You may know the already established "Mod of the Year Awards", but this, this is new.

It's the first edition of an event aimed only at Indie games, and in short it's called IOTY 2010. Since lots of GOGers seems to be interested in indie games and sales to get them, I thought it wouldn't do harm in posting it.

news: http://www.indiedb.com/events/2010-indie-of-the-year-awards/news/welcome-to-the-ioty-2010

start voting: http://www.indiedb.com/events/2010-indie-of-the-year-awards

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Which indie titles are you guys looking forward to? Feel free to discuss, I love discovering (good) new games.

Super Meat Boy, coming out on the 30th on PC. I'm pretty sure everyone knows about SMB already though. I'm also looking forward to Natural Selection 2 and Overgrowth, but who knows when they'll actually come out. Oh, also, the new Red Orchestra game (or are Tripwire big enough that they're no longer indie?).

Can't think of anything else.

Pretty cool site - I'm going to have to look through these indie games when I have time. It's pretty obvious to me which game will win this year though.

Looking through the site I came across Natural Selection 2. Has anyone played the first one (it was a multiplayer HL mod)? It's marines vs aliens with a twist - the marines have a commander who interacts via a RTS interface, building a base and giving instructions to the soldiers (live people) to try to destroy the alien hive. The aliens don't have a commander so it's crucial that they work together, otherwise the marines could easily overrun them. On the other hand, if the marine commander is not a great tactician then they won't be able to stand up to the aliens. It's a really fun game - hopefully NS2 will be as good.

King Arthur - The Role-playing Wargame should win, an outstanding game developed by just a handful of people....but it's not listed....shame.

King Arthur is a good game, but I don't think that game counts as indie, since it was published by Paradox Interactive IIRC.
One of the requirements for qualifying for the "indie" label is not being connected to a bigger publisher, obviously.

It wasn't developed by them. The people that developed it was just a small group, and I think the publisher only got involved a while later as they tried to get a hold of publishers by showing off the game as it was developing.

What about all the "indie" games on Steam, Impulse, or even on Xbox Live and Playstation Network? Do they all suddenly lose the "indie" status just because some publisher/store gets a hold of them?

Steam and co aren't publishers, they're "just" stores.
It's quite different, and to qualify for the indie label you need to do both development and sale yourself.

Usually a deal with a publisher, even a smaller, more relaxed one like Paradox, implies you aren't completely independent any longer.
On the other hand, Steam (or other DD services) isn't going to tell you how to make your game, they just require convincing that it's worth selling.

As a case in point, the developers of King Arthur, NeoCore, are working on a second
DLC for the game. I'm pretty sure that's mostly Paradox's idea, since publishers these days seem to really like the idea of DLC.

King Arthur was NOT published by Paradox. Neocore's newest game (Lionheart : King's Crusade) was, but KA was not. I'm pretty sure it was self published, actually.

I haven't played many indie games this year, but I loved the heck out of VVVVVV and Super Meat Boy.

Well, at http://www.indiedb.com/games they have a total of 1,296 games. Out of this total, 14 are commercial, and 1,282 are indie.

Here's what I voted so far in IOTY 2010:0 A.D.
AI War: Fleet Command
Amnesia: The Dark Descent
ASCIIpOrtal
Chivalry: Battle for Agatha
Duke Nukem 3D: Reloaded (previously "Duke Nukem Next-Gen")
Duke Theft Auto
Frozen Synapse
Gang Garrison
Gratuitous Space Battles
Interstellar Marines
Krautscape
Minecraft
Natural Selection 2
Overgrowth
Primal Carnage
Spring
Star Ruler
Super Meat Boy
The Ball
UFO: The Two Sides
VVVVVV
WGRealms 2
Xenonauts
Zeno Clash

Too bad that a few good games are not on the list, like Eschalon: Book I and II. And lots of the games in the list are old and renowned already.

And MOTY 2010 already started, vote in it too. It's at its 9th edition, while IOTY is only at its 1st edition. ;) I don't know, the dev self-publishes it. On Steam it's labeled as the dev itself.

If RO2 would be considered indie, I would vote for it for sure. This.

Indie games I am looking forward to that just may come around sometime in my lifetime:

Age of Decadence
Dead State
Avadon by Spiderweb
Introversion's Subversion
Eschalon Book 3
Knights of the Chalice 2 (yes, there is a sequel in the works...)


That's about all I know ATM.

Didn't knew about these two, thanks for recommending them.

I am too looking forward to Subversion and Eschalon: Book III. And another indie was announced today, Atom Zombie Smasher.

I second Age of Decadence that JudasIscariot has already called out.

http://www.irontowerstudio.com/

To that I also nominate "Broken Hourglass," an isometric cRPG clearly influenced by the BG series.

http://www.planewalkergames.com/broken-hourglass

Both of these have been in development hell (of a sort) for five years; always difficult with ambitious indie games. Limited budget, manpower, resources, and not getting paid to develop them full-time, but rather it's a labor of love in one's off-hours.

I'm also excited about the upcoming "Planescape Trilogy" mods developed by indie developer "Rogue Dao Studios", the first one in the pipeline being "Purgatorio." They are modules developed for Neverwinter Nights 2. The best reason to get a used second-hand copy of the game (and least it was solely for me).

http://www.roguedao.com/

Thanks for mentioning The Broken Hourglass. It's impossible to me to dislike isometric games, don't know why. :p

And now I've posted the Planescape Trilogy here:http://www.gog.com/en/forum/general/free_games_list_and_3rd_party_mods/post233