I agree - and good blog post. I suspected this would be the result before I started - and well done to Basilisk. I really oscillated before choosing Nethergate; Depths of Peril got a good chunk of my play time this year and it really is innovative but selling a game that is underpinned by hack'n'slashing to our crowd was always going to be...well, a tough sell. It's also a hard game to "get", so a chunk of those who saw it would still see it as a Diablo clone, because the covenant play just didn't sink in.
Likewise, while Nethergate and Geneforge will understandably induce a certain level of fatigue in our readers, I'm sure a good chunk just never tried them - or didn't get far past the graphics if they did. I maintain Jeff's content is excellent and being a remake is pretty irrelevant if you didn't play the original.
Still, you have to engage the folks and Basilisk did a fantastic job capturing their hearts.
I hesitate to call this a lesson that other indies should learn because the others might lose their other appeals if they followed the same path.
Anyway, regardless of the vote, the really good news is I filled a good chunk of my gaming time with nothing but quality indies - and there are still more to come. Good stuff.