Anyone who has ever played a squad based game is more than aware of just how bad AI can go wrong and this often ends in frustrating restarts. Now it is time to actually create your own AI from the ground up as Var And The Vikings: Smash Robots & Learn AI (Var) actually educates you on how to make AI and allows you complete control over it.

It’s interesting to see a game in development that encourages learning of vital programming skills in a fun way that make learning fun. In Var you control one central Viking (although you can take a step back and even build AI for all of them) whilst you must construct behaviour trees for your AI Vikings. These trees resemble elements that are used in real game programming and because of this allow a great deal of learning to be had whilst having fun.

This gives you complete control over what your allies do and for a change it is now your fault when they decide to run off and get killed, but you can also change that with some subtle changes. The concept is a great idea and once put into a fun game about Vikings smashing robots you can’t go too wrong with the execution.

Brainworth have had a great deal of support from the gaming industry and have some exceptionally talented people on board the project and have been working with some of the top art and music creates in the industry. However they desperately require extra funding to ensure that Var is completed and beyond that the team have a great deal of excellent ideas on how to create an even better game. With extra funding Brainworth hope to add a full level designer, Player Vs Player multiplayer, Extra character classes, and even an iPad version.

Var And The Vikings: Smash Robots & Learn AI looks to be an educational game that actually provides a great deal of fun to both young and old creating a new standard of educational gaming. To find out more be sure to visit the Kickstarter page or try the demo! If you like what you see consider funding this very interesting new project.

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – ‘Var and the Vikings: Smash Robots & Learn AI’ Bringing A New Standard To Educational Gaming

Today’s game to blow away the Monday blues is Excitement by Loren Bednar. Loren Bednar is a developer I have featured hear time and time again here largely because his games are very interesting and always just a little different, and Excitement is no different.

Excitement is a procedurally generated  arcade game that feels like some kind of reverse breakout game and is very pretty. The whole idea in Excitement is to collect the stream of particles and prevent the falling stars from hitting the blue bar by dissipating their force with your collected particles.

It really is very different to most games I have came across and because of this it stands out rather well in a market filled with so many games. However don’t expect it to be easy as Excitement requires some serious skill in order to prevent 30 collisions that lead to your demise.

Average play time – 3 minutes

Excitement is anything but boring as in this fast paced arcade style game you will be fighting for you life to prevent these stars from colliding constantly. Its a great little distraction from your day and although  rather challenging it is somewhat relaxing at the same time.

Be sure to check out Excitement online now.

If you are a developer with A fun indie game that can be played over a coffee break, we want to hear from you! Private message us on twitter @IndieGameMag or shoot us an email at editors@indiegamemag.com with the subject “Indie Intermission” and you could be our indie intermission pick of the day!

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Indie Intermission – The Stars Will Fall In ‘Excitement’

This week has seen some rather interesting games from novel platformers to 3D mazes that just make you want to pull your hair out in rage. They all have their own merits and offer something a little different to one another and should fill up your Sunday nicely.

As always clicking the title will take you to my former article whilst clicking the image will take you to the game, enjoy.

Monday: Sometimes You Can ‘Run’ Away From Your Problems

 A deeply moody and interesting platformer with a very interesting art style. You come away from a car crash only to realise you are in the middle of nowhere and must run and jump your way back. The gameplay does still need work but overall the idea is great and the art style is easy to love.

Tuesday:  Traverse Life And Death, Love And Hate In ‘KAIPUU’

 A very interesting metroidvania style game that allows you to transverse both love and hate in this somewhat metaphysical game. The art is simple yet quirky and offers a very interesting style that feeds into the games overall great gameplay. If you are a fan of metroidvania style games this is well worth looking at.

Wednesday: ’Activate The Three Artefacts And Then Leave’ I Imagine This Is What Hell Is

 I am sure you all get frustrated with games from time to time however here we have a 3D maze that is unrelentingly difficult. Although the premise sounds simple you will be hard pressed to find even 2/3 of these things.

Thursday: ’Game Title’ A Zelda-Like Like No Other

 The developer stated he never played Zelda himself however that said the game does have a fair bit of Zelda-like qualities albeit rather different. Its a bit metroidvania a bit Zelda-like and it comes together in this game that is just too awesome to even have a real title. There is a lot of neat ideas here and it has been all pulled off rather well and is well worth ago.

