Today’s round-up includes Interactive Fiction awards, Guacamelee sales news and the current state of the PS Vita.

As Vita languishes, why is Sony still gunning for indies? (Gamasutra)
“Gamasutra’s UK editor Mike Rose ponders the larger role of his beloved PlayStation Vita in this opinion piece.”

This Game Looks Quiet, Beautiful, And Absolutely Fascinating (Kotaku)
“This is The Novelist, an upcoming indie game by veteran designer Kent Hudson. It looks kind of amazing.”

Monaco developers wanted to add competitive Cops and Robbers, Thief vs. Thief modes (Polygon)
“The developers of Monaco: What’s Yours is Mine wanted to include two competitive multiplayer modes in the game but cut them because of issues with balance and quality, said creator Andy Schatz in a Reddit AMA.”

Guacamelee dominates April’s PSN charts in US and Europe (Joystiq)
“Sony reports that DrinkBox Studios’ side-scrolling luchador brawler Guacamelee emerged as last month’s biggest seller on the PlayStation Network, topping the PlayStation 3 and PS Vita sales charts in North America and Europe.”

The Monastery (Indie Gamer Chick)
“Yea, I know. The game is called “the monastery” in one of those strange cases where capitalization is denied. There’s irony in that, because the developers didn’t capitalize on solid 3D graphics to create something worth playing.”

Steve Gaynor On The Weirdness Of Gone Home (RPS)
“There’s a weird tension to Gone Home. On the one hand it should be the most normal thing in the world: an American household. On the other, well, it’s unusual for games to try and tell stories about everyday lives. But that’s precisely what it does, and that’s just part of what makes it so beautifully weird. I met Fullbright’s project lead, Steve Gaynor, and talked about that. This is how we got on.”

Live Free, Play Hard: Princess + Bomb = Cake (RPS)
“Princess + bomb = cake. Wasteland baseball brutality. Endangered hypertext preserve.”

IF News: The XYZZY Awards (and context) (IndieGames.com)
“The voting is over, the champagne corks have been swept out of the auditorium. (It’s a MUD auditorium, sweeping is quick.) The winners of the IF community’s annual awards for best interactive fiction of 2012…”

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Indie Links Round-Up: Aesthetically Pleasing

Developer Links has plenty of focus on what came out of this year’s GDC, as well as discussions on Kickstarter and crunching to make a game.

Developers should ‘think like a fan,’ be transparent when pitching on Kickstarter, says Double Fine producer (Polygon)
“Indie developers looking to launch projects for crowdfunding on Kickstarter should “think like a fan,” altering their mindset and tailoring pitches to best inform their gaming audience, according to Double Fine Productions producer Greg Rice.”

Mark of the Ninja creator: Innovation no excuse for crunch (Gamasutra)
“Jamie Cheng, founder of Klei Entertainment, creator of the XBLA games Shank and Mark of the Ninja had strong words for any game maker who might claim that working extensive overtime is an intrinsic part of making ‘art’.”

Food, firing, and freedom (Games Industry)
“Other Ocean, 17-bit, and Capy Games give tips for creating positive studio cultures without breaking the bank”

Nintendo’s indies guy tells you how to get your games approved (IndieGames.com)
“If you want to get your indie game onto Nintendo’s platforms — the Wii U and 3DS — you’ll want to talk to Dan Adelman, who works as the company’s liaison with indies. While his title is “business development manager,” he’s best known as the man who helped World of Goo and the Bit.Trip series, among many others, land on the WiiWare service for the original Wii. He joined Nintendo in 2005 to help build that service; Since then, the company has transitioned to new platforms, and offers a much better shop on them, called the eShop.”

Exploring game design through technology (Wolfire Games)
“This is a blog post adaption of my GDC 2013 Indie Soapbox talk, I hope you like it! I will link to the GDC vault video of it if it becomes publicly available.”

Gameplay – Espionage (Purple Orange Games)
“Espionage, much like diplomacy, feels completely underdeveloped in 4X games and almost non-existent in strategy games overall.”

I Want to Make Video Games, But I Don’t Know How to Program, And I Don’t Have Any Money (Indie Game Insider)
“You have that hungry look on your face. You know, the kind you get when you haven’t eaten for a while. Only this time it’s a hunger to make games. Being a game developer, I can understand the passion that you may possess to create a game can be killed by the lack of patience it takes to learn to program. You have an idea, and you want to make a game now!”

