In my opinion there are only three indie games which define the past decade as a decade of solid indie games:

Cortex Command, Minecraft, Mount&Blade

Beyond that there's very little and less still that has a solid image.

It's just a shame that of those three Cortex Command has most avoided its full potential as an icon of the genre.

But!

They are still all pretty good.

Canabalt honorable mention.


EDIT: you know Sword of the Stars is pretty amazing, but it's not unix compatible so I can't say a lot about it.

Combat_Tark_001 OST

Heard of SotS, friend plays it a lot. Might try it.
And Canabalt is kinda old news~ Just saying.

I wouldn't call Sword of the Stars an indie game. They were almost all published by Paradox Interactive. But Kerberos as a studio has fallen from grace in my opinion, being unwilling to patch and fix one of their games, Fort Zombie. That, and Sword of the Stars II was a complete mess at launch.

Also, SolForce 4 life.

Minecraft isn't an indie game. It has a development team of like, 7 people now. It is also owned by a company. Maybe not the size of Activision, but too big to be indie IMHO.

And Dark Souls isn't a Roguelike.

Everything about this thread is just

I'm baffled by the OP. Nearly at a loss for words

indie just means they arent funded by anyone and they work for themselves
you can be a team of 500 but if you dont have any support but your own company youre indie

The past decade in indie games, as a top 3? Without a doubt minecraft is up there simply due to its massive impact even though I don't like it much. Generally I'd also include Dwarf Fortress and Braid, and by generally I mean the gaming media and most of its readers, the general playerbase. Minecraft helped start the trend of voxel games and formalised pre-purchasing for alpha versions, Braid is a byword for pretentious arty platformers as an indie game staple, and Dwarf Fortress established that a 1-man game can be ludicrously complex.

For my personal top 3 indie games list, I'd go for Kerbal Space Program (although it isn't out yet), Darwinia, and Crypticsea's games A New Zero and Sub Rosa, which I'm counting as one game for no good reason although I guess they share a lot of code. Maybe penumbra too. And definitely Haven And Hearth. Okay, I guess it's a top 5.

I wouldn't include CC though, personally or generally, even though I do like it. It's got great use of physics and I'm a sucker for that, but it wasn't everything it could be, great as it is.

And do we really need to argue the definition of indie, again? My personal definition is small team, funded mostly independently of a publisher. Paradox Interactive published games sort of half count, they're a special case.

Mainly though it's a general feel. Indie games feel personal, like the creators poured their soul into the code.

I just realized that Touhou games are technically indie.
♥♥♥♥.
Also how the hell didn't anyone mention Cave Story?

It rips off The Underside, of course, Hyper.

also, King Arthur's Gold. [Support Geti, Zombies '09 ♥♥♥♥]

because it goes without saying that cave story is the best

Augh

Learn the difference between "indie" and indie. Personal examples

I don't get why you're putting Hotline in your "good" "indie" game list, I didn't detect any similarity to any of the other games that you listed. It's got retro-y graphics but that's part of the aesthetic.
I don't really see how you could consider Canabalt to be bad either. It's a game about running and jumping with some nice graphics in the background. Gameplay's pretty simple, but it's just a flash game.
DF is hit or miss, I appreciate the complaints about the interface to a point but it seems like people can't get over that fact. And honestly I don't see how you could fault it on the gameplay. It's a management game. You manage things.

your hatred of faux-retro just seems like a need to be the counterculture
theres really nothing inherently wrong about it unless you want to be a stickler

I dislike Fez on the grounds that Phil Fish is terrible and it gives me a headache.