The free board is live: likes are the currency

indie.game started as one board where every row was bought. That board still exists, and it still works the way it always did — money committed, permanently, no algorithm underneath. But it asked something of you before you could take part, and not everyone wants to open with a payment.

So there is now a second board, and it is the one you land on. Listing costs nothing. You post one tweet announcing your game, paste the link, and your row goes live carrying whatever likes that tweet has earned. Every new like moves you up. We re-count every ten minutes.

Why a tweet

A tweet is the cheapest honest proof we could find. It shows the game is yours to announce, it puts the game in front of people who might actually play it, and the like count is a number nobody controls — not us, not you.

It also means the thing you do to get on the board is the same thing that gets you traffic. There is no separate marketing step. The listing is the announcement.

The rules, in full

• Your tweet must name indie.game and link your game — that is how we verify the listing is yours.
• One tweet carries one listing, and one game gets one row.
• Likes are re-counted every ten minutes, straight from the tweet.
• Delete the tweet and your row keeps its last count — it stops climbing.
• The free board and the money board never mix: likes cannot buy a paid rank, and dollars cannot buy a like.

What this magazine is for

A leaderboard tells you what is winning. It does not tell you what is worth your evening. That is what this is: dispatches when the board moves, write-ups of games we actually finished, and build stories from the people making them — increasingly with AI in the loop, which we treat as a thing worth documenting rather than hiding.

Every row links straight to a game you can play before deciding it deserved it.

Subscribe if you want the good ones in your inbox. Or just play what's at the top and see whether the likes were right.