There were more indie games released last year than there were games released for the Xbox. Though our 11 Game of the Year categories may seem like a lot at first, consider that there were more than 200 indie games last year. (And it might really have been over 300.)

There are several different types of indie games, including the puzzle games that are available all over the web through places such as MSN Games, Real Games, Reflexive, BigFish, PopCap, etc.

There are also a lot of retro games (old-school), taking older concepts and updating them into new cool games, with companies such as Retro64 (www.retro64.com), Mountain King (www.mking.com), Twilight Games (www.twilightgames.com), Positech (www.positech.co.uk).

There’s another group doing more mainstream stuff, some of which can be found through Garage Games (www.garagegames.com) -- who sell people a gaming engine to create the games -- as well as through the individual developers. These are often developers who have left the mainstream world to do things on their own, such as Moonpod (www.moonpod.com), Inhuman Games (www.inhumangames.com), and Rampant Games (www.rampantgames.com/). Another group creates games for more niche markets, such as strategy (www.matrixgames.com). Honestly there are so many facets of indie gaming it is hard to cover them all.
 
For those interested in making games, there are many solutions out there that don't require a lot of programming, such as Game Maker (www.gamemaker.nl) or 3D Game Studio (www.3dgamestudio.com). After getting into it, those who want to look at more powerful tools may check out the Torque engine, which is available at a very low price through www.garagegames.com and includes, to its credit, a game that is on the new Mac mini.