Game jams are probably my favorite place to find new games. I mean, how amazing is the environment of creation?  You’ve got talented, motivated designers get together and try to make a game in a short time span, coming up with ideas as quickly as possible and trying to implement them. I’m not that well-versed in the demands of game design, but I imagine one’s creative process would be chaotic in a situation like that.

Ben Kane, from Going Loud Studios, has put up a bit of a “year in review” post-mortem piece on his blog that gives a pretty good indication of how things went. All in all, I would say not bad, but I still hope he can find success on other platforms, specifically for DLC Quest which, for those that didn’t know, was one of my favorite games of 2011. Also I reviewed it favorably.

We don’t usually report on Windows Phone 7 games. Unfortunately, none of us editors have one. That said, when one of our very, very favorite indie developers and developer to one of our very favorite Xbox Live Indie Games releases a game onto WP7, we pay attention.

‘Maximalist’ is a good word to use to describe Trendy Entertainment‘s action/tower defense hybrid Dungeon Defenders. Lots of levels, lots of monsters, lots of stats, huge numbers, mountains of loot, options out the wazoo and more over-bloomed neon colored lighting than you’ve ever seen before. The bigness extends beyond the core design, too, with sweeping rebalances in patches and heaps of content-filled DLC already bulking the game out further. But does all this extra baggage make for a compelling co-op tower-defense experience, though? Read on and find out.

A couple months ago we wrote about Beatbuddy’s submission to the IGF. Back then we didn’t know too much about the game other than indie developers Threaks had dubbed it the first music action adventure game. Well, that was enough to draw us in… Now they’ve released their first trailer and it’s pretty much everything I hoped for.

So here’s a bit of funny news for you. Apparently Nokia, the bastion of good business sense in the mobile industry for the past 5 years (sarcasm!), has awarded its “Calling All Innovators” game prize of $250,000 to independent game company 10tons for creating mobile game Sparkle. Cool right? Except that Sparkle is not innovative at all.

As many of you should know by now, I’m not adverse to clones or copying features. It’s a natural step in the gaming evolutionary system. So I have no problem that 10tons created a Puzz Loop clone (probably more popularly known as Zuma) and released it under the name Sparkle. In fact the game has been cloned so many times at this point who cares? It’s a fun mobile game. That said, I do think it’s funny that Nokia thinks it’s innovative because it’s not. Not by a long, long shot.

My first thought was that there must have been some other game/developer who really strived to create something unique and innovative, at which point I was angry. But then I thought… it’s Nokia. The contest itself must have been pretty sparse in the first place. Perhaps Sparkle was simply the best they could have chosen.

Oh and the really, really funny part? Sparkle isn’t even exclusive to Nokia’s Symbian mobile OS. It’s available on damn near every OS: Windows, OSX, iOS (iPhone and iPad) Android, Bada (Samsung’s thing), WebOS (including the TouchPad). In fact, it appears that these versions even came FIRST. 10tons essentially just flushed a new version down the drain to Nokia and walked home with a quarter million dollars.

Oh Nokia… oh sweet, innocent Nokia. If you’re going to spend $250,000 on a clone, at least make sure it’s a clone that’s going to be exclusive to your platform.

[Nokia]

I got into a bit of an argument the other day with an indie gaming pal of mine. Essentially we debated the merits of mobile gaming (as many of you should know I’m not huge on it regardless) and which platform serves up better indie games more consistently: iOS or Android.

As somebody who owned an iPod Touch for a few years (and still owns an iPad) as well as an Android phone since October 2008 (I waited in line for a G1) and an Android tablet I felt like I had some authority in the matter. My friend has had experience with both as well.

Ultimately, we ended up disagreeing. He said that Apple’s iOS had the better, higher quality games which made them immediately more enjoyable for gamers of all types. It kind of makes sense. I think you’d have trouble arguing that there are at least more quality games on iOS than Andoird simply due to Apple’s stricter enforcement.

That said, I persisted in my belief that Android was actually better for indie gamers due to the act that many more games were available for free like Angry Birds and that since Google is less strict with their store, there will invariably be more choice. Along with that you have different sized devices (phones and tablets alike) with can cater to a gamer’s individual tastes. More choice has always, in my opinion, been better.

And of of course then you have Windows Phone 7, which we didn’t debate but I feel like should be brought into the equation as well. Despite not having nearly the massive amount of games and apps that iOS or Android has, WP7 strikes up a nice middle ground between the two in terms of design, choice, affordability, etc. That, of course, is combined with Xbox Live which brings with it a host of features gamers have come to know and love on their consoles.

