How to Tell a Real Indie Game From a Template

Every week we wade through dozens of mobile games, and a depressing number of them are the same handful of templates wearing different costumes. Learning to spot the difference saved us a lot of wasted downloads, so here's what we look for.

The icon and screenshots are the first tell. Template games often use stock-looking art and screenshots that don't match actual gameplay. A real indie game usually has a visual identity — a specific art style someone clearly chose on purpose.

Then we look at the detail nobody fakes: friction. Template games are frictionless in a hollow way, designed to funnel you somewhere rather than to be played. A game made by people who care has rough edges, opinions, little details that only make sense if a human was obsessing over them.

Ironline Tactics is a good example from our catalog. It's minimal, almost spartan, but every design choice points toward making the strategy sharper. That intentionality is the thing templates can never copy.

The honest truth is you sometimes have to just play for ten minutes to know. That's part of why we do what we do — so you can skip the template graveyard and get to the good stuff.