Top indie games of the year
In looking at the list Game Tunnel has created of the top indie games of the year, I am struck by a couple of things:
First off, they don’t look “indie” — or rather, “indie” no longer means “ugly.”
Secondly, there’s a range of innovation and design cleverness there that puts the commercial “top games of the year” to shame. This is the promise of indie development being fulfilled.
Thirdly, how most of them passed under the radar. Yeah, Virtual Villagers got some ink, but I’ve never heard of this game about controlling the winds and currents… and now I really want to play it.
So go help out the indie scene — you’ve got some of one day of holiday left, most likely. You can probably sample several of these before you have to go back to work. 🙂
4 Responses to “Top indie games of the year”
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I definitely agree that the “indie” games are starting to look pretty good. Certainly within the bounds of acceptable. I wouldn’t be put off by the graphics of any of those, judging by the screenshots.
I’m confused about the “indie” classification, however. I thought Stardock was “indie”, I’m pretty sure I saw a post where Brad Wardell call it such, and expected to see GalCiv2 among the winners. Did Stardock do something to graduate out of “indie” status? X number of sales and you’re not an “indie”, or something?
Or … I notice that each and every winner has a “buy” button next to it. Could the classification have something to do with a game being offered for sale by the numerous “indie” game stores? Stardock does their own online sales exclusively.
Raph said:
Agreed. And there are growing number of “indie” games that look more like “major” studio games. Ysaneya from Gamedev, has been working on his project Infinity which so impressive looking.
Stardock hasn’t been included simply b/c it hasn’t submitted its games. Other games, like Wild Earth, were not included b/c they have gotten big publishers. A part of the site’s goal is to get the word out on things that are unknown. Many game developers who feel they are a bit larger simply don’t submit their games…and that is fine, they really don’t need the exposure as badly ;).
The ‘buy’ buttons are added wherever we have the opportunity to do so…but they are done after we review the games initially and we don’t have them on many games b/c they simply aren’t available. We love to use them where we can (don’t want to support the site by turning it into one big advertisement), but we don’t pick games based on having buy buttons. We’d have to change the top 10 dramatically to do that ;).
Thank you for the explanation, Russ Carroll. It makes more sense to me now.