Before They Were Famous: 6 indie giants when they still felt scrappy
A funny thing about indie history: once a game hits 15,000,000 or 35,000,000 owners, people start talking like success was inevitable. It almost never was. These games now look like permanent fixtures on Steam, but each one had an early identity that felt smaller, stranger, riskier, or rougher than the legend that formed around it. What makes this retrospective interesting is scale. Iโm not mixing tiny cult curios with mega-hits here. Every game below sits in the same broad tier of mainstream indie success, from 664,180 reviews up to 1,509,391, and from 15,000,000 to 35,000,000 estimated owners. That makes the comparison fairer, and it shows how different paths can still lead to the same rare air. ...