LUNARCADE is an indie game event, organized to promote independent videogames as an expressive medium. There will be a large gathering that highlights three HOT indie games on February 12, 2011 at The Bitte in Milan, Italy. The website provides directions, but attendance seems limited to those with an ARCI card. They point interested parties to The Bitte’s website, where things cease to remain English-friendly.

Babycastles in New York made headlines last year, promoting a public place for indie game lovers and developers to mingle. The venue had some great hand-made arcade cabinets, showing off games like VVVVVV in a wooden cabinet with a Sega Saturn controller connected to it.

LUNARCADE , along with other international ‬events such as  kokoromi.org and winnitron.ca, aims to create an open space – especially for European developers – where they can show and share their own work. The description of the games on showcase certainly smell like indie teen spirit; they will be ” fun, clever, out of the common thinking and aesthetic conventions. ”

The Lunarcade website shows off three games to be featured.

One button game Fotonica has received a lot of mainstream press lately:

Bohm is up for the IGF Nuovo award this year:

Major site Rock Paper Shotgun recently looked at Venus Patrol:

If gamers are not in Milan, don’t worry. The site administrators say, “We’re always moving, so find out where we are and come to play games, listen to good music.” Knowing that there are many venues around the world that allow this kind of indie culture to thrive is quite refreshing.

Where do you think the next indie game event should be? My vote is for Boston.

Source: @lunarcade, LUNARCADE WEBSITE

The 2011 Indie Game Challenge finalists have been announced for the professional and non-professional categories. The collective dirty dozen are battling it out for gamers’ votes. The winner in each category will take home $100,000. For those solo indies, that could mean support for their present games and future titles. When gamers vote, they can enter for a chance to win a trip to L.A., $1,000 spending money, and more. The Indie Game Challenge winners to be will be announced February 11th at D.I.C.E.

Professional Category

• Vanessa Saint-Pierre Delacroix And Her Nightmare (Bad Pilcrow)
• Fortix 2 (Nemesys Games)
• Limbo (Playdead)
• Monaco (Pocketwatch Games)
• Spirits (Spaces of Play)
• Confetti Carnival (SpikySnail Games)

Non-Professional Category

• Hazard: The Journey of Life (Alexander Bruce)
• Solace (One Man Down)
• Subsonic (Team Height Advantage)
• Inertia (Team Hermes)
• Q.U.B.E. (Toxic Games)
• Symon (ZZZ Games)

There are several nominees who are also up for 2011 IGF awards. Hazard: The Journey of Life is a finalist for the Nuovo Award (and honorable mention for Technical Excellence). Confetti Carnival is a finalist for Technical Excellence. Solace is a Student Showcase finalist. Spirits earned an honorable mention for Best Mobile Game. Looking one year back, Limbo and Monaco were 2010 IGF winners. In sum, Indie Game Challenge represents the best of indie games: something old, something new, something borrowed (from IGF’s 2011 finalists), and with splashes of brilliant color from games like Solace and Hazard, something blue! Good luck! VOTE, VOTE, VOTE!

This past weekend, Steam and several other digital distributors had a variety of discounted offerings as most of PC publisher Paradox Interactive’s catalog had been put on sale. A few of these games were included in our latest Indie Game Sales feature, as during the vast majority of development they were considered to be independently funded–and as such fall under what we cover on DIYGamer.

In cases such as this, where a publisher’s name is tagged to a game we feel might fall under our admittedly amorphous coverage blanket, it’s simply our duty to exercise due diligence and figure out where the funding for the game came from. If we conclude the finances came from the developer itself, then we’re free to write on it. There’s still a ton of grey area and this certainly doesn’t explain or justify every game that’s been included/omitted from these pages, but it gives us a floor to walk on so to speak.

We’re a young and ambitious site, some of our golden rules are set and some are still evolving on the subject. In the end we’re human, and many times we’ll error on the side of inclusion if there’s no readily available information stating that the game has received funding outside of the developer’s pocket. If it’s found out at anytime that it proves to be otherwise, we’ll be the first to admit fault and correct our mistake–including full omission of the title in question if need be.

Let’s use developer The Behemoth as an example. Microsoft is considered the publisher of Castle Crashers while The Behemoth is listed as both the developer and publisher for their previous title Alien Hominid. For both games–and presumably their upcoming third effort BattleBlock Theater–the dev claims on their website “Our development is 100% self-funded with support from fans who support our cause!” with a link to their games and merchandise. Taking them at their word that indicates that Microsoft only puts funding toward the exposure of Crashers, not the development.

In that case, I consider the game to fall on the right side of our line. Some wouldn’t, and they’d be tough to argue against, but I don’t feel that if one game receives more marketing support than another it should be forced to give up its indie badge and gun.

It’s undeniable that indie games are as popular as they’ve ever been. More than ever before, the indie scene has been brought closer to the typical gamer’s foremost interests. This has been accomplished through all walks of effort and perseverance from more individuals than we may ever know our give credit to. It leads me to beg the question: Why should an indie game lose its tag when the mainstream shows interest in it?

A notable point of contention in what I’ve written above is that we still cover partially-funded games that come from developer’s who were previously indie/independent such as Runic Games (Torchlight), Frozenbyte (Trine) and ACE Team (Zeno Clash, Rock of Ages.) All three developers have been picked up by publishers to develop sequels (or in ACE’s case a completely new IP) of their successful independent predecessors. Must our coverage halt right then and there because of this? Honestly, the jury is still largely out on the point, but let me explain why I personally feel compelled to write on it for both myself and our readers.

We like these games, and we like the people who developed them. We’re interested in what they’re cooking up next. For me it comes back to questioning why we must stop following a developer’s path simply because a publisher has picked them up based on their past independent success. That success is what enabled them to make their next game one way or another, if they look to a publisher to relieve some of the stresses they had to deal with during independent release (outside of development of course) should we then turn a blind eye?

Obviously, if the developer is ever wholly absorbed by their respective publisher and ceases to be some form of individual entity then there’s simply no argument, it can’t and shouldn’t be posted here.

All that said, and there’s still hundreds if not thousands of individual cases that could be argued either for or against in this never ending debate. There isn’t a single authority who correctly and absolutely categorizes what is considered indie in the vast sea of games and projects out there. So instead we research facts and rely on what are gut says a lot of the time. Not an exact science, but no one has ever claimed it to be.

Again, this is just one man’s (still developing) opinion on a very, very complex subject.

Indie studio Incubator Games is looking for feedback on the concept  art for their upcoming puzzle adventure game, Tribes of Mexica. Tribes uses the mythology and history of Mesoamerica as the setting for a new combat-heavy puzzle game. Players will travel Mesoamerica, help the Nahua tribe, and fight mythical beasts and gods.

Incubator has four competing designs for boss Cipactli, an Aztec crocodile monster. Here’s one version:

Head over to their site to check out the rest of the concept art and cast your vote.

Developer Yullaby has announced the release of its casual puzzler Magnetis on Steam. The title offers up four person co-op and competitive gameplay where players connect magnets with matching attractions to cause electric explosions, resulting in massive chain reactions and higher multipliers.

Packing three solo modes and three multiplayer modes (Battle, Teamplay and Co-op) and boasting an old school 8bit-esque soundtrack, the frantic puzzler tests you to think quick and plan ahead, anticipating the connections that will result in the most points.

The game’s joining of Valve’s digital distribution hub marks the official US release following a PC and WiiWare release in the UK. Magnetis is available now for that smooth indie price of $5.

Alright, admittedly nobody in France would ever exclaim the phrase in the title, but that certainly summed up my reaction when I heard Dingo Games had released The Three Musketeers, an action RPG that closely followed the novel written by Alexandre Dumas.

If you’re not familiar with the story, the game has you assuming the brash character of d’Artagnan, a young man who ventures off from his home to become a Musketeer in Paris. As you set off from your formerly sheltered life you find quickly that this particular area and time in France is a bit contentious, and if you don’t want to get walked all over you’ll have to defend your honor with your sword.

I recently had a chance to play and complete Musketeers, here are some thoughts and reactions to the more critical parts of the title.

Arvi Teikari’s free downloadable title Addicsjon shows what happens when Mario gets a little to into his mushrooms. In this concept platformer, it’s up to you the player to lead your junkie away from his pills and to the end of the level flag. Problem is, the junkie wants his pills and at times will work against you.

It gets worse if he actually gets his fix, bringing blurred vision and the virtual shivers into play. The game is a quickie, offering only five levels for you to trip and trudge through.

The game is available for download here.

Black Jacket Studios has announced the release of their futuristic vehicle combat title Metal Drift, now available on Steam. Additionally, a demo of the title has been released, giving a test drive of the game.

In the game, battles are had in high powered hover tanks (56 customizations in all) against one another, apparently for hover tank supremacy, that’s my kind of future.

The multiplayer slanted Metal Drift is out now for $12.50. Check out Geoff’s preview.

Capybara Games has released a demo for their fattening puzzle game Critter Crunch, now available for PS3 users to try on the Playstation Network. The dev is hoping the demo raises awareness of the title amidst self-admitted slow sales out of the gate.

The full game contains several modes: puzzle, adventure, challenge and survivor, as well as including offline/online co-op and versus. Critter Crunch was released on PSN October 8.

Corbomite Games adventure title Pizza Morgana contains many creatures that fit the standard Halloween theme, so the dev put two and two together and have announced a sale to celebrate the last day of the October.

From now through the 31st, PC’ers can pick up Monsters and Manipulations in the Magical Forest, Episode One of the series, for 50% off the standard price. Just enter the coupon code Halloween2009 at checkout and they’ll knock off half the cost.

Pizza Morgana Episode One released August 16th, though over two months later we’ve heard no news of what the second episode entails and when it will arrive.