat Simulator rams into the softest part of the brain that screams, “This is so stupid.” The profound dumbness of being a goat running around trying to sow chaos was never not apparent, in fact it was one of the chief factors that lead to people talking about and watching it as much as they did.

When it comes to personal computers, the Mac has never been known as a gaming heavyweight: Apple doesn't focus on building machines that have the hard-core processing and graphics power you might find in, say, a Razor PC laptop.

That said, there are still a number of excellent games available to play on your Mac — especially of the indie variety. Two-person development teams and small studios shine on Apple's laptops and desktops, building stories with smart twists and heart-wrenching endings.

There have been many great indie titles for Mac over the years, especially with the advent of the Steam Store, but here are our all-time favorites.

Braid

I'm not generally the type to get overly invested in a game — I'm more of a book and movie person. But when I picked up Braid in 2009 after an off-hand recommendation from a friend, I found myself completely captivated by its mechanics and story.

On its face, Braid is a simple puzzle platformer: You play a man named Tim searching for a princess across the landscape of a strange world, encountering puzzles as you progress through each level. But the true delight of the game is in its controls: Not only can you run forward, jump, and the like — but you can rewind time at any moment, reversing your decisions and movements. It's a simple but beautiful mechanic and quickly becomes one of the primary ways you can solve the hardest puzzles; all the while, it makes you think about time and movement in a completely different way.

Years after its release, Braid is still considered a masterpiece — and it's not hard to see why. (If you can't — just rewind.)

Firewatch

We've said a lot about the magic of Firewatch on iMore over the last year, but the Campo Santo/Panic collaboration continues to merit praise. The 3D mystery and exploration game, which places you as a firewatch in a national park around the late 1980s, captures the essential beauty of being alone in the U.S. wilderness — and the eerieness factor, too. The voice acting here is also top-tier; this is a game that demands headphones and a wistful spirit.

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Gone Home

Another entry in the first-person mystery genre, Gone Home puts you in the shoes of a student recently returned from a lengthy overseas trip to her family house, only to find it empty — with her younger sister apparently vanished. It's a wonderful example of the mystery and exploration genre, providing just enough of a creepy flair to keep you on the edge of your seat with just a few major jump-out scares.

For all of its intrigue, however, the game's core centers around family, ambition, and love — and paints those feelings with wrenching truths.

Transistor

Modern RPGs are a dime a dozen, but none are painted in quite so stunning a manner as Transistor. Supergiant Games's sci-fi/action game sets you on a path through a futuristic electro-punk city with a mystical weapon and enemies to outwit and defeat. Though shorter than your average Final Fantasy entry, Transistor nevertheless captivates and offers great replay value with its quests and power-ups — though I'd settle for just exploring its beautifully rendered environments.

Stardew Valley

This was an outlier pick for our indie games list courtesy Mobile Nations video producer Justus Perry, but I have to admit that I quickly fell in love with it myself after a few hours. If you're a fan of simulation games but want a little more quirk and a little less 'send your Sim to work for the fortieth time' monotony, Stardew Valley offers you the chance to run your own pixelated farm, interact with the locals, defeat (or join forces with) a possibly evil corporation, explore caverns, and create all sorts of endless weird cooking experiments.

In a month where it's been hard to regularly read Facebook or Twitter, Stardew Valley is an appropriately delightful escape from the real world.

FTL: Faster Than Light

Best Indie Games For Mac 2014 Torrent

If you've ever dreamed of captaining a starship, it's hard not to love FTL. Subset Games's tactical strategy title puts you in the captain's chair on your way to save the galaxy — if you can make it through any number of insane and sometimes impossible challenges. And those, honestly, end up being the heart of the game: You become attached to your ship and crew — even when you end up accidentally killing them and having to start over.

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Your favorite indie games for Mac?

What are your favorite indie games for the Mac? Let us know below!

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Apple is now redirecting (PRODUCT)RED purchases to COVID‑19 relief fund

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Now through September 30, Apple is redirecting 100% of a portion of (PRODUCT)RED purchases to the Global Fund’s COVID‑19 Response.