Film

Indie Game: The Movie

Name: Indie Game: The Movie
Genre: Documentary, Drama
Released: 2012
Cast: Edmund McMillen, Tommy Refenes, Phil Fish, Jonathan Blow, Anthony Carboni

Drama

A documentary about three indie game developers pouring everything into their passion projects. It's intimate and intense, capturing the loneliness and exhilaration of making something from nothing. For anyone who's ever created anything, or wondered what that costs.

TMDb rating

3.8

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you are curious how a personal project survives its own pressure, and you would rather watch that struggle up close than read about it afterward.

Skip it if you want a tidy making-of with a clear arc; this is intimate, often anxious, and it lingers on the cost of the work rather than celebrating the finished product.

What it asks of you: Patience with long, quiet stretches of people working alone at screens, and scenes that build unease slowly across roughly a hundred and three minutes.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Jiro Dreams of Sushi2011

A meditative portrait of an 85-year-old obsessed with perfecting his craft. Like Indie Game, it's about mastery, sacrifice, and finding meaning through work you can't stop doing.

But Slow and contemplative to the point of quietness. If you want drama and conflict, this is patient observation instead.

The Toys That Made Us2017

Explores creative vision and business pressure in pop culture. Each episode captures how something beloved actually got made, with the messiness and ego intact.

But Nostalgia-driven and sometimes saccharine. It celebrates creation but rarely questions the cost the way Indie Game does.

Midnight in Paris2011

A love letter to the creative process and artistic self-doubt. It asks why we make things, what we owe our work, and whether we're running from or toward something.

But Woody Allen's whimsy isn't for everyone. The film's magic-realism solution to creative angst might feel too easy or precious.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Indie Game: The Movie

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters2007

Both are about people pouring themselves into something the world dismisses as trivial, and both refuse to treat that dismissal as earned.

A documentary that uses arcade high scores as the engine for human drama—obsession, redemption, fraud, and what we prove by winning. Structurally and tonally inverts what a stakes-driven narrative can be.

But Constructed with a villain and hero in ways that don't hold up to scrutiny. Some see it as manipulative rather than illuminating.

The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters poster

Six Feet Under2001

A series about family, legacy, and the weight of inherited expectations. It understands how the things you make define you and haunt you in equal measure.

But Heavy, sometimes morbid, and demands you sit with grief. By design, it doesn't offer much comfort, only understanding.

Helvetica2007

A documentary about a typeface that becomes a meditation on design, intention, and how personal vision shapes the everyday world. Quiet passion disguised as formalism.

But It's a 80-minute film about a font. If that premise doesn't intrigue you, nothing in it will.

The Social Network2010

About building something from obsession and code. Captures the feverish energy of creation, though filtered through Sorkin's screenplay snap and ambition's darker edges.

But Takes creative drive and ties it to ego and revenge. If you want to feel good about art-making, this punctures that feeling.

Exit Through the Gift Shop2010

Documents street art's evolution from genuine rebellion to commodified spectacle. Questions what happens to authenticity when the world wants to buy your vision.

But Banksy's perspective dominates; it's as much about celebrity as it is about creation. Some find the narration smug.

28 Days Later2002

Director Danny Boyle's first feature after years of scrappy creativity. An urgency and formal inventiveness that shows what happens when vision meets desperation and constraint.

But A zombie film, so it pivots to survival horror in its second half. Not everyone wants apocalypse with their character study.

Anvil! The Story of Anvil2008

A band chases a dream no one else believes in. Raw, funny, and genuinely moving about dedication that the world ignores. It knows why that matters anyway.

But The dream it documents is a modest one. If you need grand stakes or triumph, this celebrates showing up despite indifference.

Citizenfour2014

Like the indie devs, Snowden is one person acting on conviction despite the systems arrayed against him—but here the stakes are not artistic but existential.

A documentary about Edward Snowden made in real time, capturing the moment someone stakes everything on exposing truth. It's about conscience and consequence with no safety net or script.

But Explicitly political and uncomfortable. If you want art-making celebrated rather than complicated by ethics, this is the opposite.

F for Fake1973

Both explore the relationship between creator and creation, and what it means to stake your identity on work in a world that will judge, commodify, or dismiss it.

Orson Welles makes a film about forgery and authenticity, destroying the line between documentary and fiction. A meditation on creative control and who decides what's 'real' about art.

But Made in 1973, formally experimental, and Welles's digressive narration won't appeal to everyone. It's challenging even when you're engaged.