A 2D retro style adventure game mixed with plenty of British charm and humor, color me interested. Add in a demo, an amusingly dry-humored narrative driven experience and a throwback to the Atari 2600 and you will find Flibble has me paying attention.

Zayne Black’s Flibble is an interesting title taking its inspiration from the classic Atari 2600 game, ‘Adventure’. In Flibble you will deal with increasingly complex mazes and a robust story with over 6,000 words of dialogue telling the story of Captain Dirk British and his A.I. companion Clive on an alien planet. As a captain of the International Space Corps, you will unravel the mystery of the planet’s inhabitants, the Flibbles, and hopefully find a way to repair his ship in the process.

To do so, Captain Dirk British will have to face off against perilous mazes and hostile creatures of this alien planet. Along the way you will have to rescue the captured Flibbles  in order to piece together the strange goings-on that led to your arrival on the planet as well as unlock the gateway to the next zone. The challenge is navigating the 10 mazes Flibble has in store for you and defeating the hostile creatures with a shortening supply of ammunition. If that’s not enough Flibble for you, there is also a Time Trial mode and a secret mode to unlock. What is in the secret mode you ask? I have no idea.

A certain degree of British humor is strewn throughout the story that gives a very light edge to it. Sometimes it’s as simple  as your Clive reminding you he cannot drink tea because he’s a computer or adding a dedicated explosion button for those with short attention spans goes a long way to giving Flibble its own charm. I’m actually kind of curious if that whole explosion idea works for getting people to pay attention.

Anything? Well I assume if you are still reading this it worked. Now that I have your attention again, Flibble is available for $4.69 at its website, pick up the demo for free and give it a shot.

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Remember The Good Ol’ Days In ‘Flibble’

The games covered in today’s Indie Links let you play as a ninja, a restaurateur, or a claymation body-swapping adventurer.  (Not all in the same game, though a body-swapping ninja restaurateur would be a unique character.)

Indie Events: Freeplay Submissions Open, Lunarcade Landing Soon (IndieGames.com)
“The eighth annual Freeplay Independent Games Festival, open to international submissions, and Lunarcade are coming soon to Australia.”

Terraria Meets Borderlands In FortressCraft2d (Kotaku)
“ProjectorGames, creators of one of the best-selling Xbox Live Indie MineCraft clone FortressCraft, are going in a different direction with FortressCraft2D: sideways.A far cry from the 3D building game that sold like gangbusters in the XBLIG channel,FortressCraft2d is a 2D zombie survival game that leans heavily on procedural generation of worlds and weapons to keep the experience fresh and new every time it’s played. There’s a definite Terraria vibe here, with a little Borderlands thrown in for good measure.”

Hardcore Restaurant Sim Preview: Cook, Serve, Delicious (Vertigo Gaming) (IndieGames.com)
“Hardcore restaurant sim management, you say? From the developer of The Oil Blue, I’d expect no less. In Vertigo Gaming’s upcoming commercial sequel to Ore no Ryomi 2, players must return the Cook, Serve, Delicious restaurant to its five-star status by keeping the menu items interesting, toilets cleaned, and the buzz high, in addition to preparing food.”

Letters From A New York Indie #3: How Much Is Enough? (Hookshot Inc.)
“Letters from a New York Indie is a diary written by friend of Hookshot Inc, Kevin Cancienne, one of the creators of Drop7, who recently left his position as Director of Game Development at area/code to pursue life as an independent game-maker. The series documents life as a one-man indie as Cancienne explores what happens next.”

In Good Conscious: The Swapper (Rock, Paper, Shotgun)
“The Swapper has been in development for a good long while now. We first noticed it in October 2010, and today it’s one of seven games receiving the Indie Fund’s financial support. Today they’ve announced that they’ve had Penumbra’s Tom Jubert writing their game’s story (“leading narrative development”). The 2D puzzle-platformer will apparently discuss such existential questions as whether we have a soul, what is consciousness, and the very nature of our being. Which it’s fair to say is something platformers all too often forget to broach.”

Google Play Cracks Down On “Confusingly Similar” Apps (Ars Technica)
“With the latest changes to its developer policy, Google seems to making a serious effort to try to impose some sort of order on the wild west town that is its Google Play Android app store.  The most important change for the unsavvy consumer might be the new restrictions on copycat apps. Now, these knock-offs ‘must not have names or icons that appear confusingly similar to existing products.’ That new policy should be useful in combatting apps like Infinity Blade II, a fake version of Chair Entertainment’s popular iOS game that surfaced on Google Play recently, or Temple Run, which appeared in many forms on Google Play before the official version was ready. Apps with names like ‘Irate Birds’ or ‘Snip the Rope’ might also come under fire for being ‘confusingly similar,’ depending on how strictly Google plans to enforce the clause.”

