Developer Links is here to drop a friendly reminder that there is just over 6 hours left until the IGF submission deadline. To all those getting in their last-minute touches, your time is nearly up. Good news is that you can still patch your entry after submitting, so just make sure to get everything processed before Midnight PT tonight!

Reminder: 24 Hours To 2012 IGF Main Competition Deadline (Gamasutra)
“Organizers are reminding that there are 24 hours until the Main Competition deadline for the 2012 Independent Games Festival, being held at the Game Developers Conference 2012 in San Francisco next March 5-9. The Independent Games Festival is the longest-running and highest-profile independent video game festival, summit, and showcase, and the deadline for the IGF 2012 Main Competition is Monday, October 17th at 11.59pm PT.”

Postmortem: Octodad (Game Career Guide)
“In this postmortem, first published in Game Developer’s 2011 Career Guide issue, the team of DePaul University students and graduates reflect on the development of the bizarre, yet undeniably creative Octodad.”

How Vimeo Lost Me (GameDesignReviews)
“I used to prefer Vimeo over YouTube. Vimeo was always a bit better in quality, had a nicer looking player and website. Most importantly, it had a more mature and tasteful community. So when I released my game TRAUMA, it was a no-brainer to publish the trailer for it on Vimeo. It was an arty project that was made exactly for the kind of audience I would meet on Vimeo. Today, I’m regretting that decision.”

The Evolution of Super Crossfire (Radian Games)
“Games have to start somewhere, and this is where Super Crossfire began…”

How Can Entry Level Game Designers Stand Out? (#AltDevBlogADay)
“I recently spent some time back at Full Sail on the Advisory Board to look at the current curriculum and give feedback on how they can improve the game development programs. When I attended over a decade ago, there was only the Game Development program which is geared heavily toward programming. I’ve always preached that having that technical background helped me become a better Game Designer and tried to encourage others interested in the program.”

Neptune Gasoline is Coming Early 2012 (Vertigo Games)
“Hey folks, just giving everyone a heads up that Neptune Gasoline has been pushed back a bit to early 2012.I had a release date set in mind that I never divulged (October 2011) and I was working at a good pace to make that date. And while there have already been 22 levels designed, the actual gameplay was something I was struggling with.”

TGC at Fantastic Fest! (thatgamecompany)
“As you may have heard, Journey was recently shown at Austin’s annual Fantastic Fest! The game was featured on several stations at the Highball Lounge – which is just next to the Alamo Drafthouse (where the festival takes place). The Sony portion of this event featured several of PSN’s upcoming indie releases – including Retro/Grade, Okabu, Papo y Yo, PixelJunk 4am and Closure. And the Fantastic Arcade showcased even more indie greatness!”

Let’s all go to the igf! (auntiepixelante)
“the independent games festival normally has a ninety-five dollar entrance fee. for a hobbyist game author who expects to lose against better-publicized games anyway, that can seem like a tremendous waste of money. but this year, a bunch of us have decided to compile a bunch of our little games into a single compilation, and someone has generously agreed to foot the bill for the entrance fee. in the interest of making the igf more diverse and accessible, in the interest of demonstrating that a bunch of small games, each with a single idea, is a lot more INNOVATIVE than a single “polished,” well-marketed game, we’re asking anyone who’s made a game or two and would like to be in the igf to JOIN US. the deadline is monday! climb aboard!”

Memoirs of IndieCade (#AltDevBlogADay)
“Last week, I was fortunate enough to attend IndieCade, for the second year in a row. Yet again, IndieCade has proven to be my favorite game development conference. In this post, I will be covering some of the finer points of IndieCade this year.”

Headcase Games have passed along a note letting us know that the Android version of their reflex-improving puzzle title 180 Ultra is dropping the price tag for the day. Hop over to Amazon now to grab it at no cost.

180 plays as a match-3 with a flipping mechanic where you touch gems to turn them over and reveal different colors. There’s several game modes, different characters to choose from (presumably who bring different effects about), and several “hidden secrets” for players to discover. It also includes achievements and online leaderboards via OpenFeint. A time killer for any occasion, and a nice addition to the app collection if you’re looking for some depth in the casual genre.