Friday: ’LIM’ When Blocks Become Violent

 A very abstract game that puts a whole new perspective on stealth. The idea is you are a block who is able to blend into other blocks close by to sneak past them and if you don’t blend in they all start violently hitting you around. It’s a great idea and shows a great level of creativity that a lot of games these days lack.

 ——

 And thus concludes yet another week of gaming and the last week in February. Be sure to join me on Monday for an all new game to try and chase away that Monday gloom.

If you are a developer with A fun indie game that can be played over a coffee break, we want to hear from you! Private message us on twitter @IndieGameMag or shoot us an email at editors@indiegamemag.com with the subject “Indie Intermission” and you could be our indie intermission pick of the day!

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Indie Intermission Sunday Round Up: A Week Of Frustration And Intrigue

Today’s Developer Links talk about garbage collection, tool development, a lighting technique, and a suggestion for how to classify RPGs.

The Top 10 Mistakes Tool Developers Make (Gamasutra)
“Since 1999, I’ve had the luck to work in the game middleware industry. It’s been extremely interesting, but something of a crusade. Why? Probably because game middleware is one of the hardest things to market and sell.”

Implementing Voxel Cone Tracing (AltDevBlogADay)
“In last year SIGGRAPH, Epic games presented their real time GI solution which based on voxel cone tracing. They showed some nice results which attract me to implement the technique and my implementation runs at around 22~30fps at 1024×768 screen resolution using a 256x256x256 voxel volume on my GTX460 graphic card. The demo program can be downloaded here which requires a DX11 GPU to run.”

Garbage Collection And Memory Allocation Sizes (AltDevBlogADay)
“As a performance conscious programmer in a soft-realtime environment I’ve never been too fond of garbage collection. Incremental garbage collectors (like the one in Lua) make it tolerable (you get rid of the horrible garbage collection stalls), but there is still something unsettling about it. I keep looking at the garbage collection time in the profiler, and I can’t shake the feeling that all that time is wasted, because it doesn’t really do anything.”

Dog Game (distractionware: devlog)
“dog game”

A Better Classification System For RPGs (Zeboyd Games)
“The labels JRPG and Western RPG are commonly used genre labels that don’t do a lot of good in actually telling anyone what the game in question is like because there is so much variety between games that are arguably in the same genre. For that matter, some people still can’t agree whether these terms should apply strictly to the location of the developer that made the game or to the style of game. Surely, we can do better. Here are 9 criteria you can use to classify just about any RPG.”

Attempt Quest 1 (Auntie Pixelante)
“attempt quest 1 is an abstract, autobiographical game i made in 2004 – i would have been around 21. i can’t remember showing it to anyone, posting it anywhere. i don’t remember making it, didn’t remember that it existed until i found it in an old corner of my web host. but playing it, i could identify it as mine, like deja vu, or like being shown a drawing you did as a kid. at that time in my life, i was dealing with isolation, depression, sorting out my identity, and a fear of my own mortality that has never left me, just transformed. i put all these into this little game that i was too scared to show anyone.”

Announcing “Roger Steel and the Human Element” (Computer Games)
“‘It’s 1936 and the sun is still shining brightly on a steam-powered British Empire. Ann Trevelyan, a naïve but headstrong 21-year-old English girl, is exiled to Kashmir from the sultry streets of Calcutta in the aftermath of a forbidden love affair. Accompanied by her technology-obsessed brother, Arthur, who has been coerced into chaperoning her, and their lifelong Welsh friends, Christina and Neville Mortimer, the four expect nothing but boredom away from the glamour of the big city…”

What Are Games (Proteus)
“I find this rather burdensome to write, but it feels necessary to set out my thoughts given recent rumblings, and specifically to respond to this article and its comments. I don’t call Proteus an antigame* or a notgame. I call it a game, but obviously I am at pains to make it clear that it doesn’t have explicit challenge or ‘winning.’”

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Dev Links: White Dragon

Together, the games discussed in today’s Indie Links include more than sixteen million levels! Okay, that’s largely because one of the games discussed in today’s Indie Links has more than sixteen million levels by itself, but the other games may have much to recommend them as well.

Austin Wintory’s Journey to the 2013 Grammys (Joystiq)
“On the day Grammy nominations were scheduled to be announced, Austin Wintory didn’t get much work done. As the composer for Journey, Wintory had an inkling that he might be nominated in Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media, and he was distracted all day, constantly refreshing the Grammy page, scanning for his name. By evening the list still wasn’t posted and he gave up on trying to focus. He got in his car, determined to go home, make dinner and then check the page again.”