Warsow 1.0 (TIGSource)
“Warsow is a free, open source competitive FPS game built on Qfusion, a heavily modified version of the Quake 2 engine. In development for 7 years, the design is based on Quake 3 but adds new movement abilities – such as dashing, wall jumping, and ramp sliding – that are accessible via a special key. Additionally, Warsow has a number of features that make it easy to modify the game and spectate matches.”

Reinventing Stealth In 2D With Mark Of The Ninja (Gamasutra)
“Although there are plenty of ninja games, quite few depict the ninja as the master of stealth and trickery he ought to be. And stealth games are precious rare in the platformer genre. But with its upcoming Mark of the Ninja, Klei Entertainment wanted to try a couple new things. “

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Indie Links Round-Up: Light And Dark

Wadjet Eye Games have really been cementing their place as the second coming of Lucasarts these past few years. They’ve put out a steady stream of well-written, thoughtful and interestingly themed point-and-click adventures, and now they’re ready to tease their next project – Primordia. Here’s the brooding, atmospheric first trailer:

A dark, apocalyptic cyberpunk aesthetic here, and a story revolving around a machine-city falling into corruption and disrepair in the absence of human control. All of this, and it’s narrated by Logan Cunningham, the inimitable voice of Rucks from Bastion. The art (while slightly low-res, admittedly) looks fantastic, and reminds me a lot of Beneath a Steel Sky. This is on the grungy, worn-down end of the cyberpunk scale for sure.

No specific release date on this one yet, but Wadjet Eye are aiming for the fourth quarter of this year. We’ll be covering news on this one as it unfolds, but you can follow the development of the game and read up some more on the official site here.

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Cast Your Ocular Receptors Over This ‘Primordia’ Teaser Trailer

In addition to all the articles about indie games that you expect, today’s Indie Links include some articles about the finances involved: the effects of Steam sales, and winning and losing indie game campaigns on Kickstarter.

The Project Zomboid Interview (IndieGames.com)
“Project Zomboid, the incredibly ambitious zombie survival RPG that pits gamers against loneliness, starvation, desperation, insanity and, yes, zombies, is about to get a brand new version, and Will Porter, Project Zomboid’s writer and co-designer, is about to answer a few questions. So, uhm, read on!”

Steam Sales: How Deep Discounts Really Affect Your Games (Gamasutra)
“Valve’s Steam sales have always proven a great time for consumers to score some cheap PC games, but over the past several months, there’s been some debate over whether these promotions are good for game developers. Some have argued that the major discounts devalue games, and end up hurting the industry in the long run.”

Kickstarter Katchup – 28 July 2012 (Rock, Paper, Shotgun)
“As the Kickstarter Katchup grows, I’m scanning the budget to see if I can hire a personal assistant. With 29 tabs open for projects, if Chrome crashes at this point I’m going to walk out the front door and just keep walking. Just for the sake of my sanity, I’m going to have to keep some of the entries shorter, but give them a click if it sounds like something you want to know more about. If there’s a project you’re just aghast we haven’t included, email me via my name above and I’ll take a look – but, you know, try to do it nicely.”

A Nation Of Wind (TIGSource)
“A Nation of Wind is an action sim where the goal is to control obelisks in levels composed of floating islands. To control an obelisk, it has to be surrounded by four temples, which are expensive in resources – you’ll have to start by building an infrastructure that includes farms, saw mills, and mines. Enemies will attack your colonies by land and air, however, so you’ll also need walls and turrets to defend. Direct attack is possible with your airship, too, using a variety of weapons that are fired with the mouse.”

Kitty Catch Mouse (PixelProspector)
“Kitty Catch Mouse is a fast paced gravity switching neon colored platformer about a cat that hunts a mouse in space.”

Aliens Vs. Presenter: Natural Selection 2 At Rezzed (Rock, Paper, Shotgun)
“Rezzed was twelve hundred million years ago, but there are still a few dev sessions left to share with those who couldn’t make it down to lovely Brighton on the day. Here’s Unknown Worlds chatting about and demonstrating their aeons-in-gestation FPS/RTS mash-up Natural Selection 2, including a whole lot of giant mouth-based action.”

