Directly inspired by these lists from PKMudkipz and Pangburn.

This is sort of a list for me to try and tie down popular themes and types of indie games that have been pretty prevalent. You know how sometimes you can look at an indie game on Steam and go "oh, this is basically Pokemon" or "oh, this is basically Portal"? Here's my list for that to try and sort/collect my thoughts.

This is a list of indie games, so please try not to suggest games outside of the indie game sphere. I think we can be lenient and accept games that were funded via EGS exclusivity or published by larger companies (i.e. Xbox Game Studios, Square Enix Collective, EA Originals, etc) as long as the developer is an indie studio. If a type/genre is mostly pioneered by one studio (i.e. how Yakuza-likes are mostly made by RGG Studio), then it's probably best not to include that as well.

Suggestions will be happily taken into consideration. I'm going to try and pick out the most popular/well known candidate as the most influential of that type/genre, but feel free to discourse in the comments if you think I could pick a better poster child. It would be greatly appreciated as, similar to Pangburn's list, you could get me three examples of successors/imitators as well.