The DIYGamer contingent of Arsen, Johnny P and I are having a blast this week in and around E3. We’ve been checking out a bevy of titles and chatting it up with several developers, interest groups, and other enthusiasts from all around the world. The indie contingent is indeed stronger than ever my friends!

I’ve talked to so many awesome people this week, I believe a new profile feature would do us some good. Look for that along with a ton of other E3-related content to come in thick over the next couple weeks from us; along with the usual news info and game recommendations. Which reminds me, have you had a chance to say hello to our veteran writer/DIYGamer rookie James Murff? Well why not? He knows the games, y’know.

Oh yeah…this is an Indie Links post! Here’s the on-topic stuff our peers are up to around the expo as well:

PixelJunk lifelike Revealed (Indie Games Blog)
“Kyoto-based independent developer Q-Games has two PixelJunk series titles on display at E3 this year. PixelJunk SideScroller is a straightforward continuation of the PixelJunk Shooter series, patterned after the on-rails unlockable level at the end of PixelJunk Shooter 2. The art design is familiar and the music is again by High Frequency Bandwidth. Q-Games’ other title is quite a bit more out of the ordinary. In fact, company president Dylan Cuthbert was careful to emphasize that it is not a game at all, but a music visualizer and generator. The lower-case title of PixelJunk lifelike is meant to emphasize its experimental nature.”

Exclusive: Magicka Tweaks Skyrim’s Nipple (Rock, Paper, Shotgun)
“Arrowhead and Paradox are a cheeky bunch. Magicka’s irreverence became infamous in the moment they announced DLC for a fantasy magic game themed around the Vietnam War. Their cheeky approach has continued, after they learned a while back that the Paradox booth at E3 would be immediately next to Bethesda’s megabooth. The result? See below for the full version.”

Minecraft coming to 360 and Kinect this Winter (Joystiq)
“Man, Mojang’s little indie darling is getting some major mileage with the gaming industry’s biggest players. The Microsoft E3 press conference brought the announcement that Minecraft would be making its way to Xbox 360 with some unexplained Kinect support this Winter. No other details were announced, but we’re thrilled to punch trees to extract logs using our real hands.”

Hands-On Impressions of Minecraft: Pocket Edition (Indie Games Blog)
“Seeing Notch at E3 was a bit of a surreal experience, something that may have had a lot to do with the multitude of fans that were swarming him relentlessly. It was something right out of Hollywood, a red carpet moment transplanted into the Xperia Play booth at E3. Like clockwork, cameras would flash and people would declare their undying adulation. The only thing that could have made the illusion complete would have probably been Notch in a Calvin Klein suit and a matching sneer. Fortunately, the Swedish developer retained both his hat and his unassuming demeanor.”

BattleBlock Theatre E3 Update! (The Behemoth)
“You’re going to be hearing a lot of specifics this week. Stories about Nintendo’s new console, Halo Part 12, and a ton of other bullet point listed stats and facts about all the upcoming and greatest things ever created. We don’t have any of that really, in fact all we have is our new website for BattleBlock Theater.”

Torchlight 2 preview: Embers only (Joystiq)
“Runic Games is showing Torchlight 2 on the floor of E3 this week, and we’re just as busy as you are looking at all of this E3 news, so we’ll get right to it: It’s great. All of the things you loved about the first Torchlight are back, polished and updated, along with one of the most long awaited features of the game, co-op multiplayer. Not a lot has changed, but not a lot needed to — this is Torchlight with a lot of smoothing, a great graphical upgrade, and a whole lot of fan lovin’.”

Desktop Dungeons Demo Playable During E3 (TIGSource)
“For the next three days, you can try out a browser-based build of Desktop Dungeons (Unity plugin required). This is the demo that QCF Design is showing off at E3.”

PixelJunk Sidescroller Previews: Joystiq — Indie Games Blog

Raptisoft is generously putting up the iOS version of their silly, enjoyable 2D platformer Robot Wants Kitty for free on the App Store through today as a special one day offering. iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch owners: do yourself a solid and pick it up.

As the game would suggest, you play as a robot desperate to secure a kitty that sits somewhere in the level behind enemies and other obstacles. Some that require the use of your abilities and power-ups to pass, others just require your constant drive to possess the cat.

You can always check out the perma-free flash version as well, but if you have an iOS device why not pick up the more content-packed and graphically enhanced version for absolutely squadoosh while you can? Have an iPhone trailer if you need help on whether or not you’d like a free game:

[via IndieGames.com]

I pre-maturely judged this game as Limbo-like, but in doing so I also increased my motivation to play it. Prior is a delightfully constructed puzzle-platformer from krangGAMES. Much of it centers around the unknown, so it’s hard to pick and choose which details to tell you and which to leave out. It’s pretty apparent at the beginning of the game that you know nothing. In fact, this is probably further illustrated by developer’s own description of the game. It goes a little something like this:

Who are you? Where are you? Why are you there? PRIOR: You know nothing.

