Aquaria ever released in stores/amazon?

[Aristobulus]

A fair point, but Minecraft also got around just by the word of mouth.

Sortof true, but completely undersells the truth of the issue.

Minecraft did about as well as Aquaria has done, up until Penny Arcade advertised it heavily by making comics/newsposts devoted to it, and THEN it took off and became wildly popular.

Aquaria has just been largely under-advertised, you might notice it never got a mention on a massively visited site like Penny Arcade, much less a comic made about it.

[Ledgem]

Minecraft did about as well as Aquaria has done, up until Penny Arcade advertised it heavily by making comics/newsposts devoted to it, and THEN it took off and became wildly popular.

Aquaria has just been largely under-advertised, you might notice it never got a mention on a massively visited site like Penny Arcade, much less a comic made about it.

Good point.  Up until Penny Arcade mentioned it, I'd never heard of it (which doesn't necessarily mean much, but I wasn't even into the indie games scene at that point).  If I recall correctly, Penny Arcade didn't mention it just once, but they did a two- or three-part series on it, and even brought it up in a comic or two after that.

It's also received coverage from other channels, as people did some creative things with it.  One fellow created a basic processor within Minecraft, which received coverage from a few other sites and introduced those audiences to the game.