Though early 2009 was unusually active on the gaming front—with triple-A titles like Street Fighter IV and Resident Evil 5 dueling against sprawling DLC expansions for Grand Theft Auto and Fallout 3—things have slowed in recent weeks in the lead up to next month’s E3 gaming expo. Which makes it the perfect time to start sampling some of the small indie downloads currently available.

Nintendo’s WiiWare took a while to take off compared to Sony’s PSN and Microsoft’s Xbox Live. But things really started rolling with the brilliant and addictive World of Goo, a physics-based puzzle game that positively, well, oozes style, with its ultra-clever game design and an adorable Dr. Seussian aesthetic.

Goo—created by 2D Boy, a two-man operation run by ex-EA employees—is one of last year’s best games, downloadable or not. “Our goal is to make games that everyone can play, with gameplay nobody has seen before,” they declare on their website, and they’ve succeeded marvelously, with the game sitting safely atop the WiiWare sales chart since its release last fall.

But it’s not the only weird Wii-ndie game on download.

Gaijin Games’ stylishly retro Bit.Trip Beat is one part Pong homage, one part rhythm game, one part chiptune rave and one part art school deconstruction. As with REZ, the blips and bleeps are created via gameplay, in this case by hitting the flying pixels with your paddle using the motion-sensing wiimote.

The old-school visuals and 8-bit interactive soundtrack are a treat for aging gamers, or any retro-fetishist, and the game is just as freaking hard as those old arcade classics. Thank the gods we don’t have to use quarters anymore.

But as eccentric as Bit.Trip is, it can’t hold a pair of scissors to the outlandishly odd Bonsai Barber. Though admittedly overpriced at $10, this “first-person groomer” game by Martin Hollis, creator of N64 classic GoldenEye and current head of Zoonami, is pretty much what the title says. Using the wiimote, you give haircuts to hand-drawn trees, shrubs, fruits and vegetables. It’s absurdist fun in short bursts which is probably why you’re limited to 5 plant customers per day.

All three indie games are stylish, creative and risky—the type that would never have been greenlit in a brick’n’mortar world but which are enjoying a renaissance in gaming’s brave new digital distributed world.