Initial thoughts about my first GDC (Positech Games)
“So here I am, post-GDC, from my point-of-view (I was only there for two days), reflecting on what I thought of my first ever trip there. I made a deliberate decision to only spend two days there, to attend the indie talks, meet some people, and then combine the trip with a short holiday, so I’m in a hotel room typing this up.”

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Dev Links: Memorable Trip

Today’s Indie Links comes bearing gifts such as an awesome list of free games, an indie game tribute music video and Haikus about Ludum Dare entries.

Scrolls, Lists and Freeware Games (Gnome’s Lair)
“So, yes, it did have to happen. After years of playing through hundreds of free games and after writing about dozens of the things, well, the time has come for me to finally set up a nice and update-able list with the best of the lot or, to be precise, those I enjoyed the most. Have a look and worry not; more playable freebies will be added to it.”

Boy Band Pays Tribute To…Steam Sales & Indie Games (Kotaku)
“New Zealand “boy band” (read: StarCraft tribute act) Viva La Dirt League have released this track called Indie Game Anthem (Thrift Shop). It’s an ode to both the affordability of indie games and the fact you can buy them en masse during Steam sales.”

The Wonderful, Rare Sloppiness Of The Monaco Soundtrack (Kotaku)
“Of all the terms one could use to describe a video game soundtrack—exhilarating, emotional, sad, uplifting, lonesome, boisterous—the word “sloppy” almost never comes up. Seriously, pause for a minute and name a video game with a sloppy soundtrack. Unless you’re talking about a poorly-played Rock Band track or a bar pianist in Red Dead Redemption, they’re few and far between.”

Gaming’s New Frontier: Cancer, Depression, Suicide (Polygon)
“Brian Ramage has made traditional hardcore games for all his professional life, and still does. He recently encountered a very different kind of experience, one that altered his view of what games can achieve.”

Bennett Foddy’s Speed Chess is QWOP designer’s take on classic game (Shacknews)
“Bennett Foddy, the creator of games like QWOP and GIRP, debuted a new take on chess at New York University’s No Quarter exhibition. Kotaku caught a look at what Foddy describes as “anti-Chess,” a 8v8 multiplayer game that rewards reflexes more than long-term strategy.”

The Ludum Dare Haikus (RPS)

Review: Machines at War 3 (IndieGameReviewer)
“Machines at War 3 suffers from a dated presentation that makes it difficult to engage with whatever strategic or tactical challenge the game may have to offer. In many ways it does reminds of Command & Conquer—a game I played over fifteen years ago, and which has been improved upon by other titles in the genre. The game leans heavily on nostalgia for the classic RTS games of the 90s, and thus runs the risk of overplaying its hand. It feels very much like a fan mod of one of those old games rather than a new production, and not entirely in a good way.”

Teslagrad (Pixel Prospector)
“Teslagrad is an upcoming story driven puzzle platformer about magnetism and electromagnetic powers. It’s story is purely told through visual means which means the game does not have any text or dialogue.”

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Indie Links Round-Up: Moving On

Today’s Developer Links include discussions on Nintendo’s eShop, luck and the left-digit effect.

Thoughts on Luck (Andy Moore, Radial Games)
“I think one of the best websites in the world is You Are Not So Smart (YANSS). They have an excellent series of long-form blog posts (and recently: a podcast) that delve into the intricacies of self-delusion and how the human brain works. I like to study how the brain works, and I am proud to say that many of my games have been designed with concepts from YANSS embedded in them. However, the biggest thing I take away from the content over there is what I think I’d call “self-help.” I’ve become happier and more productive, partially in thanks to that wonderful website. I’m sure there’s something you could take away from it too, so check it out. The most recent post on YANSS is one on Survivorship Bias. It is an excellent read, but within it there is an awesome section on Luck. I have a very negative reaction to the word Luck.”

Vlambeer News Roundup – May 2013 (Vlambeer)
“The month of May might have seemed like a relatively calm month from the outside, but we’ve been working pretty much around the clock for various reasons, all of them labeled ‘URGENT’ and ‘NEED THIS NOW’ in our mailboxes. LUFTRAUSERS will be shown at E3 (lots of work) and the game itself is pretty much done and ready for certification by Sony. We don’t know how long it’ll be stuck in cert, but we hope to have more clarity on when the game is releasing when it clears all of that red tape. When it does, LUFTRAUSERS will release simultaneously on PC, Mac, Linux, Playstation 3 and Playstation Vita.”

