The game focuses on the main character Lucas MacGuffin who’s resume calls him a magician and a thief. During his adventures, he steals a mystical amulet that changes him into a werewolf. Where the game comes in is on the period in his life where he’s forced to utilize both human and wolf form to solve puzzles and steal more treasure.

From the pre-alpha build we saw using placeholder artwork (mainly from Jolly Rover), the game is a series of push-puzzles where MacGuffin must move batteries into power outlets to open doors and reveal treasure. MacGuffin will be sent on missions by his landlord and battle the puzzles set forth by the main villain who has locked down the city.

The most striking aspect of this new game from Brawsome is the fantastic comic-style. Their artist has created wonderful characters that feel unique and interesting from all sides. The game’s story is told through portrait cut-scenes that are beautifully hand-painted. The game’s developers claim the style is so unique because they pulled the artist from outside of the games industry, thus bringing in a fresh perspective. From the early portrait work and concepts, they’re absolutely right. The new style in the game is great.

Once the full game is pieced together, this puzzle title will clock in at around 8 hours to complete. The experience will be chock-full of unlockables like developer commentary, collectible items and more.

Keep an eye out for this puzzling title later this year.

Think of it as a single moment in Canabalt with perma-death.

There is no reset button in One Single Life. Once you die you have a vestigial app haunting your iOS device reminding you of your success or more likely, your failure. The only help you have for success is the practice mode in which you can test out your abilities in a controlled environment. The leaderboards will then rank players based on how many, or how few, practice runs the player took before jumping into the main game.

Gameplay is simple. You’re standing on top of one skyscraper and need to leap onto the adjacent building. Once you tap “go,” your character accelerates at a constant speed. Another tap will launch the character into the air and towards the next building. Screw up and it all ends. There are currently 20 levels to get through to finish the game.

While the ramifications haven’t all been worked out yet, Fresh Tone Games is taking a gamble on a unique product. People waste dollars and cents on things every day, so like a scratch lottery ticket, why not take a shot at their game? One Single Life will be available in the coming weeks at the price point of $2.

Using the device’s multi-touch functionality, players are able to “toss” cute-sprites at a target. The game can be played with up to four players at one time. Once each player had their sprite bouncing around the game stage, the entire game world erupts into chaos and it becomes extremely difficult to actually hit the target.

The characters range from monsters to hamburgers and generally appealing cartoon characters. Each month the company is updating the game every month with additional content. In addition to the main flick-game, players also gain access to challenge levels that test accuracy and timing where the main arcade modes don’t.

You can find out more about Bane Games on their official website and even give a single-player version of Flick Buddies a try on Kongregate right now.

What looks like the simple button mashing of two players is actually a complex mix of fencing, running, jumping and outsmarting your opponent. Played with NES controllers, the game is fantastic for two players. You subtly adjust the height of your blade with a tap of up and down, and from a distance you can even toss your blade to impale your opponent from afar.

The goal in the game is to reach the end of the level, in your assigned direction. One player is bright yellow and the other bright orange. Each player runs to either the right or left, and the opponent is tasked with stopping them. So whoever gains the upper hand in the starting battle gets the chance to run towards their goal. But the opposing player will always respawn in their way and try to regain the advantage and move the playing field in the opposite direction.

This tug-of-war is fantastic. From clever stabs to lucky tosses, every lethal action in Nidhogg is overflowing with excellent gameplay. When one player finally reaches the end of the game world, they’re devoured by a giant worm and declared the winner. But the game is balanced well enough that this is generally no easy feat and the back and forth slash fest can linger on and on.

The entire experience is painted in a simplistic style that ranges from hallucinogenic clouds racing across the sky to a giant chandelier dangling over the players. And the stark contrast of the bright character sprites makes the tasks all memorable.

Nidhogg took home the IGF Award in the Nuovo category and was also nominated for the Seumas McNally Grand Prize and the award for Excellence in Design.

The game is scheduled for release on PC and Mac…someday. I for one want to start stabbing my friends immediately.