The title typically goes for $1.99 on the distribution service and is also available on iOS devices for the same price. To give you an impression of how cool these guys are, the lite version of the game (which is free to download for Android users anytime) has an active progress bar logging player hours. Once it reaches the goal set by the devs the full version’s content will completely unlock, and all ads will be removed. So you got that going for you should you miss today’s offer.

[Headcase Games]

Today’s Developer Links share exciting new announcements, poignant postmortems, and other editorials from thoughtful folk around the web.

AltDevConf Announced! Get Your Ideas In NOW! (#AltDevBlogADay)
“This is my first post here on AltDevBlogADay, and I am both blessed and honored to bring you some potentially industry changing information. This has been almost a week in the making. I was hoping for a solidified logo to post with this report, but one has not been firmly decided on as of the date of publishing this article. The information is more than good enough to speak for itself. With no further gilding the lily, I give you the future of game dev conferences. I give you #AltDevConf!”

IndieCade: A Post-Post Mortem Of Sword And Sworcery (Gamasutra)
“As the closing keynote of IndieCade in Culver City over the weekend, Capy Games’ Nathan Vella and Kris Piotrowski discussed the development of their cult iOS hit from the perspective of a seven-month gap since the game’s launch and a “real tangible separation” from the project, developed in collaboration with pixel artist and design film Superbrothers, Inc. and musician Jim Guthrie.”

Thoughts on Limbo (Frictional Games)
“A while ago I played through Limbo for the first time. I thought it was quite an interesting experience for many reasons and been thinking for it on and off. Now that I have collected most of my thoughts on the game I thought it was time to write a little post about it.”

A warning to others: I fell into the Game Engine Trap and lost 7 months of development work (/r/gamedev)
“Ignored the warnings of falling into the Game Engine Trap, fell in head first, and lost about half a year’s development time. Has it happened to you?

Onslaught! — a history of violence (in images) (Lost Decade Games)
“HTML5 is taking off, the web is evolving, the Chrome Web Store is available in more countries than ever and one of these days we’ll be announcing our next game, so I thought this would be as good a time as any to walk through Onslaught! and its near-successes. Here’s a history of Onslaught!, in images…”

A Vertical Slice of Ugly Baby: as Messy as it Sounds? (Dejobaan Games)
“Team Dejobaan has been iterating on Ugly Baby in an effort to make it massively, unbelievably fun, using what’s called a vertical slice. Here’s a little bit about what we’re trying…”

Ticker (Instant Kingdom)
“We’ve finished creating the new monster types, and right now I’m adding them to the game. We wanted to give the Driftmoon combat a little more variety, so we’ve tried to think of monster types that would create interesting situations when combined with the game world or with other monsters. The Ticker is one of the new ones you’ll get to meet, along with the crab colony at the end of the video.”

The Making of a Trailer (#AltDevBlogADay)
“Today I released a trailer for my iPhone app Alcohology. This is the first trailer I’ve ever worked on1 and I documented the process. This post is a behind the scenes / making of / evolution / post-mortem rolled into one. It’s got a little bit of everything.”

This looks all sorts of fun. Super Mario Bros. invaded by gameplay elements from both Portal and Portal 2. We’re talking about the mustached plummer with a portal gun here. Sound good enough on paper?

Wait until you see it in practice.

Maurice Guégan and Sašo Smolej, the two-man team currently developing the gamer’s wet dream into a playable reality, have been cranking up media as of late to keep everyone drooling. Presumably on the cash readied to pass along to these guys if/when they decide to accept it from all of us in exchange for getting to play what they’re showing off.

From the screenshot above, you can surmise co-op multiplayer will be in the mix on top of having the entire Portal puzzle-game spirit built into the original Mushroom Kingdom (all from scratch mind you.) Not just two players either, the dev claims it’ll support local multiplayer up to the number of joysticks you can plug-in to your computer. What a gem this hybrid of two classics could turn out to be.

