I am not an "indie dev"

Apparently there are people who complain that everyone who's trying to make a game calls themselves an independent developer, and that the label should only refer to people or small companies who actually manage to sustain a full-time living with games.

I actually agree.  Right now I am more of a hobbyist developer.  And until Elspeth's Garden becomes well-known enough to be monetized, it is more of a hobby game than an indie game.  What doesn't change is that a few people who are working on aspects of this game are professionals.  I can only hope that I am a good project leader so that all this effort will be worth it.

Talking about monetization, I am not sure yet.  I am still not confident enough to sell a game at "full price" (which these days for an indie game is $10 to $20).  I do still want to recover my development costs, however.  Back in the day, games released by garage coders were called Shareware.  I actually like the premise -- you don't just give away a demo, but a self-contained extended experience which could be anywhere from 1/3 of a game to the full game itself.  It was only when corporations latched on to the term to label their 'crippleware' (software that can only be fully useable when registered) as Shareware that the term lost favor then faded away.  Nowadays people just release demos and trials.  The problem is I don't know what to offer for a registered copy.  And the contents which I'm working with... overwhelming as they are already... are not really enough to provide for bonus materials.  I've already dropped event CGs, full multiple path plots, and romantic subplots -- preferring instead the simplicity of a straightforward story with win/lose scenarios.  I might as well pour all the assets to make a compelling first play-through for the user and hope that alone will make for good replayability.

What I am also sure is that I will keep on iterating and polishing the gameplay and story to be worthy of the graphics, and I won't release it until I am more than satisfied with its fun factor.