Top Indie Games of 2012: Dev Redux Part 1 (IndieGames)
“The developers from our Top 10 Indie Games of 2012 (+2!) list have agreed to share their must-play games of 2012. Today’s list features the picks of Jonas Kyratzes, Anna Anthropy, Vince Twelve, Jim Crawford, Justin Ma, and Matthew Davis.”

Project Gert: Recon (Indie Gamer Chick)
“There’s exactly one good thing I can say about Project Gert: Recon.  The paintings featured in the game’s cutscenes are beautiful.  So at least one person involved in this project has an amazing talent.  Seriously, watch the trailer below.  The actual in-game graphics are spoiled by awful animation and piss-poor collision detection, but the paintings are spectacular.  I would totally commission this guy to do a portrait.  But that’s where any complements end.  Project Gert is yet another December entrant to the ‘potential worst game of the year’ category.”

Review: Teleglitch – A Fast-Paced Arcade-Style Roguelike. Yes, It Is. (Indie Game Reviewer)
“Sometimes roguelikes are not always turn-based. Sometimes shooters are not always First Person. Three years in the making, Teleglitch is both and neither. It is at once a fast-paced arcade-style action game inspired by DOOM, and a randomly generated, single-life, intense roguelike.”

The Game With Sixteen and a Half Million Levels – The Review (Independent Gaming)
“This game has 16,777,216 levels. I didn’t beat the game before I wrote this, just warning you. This is a totally new concept to me, and I like it, if only the execution was better. The Game with Sixteen and a Half Million Levels is an game made in Engine 001 by tower07.”

What AAA Can Learn From Indies — According To Indies (Gamasutra)
“Yesterday we asked some leading indie game developers about the lessons they had learned in the past year. Today, we ask what — if anything — big triple-A publishers could have learned from the indie game community in the last 12 months.”

A Common Thread: Renaud Bédard (Quote Unquote)
“My name is Renaud Bédard. I’m a 27 years old tall, skinny guy from Montréal, Québec, now living in Toronto. I’m mainly a C# programmer but will use other languages if forced to do so. I’ve been working with XNA a lot in the past few years, but FEZ, the project I’m known for, was my first project using XNA. Before that I was using an engine called TrueVision3D, and now I’m into Unity when doing game jams and personal projects.

Scoregasm (PixelProspector)
“Scoregasm is one of the best arena shooters I have ever played (and I have played a lot of them). The game was over 2 years in development and it really shows: Smooth controls, super fun gameplay, colorful graphics, a great variety of levels and well thought out bullet patterns.”

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Indie Links Round-Up: Slices of Life

On Friday, I was lucky enough to be sent a preview-build of Pixelscopic’s upcoming platformer-roguelike, Delver’s Drop. You might remember us discussing Delver’s Drop, earlier this month when the Kickstarter campaign and new website, went live. In preparation for PAX East later this month, and more than likely to get an extra boost of well-deserved publicity, Pixelscopic sent out a preview-build of Delver’s Drop’s “Endless Drop” mode.

As this was my first hands-on experience with Delver’s Drop, I was able to see first-hand that the artistic talent at Pixelscopic is a force to be reckoned with; Delver’s Drop is gorgeous. The style is very cartoony, but every aspect of it is perfect, and nothing feels out of place. The shadows, the pieces of slain enemies flying about, the bobbing of the protagonist as he runs to and fro, everything all comes together beautifully.

How the Endless Drop mode works is that players are given the simple task of seeing how far they can drop. Each level has a pit that Delver can fall into, that takes him to the next level. Sometimes the pits are closed and only open when all the enemies in a particular level are cleared out, other times Delver must trip a switch that opens the closed pit, and sometimes the pit is already open and players must simply survive the level long enough to get to the pit. In Delver’s way are various enemies, like phantoms and giant rats, and obstacles like pits (not the kind you are trying to fall into) and auto-firing cannons. Luckily, scattered through the levels are crates and pots to smash that will occasionally contain weaponry and life-replenishing ham shanks.

“The big differences from the main campaign,” Pixelscopic CEO and co-founder, Coby Utter, explained to me in regards to this secondary game mode, “is not having contiguous rooms and levels, and thus [there is] no exploration, no narrative, and only a very loose sense of progress. We decided to send out this mode, as it was easier for us to ensure that fewer WIP things would be shown/noticeable, because there are still large chunks of things missing from the main campaign.”