No release date as of yet, but we’ll be keeping a keen eye on this one. The latest test footage video shows off lasers and a bit of fun you can pull of with an Aperture Science Portable Quantum Tunneling Device against an unfortunate Koopa Troopa and a handful of hapless Goombas:

[Stabyourself.net (we at DIYGamer do not advise or condone doing that) via GameSetWatch]

After waiting patiently for nearly two days, Terry Cavanagh was finally alone. A slight reprieve had finally occurred in the single-file onslaught of adoring fans, aspiring developers, and fascinated media (full disclosure: I am all three) that seemed to be perpetually conversing with the popular indie developer. I had a seam, and took it: “Hey Terry, I’m Erik Johnson from DIYGamer. We met basically one year ago. I heard there was going to be a preview build of VVVVVV on 3DS here.”

The energetic, yet soft-spoken Irishman recognized me after a moment, and produced a 3DS from his shirt pocket. I laughed at my presumptions of how the demo display of his port would be set-up, then focused-in to play one of my favorite (and most frustrating) PC titles on a handheld device.

Terry mentioned the build was close to finished, with just a few bugs to work out. I played for about 15 minutes, escaping out of the first puzzle area in the game to Captain Viridian’s ship. I then enjoyed a tour of the overworld, past a giant crying elephant, and eventually to another puzzle area. Everything looked and felt beautiful as far as I was concerned. The persistent map on the bottom screen is just a perfect match as well for exploring the world map area for teleporters and, of course, shiny things. Perhaps most important of all, the original soundtrack by Souleye is there in all of its glory.

Other than that, there’s really not much to say here. It’s all the greatness of PC/Mac/Linux VX6 right there on Nintendo’s latest handheld. It’s a spot-on port of the game from what I looked at, and once publisher Nicalis launches it on the 3DS eShop it’ll simply be a must have for anyone with access to the service. What of the post-launch content though?

That part appears a bit muddy at the moment. Terry was adamant that the 3DS version was entirely in Nicalis’ hands and out of his own, especially when it came to that topic when I pressed him about it. It looks like where it goes from release is anyone’s guess at this point it appears. We do know that the features list for the port includes “future content updates”, but what content that exactly will be is at the moment a mystery. One wonders if any of the player-created content content from the PC version could make it over the 3DS. Wait and see for now.

Here’s my thumbs running around old hunting grounds. The controls definitely feel just as tight as they are on the PC. (When I mess up, it’s definitely my fault):

IndieCade seems to grow in popularity every year, this time around you could just feel the pull of the event from travelers far and locals alike. The press presence was much more noticeable this year as well, especially around the Game Walk.

Below is all the coverage I’ve been able to dig up of those who’ve provided some coverage from the event this past weekend. We still have a ways to go on our coverage from the festivities, so check back here all week for new previews, interviews, and video footage from all the panels and hands-on sessions we were able to fit in.

IndieCade: Inside Jonathan Blow’s Puzzle Design Process (Gamasutra)
“At this weekend’s IndieCade, Braid developer Jonathan Blow expanded upon his “philosophy of game design” he originally presented at GDC Europe, discussing how it works in concrete terms for puzzle design in Braid and his upcoming puzzle title, The Witness.”

IndieCade 2011: Sissy’s Magical Ponycorn misconceptions (Joystiq)
“Sissy’s Magical Ponycorn Adventure may be one of the weirdest anomalies in gaming lately — it’s a LucasArts-style point-and-click adventure game that was actually designed by someone who wasn’t even alive when any of those games were released. 5-year-old Cassie Creighton designed the game with her father, Ryan, at a Toronto game jam, and when it was published online, it started spreading like wildfire around the blogs and Twitter accounts of game developers and fans, leading all the way up to its current status as a finalist at this weekend’s IndieCade Festival.”

Indie Jeff’s Guide to IndieCade 2011 (Shacknews)
“If you haven’t been before, when you first get to IndieCade, it won’t likely be what you’re expecting–but in a good way. One of the festival’s primary venues is in the Culver City Firehouse, another is in an art gallery within walking distance.”

IndieCade 2011 – Friday October 7 – A Photo Diary (IndieGameReviewer)
“An amazing day of panels, games, art and outdoor antics ended with the Game Jam at IndieCade village. Housed under tents and lit by the glow of projected laptops, some twenty young developers stood before the assembled, chilled by the cooling autumn weather, and presented their games in 110 seconds or less.”

