With a new year approaching it’s often easy to forget what has transpired in this past year. As such, I’ve put together a little list to help remember some of the biggest indie game stories of the year, after all we’ve had a memorable year.

But first, you might be wondering how we quantified these results. I’ll tell you right now this isn’t an exact science but rather a mixture of what we thought were the big stories of 2011, our own traffic numbers with regards to these topics, and the general level of media focus on each of these topics (i.e. how many sites reported on them). If we missed something (which we probably did) feel free to let us know in the comments!

Starting from last to first:

Xbox Live Indie Games Gets the Snub… Once Again

Those of you who have been around the Xbox Live Indie Games watercooler for the past couple years should well know the difficulties of releasing a game on the platform. On a few words: Microsoft doesn’t make it easy to sell games. In late 2010, however, they went above and beyond in attempting to bury the XBLIG channel by putting it in the “Specialty Shops” section as opposed to the “Games & Demos” section. Fortunately it was later placed where it belonged…

Unfortunately, just a little over a year later, it appears Microsoft is attempting to bury the channel once again. Perhaps not as bad as the year prior, but with the new Xbox dashboard came a number of complaints from XBLIG developers like:

• Inability to browser indie games by genre
• Indie games not showing up in “New Releases” or “Most Popular” sections
• Lack of cross over in search between XBLA and XBLIG games.

As far as I can tell, Microsoft still has yet to fix these issues.

Rise of the Minecraft-likes

2010 may have been the year Minecraft exploded in popularity, but 2011 was the year that was dominated by so many Minecraft-like games that I went and dubbed the game as its own genre. Whether that’s actually true is something for time to decide, but no matter which way you look at it. Minecraft-like games were all the rage in 2011.

I’m not sure what the first Minecraft-like game was (not to say there weren’t voxel based games prior to Minecraft) but to date I can list about six off the top of my head:

• FortressCraft
• CastleMiner
• Cube Lands
• Ace of Spades
• Total Miner

And that’s not even counting games like Terraria or Junk Jack which takes much of what Minecraft does and applies it to a new perspective.

Minecraft’s Release and MineCon

Moving right on to Minecraft itself, I’d say that despite 2010 being the year Minecraft got popular, 2011 was the year that Minecraft went mainstream.

It all started when Notch introduced the idea of MineCon earlier in the year. Honestly I’m not sure anybody actually expected him to go through with it, but, lo and behold, in November of this year MineCon went off without a hitch selling all of its available tickets and generally being a big success.

Even bigger than MineCon, however, was Minecraft’s official v1.0 release during the event. For a game that got popular and sold its first million copies in Alpha this was a huge moment in the game’s life as it showed that it was finally a completed game.

Later, on a lesser note, Notch stepped down from being Minecraft’s lead developer to take a break and move on to other projects.

Indie Game: The Movie and the Sundance Film Festival

There’s not a better, more heart-warming story than that of the guys doing the documentary Indie Game: The Movie. Originally revealed in 2010, I’d say 2011 is the year when they finally broke the mold not only by continually releasing fantastic teaser trailers, but also by being entered into one of the most prestigious film festivals in the world: The Sundance Film Festival.

Announced earlier this month, Indie Game: The Movie will officially premiere at Sundance followed by a home screening in Winnipeg. This is huge news because there’s not bigger or better place to show off your film than at Sundance which will give the world a chance to see the side of the indie developer that the vast majority of people don’t see.

Bottom line, Indie Game: The Movie has been a constant source of excitement and goodwill all culminating in the Sundance announcement.

Bundles, Bundles and more BUNDLES!

Finally, and this one shouldn’t come as a shock to anybody, but the biggest story of the year has to be a combination of all the indie game bundles that have launched, especially within the last few months.

There are currently about a half dozen bundles running at the moment with the Humble Indie Bundle 4 and Indie Royale bundle taking the lead. It’s to the point where gamers are starting to show noticeable bundle fatigue which is kind of a bummer because it was a great idea at first.

I suppose was really landed bundles in the top spot of this list, however, was their sharp rise in popularity over a relatively short amount of time. The original Humble Indie Bundle launched in May of 2010. At the time is was a completely new idea that turned out to be rather successful. However, up until this past November there was still really only one “bundle” in town that was making waves throughout the industry: the Humble Indie Bundle.

What will 2012 have in store for the indie game bundles? I can’t say. I just hope they slow down a little.

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DIYGamer Holiday Give Away! For each and every article we post we’re giving away an indie game.

This article’s game is A Valley Without Wind for the PC, by Arcen Games.

Leave a meaningful comment below to enter into the drawing.