One I never see mentioned. Pop Up Dungeon.
There are a couple of fixed campaigns, plus a long meta campaign which doesn't scale. I think the idea is you level up playing the scaled campaigns and use the gains to progress in the main. It has some flaws, but is fun.
Tactical Breach Wizards is one that's more of an min-maxing puzzle on blasting people out of an conveniently placed window than an actual strategy game. The demo is fairly decent, but I'm not sure if the writing would hold up once it actually hits the shelves
A meme game that spent so long in development the meme is dead, and while I hope it's good I don't see why it was delayed so long. For context, Magicka Veitnam, another "wizards with guns" meme game came out in 2011.
I don't know if it qualifies as "indie" since the production values are relatively high, but Phantom Doctrine was made by a small studio and I really enjoyed it. It's extremely XCOM-like in its presentation, but it's all about being a team of stealthy secret agents and achieving objectives without blowing your cover rather than combat.
I won't pretend it's perfect because the rough edges are obvious, but it's also one of the very, very few games I've played in the last 15+ years that had me awake until 2:00 AM and thinking "okay, just
one more turn and then I'm going to bed".
I hated that game. You have to build for shooting or stealth. Some missions require stealth, but if you're forced to go loud your stealth build does nothing. Utter waste of potential.
While we're name dropping these, might as well go for completeness.
Phoenix Point is a fun game. It's basically Xcom with free aim. It's fun, but is a bit grindy late game, just like the OG Xcom. The DLC is great but adds complexity and should mostly be saved for repeat playthroughs, or use only one or two at a time.
X-Pirates for Open Xcom. 8 foot tall muscle babes start off with sticks and muskets vs crack dealers, and end up storming the gates of hell in nuclear power armour. Is an extremely long game, and I suck at it so I never got past the early-mid game. But a fantastic concept.
And how has the thread got so far without mention of Mechanicus. Awesome soundtrack. Great gameplay (though difficulty is front loaded). It's reputation has been tarnished a bit by being some YouTubers meme game.
Finally, there is 40k game where you play as Grey Knights I heard was fantastic. I've not played it due to DRM, and I'm too lazy to pirate it.
Any titles you'd especially recommend to a relative newcomer?
Sure. Depends what you value.
Xcom Enemy Within is easily the go-to. Play it on Normal difficulty. Don't save scum every time you lose a guy (but reloading after a total wipe is fine) and you'll have a tough, but memorable experience. The same game played on Easy is also acceptable if you don't like RNG. Again, don't save scum too much, and you'll be fine.
Xcom 2 is also good. Best played on Easy. It's designed in part to troll people who mastered Xcom EW. Playing on easy mittigates some (but not all) the bullshit cheap shots. The big selling point is the character pool. You make a set of custom guys (friends, celebrities, fictional characters) and it populates the game with them. Has some performance issues for many, but in a game like this 30fps or less doesn't really matter.
Valkyria Chronicles is anime World War 2. I've only played 1 and 4, both are very good games with amazing graphics and music. 1s plot is a bit heavy handed, and 4 is a bit of a retread of 1 story and character wise. Both have some gameplay niggles but nothing you can't work through. eg. The ending of 4 the tanks are basically immune to anti-tank weapons. The way to beat them is to get penetrating bullets from leveling up sniper, and use that on your assaults. These games are challenging but are pretty forgiving all told.
And Mechanicus mentioned above.