So I leave it with you guys. Which mobile operating system caters to gamers best? If you had to convince somebody right now, what would you say to convince them?

NOTE: This is a hot topic for fanboys/girls. We here at DIYGamer do not condone rampant fanboyisms. Please discuss this politely and intelligently. Thanks you!

[Discussionware is a weekly feature aimed at promoting discussion with thought provoking topics. Each week we’ll be taking a look at a topic that influences indie gamers or developers and we’ll leave it open for discussion by our wonderful readers.]

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):

Welcome back for the third segment of Sense of Wonder 2011. These three games featured today all celebrate life in a special way. DIYGamer has covered them all in some form, however, it’s intriguing to see the games in motion and hear the developers’ thoughts behind them.

First up, Colin Northway of Northway Games works the Sense of Wonder Night with great enthusiasm when introducing Incredipede to the world for the first time. The developer speaks about his travels around the world and how Honduras inspired Incredipede with life teeming from every crack. The seemingly simple tools that are the building blocks of life are also the building blocks in the game. Players will traverse land and sea by constructing a Quozzle with limbs for swimming, climbing, tree swinging, crawling and more.

Goals seem to be to collect the fruit and reach the yellow goal, while avoiding pits and dangers. In the final version of Incredipede, players can send creatures as a sort of puzzle for others to figure out how to use them. Colin is confident in how Incredipede already exemplifies the “incredible variety in life” and “the sheer joy of life.”

For more Incredipede coverage, check out this extensive two-part interview with Colin.

Next up is the augmented reality puzzle game Reflow for iOS from xymatic. I took notice of Reflow back in July, and I am glad that the judges did, as well. The developers explain the solids from reality show up as white images (notice how hands are black in the video).

The object of the game remains the same: to re-flow the flow to its color-corresponding cup. In other puzzles, players have to change the color of the flow first so that it eventually matches the cup. Be sure to jump to the 6:00 mark to see how the guys draw on a piece of paper to solve a puzzle (including a single finger swipe which inverts the black and white in the image and a tilt of the device which controls gravity).

Omni Systems‘ Eufloria has been covered for quite some time, but PSN users finally get to experience the magic thanks to this upcoming port. In fact, Eufloria arrives on PSN this week: October 4 and 5 in the US and EU, respectively.

In this space-bio-strategy or as developer Rudolf Kremers called it, an “intergalatic gardening” game, players must spread seeds to become new trees in other asteroids to expand their colony. The trees literally sprout new life, in this process called panspermia. As the colonies expand, players learn how to make new forms of life.
Players also face adversity from other lifeforms that threaten to infect their own colonies.

Alex May describes how the graphics in the game are created at run-time using procedural content generation. Alex also describes how the procedural art provides feedback to the players, showing them what’s happening with their colony and others’.

Check out the full explanation and some colorful gameplay in the Eufloria presentation before our review of the PSN version this month:

Make sure you’ve watched the earlier SOWN presentations and stay tuned for the final videos.

I just read an article yesterday that said Rovio Mobile is now worth $1.2 billion (“Angry Birds is Bigger than Mario?“). I don’t know what that implies for the rest of you, but when I first heard this statistic, my jaw dropped. Rovio is worth almost as much as my favorite football/soccer team, Arsenal FC (which has been around since 1896). So is the story of Rovio an overnight success that other developers can strive for?

Well, not exactly. What is true is that the market for games has changed drastically in the last few years. The iOS and Android being the biggest proponents of this change, of course, but not the only ones. The mobile platform has become huge. With talk of whether console gaming is dying and where the industry is headed, it’s always important to take a step back and analyze to the best of our abilities what we have seen unfold before our very eyes.

Thomas Killen, one of the minds behind renowned Australian devs The Voxel Agents, has published a very revealing research study into the mobile market. Granted, as the humble Tom will admit, he’s not exactly a market analyst and expert in the field, but given his experience with the Voxel Agents (and the fact he put in an effort to finding out as much information as possible about the topic at hand), it’s fair to take his rather unbiased approach respectably.

There are a number of interesting findings from Tom’s article, like the fact that “every day 500,000 Android phones are activated” and how if every developer received a piece of the mobile pie, they would only end up with around $8,500 each (take into account outliers like Chillingo and Rovio and you’ll understand how skewed this statistic is).

Indeed, Tom’s study answers some burning questions I myself had for the mobile marketplace, but it also important raises new ones. Where do we go from here? What have we learned? I’ll leave those judgments up to you, the reader, consumer, or aspiring developer, because the answers certainly involve all of us. Check out Tom’s research right here. And yes, there are graphs, plenty of them, so do yourself a favor and give it a looksee!

[The Voxel Agents]