Calling all indie developers! As we plan for our big transition into our next big redesign we are planning a unique give away to our readers. I can’t spoil the beans here, but it’s going to be a  long term ordeal. The thing is, we can’t do it without your help.

Essentially what we need are codes for your game. Any amount will do across any platform (XBLIG, iOS, PC, PS3, etc.) and digital distribution store (Xbox Live, PSN, Steam, Desura, etc.). If you’ve got an awesome indie game and some way to distribute a code then we’ll take it!

Edmund hoped on the ol’ Team Meat blog this morning to announce some advancements for everybody’s favorite meaty hero: Super Meat Boy. In fact there is good news for those of us that own the game and those that don’t!

According to Edmund the first bit of good news is that starting next month the game will go on sale on Xbox Live Arcade, although an exact date and price wasn’t yet announced. Still, for those of you who are Meatboy-less, this could be your chance to jump on one of 2010’s best downloadable titles.

Indie favorite developer Dejobaan has come out and announced by not announcing that they have a sequel to their hit indie game AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! A Reckless Disregard for Gravity. Actually the guys over at Dejobaan HQ are calling it a semi-sequel… so I’m not really sure just what it is, but seeing as how it’s one awesome indie game I’ll certainly take it!

But that’s not really what this post is about. I mean, sure that’s where the big news is and the draw. Really it was mostly just bait to get you into this thread… HAHAHA! Welcome to my spider web of lies! … and contests. Where you can win things.

Seriously though, Dejobaan has put up a contest for aspiring designers. They currently want/need billboards and fake ads for the upcoming “semi-sequel” to make it more enjoyable.

Here are the details:

You want to be immortalized in a Dejobaan game!

The semi-sequel to our 2009 hit, AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! is coming. The cleverest captioned photos will appear in the game and will net their creators a free copy on Steam, once it’s out at the end of the year! (Yes, we haven’t officially announced the new game. Don’t tell anyone.)

Rules:

• Go to Morguefile.com, and search for an awesome image. Use that as your background.
• Come up with hilarious foreground text to put on top of that image.
• Send the composited image (background plus text in the same picture, 512×1024 preferred) and a link to the original Morguefile.com picture to jpolson@dejobaan.com.

And also:

• Deadline:(Updated!) Friday 9/30/11 at 11:59pm EST.
• We’ll announce the winners by the following Monday.

If you think you’ve got the chops you can not only be featured in the game, but you’ll get a copy of the game for free. How cool is that?

Here’s an example of what they’re looking for:

For more details or to simply browse their website, hit the link below!

[Dejobaan]

Kongregate is sponsoring and Ubisoft is providing the prizes for The Kongregate Project Eden: Experience the Music Contest.  Developers must create “an original game where music is an integral element to the game play or game experience.” The top 25 entries will be judged by Child of Eden‘s creator Tetsuay Mizuguchi and GameSpot editor in chief Ricardo Torres. The contest ends June 21, 2011.

This contest seems perfect for the DIY community, despite all those forbidden AAA words I just typed. Kongregate has been seemingly impartial in the past for hosting indie titles on its site, Ubisoft is finally making the 2D Rayman Origins, and Rez and Space Channel 5 creator Testuya Mizuguchi is so cool he gets an honorary indie badge, no?

This contest at least starts out as a “by the people for the people” one. The eligible submissions will be posted on Kongregate for viewing and review. Registered users will rate the submissions. The twenty submissions that receive the highest average user-ranking results on June 24, 2011 will be selected as the potential prize winners.

Those prizes? $10,000 for first place; $3,000 for second; and $2,000 for third place. So, what are you guys waiting for? Go make us proud! Here’s the official rules. We’d be happy to see what you all make, so be sure to drop us a line.

Source Gamasutra

Demiurge Studios apparently isn’t happy with the amount of robots Shoot Many Robots has, so the studio has opened up a competition to gamers to design a robot for the game. Shoot Many Robots is a run and gun action game with RPG elements, most notably stats and accessory upgrading. Geoff Gibson played Shoot Many Robots at GDC and shared his experience with DIY-land earlier this month.

One of the game’s development teammates spoke with me at PAX East, and that will come shortly. Given Monday, Apil 4 marks the deadline of the team’s creative competition, I figured I should spread the word and give DIY readers a week to show them how it’s done! The winner will get some sweet swag and a free trip to Boston to help Demiurge make their robot come to life!

I can’t draw for crap (which is why I write), but the competition isn’t “write many robots.” Now writing code to program a robot, that COULD be cool, or it could totally be Skynet all over (again…).

Demiurge’s media man Job Stauffer said that the team has also given a breakdown of existing robots on their website and asks that players carefully consider building enemies that will be just as challenging as they are fresh and creative.

I particularly liked the toilet robot drawn and posted in Demiurge’s forums. It should shoot out warfare from at least one more place, though, no? Toilet humor aside, Demiurge seems to be embracing the indie spirit and asking fans and newcomers to do the same.