Nintendo’s new, relaxed restrictions for eShop indies (Joystiq)
“One rule that kept some indie developers off of WiiWare and DSiWare was that Nintendo required its developers to have a physical office space. That rule is “a thing of the past,” eShop business development manager Dan Adelman told Gamasutra. It was originally in place to make sure dev kits and confidential information was kept secure.”

Owlchemy Labs shares its formula to successful indie development (Joystiq)
“Alex Schwartz founded Owlchemy Labs in 2010, and since launch he’s built a team of six and has developed a steady stream of indie games across multiple platforms, including Snuggle Truck and the recent release Jack Lumber. He’s still in business, with more games on the way. The secret to Schwartz’s success is simple: Don’t expect your original IPs to make any money.”

Why I Want to Emulate an Octopus (Young Horses)
“When you work on something and fill it with love, you sacrifice pieces of yourself to your creation. Time, energy and hope are all slain on the altar of design and implementation. Octodad has put a lot of time into building something he doesn’t want to see disappear due to a misstep or thrown vase: his family. I feel the same way, sometimes, when I open the Octodad Editor and start building little worlds for him to exist in. If there is one trait Octodad seems to have, it’s confidence. He can stride through a room, flip tables and knock down grocery shelves without seeming to really care. Our game is a stealth game where the main character is wearing his disguise at all times and we encourage the player to go hog wild on the world around them. His confidence comes from the player and the need to keep up the charade.”

Play our new game Treasure Goblin (Lost Decade Games)
“Today we’re happy to announce our new game Treasure Goblin, also available on the Chrome Web Store! Treasure Goblin is a free, gamepad-enabled, side-scrolling platformer built in HTML5. Players control a nimble goblin who explores dangerous caves in search of treasure. The game features tight controls, procedurally generated levels, achievements, and of course, lots of treasure!”

Indie Gamer Chick has a New Writer and PC Coverage (Indie Gamer Chick)
“Indie Gamer Chick now has an Indie Gamer Guy. His name is Jerry Bonner. He will do PC reviews and editorials.”

The Left-Digit Effect: Why Games Prices End In .99 (The Psychological of Video Games)
“Why, when you saunter into a game store or navigate your favorite e-tailer, is everything priced $59.99, $29.99, or $19.99? More specifically, why do all those prices end in “.99?” Why not just be honest and price them at $60, $30, and $20? Retailers aren’t fooling anyone by pricing them one cent cheaper, are they?”

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Dev Links: Now We’re Cooking

What makes Ludum Dare special, indie RPG combat mechanics and abandonware on today’s Indie Links.

Indie Corner (RPGamer)
“Greetings, and welcome to the newest RPGamer column, Indie Corner. This is not a weekly column, but will instead be a sporadic look at the indie RPG development scene. And again, it’s not a typical column. Instead of directly reporting about indie RPGs, we’ll be bringing in the actual creators to talk about development and other aspects of the RPG scene. Interviews, in-depth discussion, talk of inspiration, and other editorial content directly from indie devs will be highlighted here. To start things off, we’ve gotten a few RPG devs to share how they feel about combat and battle systems. We talk about the most important aspects of a battle system, their inspirations, and what combat pitfalls they most worry about falling into and how best to avoid them. Today, we talk with AckkStudios, Sinister Design, Breadbrothers Games, Muteki Corporation, Zeboyd Games, Eden Industries, and Experimental Gamer.”

Surgeon Simulator 2013: death in your hands (VG247)
“Surgeon Simulator 2013 is a strange, almost morbid game that proves VG247′s Dave Cook should never be trusted with a person’s life under any circumstances. Get disturbed here.”

Unfinished Business: Super Hexagon creator reveals his abandonware (Joystiq)
“This Vine represents eight of VVVVVV and Super Hexagon creator Terry Cavanagh’s unfinished projects – the first of three like it recently posted to the game designer’s Twitter account.”

Thomas Was Alone review: Mastering the inverted fall (Joystiq)
“On the surface, Thomas Was Alone appears unremarkable. It breaks platforming mechanics down to their most basic levels, quite literally, replacing characters with colored rectangles and environments with precarious arrangements of black rectangles. To reiterate: Thomas Was Alone is a platformer starring a cast of little, colored blocks.”