Best Student Game:

Fract - University of Montreal

Technical Excellence:

Amnesia: The Dark Descent - Frictional Games

Excellence in Design:

Desktop Dungeons – QFC Design

Best Mobile Game:

Helsing’s Fire – Ratloop

Excellence in Visual Art:

Bit.Trip Runner – Gaijin Games

Excellence in Audio:

Amnesia: The Dark Descent – Frictional Games

Nuovo Award:

Nidhogg – Messhof

Seumas McNally Grand Prize:

Minecraft – Mojang

Audience Award:

Minecraft - Mojang

Direct2Drive Vision Award:

Amnesia: The Dark Descent – Frictional Games

So altogether, Amnesia swept a lot of the categories netting a score for unsettling horror titles. This means that the new IGF banner is going to include Notch and the Mojang crew in full effect taking home the award.

They have been silent about the project they’ve chosen to fund, only announcing that there are three of them in existence, but today at GDC the Indie Fund team announced the projects that are burgeoning under their wing.

The first three Indie Fund projects are:

• Monaco - Andy Schatz (Pocketwatch Games)
• Shadow Physics – Steve Swink (Enemy Airship)
• Q.U.B.E. - Daniel Da Rocha (Toxic Games)

I’ll fill in more details about the presentation once I get some spare time.

Geoff and I listened to a talk the team gave at PAX last September, but their latest breakdown of their sales prowess included the second bundle that went on sale in September and clocked in $1.8 million of the total sales between both projects.

Their second bundle proved that the first instance wasn’t just a flash in the pan or another event on which one could hang the label of “the perfect storm.” The first bundle, which took the press (even ourselves) a moment to catch on to, ended up selling 130,000 copies. The second bundle cracked 200 and landed on around 230,000 copies sold. The excitement surrounding the second bundle was enough to blast around $500,000 in sales in the first 24 hours.

While we’ve already been over some origins of the bundle, it’s notable to catch that Wolfire Games’ first attempt at such a project was their collaboration with Natural Selection 2 in which the two games bundled up to sell preorders. They pulled together over 1,600 people who paid $39.95 for the combo.

If you recall, the second Humble Indie Bundle didn’t include any games from Wolfire themselves. On this matter, they formed the company Humble Bundle, Inc. and accepted “tips” on behalf of their managing of the sale. Of all the funds diverted through the games in the second bundle, Wolfire Games earned around $133,000 for their work putting it all together.

Their swords were sharpened for the second bundle, because they knew the amount of traffic they may have to anticipate. On the second go-round, they had 70 instances of the Google App running so that nobody would crash the program or the servers while trying to nab their games. With a chat client that had them running 18 operators helping people through tech issues, this tiny team of independent developers achieved the kind of customer service that a major corporation could only dream of. These operators were faced with up to 30 chat sessions at a time seeing each and every problem through to its closure.

The bundles were unequivocally a success. That cannot be denied. And with the creation of the corporation Humble Bundle, Inc. we can foresee more bundles coming down the pipeline. Only time well tell which titles make it into the new package. The deal seems to be a success for the developers, the players and the organizers: the trifecta of good business.

Inside a Star Filled Sky is a single-player, top-down shooter where you work your way through the inside’s of various creatures. Each level has an up arrow which will send you into the next creature, unless you’re killed and you’re sent back down a level. Think of the progression as a series of Russian stacking dolls: a world inside a world inside a world inside a world – and so on.

Each level is procedurally generated so that you’ll never quite experience the same progression twice.

For more information check out the game’s official website.

The game is available for $9.99 through Direct2Drive, Steam and GamersGate. For more information check out the game’s official site.

Here are the official changes and fixes that have popped up with the game’s relaunch:

Feature list:

• New account system – Allowing players to play each other on any PC platform.
• New Master Server – Faster, more reliable with more accurate player counts.
• New Tank Skins – Now identify players by rank.
• New East Coast and European dedicated servers – Low pings across the western world!

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed inaccurate player counts in servers.
• Fixed incorrect weapon bonus damage.
• Restored and fixed ‘Drakon Fire’ Steam achievement.
• Fixed collision issue with the ball bouncing off boost tunnels.
• Fixed ‘Team Fake’ boost color issue.

Misc. Changes:

• Added cockpit glass to the 1st person tank view.
• Reduced number of players necessary to record leader board stats from 6 to 4.

Here’s the trailer:

So here are eight new images (including the one above) to show off some of the tweaks they’ve implemented in just a week.

Here’s the latest alpha gameplay in action:

If you’re curious, you can also check out the most recent blog post by composer Pablo Vega over at the game’s official website.