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

Today’s Developer Links pass on more good PS4 vibes from indies, along with updates from games including The Witness, Clockwork Empires, and Democracy 3.

PS4 will support indies, agree optimistic devs (Develop Online)
“A number of developers have stepped forward to state their optimism about the PlayStation 4′s support for indies. Speaking to Develop individuals from companies as diverse as Gearbox and nDreams have expressed hope and positivity that, in contrast to previous sony consoles, the PS4 will be accessible and affordable for indies. Their views appear to reflect comments made to Develop by Sony Worldwide Studios SVP Michael Denny, who insisted indies are set to be core to the PS4.”

A Little Something For The Pipe Fanciers Out There (Gaslamp Games)
“From just about the beginning we’ve been into the idea that Clockwork Empires should involve running giant assemblies of pipes and cog-laden axles across settlements to transmit energy and water and completely harmless high-pressure superheated steam between various machines and factories. The basis for this came early: if we’re to embrace the aesthetic we desire we need to fully embrace the visuals of mechanization, of machines and factories and the wonders of technology of this Age of Progress & so forth. If we hide the machines inside the factories then you won’t be able to see any of the Fun gears and pipes. So, the breakthrough: put the machines, the pipes, the gears on the outside of the factory.”

Low-Light Combat Art Asset Overview (Wolfire Games)
“We recently made a charity jam game called Low-Light Combat. In this jam, I wanted to try cutting out the most time-consuming steps of the traditional art asset workflow, to see if it would make any real difference in the final product.”

iPad video update #1 (The Witness)
“Andy’s got the iPad port far enough along that you can sort of play the game now. Here’s a short video…”

More Democracy 3 simulation fun and games (Positech Games)
“The core mechanic of Democracy 3 is going to take a lot of careful explaining in tutorials and tooltips and help windows. Essentially, it’s pretty simple, in that you implement policies, and you can adjust the intensity of a policy using a slider. So with a policy like income tax, the slider adjust the rate of tax from low to high. A series of bars show you the effect this policy has on everything, such as voter happiness, GDP, and so on. Sounds simple so far right? This is where it gets complex because there are three additional factors, which are implementation times, effectiveness and inertia. I’ll explain each one…”

Even Ugly Babies Need Hugs (Dejobaan Games)
“Our good friends at Zapdot and Hybrid Mind have been working hard on Ugly Baby. Ichiro continues to rest as evidenced by this picture from yesterday. This is most excellent news because a rested Ichiro is worth at least 3 times as many points as a tired Ichiro! This week we look at visualizers and also the in-game HUD that tells you when your stunts are X-Games worthy.”

Managing Risk in Video Game Development (Gamasutra)
“How do you best manage risk when creating a game? Using this article and the attached spreadsheet, you can better identify the problem areas in your game and get a sense of whether any decisions you are making actually make business sense.”

The Language of Monetization Design (Gamasutra)
“Automobiles and computers were so simplistic in their first 10 years that today we have a hard time looking back and appreciating just what a leap in technology they were at the time. Like all technology, they benefited from the iterative process, slowly adapting to changes in allied technologies, consumer demands, and infrastructure. Today both cars and computers have components in them that did not even have names 10 or 20 years ago. Before they could be added to these products, they had to be thought about and given names so that they then could be optimized and adapted to various uses.”

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Dev Links: Pipe Dreams

RPG gems on XBLIG, Monaco, Kentucky Route Zero and more – in today’s Indie Links.

Breathe In The Road: Cardboard Computer And Kentucky Route Zero (Polygon)
“With Act 2 of their five-act piece on the horizon, artists Jake Elliott and Tamas Kemenczy discuss their past and their process and speak to their critics.”

Indie platformer Cloudberry Kingdom will be published by Ubisoft, coming this summer (Polygon)
“Indie side-scrolling platformer Cloudberry Kingdom will be published and distributed by Ubisoft this summer, the company announced today. Developed by Pwnee Studios, and successfully crowdfunded via Kickstarter last summer, Cloudberry Kingdom will feature levels that randomly generate each time you enter, presenting players with new challenges for each playtime, and adjustable difficulty ranging from casual to hardcore. Levels will adapt to the player’s skill level and the abilities of the in-game characters. Players will also be able to create their own characters and challenges.”

Guacamelee review: Wrestlevania (Joystiq)
“Is there anything more paltry than the video game chicken? Guacamelee lets you kick the poor featherballs, lock them in your log-like luchador arms, and pile-drive them into the ground so hard they bounce around the room. In the presence of a protagonist, the only thing worse off than a chicken is a vase.”