Indie Pleas: Indie game crowd funding roundup for April 26, 2013 (IndiePub)
“This week’s Indie Pleas include: A.N.N.E., a metroidvania pixel art adventure; Rex Rocket, a retro sci-fi adventure; My Temple, a fun iOS fitness game; and Ghost of a Tale, where you play as a mouse in a medieval world.”

Andy Schatz talks Monaco’s delay and fan reactions (Edge)
“Last week, Andy Schatz, founder of Pocketwatch games, found a bug in the Xbox 360 build of his game Monaco that caused players to consistently get dropped from multiplayer matches. As a result, he decided to delay its release mere hours before it was slated to come out. We talked to him about the aftermath and how player reaction shapes his development process.”

Piracy or baiting? The thorny legal question of Game Dev Tycoon’s honeypot (Ars Technica)
“Earlier this week, the developers at Greenheart Games distributed a crippled version of its new game Game Dev Tycoon disguised as a “cracked” version of the full game. The little Internet experiment served as an ironic and humorous poke at software pirates and a smart way to call attention to the challenges indie developers face with piracy.”

Here’s what makes Ludum Dare so special (Gamasutra)
“Whether you’re an indie developer or not, you’ll likely have heard of the Ludum Dare 48-hour competition and game jam. Three times a year, hundreds of developers come together online to create games based on a set theme over a single weekend, and subsequently vote for a winner in the weeks after.”

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Indie Links Round-Up: Grandfather Clock

Indie Links today has freeware before commercial, personal instead of professional and hot Monaco on Monaco action.

Four perspectives on personal games (Gamasutra)
“The personal games movement is providing an important, exciting new avenue for expression and a new understanding of design, many believe. At the Different Games conference in New York this weekend, four panelists presented on the theme of personal game-making and why it matters to them.”

Review: Starseed Pilgrim – A Game of Discovery by Droqen (IndieGameReviewer)
“You could be forgiven for initially dismissing Starseed Pilgrim as little more than a curiosity. Droqen’s latest endeavor is a strange, abstract title that does little to endear itself to new players; spending ten minutes with the game might leave you with the vague impression that something is missing. Spend an hour with it and you may come to the conclusion that it was designed with the specific purpose to bewilder and confuse its audience. If you stay a little longer though, you’ll begin to see something compelling and altogether worthy of your time emerge from the blankness.”

Analog Investigations in Arkham (Gnome’s Lair)
“Deduction, despite what Sherlock Holmes would have you believe, is not a science. It’s a method. A method that could arguably make the life of all fictional investigators much easier and can definitely be applied to board-games as the classic Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective so effortlessly proved over 30 years ago. What’s more, deduction is what you’ll be using when playing the freshly released and rather excellent Arkham Investigator.”

Why Vlambeer won’t stop making freeware first, products second (Polygon)
“Earlier this week, Vlambeer — an independent developer who receives as much ink for their critically acclaimed titles as they do for unscrupulous developers’ tendency to copy them — got hit once again. SkyFar, an iOS game from Bangalore’s Rubiq Lab, was criticized for nearly duplicating Luftrausers, a browser-based Flash game Vlambeer released in 2011, which the studio later planned to turn into a full retail release.”

Live Free, Play Hard: The Week’s Finest Free Indie Games (RPS)
“Heterosexual narc. More than a few games about the demise of balls. CANDY ANT PRINCESS.”

Two Game Developers Travel The World, Playing Games And Helping People (Kotaku)
“Earlier this year, Battlefield producer Daniel Matros and former colleague Tim Kjell set up something called Charitystream. The idea was simple: stream games online, raise money for charity. It’s a noble goal, yeah, but it’s also something countless others are engaged in.”

Monaco made good on Indie Fund $100K before launch, what it means (Joystiq)
“Since 2010, Indie Fund has helped launch high-profile games such as Dear Esther, QUBE and Antichamber, each one recouping investment within days or even hours. The first game in which Indie Fund ever put its faith (and money), Monaco, launched last week and made back its $100,000 investment in negative time, before the game went live on April 24.”

Monaco: What’s Yours Is Mine offers the thrill of the heist (Shacknews)
“Andy Schatz’s IGF award-winning Monaco: What’s Yours Is Mine is all about staying in the shadows and avoiding detection. In fact, it’s succeeded almost too well, remaining out of the spotlight since it first took the Seumas McNally Grand Prize at IGF 2010. After years of tireless work and dedication, Monaco has finally been released and like a fine French wine, it was worth the wait.”