More Game Coverage From IndieCade 2011 – Saturday October 8th (IndieGameReviewer)
” Today we spent less time in the conference rooms and more time checking out the games on display around the various locations in Culver City. It was great to see developer Jesse Vigil sitting at a table with several guests playing a round of his paper-and-dice board game Application Crunch that makes the process of applying to and deciding which College to attend into a parlor game.”

Tidbits from IndieCade (The Behemoth Devblog)
“How are you fellow Behemothians Pretty swell over here! I discovered a little event called IndieCade in Culver City (a city within the city of Los Angeles, CA) this past weekend. It’s an International Festival of Independent Games that’s focused on games that you wouldn’t see just anywhere. Packed full of game developers with a passion for creation, competitions, conference sessions, demos and general enthusiasts…it’s quite amazing to see everyone come together for the love of gaming.”

IndieCade Awards And Alternatives (RPS)
“I spent the weekend in a haunted watermill, which was pleasant and all, but I would rather have been at the Indiecade festival, battling inanely with invisible weaponry and rearranging boxes with strangers. The whole thing is done with now and that means it’s time for me to take a look at the winners, some of which I’ll cast no more than a sidelong glance at because they aren’t coming to PC. Last time I spoke about IndieCade I named my pick of the entrants as Proteus. Read on to see if the judges paid attention to my words and for a PC-centric awards ceremony of our very own.”

IndieCade 2011: What Brings You Here? (IndieGames.com)
“We caught up with independent game developers from Facepalm Games, Metanet Software, thatgamecompany, Kokoromi and Distractionware to hear what brings them to the IndieCade independent games festival in Culver City, California.”

IndieCade: Canabalt’s Adam Saltsman’s Pursuit of the Infinite (Gamasutra)
“As part of IndieCade in Culver City, CA, Semi Secret Software’s Adam Saltsman (Canabalt) discussed his “exploration and pursuit of the infinite” through his game and game tool development.”

IndieCade Day 1 — IndieCade Day 2 — IndieCade Day 3 (Gabotron)*
“Indie Cade is a conference and festival in beautiful Culver City, that is focused on the world of independent video games. Game makers from all walks of life come together to learn from and get inspired by each other. This year I decide to take notes in each of the sessions. It was a challenge, and I was a bit nervous, but it was a lot of fun and very rewarding.”

IndieCade 2011: Tom Sennett cares about Deepak Fights Robots (Joystiq)
“When Tom Sennett stepped on stage to pick up the Game Design award at this year’s IndieCade, his entire speech suggested strongly that he doesn’t, um, really care. But here’s his secret: He actually does. “I take the work very seriously,” he said. When it comes to Deepak Fights Robots (currently available on Mac, Windows and Linux), Sennett actually cares very much.”

IndieCade 2011: Award winners and inventive cooperation (Shacknews)
“One of the best things about this year’s IndieCade is the particularly wide assortment of incredibly innovative cooperative experiences. Given that all those in attendance love videogames–or at the very least, have a healthy curiosity–an enthusiastic collaborator is always in within arm’s reach.”

IndieCade 2011: The Takeaway (IndieGames.com)
“On the final day of IndieCade 2011, we spent time with independent game developers from LoadComplete, the Copenhagen Game Collective, Pixeljam and Haunted Temple Studios to hear what they will take away from the festival in Culver City, California.”

Hands-On/Previews

IndieCade 2011: Desktop Dungeons’ inspiration, past, and future (Joystiq)
“If you enjoy PC games, especially action RPGs like Diablo, but you’ve never once played Nethack, you probably should. No, seriously — go, right now, download it, and check it out. Sure, it’s hard, not very accessible (there are no graphics, only ASCII symbols to represent the player, items, and monsters), and enormously complicated. But it’s also essentially the root of the “roguelike” genre (named after a game called Rogue), featuring random dungeons with dozens of levels, exciting turn-based combat, and plenty of unpredictable magic. Desktop Dungeons is a game that continues in that tradition, though with one important twist: While Nethack, Rogue, and all of the other roguelikes take place over huge dungeons with multiple levels and lots of complexity, Desktop Dungeons champions simplicity… And it’s glorious.”