The preview build only allowed me to play as the rogue character, but that’s fine, as that is what I would have picked anyway. At first, I was a little thrown-off by how slippery the rogue maneuvered about. It felt like I was running on ice. However, I quickly got used to the carried momentum and everything was fine in no time. Using my Xbox 360 controller made things much easier for me to control, and I ended up doing better than when I tried playing with the mouse and keyboard. Both ways controlled great, it is simply a matter of preference.

I asked Coby how the other two revealed character classes (sorcerer and barbarian) would feel, in comparison to the rogue.

“The sorcerer actually floats a bit,” Coby explained, “so he has an innate advantage when it comes to pits, but he will also be a bit more difficult to control…The barbarian will feel the least “slippery” out of all the characters. He’ll have a very high grip, but lower acceleration and top speeds. In some ways, he will be easier to control, but also difficult to move nimbly.”

The rogue, the sorcerer, and the barbarian are just three of the five character classes that will be available upon the game’s launch. Pixelscopic is letting the Kicksterter funders choose what the fourth and fifth characters will be. Coby told me that they have a handful of options for those fourth and fifth characters, and that the team would be releasing them soon, as they are finishing up some concept art for them.

As an incentive to fund the game, Pixelscopic is offering a bonus, sixth, character for people who back the game at the $50 mark. For more information on incentive rewards, do visit the Kickstarter page for Delver’s Drop. The campaign has a little over a week left, and Pixelscopic is just around $12,700 under their goal. Help out if you can, and if you can’t spare the change, spread the word.

Visit Delver’s Drop’s official website, and follow the game on Twitter.

The Indie Game Festival Awards are at the end of this month and in this issue we talk with Cardboard Computer about their grand prize nominated game, Kentucky Route Zero. There’s also a hands-on preview of Kentucky Route Zero Act I along with other previews such as Path of Exile. Read reviews of Skulls of the Shogun, Antichamber, Primal Carnage and Croizleur. Other feature articles include Comedy in indie games, and interview with Sakevisual about Yousei, Symmetry in Game Design, and an Editorial on the Land of Indie. Stay up to date with the indie game scene by grabbing this issue of the indie game magazine.

Here’s a quick walk through of all our purchase options.  So just answer these questions to find the right purchase link. If you are interested in subscriptions, please click the link here and check them out!

If you answered Yes, Magcloud is where you want to place your order.  You can order a direct PDF download or a Print issue from Magcloud.  Ordering in print comes with a free PDF version of the issue as well so there’s no waiting!

Issue 31: March 2013

By Mike Gnade in Indie Game Magazine

30 pages, published 3/1/2013

The Indie Game Festival Awards are at the end of this month and in this issue we talk with Cardboard Computer about their grand prize nominated game, Kentucky Route Zero. There’s also a hands-on preview of Kentucky Route Zero Act I along with other previews such as Path of Exile. Read reviews of Skulls of the Shogun, Antichamber, Primal Carnage and Croizleur. Other feature articles include Comedy in indie games, and interview with Sakevisual…

Do you want to read the Magazine on your iPhone/iPad?

If you have an iPhone/iPad, you can grab our App for Free and download individual issues.  You can buy future issues or get a subscription from right within the App.  Plus the app allows us to embed some sweet indie game videos, trailers, and reviews – which is pretty cool.

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Kentucky Route Zero and Cardboard Computer featured in Issue 31 on SALE NOW

LIM is an interesting game about violence and deception developed by Merritt Kopas and is quite different to the norm. In LIM you take control of a box which must navigate through this maze of violent blocks that will stop at nothing to prevent your progression through the game.

Luckily your block has the ability to blend in to the surrounding blocks which neutralizes but starts to create turbulence in your own block. Its quite the abstract game (but this should be obvious when dealing with blocks) but the nature actually plays into the game very well and creates a fun and interesting game.

The graphics style is rather basic and follows a very simple colour scheme but this is not a bad thing, far from it as it adds to the game and helps create it what it is. Although on my play through I managed to get knocked out of the maze by some overly violent blocks which did spoil it a little these things happen and at least they are not too common here.

Average play time – 15 minutes

LIM is a very different stealth style game that will keep you entertained throughout its duration and does offer something just a little different. LIM can play played online on Merritt Kopas’ site.

If you are a developer with A fun indie game that can be played over a coffee break, we want to hear from you! Private message us on twitter @IndieGameMag or shoot us an email at editors@indiegamemag.com with the subject “Indie Intermission” and you could be our indie intermission pick of the day!