The Day After #ScreenshotSaturday 5 (IndieGames.com)
“I’m diving right into the fifth edition of The Day After #ScreenshotSaturdaywith Martin Ziegler’s visually striking Wake Up Call. The beta of it went well enough that everyone should get to play it ‘next week.’  The premise is rather out there. The game happens inside a comatose man’s mind, and he has to to earn his consciousness back. I’m ready, Mr. Ziegler. I can’t say the rest of the games have such a deep premise, but they sure are nice to look at! That’s what this feature is for, after all…”

Now That Dear Esther Is Done, Everybody’s Gone To The Rapture (Kotaku)
“Indie developer thechineseroom’s experimental first-person adventure Dear Esther was a runaway success, despite the fact that wonderfully moody and atmospheric experience wasn’t exactly what one might consider a game. Now that they’ve set the mood, it’s time to add in a bit more game with Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, the story of the end of the world and the inconveniences that might cause.”

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Indie Links Round-Up: Castles In The Sky

Senscape has been kind enough to provide us all with a brief and entirely interactive glimpse into the world of Asylum, the first and – by that logic – freakiest game to be created using their homegrown Dagon engine.

It’s a point-and-click adventure, set within the hallways of the mysterious Hanwell Mental Institute – the developer’s official stance is to keep quiet about specific plot details. All we can assume so far is that the protagonist has been tasked with an investigation into the recently closed asylum, to uncover ongoings that are no doubt nefarious in nature. It’s a classic setup and, were there not to be some manner of supernatural development down the line, I would be entirely stunned.

I’ve taken my first trip through it, fifteen minutes from beginning to end, and I’m suitably impressed by the atmosphere they’ve created with the engine. It’s Lovecraftian through and through. The player character coughs through the dust within the abandoned rooms. He offers notes and descriptions in a manner that seems entirely well-placed considering his surroundings. There’s fear in his voice, a hint of madness and a foreboding sense of determination to continue with his task. And then there are the inmates, banging and wailing.

If you want to have a go for yourself, head over here to download. The teaser is currently available for PC, Mac and Ubuntu. And if you want to find out more about Asylum, check out the main site, here.

It’s important to note that Senscape have not released this as a demo per se, as the content has been created separately from the main game, but it offers an indication of what we might expect. The full release is expected to be with us next year.

[With thanks to Richard Cobbett for bringing this news to my attention]

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Senscape Release ‘Asylum’ Interactive Teaser

The video game world is an ever-changing phenomenon. Every year it seems that someone innovates, then someone else takes that innovation and warps it to either transform the idea into a game all the more original or catapults that idea into the mainstream’s all-seeing eye. Those innovations, ever so slight as they may be, have led us to the nature of today’s games, which I would argue are often more style than substance when it comes to the big name companies and their super titles, with a few exceptions (Dark Souls, Skyrim, etc.). Big release $60 games have become a sort of odd hybrid of thirty minute cut-scenes,which rival movie type production, and the root principle of video games. Sometimes one is overshadowed by the other. Namely the movie aspects overwhelm the video game qualities. Even so I cannot help but wonder which path gaming will favor in the coming years. One thing is for certain; Indie developers have recently made it a point to go one direction or another in design.

Some Indie developers have turned primarily to taking gaming in the “experience” direction. I am not arguing that these groups are interested in making movie-like games, but rather are making stories with gaming elements. A perfect example of such would be the Half Life 2 mod Dear Esther, which has become somewhat of an indie darling. I have played it, and verily rejoiced at the idea of its non-linear poetry-styled storyline. But many people questioned whether or not Dear Esther is even a video game, so much as it is an interactive storybook. Many adventure games live in the same realm. Recent indie adventure games like Hydrophobia: Prophecy and  Resonance are fairly straightforward in a point and click nature. They hearken back to the classic adventure games, and that is largely the point of their existence. For people to casually play through them at their leisure and content. They are as accessible for someone such as myself as they are to my non-gamer sister. I cannot count on my two hands the number of Nancy Drew adventure games she has blown through. Not that I would liken a Nancy Drew game to an adventure game classic like The Longest Journey. But they are strictly purposed towards the experience, not the gameplay.

The quintessential example of a game which is purely focused on the “experience.”

The other side of the proverbial coin is the current indie trend toward gaming returning to its very roots. I believe they are referred to as a gamer’s game. All too often when I was playing Super Meat Boy and Dark Souls simultaneously I was told I was a true gamer. Please, hold your applause while I continue gloating as my gloating will just drown out your applause. But seriously, there are some games which are meant to be played then never spoken of again. There is no deep philosophical discussion to be had about Contra. All you can say is “Contra was sweet. I spent three years trying to beat that game.” Which is great in its own regard. Indie developers have decided to be pure energy and no frills, and in many regards, that is a very refreshing stance on gaming. You begin the game. You have three lives. You better be careful. Checkpoints tend to be brutally far back in these types of games, or in extreme cases you die and are just dead. I play Bit.Trip Beat and chase high scores, because there is such a thing as a score. The ideas are novel because they are classic, but died out, and are seeing a revival.

