The 7 Day FPS Challenge (7DFPS) is fast approaching; from June 9th those who intend to participate will begin to develop their fresh take on the first person shooter genre. It’s all rather exciting. The purpose of the Challenge, apart from honing skills and having fun, is to breathe new life into the first person shooter genre. It’s actually a thriving genre at the moment which is seeing a lot of attention for the AAA folks, but the argument goes that they’re just spewing out the same game over and over again. It’s all a bit of a bore really, despite the popularity of these games.

As responsible indie developers then, it’s up to you to turn that around and see how much room for experimentation there is in this increasingly damp genre. This requires putting those creative sparks on overdrive and really exploring new ground. That’s not the easiest thing to do though, and having some inspiration is always very handy. Hence, we’ve stepped in to try and help get those juices flowing, with the aid of the community of course who we predict are more than willing to throw ideas around.

In fact we’ve already initiated that ourselves over on Twitter, and you can see people’s ideas be searching the #7DFPS hash tag. Feel free to offer your own ideas too. Here’s some of our favorites from that feed for your convenience:

@gameproducer“#7dfps time travel multplayer where ur actions are logged, when one dies level restarts, your clone spawns too, repeats ur prev actions…”

@S0phieH “‘tag’ a player by shooting them. they will be warped to wherever your next bullet hits, shoot at the ceiling over a lava pit #7DFPS”

@joeLark0 “#7dfps Multiplayer. 3 legged race with GUNS! Work in pairs to win the race. Dead partner slows you down.”

@indiegamemag “You’re Cyclops from X-Men and you’ve lost your sunglasses. Find some more without destroying everything #7dfps”

@JoramWolters “Weapons have collision. The best weapons have very long barrels, the levels have a lot of tight corners. #7DFPS”

@McFunkypants “#7DFPS idea: in a battlefield, you’re cupid shooting love arrows. Match compatible couples to end the war! =) http://7dfps.org @7dfps”

@indiegamemag “Shoot a bullet at someone’s head, guide the bullet through your victim’s best memories as their life flashes before their eyes #7dfps”

The best place, perhaps, to draw inspiration from are previous first person perspective games (note the lack of “shooter”) and see what kind of differences can be found just floating about. Of course, out of this selection there are going to be some non-indie games, but they’re commendable for being different to the norm. We have some charming examples for you. Behold!

Chameleon Sight

This is a simple but daring take on the act of seeing through someone’s eyes. In this case, a Chameleon’s eyes. Which can be controlled separately from each other. This proves that sometimes even the most slightest of changes can lead to all sorts of new challenges for the player. While attempting to move about and control both of the chameleon’s eyes, the player has to attempt to eat all of the flies in the level and in the fastest time possible.

Blood

If we’re going to include an old school FPS we may as well go for a gloriously fun and over-the-top one, right? From the golden days of 3D Realms, Blood quickly became a cult title due to its quirky sentiments and exuberant gore. With the Duke3D engine and additional voxels from Ken Silverman sprites; Blood offered a unique take on dismembering enemies and playing around with them post-death. Weapons typically had more than one method of firing and came with great diversity – napalm launcher, Tesla Rifle, aerosol cans, a voodoo doll and a flare gun to name but a few.

True First Person Demo

We stumbled across this and thought to include it. First person shooters need more shoulders, don’t you think? This is one thing this demo brings – shouldered weapons. You can also clearly see the whole body and with an interesting use of head tracking using Seeing Machines, you get a real sense of actually being inside a body. Not too innovative outside of that, but it’s the feel of it that is important. You can download this demo version here.

First Person Mario

Sohcahtoa Studios have decided to make a first person platformer, using the format of what is probably the most well-known platformer out there. We could have picked Mirror’s Edge here for a AAA choice but decided on First Person Mario, simply because it’s so weird to play. Challenging too, altering the perspective of a platformer is no easy feat it turns out and it may not even be the right thing to do. Experimentation on the other hand is always the right thing to do. Try mixing the first person perspective with other genres and see what you get.

