Instead of blowing all our money on microtransactions, let's give some attention to Indie games that have dared to stand out from the crowd.

ECHO - This is the most original third-person stealth/action shooter I've seen in a long time. It takes place in a massive, intricately detailed, fractal-inspired palace that goes through regular cycles of light and darkness due to constant power outages. But here's what makes it interesting: All of your enemies are robotic clones of yourself. Anything they see you do, they'll learn to mimic. Pick up a weapon to fight with, and they'll learn to use that weapon. Shoot at them, and they'll learn to shoot back. Sprint, climb, or hide, and they'll learn those actions. But only when you're in the light. When the power goes out, all bets are off. It's a game that forces you to constantly change your playstyle, as your clones are always adapting to your strategy. You'll find yourself thinking twice before using a powerful attack when you don't need to, because you'll be teaching it to your enemies too.

ICEY - A narrative-driven hack-and-slash that isn't afraid to break the 4th wall. You're an android girl who's being told what to do by a mysterious narrator, but you don't have to follow his advice. You don't even have to get out of your tube. Not everything is what it seems. There are some plot twists that you'll see coming, but some that you won't. If you're interested in Castlevania meets The Stanley Parable, this game might be worth a look.

DeadCore - Have you ever played those custom jump maps in Halo, Quake and Unreal Tournament? Yeah, DeadCore is like that. It's not the only first-person platformer out there, but it's unique in that it specifically tries to capture the feel of trickjumping/speedrunning in old-school shooters. You have a gun, but it's more of a tool than a weapon; Your timer is even built into your ammo counter, which says a lot about this game. Enemies will recover from being shot almost instantly, forcing you to develop twitch reflexes and precision aim as you rush through levels as fast as possible to make it past each threat. It's been described as "Portal without the Portal gun".

Quadrilateral Cowboy - This is a game about hacking where you actually need to hack. As in, you need to manually type commands into a DOS prompt, not just press a button that says "Hack". It's a stealth puzzle game where you'll need to be clever about problem solving and automating tasks if you want to infiltrate each location without setting off any alarms. Armed with only a laptop and a wifi antenna, you'll travel the world and do everything from downloading people's brains, to hijacking an airship, to robbing a moving train, to compromising a space elevator. Hack the planet.

Spintires: Mudrunner - Probably the most detailed offroad trucking simulator out there. Your wheels will dig into the mud, leave trenches, and possibly get stuck. Your tires will deform from the weight being forced on them. You can bend and snap trees by ramming into them. Old bridges will buckle and warp as you drive over them. Rocks will come loose and crumble as you crush them under your wheels. If you're carrying a cargo, it will fully react with physics just like it would in real life. You can attach a winch to nearby anchor points to pull yourself out of deep mud. The game also has Steam Workshop support, so you can drive pretty much any truck, SUV, pickup, buggy, or other off-road vehicle that you want.

EDIT: People have been saying that you should get Spintires: Mudrunner (spelled with a lowercase t), and not the original, because the developer got screwed out of control of the original. Just a PSA.

Frozen Synapse - A cyberpunk turn-based strategy game where you command a squad of genetically-engineered transhuman soldiers, but with a twist: Both you and your opponent's turn play out at the same time. With no way to predict what your opponent is going to do next, your only option is to position your soldiers at the best angles so they can cover any possible countermove. There's more: The layout of each level is randomly generated every time you retry, so the floorplan and angles will be completely different on your next attempt. No strategy will work twice. Add some destructible cover, a well-designed system of unit commands, and a good story with morally grey objectives and some unexpected twists. Believe it or not, this game actually plays out a lot like a full strategy version of the classic Rainbow Six games. I learned some things playing this game that I still use when I play first-person shooters.

Antichamber - This game will fuck with your head. It's a Portal-style first-person puzzle game that uses non-euclidian geometry. This basically means the world doesn't make any damn logical sense. You'll see impossible geometries everywhere. Pay attention to the above gif, and think about the shape of that hallway for a second. Exactly. It's a nonlinear game that will constantly subvert your expectations of how three-dimensional space works, and even failure might still move you in unexpected directions...

The Fall - A bleak, story-based adventure game with a unique premise: You are an intelligent suit of power armor, the human soldier inside you has been knocked unconscious, and you need to get him to safety so he can receive medical attention. As an AI, your survival is unimportant, but his survival is. This game's story gives a unique perspective on the emergent behavior of an AI, and the way automated systems based on a strict set of rules can eventually have no choice but to do things their human designers never intended, once left unsupervised. How much danger should you be willing to put someone in, in order to protect them?

CrossCode - This one was a suggestion from a friend, so I only have second-hand information on it. But apparently it's a top-down RPG that has a super fluid combat system, a huge open world, and lots of quests and side activities. It has a fairly in-depth talent tree, puzzles that are physics based and very well built, bosses that play like puzzles, and some excellent pixel animation. It's very similar to the classic Legend of Zelda games, if you enjoyed those.

Subnautica - A survival game that distances itself from the others by immersing itself in a deep-sea setting. You dive into the depths of an alien ocean to collect resources so that you can build and expand your underwater base, and then upgrade your submersible so that you can explore deeper into the darkness. But don't stray too far from home, because there's some scary shit in the ocean...

High Hell - A fast-paced cartoonpunk-style shooter where you run through the upper levels of skyscrapers, kick down doors, and blast demons in the face, before jumping off the edge of the building and parachuting to safety. I love games that stand out visually, but the cool thing about this game is the light feel of the mechanics and the dynamic layout of the levels, often allowing you to tackle a fight in more than one way. According to people in the comments, it's like Hotline Miami but first-person.

Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale - What would it be like to run one of the item shops in an adventuring world? Why not find out? An interesting game because it casts a deconstructing look into the tropes common in RPGs; Recette herself is deeply in debt because her father abandoned her to go adventuring and never returned, forcing her to convert the family home into a general store to try and pay off the bills. You spend each week stocking shelves with whatever items you think passing adventurers are most likely to want, in an endless struggle to keep up with the loan payments. Also the characters are adorable which is probably the reason this one caught your eye in the first place.

Intrusion 2 - This game is just plain badass. It's a sidescrolling shooter with some amazing animation and heavy usage of physics, set to an intense metal soundtrack. The boss fights in this game actually remind me of the old Madness series, because of how intense they are and how well they're animated. If you like Metal Slug or Thing Thing, you should check this out. AND YOU CAN RIDE WOLVES WHICH IS AMAZING.

Night In The Woods - Mae Borowski is a socially-awkward small town girl returning home after dropping out of college. Mae Borowski is a cat. Mae's blundering attempts to reconnect with her friends and adapt to the challenges of adulthood are interrupted by overwhelming existential horror as her quiet hometown is consumed by more than one kind of darkness. One of the most relatable stories I've seen in a game, period. It tackles personal topics like depression, sexuality, and mental illness, as well as broader subjects like economic inequality, social issues, and Lovecraftian horror. The unique and grimly nihilistic coming-of-age story painted by Night In The Woods feels quaint and nostalgic while also filling you with a constant overhanging feeling of imminent doom. Hopefully this entry also counts as cat tax.