ABSTRACT
Figuring out the exact date of when indie games appeared would be difficult due to the many games that were released outside of conventional methods. Many early indie games were only available from the developer themselves, and this was a long time before there was any centralized source for buying digital games. One of the most recognizable indie games to be released was also an action platformer with 2004’s Cave Story. The popularity and widespread use of Steam provided a storefront for gamers to buy titles from developers all over the world, and led to the legitimizing of indie development and indie games. In terms of aesthetics, there have been many indie developers who have pushed pixel graphics further than AAA developers did during the 1980s and 1990s. The indie market pushed platforming design in ways that the AAA developers never did, and created a more complicated form of platformer.
