The bestest indie shareware games ever in the world always!

Aquaria is Derek Yu and Alec Holowka's "Metroid with Fish" game which was the darling of the 2007 IGF. Aquaria looks beautiful and as I'm no fan of fish in the culinary sense I can't wait to shoot a lot of scallops in the head. Especially as I get to combine that scallopicide with exploring a huge, atmospheric and spooky world.

Braid is Jonathan Blow's stupendously clever and satisfying platform puzzle game where you can manipulate the flow of time in order to solve puzzles. It's just about the most refreshing and excellent entry in the platform puzzling canon for a decade.

Mr. Robot is an isometric platform action rpg hybrid about a robot on a ship who's AI has gone HAL9000 on the crew. It's an extremely slick looking homage to the classics of old like Head Over Heels and Batman which has had RPG elements grafted onto it.

Gish was the first truly physics-based platformers. In it you play a sentient amorphous blob in a world full of physically simulated objects and enemies, and while the game isn't perfect by a long way, until Loco Roco came along and stole it's thunder, it was damn near unique.

Weird Worlds is like Elite, only viewed from from the top, packed with humour and only thirty minutes long. Although the combat in it is simplistic and flawed and you'll soon see everything the game has to offer, it has a sense of magic and exploration about it which keeps you playing for a goodly few hours. It's a very unique experience in the indie game scene but I just wish it had ten times as much content so that I was still discovering new things up until today.

There have been several attempts to update Defender and while my favourite is still Strike Force, PomPom's Space Tripper is damn good as well. The main thing it adds to the Defender design is actual level design instead of a series of identical challenges, while abandoning that actual defending part of the game. It doesn't hurt that it looks very pretty, too.

Of all the attempts to update Robotron, this is the most successful for me. Proper level design, oodles of types of enemies and simplistic but addictive gameplay. The only thing which would improve it is a bit more variety in the weapon bonuses.

Like a mix of Sokoban and Rush Hour, only better than the pair of them and as cute as a button which releases a pile of puppies onto your lap.