Nexus war eh? Does that mean that that's Agema from
Team Laser Explosion?! It's Bang/Dethnutz/I'm an engineer... small world eh?
Regarding independent games,
Mount&Blade is a great medieval mounted/army combat game with an active modding community. It's been in development for years and keeps getting better. Demo lets you get to level 6 before having to buy.
Transcendence is a completely free action space roguelike developed by a single (awesome) person who has added tons of modding support over the various iterations. It's basically a finished game, although he'd like to add some extra content on the end and frequently adds new content to what's already out there. There's an active modding community there, too (check out the enhanced weapons mod if you try it, definitely worth a download).
I second Weird Worlds: Adventures in Infinite Space as a great game. I love the fact that it really does only take 10-30 minutes to play through a game once you get the hang of it. It's like candy.