It’s like 1988 all over again.

So, what do I prefer? Puzzle games, Through the Ages: A Story of Civilization, and ribs. But in terms of gaming sustenance I cannot help but think the novelty of the extreme will wear off. How much more can the experience of games be stripped down until we are simply playing pong and calling it a revolution? And on that note when will games strip me of my gamepad, mouse, and keyboard and simply shove their ideals into my mouth cavity. I am probably wrong, as the indie community is strongly influenced by nostalgia. Perhaps there is no middle ground. Perhaps indie gamers are extremists. My fear is not of the current generation of games; however, it would appear the extremes will continue toward their respective outlier. I for one hope that the trend settles and new innovations are prized more than recycled ideas.

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Indie Game Philosophy: Two Extremes

One-man studio Smudged Cat Games doesn’t get nearly the respect it deserves. Between the clever single-screen puzzling of The Adventures of Shuggy and the mind-crushing, dimension-bending complexity of Gateways, it breaks my heart to hear that they continue to underperform sales-wise. Hopefully, this move will help give Gateways the boost it needs. This September 13th, the game officially re-launches, this time on Desura, Steam and Xbox Live Indie Games. That should cover just about all the bases, right?

Of course, you can still buy the game now direct from the developer. If you’re at all interested, you probably should – it uses the Humble Store framework, same as the Humble Bundles, which means you’re likely going to get a Steam key if you buy it direct, and more money goes to the developer anyway. The game continues to be updated and tuned, with the latest major update bringing a fast-travel system and some refinements to the hint system. I wouldn’t be surprised to see it get another major update close to re-release.

As mentioned, Gateways is available now for $10 direct from Smudged Cat Games, although the Steam, Desura and XBLIG releases won’t be happening until September 13th. You can get a fairly generously sized demo on the site as well – well worth trying if you like your puzzles deep and involved.

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Brain-Busting Portal Puzzler ‘Gateways’ Hitting Steam, Desura & XBLIG September 13th

Ever since the first in-development footage of Dust: An Elysian Tail surfaced years ago, I’ve been following it like a hawk. It went on to win Microsoft’s Dream Build Play contest, and secured itself an Xbox Live Arcade publishing deal. Now, it’s the crowning item in this year’s Summer of Arcade event. Next week, on August 15th, it finally releases on XBLA for $15/1200MSP. Here’s the rather Hollywood launch trailer:

The game is an impressively large Metroid-esque platform adventure RPG, with a combat engine reminiscent of Devil May Cry and Ninja Gaiden. All of that – voice acting and music aside – is entirely the work of one man. Can’t get much more indie than that. This is probably the most ambitious solo project to be released on XBLA, and one of the highest-budget solo releases that I’m aware of, period.

IGM are currently hacking through the game right now, and will have a full review up on Monday. Dust will be available to buy on Wednesday, August 15th. It’s exclusive to Xbox 360 at the moment, although given that Fez is now planning to jump ship once its exclusivity deal ends, perhaps this one might make it back to PC someday.

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – ‘Dust: An Elysian Tail’ Gets Cinematic In This XBLA Launch Trailer

In today’s Developer Links: Gender in games, “freemium” pricing, and music and background art.

Magic Needs To Be Mysterious And Unpredictable In Games (Nightmare Mode)
“Most of the great writers of fantasy know that magic works best when left unexplained, when it is allowed to be mysterious and unpredictable.  There is, after all, little point in writing a story featuring magic if you then make that magic mundane.  An author wants to create the illusion of a system or set of rules, but one which is mostly hidden and secret, because nothing will kill mystique like familiarity.”

Why Music Is The Best Thing (Octodad blog)
“I guess I should probably cover how I got to feeling the way I do about music before I go into too much more on this train of thought.  I was raised a musician, I have been playing the flute since a young age.  Music is always something I’ve enjoyed and had a knack for.  I always wondered about it, though.  Why has music existed for so long?  Why is it something that has transcended the fall of civilizations, and why do people like it so much?  How can someone devote his or her entire life to something that takes so much work?”

Gender In Minecraft (The Word Of Notch)
“The human model is intended to represent a Human Being. Not a male Human Being or a female Human Being, but simply a Human Being. The blocky shape gives it a bit of a traditional masculine look, but adding a separate female mesh would just make it worse by having one specific model for female Human Beings and male ones. That would force players to make a decisions about gender in a game where gender doesn’t even exist.”

