never tried Celeste though

How solid is your relationship to your gender?

Minecraft is an indie game that became super popular.

I mean Deltarune was made by toby fox who became a millionaire from his other indie game Undertale. I think it definitely counts.

So if an indie game blows up because it's great then it's not indie? That's a silly way to define it.

Have some mid-sized studios co-opted the term? Sure. Expedition 33 is on that AA spectrum, but a game by a very small team? In what definition is Celeste not an indie game?

I think the most accurate definition is "produced without a publisher". That's the thing they're independent of.

Where it gets grey is things like "okay it has a publisher, but they're tiny and cute and only publish indie-feeling game"

So the "feeling" of indie is "made by a small group of people with a shared cohesive vision and minimal outside influence", where publishers tend to be large sources of outside influence, and teams larger than, like, 50 people tend to be unable to all have a truly shared cohesive vision. And a single person, by definition, always has a shared vision no matter what they make. But if a publisher is low-touch, or brings a game that's basically done to market without asking for changes, and the game feels cohesive and personal, then that's good enough.

And ultrakill probably sold the least out of these 3 but actually has a publisher (it's also my favorite of the 3)