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Indie Links Round-Up: New Heights

Today’s Indie Links include a Boston Festival of Indie Games Kickstarter, a Javier Cabrera interview and what indie means to Thomas Was Alone dev Mike Bithell.

Tha Javier Cabrera Interview (IndieGames.com)
“Javier Cabrera, 50% of the Cabrera Borthers and one of the staunchest supporters of indie gaming I have ever met speaks about the indie community, developing games, The Free Bundle, Cypher and much more. Oh, and he does also mention some interesting plans on the future while never forgetting the past. So, set aside 30 minutes, make yourself a nice cup of tea and read on.”

Boston Festival of Indie Games seeks Kickstarter funds for expanded 2013 event (Polygon)
“Organizers of the 2013 Boston Festival of Indie Games have taken to Kickstarter to raise funds to cover the costs of the expanding celebration of independent studios in the Boston area, according to the event’s Kickstarter page.”

Today I Played: Monaco (Polygon)
“There’s no honor among bumbling fools. Here’s the thing about Monaco: If you’re not an expert, you’re going to have a lot of trouble understanding what the hell is going on in the above video. The stylistic, minimalist HUD and graphics are not exactly friendly to newcomers. That’s a bit of an issue when you’re playing the game, and even more of an issue when you’re watching four zany minutes of goofballs attempting to master its complexities.”

Thomas Was Alone Dev: Indie Means ‘I Get to Do Exactly What I Want’ (Kotaku)
“Mike Bithell’s had a crazy year. He went from being one of a few dozen developers at U.K.-based Bossa Studios to becoming a solo indie creator supporting a game on multiple platformers. What prompted the drastic lifestyle change? The steady climb of acclaim around his minimalist platformer Thomas Was Alone.”

Wot I Think: Don’t Starve (RPS)
“I starved. I feel as bad about disobeying the order as I do about losing my character. A negative imperative – ‘don’t starve’ – is so much more affecting than a positive one ‘orcs must die’. There’s a sense of threat in it, far more of an ‘or else’ than any form of Go Ahead And Do This. Don’t Starve really is about trying not to starve too: not eating is simply not an option. The cold fingers of personal famine are forever on one’s shoulder, and it’s crucial to remember that even as another kind of hunger, the familiar craving for better loot and gear, tries to seize control . When my own imperative was not ‘don’t starve’, and was instead ‘get stuff’, I last significantly less time. All I had to do was not starve: how could I lose sight of that?”

Kickstarter Katchup – April 28th 2013 (RPS)
“Jagged Alliance: Flashback arrives in the Katchup this week. I’ve expected (and hoped for) a Jagged Alliance crowdfunding attempt for some time now. As soon as it became obvious that Kickstarter was a place where old franchises could revive themselves, every week that the mercenaries didn’t appear was slightly more unsettling than the last.”

Magnetic By Nature (Indie Gamer Chick)
“Magnetic By Nature is the latest game from students attending the University of Utah. I know what you’re thinking. “Hey, wait a second. What do people from Utah know about having fun? Didn’t they ban their only form of that in the 40s?” Actually, inappropriate polygamy jokes aside, they know plenty about fun. Atari founder Nolan Bushnell discovered the medium of games as a student at the University of Utah. So in essence, we owe the gaming industry as it exists today to their beautiful, boring, Pac-10 devaluing institution. It makes me happy that the science of creating games is taught there to this day. It would be wrong otherwise, like if Harvard stopped teaching law, or Fresno State stopped teaching binge drinking.”

Recommended Game: Electro Bobble (Independent Gaming)
“Unbeknownst to humans, the insides of thunderclouds harbor entire ecosystems. Small beings called bobbles live off the electricity and leap around as if the clouds were composed of a series of platforms. Sometimes, an invasive species, known as meanies, takes over and sets up house, forcing the native bobbles to find another thundercloud. But one day, one bobble decided that it wasn’t going to be thrown out. This is its story.”

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Indie Links Round-Up: Cruel Summer

Today’s Indie Links include games you should have on your radar. Which, to be honest, really isn’t different from any other day.