Singularity

For ages players had been looking for a game that let them take full control of the bullets they fired and Singularity did just that. There was plenty of other great stuff going on throughout the game but being able to guide a bullet into your enemy was definitely one of the game’s most memorable points. There’s certainly a lot of room in letting players do something a little more with the projectiles they fire – it just takes a little bit of thought.

Remember, the 7 Day FPS Challenge will begin on June 9th and will give you until the 16th to make your game. There’s no rules as such except that you should make a game using the first person perspective really. The official site just states to make a game and have fun, but innovation is what we really want to see!

Perhaps you shouldn’t get your hopes up, but then again, this seems to be pretty solid evidence that Steam is making its way to Linux very soon.

Indie developers and their games have been kind to Linux gamers, which is an often neglected platform, especially by the AAA side of the industry. They returned the favor by consistently being the highest contributors to the Humble Bundle which gave Linux gamers many new titles for them to try out, for example. Now, it seems that the penguin gamers will be treated to Steam in the near future.

What’s the evidence then? Well, a Reddit user has posted an image of an email conversation with Valve about porting the Source Engine to Linux which seems to be real and solid confirmation. Here’s the image for your viewing pleasure:

Why would we be interested in this though? Well, recently we discussed the idea that Valve were looking to make many big changes to Steam, ones that were to be focused on the needs of indie developers and like we just mentioned, Linux gaming is mostly catered for by indie developers. So, if more indie games will be on their way to Steam (hopefully) then it’s surely very good news to know that they will be able to make their games available to Windows, Mac and now Linux on the same platform.

That’s not to mention the benefit this will have to the many indie game bundles which will also be able to cater to the very generous people of Linux even easier if this was to happen! Let’s just hope that this means it really is on the way along with many more indie friendly changes to Valve’s digital distribution platform.

Jonathan Blow, creator of Braid, had a little sit down discussion with Gamespot which, as with most things he says, is worth listening to if you’re in the field of game design.

The first four minutes of this video interview with Blow are definitely the more interesting – the rest of it discusses the state of modern Japanese games which, to be honest, is a moot point but it does feed into Blow’s mentioning of “the joy of discovery”.

So, for those interested in some more interesting game design ideas from Blow, you’ll want to pay attention to the first four minutes. An interesting point from Blow is how indie games, he argues, started getting a little bit more validity in the grand scale of the industry in 2008 as they weren’t just small hobby projects, but interesting exciting other experiences.

He then moves on to the idea of having fun, seeming to evaluate that there are two types of fun – one being fun in the literal sense, a game that is just designed to be fun. The other being that games such as Counter Strike and Braid are fun, but are designed to be grueling for the player – giving them tough challenges to overcome. Blow then says that game designers have only just really started exploring the different emotional experiences that games can deliver, going further to imply that the AAA industry focuses too much on delivering only one type of these experiences, or perhaps a handful at most.

So, like we said, the rest of the video feeds into that discussion that Phil Fish ignited with his blunt discretion of the modern Japanese games industry during GDC. Blow seems to think the same way, that being that the Japanese games of today often don’t feed into that “joy of discovery” – as in they don’t allow the player to feel their way around the game and simply tell them exactly what to do. Now before you get all heated, he does mention the same of the AAA industry in the Western part of the world too.

Anyway, without further ado, here’s the video for you to watch yourself:

Jonathan Blow is still in development of his next game The Witness, of which you can find more information over on the official website.

The web game, Bullseye, is similar to a simple FPS tutorial stage, having players shoot targets, but there’s more to the idea than that, as the dev tries to give you a feel for their upcoming shooter.

Both Interstellar Marines and Bullseye were created using Unity. The minigame has players going for points and earning unlocks by shooting as many targets, as fast and as accurately as they possibly can. Though the gameplay is simple, the look and feel are solid and definitely leave me wanting more, which is certainly what the dev appears to be going for.