Monaco review: A good day to spy hard (Joystiq)
“I’m a terrible thief. If ever there were an investigation into a string of high-profile burglaries in my neighborhood, all I’d have to do to clear my name is invite some police officers to sit down, get comfortable, and watch me play Monaco for five minutes. The officers would see my glowing, pixelated character get caught on the walls around doorways while running away from hordes of angry guards with guns; they would laugh as I rushed into rooms full of alarms and set off every single one; and they would leave soon after I forgot, again, that my character could dig through walls, hack locked doors or easily knock out unsuspecting enemies, and I’d be a free woman. Just like I’d planned all along.”

The State of XBLIG RPGs (Independent Gaming)
“RPGs are powerhouses of both the AAA and the indie game industries. That’s no different on the Xbox Live Indie Game Marketplace, where they’re some of the best games on the service. Like RPGs? Here are some XBLIG suggestions for you.”

The Prisoners May Be Innocent in One of 2013′s Most Interesting PC Games (Kotaku)
“I’m already on-record about how fascinating Prison Architect is. Seriously, it’s SimPrison—or ThemePrison, if you will—made by people who seem to be damn near fearless about making video games about uncomfortable topics.”

Indiemon: Earth Nation (Indie Gamer Chick)
“I have an idea for a children’s game. In it, you’ll play as a pre-pubescent lad who will wander the world making animals fight for sport and for fame. You’ll start with one enslaved creature (possibly an adorable mouse-lightning bolt thing, something that just oozes cuteness) and then randomly fight other adorable creatures along the countryside. During a fight, right at the moment before your huggable little animal buddy delivers a merciless death-blow to the creature it just beat into a pulp, you’ll capture the creature in a cage way too small for it to possibly live comfortably in. You’ll then force it to fight creatures that you wish to enslave, with your ultimate aim being to capture one of every creature like some deranged, asexual Noah.”

Getting a start in making games, from the man behind Thirty Flights of Loving (IndieGames.com)
“This week I [was] fortunate enough to be featured in The Humble Weekly Sale. My email inflow has skyrocketed, and amongst them I get a fair amount of messages like this: I’m a student in high school and I’m really interested in making games, but I have no clue where to start. I was wondering if you could offer me some insight into where to start? Everyone’s brain is wired differently. For me, my best suggestion boils down to: Make stuff. Then make more stuff. If you’re not into brevity, I’ll get more specific.”

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Indie Links Round-Up: Brick By Brick

Today’s Developer Links cover one week of game development, 30 weeks of game development and a plea to avoid too much development.

30 Weeks of Game Development (AltDevBlogADay)
“Outland Games is an iOS game I’ve been working on at Uber Entertainment since late last summer. We just released the game to the app store this week (iTunes – $0.99). This post is the first in a short series on it’s development.”

Overfunded Kickstarter Projects – Please Avoid Feature Bloat (Zeboyd Games)
“We’ve seen a number of video game kickstarters raise a lot more money than they requested. Inevitably, these projects take this extra money and drastically scale up the ambition of the project with the result that they miss their projected release date by a huge amount.”

Seven Day Roguelike, Day 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6- 7 (Distractionware)
“So, I’m making something for 7 day roguelike. This compo has an uncanny knack for clashing with other things, so this is the first year I’ve ever actually been able to do it!”

Forbidden space (Auntie Pixelante)
“my friend andi was really excited that nasa was hosting a game jam on her birthday. she wanted to rope a bunch of us in to making games with her thirtieth birthday – then she found out that you had to book tickets months in advance. BULLSHIT. not to be deterred, she had a bunch of friends over to my place for a KICKED OUT OF NASA GAME JAM. (they’re still here. it’s still going on.)”

Making wrong choices (Winter Wolves)
“I’m at one point where I fix a plot hole, and a new one appears. I check a variable, one path works, the other doesn’t. A scene that before was fine, now plays out of order. I’ve worked like crazy in past 3 days, I’m stressed like never before and then I came to a simple conclusion. There’s no hope to make this work. Every time I open the script I have a headache now. Writer doesn’t have time to help. So I’m thinking what to do. It’s really embarrassing for me. Despite all the efforts, I know that I can’t make this work, unless I make some really big changes.”

