Independent development can be a long and laborious road, but Capsized creator Lee Vermeulen is hoping to make it a little smoother with Indievania, a new open platform where developers can sell and promote their indie darlings. Indievania is a direct-to-fan, DRM-free platform, where developers will interact directly with potential players, eliminating any middle-men and their exorbitant fees. In beta, Indievania is currently offering four games, BEEP, Steel Storm, and two of Vermeulen's Alientrap creations, Capsized and Nexuiz Classic.

Indievania will host alpha, beta and prototype game versions for developers to raise title awareness, and asks only 9 percent for hosting a game, much lower than the industry-standard 30 percent. Payments are only accepted through PayPal now, but Vermeulen plans to add Google Checkout and Amazon Payments later. Developers can submit a game and have it selling within one day, with complete control over their store page and price. Games will be featured, front-page style, according to popularity or overall quality.

Indievania sounds like a wonderful opportunity for independent developers -- at least, unlike Dracula's -vania, we don't think it will completely suck.