You move about by using the WASD keys, among a couple of other buttons, and go from area to area attempting to solve puzzles to progress and discover notes with hints as to what has happened to you, who you are, and where you are. There is certainly an air of eeriness throughout Prior. As you go searching for answers — or, at least, it seems — you may come up empty-handed. Much of it is even affected by choice. I can’t discuss this without spoiling the game for you, albeit this is a weak spoiler: there are three endings to the game. Each is tragic in its own way. How you reach them is essentially up to you. There are a number of walkthroughs for the game, most notably on JayIsGames.com, but I suggest piecing the puzzle together yourself.

Simply put, it’s much more rewarding to delve into the dark ambiance of Prior and learn about the environment by yourself. Although some may surely look at the game’s story laughably, those of us who are akin to Flash games and don’t mind suspending disbelief should have no problem connecting with its malaise tone and meaning. Likewise, there are a few interpretations of the story — which takes center stage along with the carefully constructed and wonderfully designed environment.

Prior is a game worth playing, and it’s absolutely free. What you may gain from it, however, may be priceless. See for yourself.

[Prior]

I’ve always had a special place in my heart for marble-type puzzle games, beginning with Marble Madness when I was just a small child. I just love the physics behind them, to be honest. Unstoppaball is a similar physics puzzler to Marble Madness, but with a single caveat, it’s available as a browser game.

With the advent of the Unity Web Player, developers have been able to create browser games that far surpass what we are typically used to. In fact, they’ve gotten to the point where browser games can offer full PC experiences without the need to ever install anything (aside from the actual player plug in, of course). Unstoppaball is a showcase example of Unity’s ability to create fantastic games for the web.

Anyway, enough gushing about the technology, the game itself is actually quite good as well and controlling the ball is quite intuitive despite the fact that you’re only using the four keyboard arrow keys. I was actually quite impressed that the game didn’t suffer from worse controls, especially given most of my recent experience with rolling physics puzzlers have been with thumbsticks, which are far more accurate than any d-pad.

Unstoppaball is available right now via Kongregate. As always, browser games are free.

[Kongregate]

This past weekend was the Global Game Jam, a yearly event which tasks teams of developers to create a game in under 48 hours. It’s an arduous task that has developers forgoing sleep and food, on some occassions, in order to complete their game on time. Oh and there’s also a theme, for which this past GGJ’s theme was “extinction.”

This past Sunday I was lucky enough to be able to visit my own city’s (Portland, OR) game jam, speak with the developers and see what they were working on. All of them were creating fantastic games and I hope to be able to get a piece on my own experiences with the even sometime next week.

Anyway, I bring up this post today because I’ve just played an intersting GGJ “game” that takes a more direct path to expressing this year’s theme. The game is called “Happy Path and believe me when I tell you that it’s anything but.

As a first person game, everything starts out simple enough. You wander along a path with sunshine and lollypops all along the way. Everything is happy, as the title suggests, and even the narrator of the game is happy enough to give you a tour of what he hopes to add into the game at a later date, post-GGJ. About five minutes into the path, however, things start to take a turn for the worst…

I don’t want to spoil it for you, but needless to say the happy little path that the developer created soon becomes a hellish nightmare for all the inhabitants of said Happy Land. Oh and fans of Minecraft will love the end “villain.”

For a game made in 48 hours I was quite impressed with what the developer chose to do for his theme on extinction, hence why I’m sharing it on DIYGamer. It only takes about 15 minutes from start to finish so, if you’ve got the time, I’d suggest giving this game a play.

[IndieDB]

Alright, going off the title of this article you might find yourself just a little confused. Granted, it’s a pretty difficult concept to realize in a single title. Regardless, the game we have here could very well be one of the most unique experiences you’ll have the chance to play this year. In essence, we could be looking at the “Sleep is Death” game of 2011, as in, the completely unique “you’ve got to experience it to believe it” type of game.

Coordinate Quest, by indie developer Tom Sennett (of Runman fame) has put together a very unique adventure, exploration game where the entire purpose is to collect Macguffin Muffins. The idea is that there is no way for any one person to find all the Macguffin Muffins and, instead, you’ll need to work together with others who are playing the game at a similar time to find them all.

Of course, this is still a single player game. As the title states, this is a game you’ll be playing by yourself. According to Sennett, you’ll need to use outside social media forms of communication in order to help each other find all the muffins. Think of it as a big, virtual, cooperative treasure hunt.

