1) Why are Indie Darlings 2D?
2) Why are Indie Darlings platformers?
The commentators pounced on the first question (more or less lazily), but not the second. Obviously indie darlings are 2d because 2d is cheap and simple to program. Importantly, a 2D format also happens to makes it very easy to include inspired visual art. From this theory you would expect to find upon research that most indie games are 2D, not just darlings, and not just platformers.
Now the reason why they are platformers probably has something to do with the question of why ACTION games are such a dominant genre. And another way of asking the question is: why are darling games action-oriented platformers, rather than sports games, or pure puzzle games, or fighting games, or space shooters? Why do we want to run and jump all over the place?
My answer is that they're platformers because you DO THINGS in a platformer. It's usually limited to jumping, bopping, grabbing, or shooting, but all of these things feel really good! A game filled with charts and graphs, or with a deep intellectual understanding of the diamond trade (as mentioned by Anderson in his article), yes that could be cool, but you probably won't find me playing it. I want action.
Running, jumping, bopping, and grabbing, are PRIMAL acts for the majority of multi-cellular organisms on our planet. And they are action-packed! So a more interesting question is, why would anyone want to make a game about anything else? (And the answer would have something to do with the uniquely human pursuit of Edification, which would be an interesting study.) Working from this theory, you would expect to find that the preponderance of popular games has these elements, more or less, regardless of whether they are indie, or darlings, or 2d, or platformers.
Scrolling Platformers
I should mention that the only indie darling 2d platformers I really know about are Braid and Limbo. Both happen to be side-scrolling platformers, not just platformers, meaning your point of view moves from left to right as your character moves from left to right. Primitive platformers like Pitfall! and Donkey Kong had a stationary screen and stationary viewpoint while the characters simply moved around the screen. The scrolling nature of modern platformers is an integral part of their appeal.
Scrolling 2d Platformers allow for a *guided* ADVENTURE with a truly "moving" sense of progression, from present areas to unexplored areas. Every instant of a scrolling platformer gives you exploration and discovery, at the same time, which is psychologically stimulating. Or at least, a notable anthropologist here or there has assumed that an innate disposition toward exploration and discovery was an important factor in the spread of the human species across the globe, although I personally consider that to be a romanticized just-so story.
Moving from one area to another can mean progressing from one inspired piece of visual art to another, which is crucial for an "indie darling". In a platformer you literally TRAVERSE the terrain of a design opus. You don't do that in space shooters, where the scenery is usually vacuous space, and you certainly don't traverse terrain for its own sake in a sports games, or a pure puzzle games, or fighting games. In the case of Limbo or Canabalt, the terrain happens to be visionary.
In a "top-down" perspective game or platformer, the only variety in visuals comes from the floor or ground. When you move between different areas, the floor might switch from a grey concrete to brown floor, and the great top-down games like Metal Gear and Zelda managed to present interesting scenery from a quasi-top-down view. But in a side-view platformer, you have an entire visible world that stretches all the way to the horizon, which you can fill with visionary art and otherworldly ambience (see Limbo, Canabalt).
Other Factors
Gravity
2d platformers also assume gravity as a spicy backdrop by default. Every game must have forces that affect you, and rules that constrain you. The force of gravity has dramatic power in a platformer. It's a constant and familiar force that has important consequences for mortal characters. A precipice in any context is exciting, and if you have to enjoy a precipice in 2-dimensions, a side-view is best.
I'm waiting for a good designer to notice the common inextricable mix of gravity, 2d, and side-scrolling, and tear it apart to make something new. You might say that Braid did this, because it let you reverse time and rise back above a deadly pit that you were just pulled into. Bionic Commando also had a unique approach, because rather than letting you simply jump from platform to platform, it gave you a portable grappling hook from which you could swing and leap.
Heritage
An on top of all this, 2D platforms are easy for developers to conceive of because there's so many formative masterpieces that serve as precedents (Mario, Another World, Elevator Action) and that can be irresistible to the intuition during brainstorming. But I think these earlier platformers came into existence because of all the benefits offered by the format, which I laid out above.
Conclusion
Time and money constrains indie games to 2d, and a basic human desire for action (and art) constrains the popular ones to scrolling platformers. The combination of a 2D side-view perspective and the action of platforming can be especially poignant, because the very environment that you walk across and negotiate can be a traditional piece of graphic art. As the allure of 2D platformers changes shifts from violent combat action of shooting a machinegun at anything that appears on the screen to exploring a more deliberate visual aesthetic, as in Braid and Limbo, that's progress.
And if you ever contemplate why we have all these "platforming" games where all you do is run and jump all over the place, remember that our ancestors were tree-dwelling creatures.
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