Game Tunnel picked their indie games of the year and I gotta say, I'm pretty impressed.

I know, I haven't put enough time into Lumines on PSP to really "get it" but having put maybe 30 mins into it and 5 mins into Revolved I enjoyed them about the same amount. Maybe Revolved just slightly more since the default arcade mode the rounds actually finish giving a sense of accomplishment and some tension as well from the time limits. (I'm sure Lumines has some modes like this but the default mode of Lumines just went on and on seemingly forever with almost no tension whatsoever.) Of course one is designed for a pad and buttons while the other is designed for a mouse.

Otherwise, I also checked out Break Quest which is basically Breakout/Arkanoid on total acid. One thing I realized while playing though, music can make or break a game for me. Although it was kind of fun and the variety of levels was over the top the music was pretty weak and that alone would keep me from getting into it more.

I also checked out Outpost Kaloki which reminds me of an RTS in that you have to build stuff and balance your resources between energy needed, income (resources to build with) and what you are actually required to build. Just subtract the battle part. It's not really my type of game but I was still impressed with how polished it was for an indie game.

It seems to me, looking at all these indie games coming out of the woodworks here and there that indie games have really taken off. Any complaints that there is no indie game movement would seem to be proven false. There are new ones like daily it seems and they are not complete crap either. In fact many of them are fully on par with any of the lower budget console games. Lumines, Puyo-Puyo, Katamari Damashi, basically any game that doesn't require 20-30 artists for 2 years is being covered pretty well by the indie market it seems. I wonder if Sony or Microsoft will ever open the console market to these guys.