Races #2: The Empire (Purple Orange Games)
“Nobody knows the origins of the Empire, how it was formed or by whom. Scientists speculate that a once peaceful race, the Lirri, endured some kind of disastrous genetic disease which made them seek salvation by means of complex genome modifications. Unfortunately, the process went wrong, and the newly created creatures turned on their masters and, not encountering any resistance, quickly conquered the planet. Soon, there were no Lirri. There was only the Empire.”

The Metrics Aren’t the Message (Gamasutra)
“Metrics can rule you — but should they? The Workshop Entertainment’s new design director and Free Realms veteran Laralyn McWilliams explains how a pivotal moment in her life showed her that overreliance on analytics and friction in social games isn’t the answer.”

Port Wine, Live-Streaming, Drunken Robots and Ugly Babies (Dejobaan)
“This week’s blog post is brought to you by the letter T and the number 2! It has been a fun week for all of us over at Dejobaan. Ichiro is in Portugal taking a much deserved vacation. We are laying on the beach did our second live-stream on Twitch (more on that below) and we continued working hard on Drop That Beat Like An Ugly Baby, Drunken Robot Pornography and Monster Loves You. Did I mention that we are working HAAAAAAAARRRRDDD! But first Ichiro drinking port, because everyone should drink port!”

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Dev Links: Lost In The Woods

An indie developer in defense of Microsoft, a spreadsheet RPG, and curious games – all this and more in today’s Indie Links.

The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile dev defends Microsoft (VG247)
“The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile developer Ska Studios has never had any problems working with Microsoft, contrary to ongoing talk of how indies struggle with the platform holder.”

Making an RPG in a Spreadsheet is Easier Than It Sounds, but Takes Longer Than You’d Think (Kotaku)
“Last fall, Cary Walkin was enrolled in business school at York University in Ontario, taking a course called “Advanced Spreadsheet Modeling.” He quickly realized the application could be used for more than just accounting.”

The fear and loathing of N++ (Polygon)
“Metanet’s creative director and co-founder, Mare Sheppard, announced at GDC that after much trepidation the Toronto-based independent developer has decided to develop the final game in the N series. Sheppard told Polygon that the decision to develop N++ was more of a “gradual realization,” than a “lightning strike.””

Dragon Fantasy Book 1 coming to PlayStation 3 and Vita April 16 (Polygon)
“Developer Muteki Corporation’s Book 1 of Dragon Fantasy — a game originally released for mobile devices, Windows PC and Mac — will come to the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita on April 16, Sony announced today.”

Guacamelee review: more behind the mask (Shacknews)
“The ability to boil down a game’s premise to an elevator pitch can easily do it a disservice. Guacamelee has been called Metroid-vania with luchadors, a description Drinkbox hasn’t exactly shied away from. But that description, and its pun-y title, make the game seem more like a gag, and gags don’t have longevity by definition. They’re an object of fleeting fun, and the game is much more inventive and lasting than this glib explanation would suggest.”

BattleBlock Theater review: battles blocked (Shacknews)
“Following the release of Castle Crashers, The Behemoth was riding high as a stalwart of the 2D old guard. It had produced a beat-em-up that lovingly paid homage to its predecessors and injected it with a dose of Monty-Python-styled inanity. Nearly five years later, the studio has finally produced its follow-up, BattleBlock Theater. It leans less on its roots, and while greater ambition gets the better of it, it’s hard not to cheer on more of the developer’s spirit.”

Pippin Barr’s philosophy of developing ‘curious’ games (Joystiq)
“Pippin Barr’s doctoral thesis is titled Video Game Values: Play as Human-Computer Interaction, submitted in 2008 to the Victoria University of Wellington as the final stage of his degree, Doctor of Philosophy in Computer Science. In the thesis, Barr highlights the act of playing a computer program rather than simply using one, with case studies in Civilization 3, Fable, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, Half-Life 2, and The Sims 2.”

Retro Arcade Adventure Remade (Indie Gamer Chick)
“It’s been a little over a year since I reviewed Retro Arcade Adventure, a hack-and-slasher that was sort of like Smash TV for the dark ages. I didn’t really like the game. It was short, repetitive, and boring. You could see potential in the developer, but the experience was tedious. So I was skeptical when I saw that they had decided to remake the title instead of patching the original. Ballsy for sure, since the first wasn’t very good. It would be like burning a steak and trying to correct it by throwing it back on the grill for ten minutes.”

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Indie Links Round-Up: Beat The Spread