Various projects kept me awfully busy these past three months. They’re fantastic stuff to work on, but it hurts not being around here all the time anymore. For here resides my favorite place to share what I or others have found in the limitless indie games toy chest.

Let’s resume Indie Links and get it back to form as if it never took that awful hiatus.

Hooray For The Indie Games Arcade Winner! (Rock, Paper, Shotgun)
“If you were lucky enough to be among the gaming hordes at the Eurogamer Expo you might have noticed a booth with “PC Gaming Since 1873″ emblazoned upon it. Inside are twelve games. Some of them are even PC games! We saw them. We judged them.”

The IGF is Broken (#AltDevBlogADay)
“The Independent Games Festival is broken and needs to be fixed. To my knowledge it is the only respected award of any industry that is given to something that is not only unfinished but may be unfinished for years. That is absurd and the submission requirements should change.”

Interview: The Stanley Parable developer Davey Wreden (Shacknews)
Developer Davey Wreden made quite a few waves in the indie gaming pond with the relatively recent release of his free, narrative-driven adventure, The Stanley Parable. Built using Valve’s Source SDK, The Stanley Parable effectively plays with pre-established conventions when it comes to storytelling, and raises some thought-provoking questions about game design in general.

Indievania doesn’t want your dirty, stinkin’ money, but its indie devs might (Joystiq)
“Indie-game developer Lee Vermeulen began Indievania with a dream, a dog and a 9 percent rate for hosting indie games — now his dream is coming true, the 9 percent rate has transformed to 0 percent and the dog has mutated into a dashing young prince (OK, maybe we lied about the dog). Just as magical though, Indievania doesn’t keep any of the money developers charge for their games, which is exactly how Vermeulen wanted his site to operate.”

The Last and Final Word: David Shute (Quote Unquote)
“David Shute showed his immense promise as an independent videogame developer by winning the JayisGames Casual Gameplay Design Competition #6 with Small Worlds.”

8-Bit Night (Pixel Prospector)
“8-Bit Night is a pretty clever puzzle platformer with a fresh swapping mechanic that allows you to turn the world around you vertically and horizontally. In the game you control 2 guys at once (the main character and his phantom counterpart) with the goal to collect all golden pixels on the screen.”

Interview: Lifeless Planet’s David Board Bursts Onto Indie Scene (GameSetWatch)
“Who says that an indie developer needs to build up a presence in the scene before they can truly capture the imaginations and hearts of the close-knit community? Sometimes an indie title fires out of the blue, instantly grabbing the limelight and building up unfathomable intrigue.”

Indie Jeff’s Weekly Picks: September 26-30 (Shacknews)
“I’d like to kick things off this week by recommending one of this year’s IndieCade finalists, called Loop Raccord (see top image). Developed by Plural Games (Nicolai Troshinsky), it’s a game centered around manipulating a number of brief (and completely disparate) video clips in such a way that the action from one flows seamlessly into the next.”

Interview: Soldat’s Marcinkowski On Why Alpha Funding Will Save The Games Industry (IndieGames.com)
“How many games do you know that still have an active player base nearly 10 years after the original release? How many of those originally had just one developer? Polish 2D side-scrolling multiplayer shooter Soldat was released in August 2002, and still now receives updates to keep its fanbase happy.”

T-17 Tanky (TIGSource)
“As our column of tanks rushed down a hill towards an enemy column, one of my fellow tank commanders – apparently a raven wearing a top hat – screamed, “Kill them all!” That was the moment I decided that T-17 Tanky was a game for me.”