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Indie Intermission – ‘LIM’ When Blocks Become Violent

Earlier today, Steam released a list of ten games which have passed through the gauntlet of approval that is Steam Greenlight. Some of the games listed, were not surprising. Anodyne, for example, just finished a large Pirate Bay promotion campaign that undoubtedly boosted popular opinion of the title. You may remember we featured Distance in an IGM Greenlight feature awhile back. We knew once people knew of Distance, they would have to get their hands on it.

I was surprised to see Receiver on the list, considering the game has been out since late last Summer, and I had not heard of any updates from Wolfire Games since Receiver’s game-jam conception and launch.

The full list of Greenlit games are as follows; we will be examining each of these games closer, in the coming weeks.

Anodyne – Sean Hogan and Jonathan Kittaka
Distance – Refract Studios
Evoland – Shiro Games
Huntsman: The Orphanage – Shadowshifters
Kingdom Rush – Ironhide Game Studio
Legends of Dawn – Dreamatrix Game Studios
Organ Trail: Director’s Cut – The Men Who Wear Many Hats
Receiver – Wolfire Games
Surgeon Simulator 2013 – Bossa Studios
War Thunder – Gaijin Entertainment

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – ‘Anodyne’, ‘Surgeon Simulator’, ‘Organ Trail’, And Others Selected For New Greenlight Batch

In today’s Developer Links, the developer of Sir, You Are Being Hunted discusses animation; the developer of Cthulhu Saves the World discusses repetition; the developer of Octodad discusses publicity; and the developer of Cthulhu Saves the World discusses repetition. (You see what we did there?)

Heileen 3 Postmortem (Computer Gaming)
“The Heileen series ends with this third chapter, and I’m overall satisfied by it. Without doubts it’s the best game of the series under several aspects: the longest, the most funny, the one with more variety of romances, the one with more artwork, the first one with a custom soundtrack and theme song, and the list goes on.”

Sir, Unity, Mecanim and the Trials of Small Studio In-Game Animation (Big Robot)
“We thought it might be insightful for you guys to be able to read a bit more about the challenges we’ve faced in completely overhauling our animation system since the success of our Kickstarter. As we mentioned in that pitch, animation is one of the key challenges for the game, and we feel we need high quality character animation to really make the experience work. So that’s what we’ve been doing. However, it was not without complications.”

On Repetition and Different Perspectives (Zeboyd Games)
“…This got me thinking about our own games. In one of our games, we have a dungeon that is split up into two parts – past and present. Your party gets split up between the two time periods & you have to go through the dungeon as each group. Your active party, the visuals, and the boss are different for each time period, but otherwise you’re going through the same stuff. Many people complained that they felt it was repetitive and I can’t really blame them. If I was to do it again, I would add more unique gameplay features to each time zone and otherwise reduce the amount of time you spent repeating content (there should have been fewer enemies for one thing).”

Purification Ritual for Computers (Auntie Pixelante)
“luna designed a game / ritual to purify your computer. she did the art, i did the technical stuff, with leon on call for consultation. downloads for windows or mac. purify your computer today.”

The Crowdfunding Experience (AltDevBlogADay)
“So, just recently, I was asked to give a 90 min lecture in my home city regarding crowdfunding after managing to run a successful campaign myself in mid 2012. The lecture is pretty long, but I’ll include the video at the end in case anyone’s interested in sitting through the whole thing. If not, I was also asked to write a shortened version of it for people to read, so I thought I’d share it here.”

Mew-Genics Teaser Week 14, THE MAIL! (Team Meat Blog)
“The mail in Mew-genics is an exciting thing.. you never know what you might get! maybe it will be an invitation to the next Cat Fight? maybe your children sent you a dollar bill… could be a notice of violation from the county about the smell, or more importantly your next SSI check!”

Mavis Minecraft Teaches Coding – Part 4 (Rock, Paper, Shotgun)
“What’s left? Well, I’ll wrap up a few loose ends by introducing you to some nifty coding shortcuts called functions, tell you how to wirelessly communicate between computers using rednet modems, and explain how bundled cables work so you can make complex creations.”

Octodad’s Path to Popularity (Octodad Blog)
“It’s probably not a stretch to say that the first Octodad became popular for two major reasons: it was quirky and it was free.  But aside from that, it’s interesting to take a look at what has really helped push us into the spotlight over the past couple of years since our release on October 31, 2010.  (As a disclaimer, I tried not to accidentally leave out key people who have helped us, but I apologize if I did!)”

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Dev Links: Maritime Maiden