LUFTRAUSERS Devlog #2 (Vlambeer)
“We were testing some performance things, spawning a hundred player-controlled LUFTRAUSERS at once. The following ensued and was dubbed SQUAD MODE.”

Friday Flashback #27: Like Christmas & Easter (Broken Rules)
“This week’s been filled with lots of new content but also new work machines! Since a lot of the work machines currently used are relatively old, a lot of them bruised and heavily used, new work machines were in order. For some of us the time was right to invest in the new MacBooks with Retina display. Besides the heavy self-gifting, we’ve been busy adding content to the multi-player mode, in order to justify the heavy testing session that’s coming up. 18 brave testers got together to give the new multi-player levels a thorough and merciless testing.”

Why We Chose Freemium (AltDevBlogADay)
“When we started Itzy Interactive a little over a year ago, we were already too late. Developers has already undercut each other’s prices on the app store to the point where all games were already pretty much in the $1-2 dollar range, and the freemium pricing model of giving away a game for free and earning revenue from in-app purchases had already taken root. It was a bit like pulling up to the starting line after the race had started and you’re informed that everyone has already piled up in a spectacular crash in the middle of the racetrack but you go ahead anyway.”

An Adventure In Artsy Fartsy, With Jonathan Elliot (Dejobaan Games)
“Okay, so this is a post about the background art development process in our upcoming Monster Loves You!.  I will mix you a drink while Jonathan regales you with all things.”

Gratuitous Alien Death Effects! (Rocket Bear Games Blog)
“I was showing the game to a friend a few weeks ago and he commented that the aliens should have some sort of effect when they die. This is something that I struggled with quite a while.  For those of you who played the earliest versions of Infested Planet, you’ll remember that there was a red puff that the aliens emitted.  Unfortunately it was too slow – each puff was a dynamic particle system.”

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Dev Links: Fixer-Upper

Heroes Rise: The Prodigy is an interactive fiction game for PC, Kindle, iOS, Android, and Linux. You play as a young would-be hero, in the Powered world of Millennia City, but when the game opens, you are an underpaid, part-time videogame tester, so low-level the execs don’t even know your name. (I’ve actually been in that position, and I loved the industry nod from author Zachary Sergi.)  Since your famous Powered parents were jailed after a botched operation, you’ve been living quietly with your gardening Grandma, under an assumed name. But all that will change when you get your hero’s license….

The game is a text-based adventure, using ChoiceScript, in the vein of Choice of Romance, and Choice of the Vampire. I love interactive fiction games. I’ve played a lot of Adventure, Zork, and similar text-only games, so I’ve spend a lot of time trying to open doors with  Use Key, Turn Key, Unlock Door, and Use Key With Lock where Use Key In Door was required.  ChoiceScript, though, avoids the most frustrating part of  IF games by providing multiple choice options instead of asking users to enter text.

Heroes Rise presents a scene, with full descriptions and developed characters, and asks the player how they react to that scene. Do you want to fight defensively, offensively, or with total disregard for any collateral damage? Do you want to work with the police or avoid them? Be polite or a brat? Do you follow the laws for Powered heroes all of the time, or only when they line up with your plans anyway, or do you and your Powers deliberately flout the laws of basic humans?

Good gameplay has been described as “a series of interesting decisions”, and Heroes Rise moves beyond an electronic version of a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book by asking players about their motivations as they make choices. Are you taking this on to rid the world of evil, get revenge, make money or get famous? This aspect makes it easier to connect with one’s character, and adds to that willing suspension of disbelief that all good superhero stories require.

Identifying with one’s character is quite easy, after you’ve chosen your name and gender, customized your herosuit and powerset, and chosen a personality for your omnipresent MeChip virtual assistant.  You also impact interpersonal relationships by the dialogue you choose, making the characters and relationships so much more engaging.

My only complaint is a common ChoiceScript annoyance. I couldn’t find anyway to save the game partway through, besides leaving open the browser window in which I was playing the game, an inelegant but effective workaround. It’s not always practical to play through in one sitting. I was also frustrated when I got to particularly interesting narrative forks, and wanted to save the game at that point, and try the second one later. It didn’t seem like fun to try to remember everything I’d done to get to this stage in order to recreate my existing game, and then try the other choice.

Overall, Heroes Rise: The Prodigy is a great interactive superhero adventure story. With the Kindle or iPad edition, this is a grown-up and streamlined version of a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure paperbacks we read in grade school.

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Heroes Rise: The Prodigy