Tom is planning to host a game tomorrow and we are forming up a “team DIY” over on the forums if you’re interested in joining. Should be fun! Game time starts at 3:00pm PST, 6:00pm EST.

[Coordinate Quest, Team DIY]

In a continuous effort to expose their under-appreciated and surprisingly deep casual puzzler Tidalis, Arcen Games has released a free, slightly scaled-down browser version through the Unity Web Player plug-in.

Serving as a fast and easy way to drop in and play, Arcen head Chris Park explains they got the idea of ‘Tidalis Lite’ from the bite-sized lite versions of games on iPhone. He goes on to point out that while there’s a lot of overlap, much of what the browser version offers up differs from the full game’s demo.

‘Tidalis Lite’ is currently in beta and will officially release sometime early next week once the team confirms all the bugs have been swept clean. It weighs in at just under 7 MB and took just a short time to load on my crackerjack connection.

If you like what you see, the full version with all the bells and whistles can be purchased for $10 through the developer.

[Arcen Games]

Browser games are a bit of an enigma for me. For whatever reason I just can’t seem to get overly involved in one unless it’s a really, really good game. While sites like Kongregate have created easy access to some of the best browser games ever to be released, I still find most of them a fairly downtrodden compared to most platform-specific games.

That said, every now and then I’ll come across a browser game that I really enjoy, typically in some fashion that creates a unique sort of gameplay. Today’s pick is just sort of a game called Tealy & Orangey. It’s kind of a lame name, granted, but the gameplay is purely unique.

Tealy & Orangey takes a very simple idea of a platformer and  switches it up a bit by having you control two different characters at the same time. In this case, you’ll be controlling two balls, one colored teal and the other colored orange. Should you move left, both will move left. Move right and both will move right. Two characters, one system of controls.

The hook here is that each moves along it’s own level. Meaning there will be hazards for each depending on where you are in the level. As such you’ll have to frequently check each level to make sure your not about to jump into some spikes. Should one hit a spike you’ll be required to start over. The goal of the game being that you want each ball to reach its respective goal without coming into contact with anything that will end your game prematurely.

It’s really an incredibly complex system that makes other regular platformers seem almost easy by comparison, particularly when you reach the latter levels.

Tealy & Orangey can be played right now via Kongregate. If you’ve got a few minutes to spare, I’d recommend checking it out.

[Kongregate]

I feel guilty for liking Foopets.

I really do.

I think it has something to do with the fact that it makes me feel as though I’m selling out, somehow. Foopets is cute. Foopets is stereotypical. Foopets is a browser-based version of Nintendogs decked out with kittens for good measure. Foopets is .. girly.

In spite of how it affects my pride, I find it hard to deny the fact that Foopets is actually a pretty spiffy clone of Nintendo’s globally-adored Nintendogs. The visuals are charming, the gameplay surprisingly deep; you even have to clean out kitty litter. More than anything, however, I enjoyed the premise behind this adorable little release. While players can choose to purchase their account and make off with a pet immediately, cheapsakes and children have the option to work extensively at their virtual adoption center first. After that, they’ll be awarded a pet of their own.

Although hardly original, it’s still a pretty interesting approach to things. Foopets makes it clear that pets are work, a responsibility onto themselves as opposed to a decorative sentient item.

[Play Foopets Now]

So here is a unique game that managed to find its way into my inbox. It’s actually an HTML5 Chrome web store game, but beyond even that it’s a unique PC-equivalent of the twin stick shooter that has you killing a multitude of monsters in an arena like setting.

Anybody who has played a game like Geometry Wars will be instantly familiar with the high concept of Onslaught! Arena. Essentially the game is just a twin stick shooter played on a PC. Except instead of using a left and right thumbstick, you’ll use WASD and the mouse. Not that that’s a bad thing as the control method actually works fairly well.

Aside from that everything else seems to be fairly standard affair for the genre. You’ll fight off waves of enemies, acquiring weapons as they drop with each successive wave being more and more challenging that the one that preceded it. It’s not entirely unique, but it sure is fun.

The game is available right now for $5, whch kind of seems like a steep price when Steam is practically giving games away. Still, if you’re looking for a fun browser-based game to play, I can’t argue against you checking out Onslaught! Arena, it even comes with a lengthy demo for you to play should you want to try before you buy.

Also, word to the wise, I would not play this game on Firefox. It was slow, sluggish and overwhelmingly a poor experience. I don’t believe this is the developers fault, but rather Firefox’s lack of strong HTML5 support. Google Chrome worked great.

[Try/Buy]