The Indie Fix: IndieCade Review of Games (BnBGaming)
“I spent the whole day at IndieCade yesterday, the annual indie gaming festival/awards… thing, and while I was there, I played the bulk of this year’s finalists. Before going on, I’d like to say that every game I played was impressive in at least one way or another, if not an all-around innovative, inspirational, or downright awesome experience. These games, and their respective developers, all deserved to be there, and each was a pleasure to experience.”

IndieCade Day 1 — Shadow Physics, Hohokum, BasketBelle (Shacknews)
“The first day of IndieCade found developers setting up their booths and getting their games ready for attendees to play this weekend. While several were still getting settled in, I was still able to get some play time in with a number of the festival’s games. I tried out demos of Honeyslug’s Hohokum , Michael Mollinari’s BasketBelle, GAMBIT Singapore’s Improviso , and SCAD USA/Hong Kong’s tabletop game Black Bottom Parade.”

IndieCade 2011: Molding The Swapper out of clay (Joystiq)
“The Swapper is one of IndieCade’s most fascinating finalists this year. While the trailer will definitely pique your interest about the title (it features some really interesting “create-a-clone” gameplay — more on that in a bit), what’s most incredible about this one isn’t how it looks or plays. It’s how it was made.”

IndieCade 2011: Johann Sebastian Joust (Shacknews)
“Copenhagen Game Collective is not known for creating conventional games. They’re constantly thinking outside the box, looking for different, more exciting ways to utilize the gaming hardware at their disposal. Last year, CGC enthralled many IndieCade 2010 attendees with their oddball contribution, B.U.T.T.O.N. (Brutally Unfair Tactics Totally OK Now), and took home the Wild Card award, as a result. This year, CGC brought another bizarre and creative game to IndieCade 2011 called Johann Sebastian Joust.”

*Those notes are amazing! Gabotron is awesome.

A pleasant surprise this morning as Spilt Milk Studios has again made their excellent Snake meets Geometry Wars retro arcade title Hard Lines temporaily free on the App Store. The offer (as per the usual for iOS handouts) goes for today, and today only.

I’ve been playing the game during travel days this summer and have to say it’s one of the top titles in terms of quality and depth I’ve discovered thus far on the platform. Hard Lines provides hours of high-score topping fun through a bunch of different creative and fun modes accompanied by a slew of whitty/hilarious one-liners. Plus it just recently received a content update adding a new Daily Challenge mode and four new power ups–iPhone/iPad owners don’t miss this one if you’ve yet to take the opportunity to pick it up.

Android owners must wait for another day for a free offer on the game, but they can still pick it up at its normal price of $2.99 anytime.

Developer Links returns to demand you drop anything else important you may have been doing. Stop working, or helping that guy, etc. For there are indie developer discussions we must keep up with!

2012 Indie Games Summit Opens Submissions, Reveals Special GDC Pass (GameSetWatch)
“Continuing his posts on the Independent Games Festival and related events, IGF Chairman Brandon Boyer calls for 2012 Independent Games Summit lecture submissions, also unveiling a new indie-centric pass for GDC 2012.”

Controlling the Player (#AltDevBlogADay)
“In my last article I referenced a Dara O Briain sketch about video games, where he complained about how hard they are to control and that they lock content. This is part two, and it’s time to tackle the crux of most video games: controlling a character on screen.”

Anyone remember when I used to be a game developer? (David Shute)
“Celebration time! My massive animation project is finished! More or less. But the three months of working 14 hour days 7 days a week are over, so I have my life back! Finally I can get back to gamedev – Two and Sentinel have been gathering dust for the last few months, and I’m excited about finishing them up and actually releasing something worthwhile for people to play, but I’m also really happy to have the time to actually play games again.”

Dev Blog: Our experience with game engines while making Totem Destroyer Deluxe (Cats in the Sky via indiePub)
“Totem Destroyer Deluxe (TDD) was our first “big” project using Unity. Before that we only used it for small things like prototyping game concepts. We’ve had a good experience with Unity so far and it helped resolve a few problems.”