How can you turn down an offer from men dressed so eloquently?

Photo from ShotGunGamer

Inspired?? Horrified?? Horrifically inspired?! Feel free to post your submissions here to inspire other DIY readers and of course submit them to Demiurge. The full contest rules are here. Remember the winner gets to spend a week with these guys, who prove once again that all it takes is a beer hat (allegedly without alcohol, even) to make a man wear a dress.

SoundCloud has launched their first ever video game remix competition. Sound geniuses must remix or cover virt’s Retro City Rampage (RCR) Theme Song. RCR provides both the raw channels in .WAV format as well as the source Impulse Tracker .IT file here. The deadline for submissions is 11:59pm PST March 28th, 2011. RCR judges promise a quick turnaround; they will announce winners on March 31st, 2011.

Because of SoundCloud’s promotion, the first place winner will now receive a SoundCloud Pro account in addition to a signed NES cartridge case and game box. The second and third place winners will receive a Lite account in addition to signed cartridge labels, and fourth and fifth place will win labels, as well.

The rules of the competition are rather lenient. Participants can submit as many entries as they like. The entries may be created using any instruments, tracker, or other musical medium. Check out the video below for contest details and some chiptune audio inspiration:

Source: Retro City Rampage website

So we didn’t have very many entries, but we did have some damn good ones. Quality over quantity I always say.

To those that entered, I thank you for putting a smile on my face, truly. Some of these photoshops were hilarious.

Anyway, onto the winners!

Congratulations to all the winners!

If you did not win, don’t feel bad. We really did enjoy all the entries, it’s simply that we only had six copies to give away in total. Please keep a look out for future contests, photoshop or otherwise in the near future.

If  you did win, please check your email for a code to be used either with your Steam account or your Xbox 360.

Thanks for entering!

Just a quick reminder guys! You can enter and win one of these two great versions of the same game. The PC version comes with everything Digital Devolver has to offer in the Serious Sam series, where as the XBLA version is merely the newest game (came out last weekend) in the Serious Sam chronicles. Both are great!

ENTER THE CONTEST

Did you miss out on grabbing the awesome Serious Sam HD: Gold Edition on Steam this past weekend when it was 75% off and only cost a mere $10? Or do you just, in general, lack the funds to grab what’s easily one of the most addictive and hilarious shooters since the heyday of Duke Nukem? In either case, I’m here to let you know that we’re giving away 3 copies of Serious Sam HD: Gold Edition for Steam and 3 copies of Serious Sam HD: The Second Encounter for Xbox Live Arcade.

Here’s the deal, we want photoshopped images of Serious Sam. Funny, unique, awesome, curious…. doesn’t matter. We want you to take some picture from a promotional poster or from an in game shot and then photoshop it to look awesome and mean something beyond what the actual screenshot represents. For example, our editor whipped this up:

See? It didn’t take very long to do, but it’s a unique angle on who Sam is and it brought a smile to my face. Our favorite entries will be chosen as winners.

Here’s what you need to know before you can submit:

1. It’s not mandatory, but creating an account and posting your entry with that will ensure to us that your email is valid and that nobody can rip off your username.

2. Only one entry per person (we’ll be checking IPs).

3. This contest is open to US and Canadian residents only. Sorry Europeans, we don’t know the rules over there and we don’t have enough money to hire a lawyer to figure em out.

4. The contest starts right NOW and ends this FRIDAY. So from 9/27/2010 – 10/1/2010.

5. Please indicate in your post whether you want the Xbox Live Arcade version or the Steam version. We can not accommodate you if you end up getting a Steam version but actually wanted an XBLA version.

6. Please host your images at a hosting website and put a link in the comment area. We like imgur.com!

Sounds simple, right? Good so get to ‘shoppin! You can find a handy list of images at Google. Good luck!

Having recently updated their Japanese-style dual-stick shooter, Meow Meow Happy Fight, Big Pixel Studios are riding high and conducting a brand new contest. Players can now find 6 new levels, 3 new playable characters, as well as new power-ups and achievements. Moreover, Big Pixel is also conducting a “Design a Character” contest — allowing users to design their own unique character to be added to the game in a later update.

Here are some details for the contest:

Write a short back-story for your character (see www.meowmeowhappyfight.com for examples)
Draw a sketch of your character (not essential)
Email your entry to happycat@bigpixelstudios.co.uk

The winner’s character will be drawn and animated (Meow Meow style!) by the Big Pixel Studios team, and added to a future update of Meow Meow Happy Fight for iOS. The winner and 3 runners up will also receive a $10 iTunes Gift Certificate (or similar if not in the USA). Closing date is Friday 3rd September. For full terms and conditions please visit www.bigpixelstudios.co.uk/blog

Meow Meow Happy Fight is still available at a $0.99 sale price ($2.99 regular price).

[Buy from iTunes.]

[Source: GamesPress]