Just saw some gameplay footage of Murder Miners. That game looks awesome. Minecraft + Halo.

gameplay: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRP06-kSAeE
That one is extremely funny (nerd rage): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcYDJhHb-Jo

Also Penny Arcade's On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness 3 is on the service (the first 2 games were on XBLA/PSN/Steam). Part 4 is coming as well.

Breath of Death VII and Cthulhu Saves the World are two famous XBL indie RPGs.
Many 2D zombie shooters such as  I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MBIES 1N IT!!!1 and Dead Pixels
Minecraft clones (but also expanding the idea) like CastleMiner Z, Total Miner Forge, Fortresscraft etc.
Lots of SHMUPS and more

I guess the answer is you can't, but there are plenty of fun games!

My favorites are 'Solar', and 'Solar 2.' 'Try not to Fart' is hilarious. a funny game where a dude is on a date, and he is trying to toot and thus offend his date - and the staff of say the restaurant.

'Techo Kitty Adventure' is just crazy and worth a look.

Yes you can. If you had to be online to play them would be like if you were renting them, you already purchased the game so you have to be able to play it whenever you want, it would be dumb if there was some kind of rule that forced you to stay online to play the games you already paye. . . (...) ...

i wish they would have stricter rules for what gets approved to be on there. the poor quality of so many games made me even stop looking at them

But how ?
These games are too insignificant for reviewers (or even game rating boards) and if Microsoft would need to hire people to check if they aren't crap, expect the games to be twice as expensive.

Citing Wikipedia:

"Peer Review – Indie Games must undergo peer review before they are released to the service. These are performed by other developers on the Indie Games service, who review the game for unacceptable content, game instability, and other factors that would be detrimental for wide release on the service, though these reviewers do not attempt to qualify the quality of the game itself. Reviewers also provided suggested content ratings for the games, similar to the submission phase. Games require multiple trusted reviews before they are released. Rejected games can be resubmitted using feedback provided by the reviewers."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_Live_Indie_Games

Imagine if other developers would deny a game release because of a lack of quality. They are already competitors, but that would totally destroy the working atmosphere.



As for the games, why don't you just sort the games by ratings, total downloads, daily downloads or release date ?
Ignore anything that's 3 stars and below and download the trial for the rest.

http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/Games/XboxIndieGames?page=1&sortby=ReleaseDate

Make sure to use the American site as this has more ratings.

From what i know you can play it offline after start the game,no 3 mins rule here

Btw they already did that long time,don't think it related always-on,especially most Xbox Live countries can't even buy indie games

There are plenty of Hidden gems in the idie section. Watch "It Came From Xbox Live!" on Gamespot. You will be amazed how many great games there actually are. Go play Hidden in Plain Sight, fucking love that game.

You can check out Mommy's Best Games here:

http://mommysbestgames.com/

They went on from really good Indie game stuff to actually do XBLA stuff.  You have had professionals in the industry developing stuff.  Cutting to the quick, you can think of Mommy's stuff akin to Psygnosis's stuff they did on the Amiga.

And go look up Miner Dig Deep.  It is an addictive and smaller title, good in its own right.  Best to think of it as an mining arcade simulator.

Glad you put Arcadecraft up.  That is an awesome game that fullfills the dream of anyone who ever wanted to run their own arcade.