It’s only been a few months since we last highlighted updates to Wolfire Games’ massively exciting upcoming rabbit-punching sim, Overgrowth, but there’s good reason for such frequent commentary. This isn’t a game that sits quietly in development limbo whilst outsiders look on, praying for news – any news – that the project isn’t dead in the water.

I missed it over Christmas day, but apparently IndieDB released the results of their 2011 indie game competition after revealing their top 100 games earlier this month. And just to be clear, these are the top 10 released games, I’ve also included a bit below the top 5 unreleased games, each of which look very tasty, although a little surprising as well…

Overgrowth, the hugely ambitious follow up to Lugaru, is all about anthropomorphic Rabbits punching other anthropomorphic Rabbits, with lightning quick combat, and ninja-like acrobatics. It’s an odd one for sure, but even in it’s current alpha state, it’s looking great.

Wolfire do like keeping their fans up to date with how the development process is going, and part of how they do that is with regular videos showing new features as they are developed. A couple of interesting new features have been shown in some of their recent Alpha videos, so lets take a look:

Here we get to see some of the stealth in action, where you can sneak up behind enemies, and get them in a chokehold. There’s a real weight to the animation, especially the corpse-dragging: I think it looks fantastic.

Here we get to see the newly implemented splitscreen mode, where two players can play either cooperatively or competitively, with one player using keyboard and mouse, and the other using a controller. They’ve also added a bunch of bugfixing stuff, and improved pathfinding, but that’s not particularly exciting.

If you want to give the Alpha a try yourself, you get instant access to it when you preorder the game.

No release date yet, but when it does come out, it will be out for PC/Mac/Linux.

[Wolfire]

Lots of people have far more things to say than I could ever possibly write about indie games. As such, enjoy this new feature that I am honestly going to attempt to do every week day. I might skip a day here or there, but hopefully it won’t be much more than that. I figure you probably come here for the most extensive indie news anyway, you might as well get easy access to whatever we could find throughout the day.

Enjoy!

Overgrowth Alpha Video #7 – New day, new video for fans of Wolfire Games’ upcoming ninja rabbit game: Overgrowth. (Wolfire Games Blog)

Excruciating Guitar Voyage 2 – Developer WickedWorx has announced that they are working on a sequel to their quirky puzzle platformer Excruciating Guitar Voyage. (WickedWorx Blog)

Minecraft Beta: December 20, 2010 – Notch has confirmed that his incredibly popular indie game Minecraft will reach beta later this month. (Notch’s Tumblr)

Devmode leaked! – The dev mode for the PC version of Super Meat Boy has been leaked. There’s no support or any sort of help from Team meat should you find yourself in trouble with it. (Team Meat blog)

Ulrich Jones: Rogue Survivor (Part 2) – Michael Rose’s fantastic narrative series as he explores the roguelike game: Rogue Survivor. (indiegames.com/blog)

And that’s it for today. I’ll probably get better at this as time goes on.

With Super Meat Boy coming out almost two weeks ago today, there’s been a lot of hype surrounding the game not only amongst gamers and the media, but also amongst fellow indie developers. Team Meat added many other characters into their game and, in turn, other indie devs have been incorporating Meat Boy into their game as well. While Overgrowth isn’t exactly a game that would be well suited for Super Meat Boy, the did manage to pay homage in their own “Super Meat Bunny.”

Now, before you watch the video, let me just say that Overgrowth is going to be amazing. Everything we’ve seen from Wolfire up to this point has been great. While I contend that Super Meat Bunny certainly has a disgusting factor about him, I am just that much more amazed that their game was even able to do something like this as it seems like it would be hard to implement.

Anyway, enjoy the video. The developers never mentioned whether he would make it into the final game or not so don’t get your hopes up.

[Wolfire Games]

Video

Developer Wolfire Games, creator of Lugaru, has released a new trailer for their upcoming spiritual sequel Overgrowth. While even the developer admits that their trailers are usually more on the whimsical side, I think we can all agree that this trailer is nothing but pure 100% awesome.

In other Overgrowth news, the game was recently submitted to the 2011 IGF and if this trailer is anything to go by we could possibly be looking at a future grand prize winner. Seriously, it’s that good.

[Overgrowth]

Trailer

Wolfire Games has dropped a new video showing off their open-world brawler Overgrowth and its new animation technology. A six-and-a-half minute showcase of what the sequel of Lugaru HD will be able to do, commentated quite enjoyably by the awesome John Graham (personally can account for the awesomeness.)

There’s even music which includes a live flute performance, nobody ever said Wolfire didn’t know how to put together a demonstration video. Overgrowth is in development for PC, Mac and Linux with a release date still to be determined.

How indie are you? Do your friends ask you about the best new independent games? Can you recognize screenshots from across the room? Can you sing indie game themesongs? (Ok… I night have made that one up.) Can you answer analogies to pass your indie-game SATs?  Take Indie Game Mag’s new quiz and send in your answers to quiz@indiegamemag.com for a chance to win an indie bundle of Gratuitous Space Battles, Crayon Physics Deluxe and Puzzle Bots. You may need the latest issue of  Indie Game Mag to help you answer some of the questions. [Disclosure: Issue 10 also contains my review of Osmos, so I would not be upset at all if you decide you need to own this issue.]