25 indie games that should be on your radar (ArsTechnica)
“One of the best things about travelling to shows like PAX East and the Game Developers Conference is the chance to check out titles from off-the-beaten-path, independent developers. While shows like E3 are overwhelmed by the presence of multi-million dollar booths from huge publishers, the early-in-the-year shows make a point of highlighting some of the most original and promising game ideas from game makers without big contracts or salaried positions behind them. Freed from the financial responsibilities of the major AAA publishers, these are the titles that are most likely to truly break new ground in gameplay, aesthetics, and subject matter.”

Anna Anthropy and the Twine revolution (The Guardian)
“There’s a growing realisation that games can be as much about personal expression as they are about shooting stuff. We talk to prolific designer Anna Anthropy about her reluctant role at the centre of an emerging scene based around free game making tool, Twine.”

Tigsource Devlog: Dom2D’s Visual Showcase of Awesome New Games, Issue #14 (Venus Patrol)
“This week’s selection shows some love for pixel art, with fourteen games in development showing true skill with the pixel brush! We have Chasm in the middle of a Kickstarter campaign, Tale of the Stolen Rainbow creating an epic Zelda-like adventure with minimalist black and white pixels, and then there’s The Bitter End.. oh wait, it seems to have been made in Hexels!”

Recommended Game: Reunion, A Short Horror Experience (Independent Gaming)
“Explore a dark forest and the darkness of the human mind. In these woods, nothing is as it seems. Reunion is a short horror game that surprised me with its creepy atmosphere, genuine scares, and shocking ending. You control a father searching a forest at night for his son, Waleed, who has fled from home. You must navigate the darkness, using the circle of light surrounding you and the sounds of the things in the woods to stay on a safe path.”

The Long And Brainy Road: An Organ Trail Diary Part 3 (RPS)
“The Organ Trail: Director’s Cut is a zombie pastiche of the old favourite edugame, The Oregon Trail, where you had to get a family of settlers to Portland, Oregon, past the perils of the unconquered western USA. In the Organ Trail, players must get themselves and up to four friends all the way to Portland Oregon without losing any of their innards to rampaging zombie hordes. They’re both mainly asset management games, with bastard-hard minigames included. “

Kickstarter Katchup – April 21st 2013 (RPS)
“Two $100,000 winners this week and a few other projects close to the finish line.”

Itano Alpha Flight and Heart Breaker (Indie Gamer Chick)
“Here’s some quick thoughts on a pair of recent XBLIG titles, Itano Alpha Flight and Heart Breaker. They suck. My boyfriend says I’m not allowed to leave it at that, so I guess I’ll explain why.”

Humans Must Answer (PixelProspector)
“Humans Must Answer is a really promising horizontal shmup with fine visuals and fun looking gameplay that features a nice selection of weapons.”

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Indie Links Round-Up: Killer Screen

Ridiculous cloning, surgical simulation, and another chapter in the indie support debate between Sony and Microsoft – in today’s Indie Links.

Cloned at Birth: The Story of Ridiculous Fishing (Polygon)
“The interview is over. The story, told in pieces at least a hundred times in bars, at hamburger joints, on stages and in private circles of up-and-coming game developers, has now been told for the first time in its entirety. It is a story about the little guy getting bullied and making a stand. And winning. It is the story of Ridiculous Fishing, and how two men from the Netherlands rallied the worldwide community of independent game developers to take on the practice of game cloning and reclaim their invention to launch what will become (for a time) the best-reviewed iOS game of 2013.”

Microsoft hasn’t lost touch with indies, insists XBLA dev (Eurogamer)
“Microsoft’s relationship with indie studios remains strong, the developers of forthcoming XBLA title Max: The Curse of Brotherhood have insisted – and while it might seem that the platform holder is losing its grip on indie gaming as Sony attracts more and more developers to PlayStation, there’s plenty going on behind the scenes to ensure that won’t be the case come the next generation.”

Review: Spyleaks (Independent Gaming)
“*wipes sweat off face* Gee, that game can be tough at times. What game am I talking about? Spyleaks, an old-school stealth-puzzle game by HeartBit Interactive using the XNA engine (it is available on XBLIG and on the PC).”

Super Brain Eat 3 (Indie Gamer Chick)
“PlayStation Mobile is to the Vita what Xbox Live Indie Games is to the Xbox 360. Whether that’s a good thing or not is in the eye of the beholder, I suppose. I wasn’t around for the early stages of XBLIG, but based on what I hear from my buddies Ryan, George, and Justin, the early days were nowhere near the desolate wasteland that PSM is turning into. Looking at the slate of recent releases, nothing really has caught my fancy for it. But then again, nothing really caught my eye on iPhone either. My Vita has been getting a bit dusty though. Nothing like my Wii U, which currently wears the same amount of dust as your average mummy.”

