Independent games, or ‘indie games’, are game developed by a very small group of people (sometimes just a single person) who are independently funded and without a publisher. As a result Indie games are almost exclusively digitally distributed, however this also means indie games are not very marketable to mainstream audiences and often target niche markets. They are released on variety of different digital platforms such as Angry Birds, released as an ios app on androids and smartphone, or Super meat boy (the priced downloadable version), released exclusively on XBLA. Because they have an extremely limited, or basically no budget, indie games often focus on innovative, unique gameplay to make them stand out from big budget triple a titles. Unlike large developers, because of the small concentrated team behind an indie game, the developers have a lot more freedom to do want they want when making a game, however there are disadvantages to indie development too. Because of how small the development team is, combined with the limited budget means that indie game development is often a very stressful process for the developer(s).
An example of an Indie game is Slender: the eight pages, a free to download indie game based on the original beta, simply titled Slender, released in June 2012. The game was created by Indie development team, Parsec Productions utilising the Utility Engine and is available for digital download on Microsoft Windows and OS X. The games itself is a first person survival horror game based on the internet phenomenon slender man , which along with the game, has rapidly increased in popularity over recent years. Unlike other successful indie games such as Minecraft, Slender: the eight pages is free to download, however developers Parsec Productions have announced a sequel titled Slender: the Arrival that will cost $20 and will allegedly be distributed on steam.
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