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Google Trends tracks which searches are climbing fastest, and the indie games category this week produced a revealing list. Five queries hit breakout status — the label Google uses when growth outpaces any percentage worth printing.
Four of them are games. Here is what people are actually looking for, and why each one is having a moment.
1. How to Fish — the biggest rising indie query right now
Two of the five breakout queries are the same game: how to fish and how to fish game. It is the single most-searched indie topic of the week, and for good reason.
How to Fish launched on August 20 from a two-person Swedish studio at $4.95, and has surpassed 340,000 concurrent players. The mechanic that did it: fling a caught fish into the air with your rod, then shoot it mid-flight with a rifle for bonus money.
2. Dave the Diver — the hybrid that keeps finding new players
DAVE THE DIVER is three years old and still trending, which tells you something about its staying power.
The structure is the appeal: you dive the Blue Hole by day with a harpoon, then run a sushi restaurant at night, with each half funding and motivating the other. The Blue Hole changes every dive, so the exploration never settles into a route.
It holds a 90 Metacritic at $9.99, and it is widely credited with proving that genre-blending indie games can reach a genuinely mainstream audience.
3. Team Cherry — the studio, not just the game
People are searching the developer name, which usually means they want to know what is next rather than what exists.
Team Cherry released Hollow Knight: Silksong on September 4, 2025 after six years of anticipation, to a 90 Metacritic. In a Bloomberg interview the studio confirmed two things worth knowing: new Silksong content is in active development, and their next original project will not be Hollow Knight 3.
That second point is the interesting one. A studio this successful choosing to build something new rather than a third entry is unusual, and it is why the name keeps trending.
4. OneShot — a 2016 game refusing to be forgotten
OneShot is a surreal top-down puzzle adventure where you guide a child through a dying world to restore its sun. The line on its store page is the whole pitch: the world knows you exist.
Its mechanics deliberately reach beyond the game window, and it treats the relationship between game and player as the actual subject rather than a gimmick. Nearly a decade on, it is still cited as one of the most inventive things anyone has done with the medium. $9.99.
Also worth knowing: Blue Prince
Not in the breakout list but adjacent to it, Blue Prince just took a Speakers’ Choice award for game design at the gamescom dev awards 2026.
You explore a manor where you choose which room appears behind each door, and the layout resets afterward. It rewards observation and planning rather than execution, and holds a 92 Metacritic — the highest score of any game in this article.
What the list has in common
Look at the five together. A fishing game where you shoot the fish. A diving-and-sushi hybrid. A metroidvania sequel six years in the making. A game that talks to you through your own desktop. A manor you rebuild every morning.
Not one of them is a familiar formula executed competently. Every single one is built on a structural idea you can describe in a sentence and have never heard before. That is what the search data is actually measuring — not marketing budget, but novelty that people feel compelled to look up.
Browse everything in our games library, or see the best indie games of the year.
Frequently asked questions
What is the most searched indie game right now?
How to Fish, which accounts for two of the five breakout queries in the indie games category. It launched August 20, 2026 at $4.95 and has passed 340,000 concurrent players on Steam.
Is Dave the Diver still worth playing?
Yes. It holds a 90 Metacritic at $9.99 and still trends three years after release. The day-diving and night-restaurant structure remains one of the better hybrid designs in indie gaming.
What is Team Cherry working on now?
Team Cherry has confirmed new Hollow Knight: Silksong content is in active development, and has stated its next original project will not be Hollow Knight 3.
Why is OneShot still popular?
Its mechanics extend beyond the game window and treat the relationship between the game and its player as the central subject. That design remains distinctive nearly a decade after its 2016 release.