The Amusing Messages to Gamers Tucked in Monaco’s Credits (Kotaku)
“Are you planning to steal the wonderful new co-op heist game Monaco? Please consider the above message. It appears in the $15 game’s credits. “

I’m Mexican. Am I Supposed To Be Offended By Guacamelee? (Kotaku)
“I remember being told I was a bad Mexican. To some of the white friends I hung out with, I was one of them. Once someone told me that because I played video games, read science fiction, and spoke with no accent, that I was whiter than they were. Now that was weird. Maybe I should have worn a sombrero or poncho around campus. Maybe then I would have been a Mexicano auténtico. To my extended family, my choppy spanish and awkward adolescence was a sign of my absolute assimilation into a destructive other.”

Wot I Think: Surgeon Simulator 2013 (RPS)
“As a games blogger, the question I am most often asked is: “When are you going to go back to school so that you can get a real job, like an accountant or a doctor?” To which I reply: “Look, Mum, Dad, writing about videogames is a real job now. I’ve paid my rent unaided for at least several years.” Then I show them games like Surgeon Simulator 2013 and ask why I would want to be a real anything, when I can be a simulated everything?”

Live Free, Play Hard: The Week’s Finest Free Indie Games (RPS)
“THIS WEEK: Fridge magnet story engine. 2012 so .exe, 2013 so .ppt. Dinosaur dating sim. “The ONLY LGBT-friendly anglerfish dating sim!””

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Indie Links Round-Up: Among Foes

Quality-of-life, DRM, Piracy and other discussions reverberate in today’s Developer Links.

Indie Fund Now Backing “Panoramical” (IndieFund)
“We are super excited to announce our support of Panoramical, a collaborative project by Fernando Ramallo, a game developer from Argentina, and David Kanaga, best known for his work on Proteus and DYAD. Panoramical is something really different from what we’ve funded in the past, and its difficult to describe it in words. It uses an input device like an iPad or MIDI controller to explore hand-crafted musical landscapes, allowing the player to alter the visuals and music to their touch.”

Game Developer Quality-of-Life Survey (Gamasutra)
“”Game Developers: How are you doing?” That’s the question we asked approximately 1,000 of you at the end of 2012. We know that between the long hours, frequent layoffs, and crunch phases, the game industry can be a notorious grind. While we perform a yearly Salary Survey every April to check the pulse of developers’ financial health, we thought we’d supplement that with a quality-of-life survey to see how you’re doing in ways not measured by dollars and cents. Are you satisfied with your pay? Are you confident in your current project? Do you want to be in this industry five years from now? Read on to find out how your colleagues responded.”

Meat Boy dev: DRM hurts more than piracy (Games Industry)
“The troubled launch of EA’s SimCity due to its always-online requirement has raised the issue of digital rights management and the effectiveness of anti-piracy measures once again. In a post on his own blog, Super Meat Boy developer Tommy Refenes gave his own take on the subject, arguing that developers’ attempts to keep their games from being pirated are hurting themselves first and foremost.”

Vlambeer: Mobile devs mustn’t be scared of charging more (Develop Online)
“Mobile developers should not be scared of charging more for iOS and Android games, a developer from Vlambeer has said. Speaking in a Reddit Q&A, developers from the Super Crate Box studio said that indies needed to be sell a countless number of titles at the standard $0.99 (£0.69) price just to survive on the platform, and encouraged more developers to start charging more.”

Sony easier to work with as an indie, Guacamelee dev says (Shacknews)
“With Guacamelee’s release on PS3 and PS Vita imminent, developer Drinkbox Studios took a moment to praise Sony’s continuing efforts to reach out to developers–smaller indie studios, in particular.”

Democracy 3 development blog video #2 (Positech Games)
“Another short video showing off new color schemes and some new features.”

Overgrowth a198 video changelog (Wolfire Games)
“Here is the new Overgrowth alpha video!”

Penny Arcade’s On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness 4 Trailer! (Zeboyd Games)
“Our first trailer for our upcoming new game, Penny Arcade’s on the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness 4 is now live! “

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Dev Links: Natural Wonder