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Indie Gaming Gets 2004 Mid-Term Grades
Thanks to Game Tunnel for its 2004 mid-term report card on the independent PC gaming scene, rating what "is turning out to be one of the most impressive years yet in the Indie world." Among the approved-of titles include action games such as Hamsterball ("a wonderful surprise that plays a lot like Marble Madness would play [if updated]"), platform adventures such as Gish ("[starring] a ball of tar [whose] goal is to find his girlfriend who was taken down... the sewer"), before looking forward to interesting hopefuls that include Oasis ("takes all the strategy of a game like Civilization and then turns it into a 3 minute experience.")
You are getting confused by a review trying to explain a game by making references to familiar genres. If you are looking for someone to go "check out this game it is truley unlike ANYTHING you have ever seen" then you will play one game every 5 years. Just because someone explains a new game to you based on familiar themes and genres doesn't mean the game is identical to others.
Any decent indie developer lives by the rule "make something people cannot buy elsewhere" - it's common sense. If you can buy a big publisher mainstream version of an indie game from a year or two ago it will always be better and probably cheaper. So it makes no sense for indies to just replicate mainstream titles. Hence GOOD INDIES DON'T.
However, very rarely will someone make something so "off the wall" that it has no connection to any previous form of gaming. There is a good reason for this, there is a very good chance people will reject it. They wont understand.
Think about two truely innovative titles like REZ(ps2) and ViewtifulJoe(GameCube) - both of these lost their publishers a lot of money (FACT). These were rare titles that were good and totally new, yet people didn't get it and voted with their wallets.
Starscape - this one is very good, yet again I defy you to find anything remotely similar in a shop. It's like a shootemup crossed with command&conquer (kind of).
GISH - not my cup of tea, but certainly unique, you cannot buy anything like this in a shop.
Hamsterball - I enjoyed this, but it got really hard really quick. Again, you CANNOT buy this in a shop. Ok you could download marble madness for an emulator or a phone, but it isn't the same really, the true 3D environments here lead to much more interesting puzzles.
If you can find the proper top quality indie titles you will always see something you cannot get anywhere else. The serious indies would be out of business if they just copied mainstream titles. What idiot would spend more on something that they could get out of a Walmart bargain bin for half the price? Nobody.