Unite 11 slides are up! (Owlchemy Labs)
“The scientists at Owlchemy Labs are still catching up on their beauty sleep after galavanting in San Francisco for Unite ’11, but we thought we should post our talk slides here as soon as we became coherent.”

Let’s All Be Poor Together! (Vertigo Games)
“Many of you know I’ve been working at a coffee shop for the last year, paying off my debt and workin’, and making games mostly on the side. Well, in a few weeks that’s going to shift from part time coffee shop/ gaming hobby to part time game maker.”

Hero Core Official Game Guide (Daniel’s Base)
“Hero Core was first released in May 2010, featuring the return of Flip Hero and Cruiser Tetron, and the end of their story. While far more advanced than the original Hero, it maintains the retro style and comes with the usual dose of tricks, secrets, and menacing machines. Lucky you have this guide to help! Put away those “polygons” and “colors”, and let’s return to a time where games were hard as pixels.”

To players there’s no concept of cloning (#AltDevBlogADay)
“There’s been a lot of drama recently about the cloning or, more appropriately, the stealing of indie games. I had been thinking a lot lately about where I stand on the issue when I had an interaction with my mom that made me think about things a little differently. Last week, I went to meet up with my family at a local bar to watch some Rugby World Cup. I almost couldn’t believe it when I got to the bar and noticed my mom had her iPad out and was playing Crimson: Steam Pirates. I asked her how she found the game and she said it was in one of the top games lists for the iPad. I then asked if she had heard of a game called Steambirds and if she knew that this was a direct clone of that game. She replied, “No. This game is really fun though.” and kept on playing. Just as simple as that. Even asking my brother, who refers to himself jokingly as a MLG, didn’t know about the Steam Pirates/Steambirds or Ridiculous Fishing/Ninja Fishing cloning fiascos.”

IndieCade provides a plethora of unique projects, some that even go beyond the popular platforms we’ve come to expect video games to be delivered to us on. In fact going outside the box in that direction is a major way indie developers can show off their experimental prowess and creativity. So when I had an opportunity to play and watch a game on one of the three currently existing custom-built tables, I was immediately intrigued.

Black Bottom Parade falls into the (perhaps) budding genre of interactive tabletop, and it’s very cool stuff. The game is played on a custom built 57″ by 36″ prototype “gestural input” display, and involves players swiping controllers across the display in an attempt to maintain balance on a wobbly platform. How this is done in BBP is by having players direct the three band members (who simply walk endlessly in any direction you gesture them to) in an attempt to maintain symmetry on the platform.

The controllers are akin to large, upside-down shot glasses that you use to swipe (gesture) across the band members on the table to keep the platform balanced. In the sessions I observed and played, two players had to work together cooperatively to keep a handful of NPCs from falling off. It’s not as easy as it sounds, as many times your partner’s actions won’t necessarily coincide with your own unless you’re actually working together. To allow for co-op play the table is multi-touch, so there should conceivably be a way for more players to get in on the action based on how many functional controllers you have. Which in my estimation would be an awesome mess at first that would evolve into potentially some really cool teamwork.

Visually, the title paints a macabre meets Mardi Gras feel, as the band trio you control leads a pack of freshly deceased across the River Styx. The colors tend to the cool side (mostly lavenders, dark reds, and purples) to bolster the Underworld feel, but I (blindly) wonder if these colors were also selected due to how easy on the eyes they are when viewing the display.

The team from Savannah College of Art and Design–students from both Atlanta and Hong Kong–made it clear they have created the balancing game more as a proof of concept for the gestural input display table. The title is simple in concept, and has been created to demonstrate the viability of the platform first and foremost. So while the gameplay itself may not sweep anyone off their feet, the possibility of what game development could do if they got into creating  on the platform is what gets me really excited.

We’ll have some more media for Black Bottom Parade from this past weekend to share as we work through several hours of panel discussions and gameplay footage for this week. For now here’s a video of the alpha build in action. (For more information, check out interactive designer Daniel Plemmons’ page for the game):

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.”