Here’s a sample question to test your indie games expertise.

[Source: Indie Game Magazine]

In the mood for an in depth indie session? Great news, we’re back again with another batch of great links from around the web. We’re not trying to send you away or anything, it ain’t that type of thing; we just want what’s best for you, to allow you to spread your wings and become a more well-rounded individual. There’s more to see out in this busy indie world than our ‘little site that could’ can currently provide dammit, so we scratch and claw to try to accomplish the impossible anyway and when we get tired we pepper in a little ILRU.

How To Make It As An Indie (Edge Online)
“It’s never been easier to set yourself up as an independent studio. Open platforms such as Xbox Live’s Indie Games and iTunes’ App Store are democratising development on consoles as well as the PC, while tools like XNA and Flash lower the barriers to entry in terms of both cost and experience. Suddenly, designers who have spent years submerged within massive hierarchies – “devoting their entire lives to modelling footballers’ noses,” as Frontier’s David Braben puts it – can suddenly have total control of their own projects. This comes at a price, however…”

In-Depth: Inside The Eerie Fiction Of The Devil’s Tuning Fork (GameSetWatch)
“Checking out student game and IGF Student Showcase winner The Devil’s Tuning Fork, Andrew Vanden Bossche examines its unique echolocation mechanic in conversation with the development team.”

Retro: Slay (Rock, Paper, Shotgun)
“Too many papers, too many books, too many MP3s. Games. I need games. Games that use my mind, that focus, sharpen and obsess it. Slay. Slay is perfect. I shall attempt to gather up the pieces of my travel-maddened brain and tell you about it. Slay is an independent turn-based strategy game from 1994, created by one man (with help from his brother) in an age where indie development was a very different thing to today’s web-wide chest-beating and constant discovery.”

Xbox Live Indie-Dome: April 4th-17th (Crush! Frag! Destroy!)
“Last time we had a surprising amount of quality releases, especially towards the end. But will this new installment see the same amount of love? Or will it be nothing but a load of “Meh!”? Read on and find out. Or just skip straight to the recap at the bottom if you’re the impatient type.”

@Play: Interview – Enjoy A Coffee Break Of Victory With Desktop Dungeons (GameSetWatch)
“‘@ Play’ is a monthly column by John Harris which discusses the history, present and future of the Roguelike dungeon exploring genre. This time – an interview with Rodain Joubert about the buzzed about Desktop Dungeons.”

The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Overgrowth (Joystiq)
“This week we talk with John Graham of Wolfire Games, whose Overgrowth, a follow-up to underground hit Lugaru, is currently in development.”

The Joystiq Indie Pitch: League of Legends (Joystiq)
“This week we talk with Riot Games co-founder and president Marc Merrill about how he and his team turned their passion for a Warcraft III mod into a full-fledged game.”

IGS 2010: Fantastic Contraption Postmortem (TIGSource)
“Colin Northway gave a fairly business-oriented postmortem of his game Fantastic Contraption at this year’s Independent Games Summit called (no big surprise here) Postmortem: The Design & Business Behind Fantastic Contraption.In short: Flash is good, Box2D is great, and anyone can create and publish a successful game all by themselves. (Though, backup from Andy Moore certainly doesn’t hurt!) Okay, it was a bit more in depth than that. Read on, if you dare!”

Interview: Loren Schmidt On Star Guard’s Retro Charm (GameSetWatch)
“In this interview for GameSetWatch conducted by Andrew Vanden Bossche, we talk to Loren Schmidt to satisfy our curiosity on his beautifully constructed, pixel-heavy PC/Mac freeware action game Star Guard, finding out just how its 1982-era lookalike retro charm was birthed.”

Issue 10 is ON SALE (The Indie Game Magazine)
“Change has arrived! Feast your eyes on the new look of IGM. Issue 10 features a brand new look to coincide with our new website launch. It is also our largest issue yet and is chock full of the best indie games of the year. The best games are shown at the Indie Game Festival every year, so we take a look at some of the best past winners and some of the new entries. We review Machinarium, Osmos, Saira, and 10+ other IGF indie games. There’s also the ultimate indie gaming quiz! You can send in your answers for some great indie prizes too! How indie are you? Find out in this issue of the new IGM and support the little guys and the geeks who write about them.”

Wolfire Games have just released a new tech demo showcasing the character physics in their upcoming rabbit fighting game Overgrowth.

Every element of the game looks to be a step above its predecessor Lugaru, and I’ll admit I laughed out loud to myself upon watching the more brutal elements of this ragdoll physics demonstration.

Every new aspect of the game Wolfire reveal looks great, and as the game works its way toward an unnamed release date, we’re going to be covering its progress.

You can take a look at the embedded video below: