Sung to the tune of “My Favorite Things”, from The Sound of Music:

Games based on Bosch, or on playing the cello,
History told by a puppet that’s yellow,
Hear what the team behind Octodad thinks.
These are a few of today’s Indie Links.

There, now try getting that awfulness out of your head with these:

Gimme Indie Game: The Improbable History Of TheCatamites’ Pleasure Dromes Of Kubla Khan (Venus Patrol)
“The Pleasuredromes of Kubla Khan, just released as a free PC download, continues right where Murder Dog left off: a brief but hilarious interactive history lesson of the Mongol emperor’s Xanadu. Like a modern-day punk Encarta (and as with Murder Dog), its best feature is its frantic and entirely unreliable Muppet-esque narrator, providing meta-commentary on all your actions (toss yourself off the edge of the world to smash further through the fourth wall), as you find yourself headed straight into the hedonistic heart of the pleasuredrome.”

Live Free, Play Hard: Strategic Torture Simulation (Rock, Paper, Shotgun)
“A day late due to, um, let’s say otters, here’s this last week’s finest free indie games. Take it away, Porpentine.  Important historical edutainment game. Strategic torture simulation. What if Kirby were born billions of years ago. Ladder fortresses of jellyfish space. Lynchian piss world.”

City Tuesday’s Pretty Source Code (Hookshot, Inc.)
“The Xbox Live Indie channel may not be the most popular stop on the indie train line, but for that reason it continues to be a go-to destination for those who believe their game has more chance of being noticed there than on the brutal wastelands of Steam and the App Store. City Tuesday certainly stands out among the crowd, borrowing some threads of premise from Duncan Jones’ Source Code – in which a man relives the final few moments of his life before a terrorist attack over and over again, with the chance to change fate if he manages to find the bomb – and presenting it in sharp vector visuals and a generous spattering of Helvetica chic.”

Dumbest Thing I’ve Ever Done: Octodad Team Interview (Sugar Gamers)
“Pax Prime allowed me the pleasure of sitting down with Young Horses, Inc., the team behind Octodad: Dadliest Catch, the sequel to OCTODAD.”

Forget Rock Band, Here’s Cello Fortress (Gamasutra)
“Cello Fortress is a work-in-progress by Proundeveloper and Ronimo designer Joost van Dongen, and as far as I’m aware, it’s the first video game to incorporate a classical music instrument (feel free to correct me if I’m wrong!) into the gameplay. The game will first be shown at the Dutch Game Garden Indigo exhibition later this month.”

Boston Festival Of Indie Games Announces Lineup (Joystiq)
“The Boston Festival of Indie Games has revealed the 36 games that will be showcased at the event this Saturday, September 22. Featured games – with developers in tow – include Fire Hose Games’ Go Home Dinosaurs, Owlchemy Labs’ Jack Lumber and many, many others.”

Garden Of Delights: JB500 Opens Call For Hieronymus Bosch-Inspired Games (Venus Patrol)
“As a tyke, I had the extreme fortune of having at my disposal a number of art-history survey textbooks (thanks, dad) which I pored over daily — an early, self-guided & very valuable education in art appreciation — and I have very distinct memories of continually returning to one artist:Hieronymus Bosch, whose landscapes were littered with cartoonish-ly caricatured monsters, animals and half-humans that wouldn’t at all be out of place in a children’s TV show if they weren’t so overtly representative of grim morality tales. It’s with that said that I count myself super lucky to having been asked to be involved with a new art/game initiative from the Jheronimus Bosch 500 Foundation itself — an organization founded to honor the artist on the 500th anniversary of Bosch’s death.”

You Won’t Survive FTL‘s Space Mission, But You’ll Remember It (Kotaku)
“The flames shred through my vessel, eventually overtaking the populated rooms, but it didn’t matter. My men would burn, but there are worse ways to go than ablaze with the virtue of dedication. Of course I couldn’t give up. Not when good men and women spent their last moments proudly showing me the honor of what it means to serve a ship. It wasn’t something I understood before FTL: Faster Than Light, the spaceship roguelike by Subset Games where you command your own ship and its crew under a space exploration mission.”

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Indie Links Round-Up: Escalation

Along with posts about a number of indie games, today’s Indie Links cover Kickstarter stretch links, Venus Patrol, and how to run your own Minecraft server.

Welcome To Venus Patrol (Venus Patrol)
“Fast forward past an incredibly arduous blur, and Phase One of all that good will & good intention is officially complete: the website before your eyes, designed by Cory Schmitz with background assets graciously provided by indie game developer Neil Thapen‘s not-coincidentally-titled 2009 game Venus Patrol (more on that relationship over here).”

The Shocking Truth Behind Super Hexagon Creator’s Score Scam (Hookshot, Inc.)
“Terry Cavanagh slouches in the quarter-light, his silhouette all puffed defiance. I can’t see his face but I sure can imagine its proud contortions, the winning smirk of the unrepentant cheater.  Why did you do it, Cavanagh?  ’Why did I do what?’ he says. ‘Why are you in my house? Why have you turned all the lights off? I can’t see you properly. Who are you?’”

Steam Users Can Now Buy To The Moon, A Game About Marriage, Memories, And So Much More (Kotaku)
“I put off playing To The Moon for months. Not because I thought it was terrible; far from it. A huge number of people I respect had showered it with glowing praise. It’s just that I knew something of its subject matter: the memories of a man who survived his wife, at the end of his life.”

Review: Lone Survivor – Jasper Byrne Is Playing With Your Expectations (Indie Game Reviewer)
“Created by Jasper Byrne, who has a history of making lovely low-rez games (that may have begun with a tribute to Amiga computer games on which I invested a large portion of my late grade-school years), Lone Survivor is his best outing yet and in kind is getting the attention it deserves, with high visibility on Steam and in major press outlets.”

Snapshot: They Bleed Pixels (PC) (Joystiq)
“I have a soft spot for difficult, precision platformers. Super Meat Boy was my number 2 game of 2010, edged out only by Alan Wake. I also have a soft spot for character action games. 2004′s Ninja Gaiden, for example, is probably my favorite action game of all time. Imagine my delight, then, when I first played They Bleed Pixels, which is both a precision platformer and a character action game.”

Blocks With Friends: How To Run Your Own Minecraft Server (Ars Technica)
“The game has an engrossing single-player component, with a core gameplay mechanism that feels like a LEGO block set—go build stuff!—but it’s much more fun to make things with your friends than to labor alone. Public Minecraft servers are widely available (here’s a good list), but they have an unfortunate dark side: as with any public online game, keeping out folks bent on making mischief is ultimately impossible. If you want to play Minecraft with just your friends, the easiest way to do so is to run your own server.”

Our First Look At The Slenderman In Slender: Source (Kotaku)
“Ever since we learned that there’s a multiplayer, source-engine take on the Slenderman game in the works, I’ve been hoping see more of the game in action. This video, which was shared on the Slender: Source Steam Greenlight page, gives a first look at the Slenderman in the game, as well as a hint of the effects that will happen when he closes in.”

Kickstarter: Stretch Goals (TIGSource)
“Even though the following three Kickstarters have been fully funded, I thought you might still be interested in hearing about the projects or getting in at the last moment to obtain prizes and help the developers reach their ‘stretch goals’.”

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Indie Links Round-Up: Red-Handed

Where can you see SimCity mixed with steampunk, rabbits with revenge quests, match games with endless runners?  In indie games, of course, like those discussed in today’s Indie Links.

Clockwork Empires: A Preview Of Gaslamp Games’ Lovecraft-Laden Steampunk City-Builder (PC Gamer)
“Take SimCity and stuff it with steampunk. Take Dwarf Fortress and make it modern. Take Anno and dump H.P. Lovecraft into its oceans. Consider yourself mildly acquainted with Clockwork Empires, the next project of Gaslamp Games. The indies behind of Dungeons of Dredmor are creating a 3D, sandboxy city-builder teeming with 19th century imperialism. It’ll be populated by street urchins, aristocrats, volcanoes, sea serpents, war zeppelins, mad scientists, and at least one foodstuff that doubles as a building material. It’ll be irreverent, and PC-exclusive. It’ll have multiplayer. It’ll be moddable. Most of all, I think it has a chance to set a new standard for player-driven story generation in the genre.”

How A Bedroom Developer’s ‘Ugly Little Game’ Became An App Store Hit (Wired.co.uk)
“Dungeon-based puzzle app 10000000 (said “ten million”) is an unlikely autobiographical game. So unlikely, in fact, the developer doesn’t even realise how autobiographical it is.”

Mark of the Ninja: The Kotaku Review (Kotaku)
“So before starting Mark of the Ninja up, I assumed my brash nature would be at odds with what the 2D game required of me. I was right—at first. The game starts with the assumption that you are already a smooth killing machine, and the pith lies in the tension between a player’s clumsiness and the eventual embodiment of the refined ninja. The ultimate revelation comes in the transformation, in the metaphorical gain of the black belt. The game teaches you to feel at home in the shadows, to become quick on your feet, to bear the mark of the ninja proudly, with honor. And honor is one of the most important things in the game, but more on that in a second.”

Interview With ‘Dusty Revenge’ Developers, PD Design Studio (Epic Brew)
“‘Hey, thanks for having us. PD Design Studio started out 6 years ago doing various jobs, web, print, video, anything we can lay our hands on. But our very first project was actually a Flash game project. Over the years we started to focus on Flash educational-games. We must have done more than 20 of those. We found it thoroughly enjoyable to work on games but working on client-based games means we’ll never get to fulfill our inner fantasies. The studio actually has done a couple of game prototypes, but we left it at that. We had this game idea of a 2D platformer with supporting character mechanics. After talking through between ourselves, we thought let’s just do it.’”

Super Hexagon: The Joys Of Waiting (Hookshot, Inc.)
“Long story short, Super Hexagon, a game I knew about for ages, but which took its own sweet time to appear on iTunes – and then got yanked away again and is now finally back. I’m not going to tell you about it, because it’s well worth 69p, and if you’re an Androider, here’s Hexagon on Flash.”

The Killing Floor Of PAX: Welcome To Eighteen-Player Johann Sebastian Joust, Complete With Traitors (The Penny Arcade Report)
“Johann Sebastian Joust, played at the higher levels, can turn everyone into a dancer. Every man who picks up a Move controller and understands the mechanic of appropriate speed, while trying to knock out his opponents, begins to move with more grace. Every woman who learns to evade while keeping the door open for attacks becomes a ballerina. The game is not available for sale to the public, but creator Douglas Wilson is hoping to change at some point in the near future. “I really need to release this,” he told me while packing up the controllers and laptops at the end of the night. You’ll hear no argument from anyone who has been lucky enough to play the game.”

A Streamlined Experience: Dungeon Dashers (TruePCGaming)
“Andrew Sum, developer of the online multiplayer dungeon crawler, Dungeon Dashers, spoke to TPG about all things PC gaming.  You will read how Dungeon Dashers was created, his early failures and achievements, thoughts about DRM, piracy and more.”

Thirty Flights Of Loving Isn’t A Game, It’s A Manifesto (Scripted Sequence)
“Well, obviously it is a game, but that’s not what I’m talking about. Brendon Chung’sThirty Flights of Loving, for those who don’t know, is a ten minute long, Quake 2-powered, short story. It’s about a heist gone wrong. That’s probably all you need to know.”

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Indie Links Round-Up: Birds’-Eye View

Would it be possible to make a game like Portal in 2D?  Or a stealth game where you can’t see the movement of enemies out of your character’s line of sight? Or a game where things that aren’t illuminated cease to exist?  Today’s Indie Links say yes to all of these, and more.

If Portal Were A 2D Platformer It Would Go Something Like This (Kotaku)
“Coming this week to Steam and Xbox Live Indie Games, Gateways is a 2D retro-style platformer that creator David Johnston describes as ‘like Portal, only better.’ Those are fighting words, Mr. Johnston.”

To The Moon: A Lesson In Interactive Storytelling (Funsponge)
“Being a younger medium, interactive storytelling is still defining its language. Writers from more traditional backgrounds are adapting their tool kits, but dictating our experience in those terms often comes at the expense of interactivity. To the Moon falls into this category, for the most part you’re just along for the ride, but when the ride is so compelling, none of that seems to matter.”

I Have Played: Dark Scavenger (Scripted Sequence)
“Many of the best things in life derive from unexpected combinations. The peanut butter and jam sandwich, for example, is humanity’s single most glorious achievement, and yet a mathematical quandary: the sum is greater than its parts. Psydra Games’ adventure-RPG Dark Scavenger is born of a similar (if less hyperbolic) phenomenon. It sequences DNA from Phantasy Star and Zork, adds a dash of Discworld: The Trouble With Dragons, and feels like it might have been lovingly raised by Armando Iannucci’s comedic imagination — an analogy that’s bereft of Dark Scavenger’s triumphs and near-misses, but full of its spirit.”

Review: Mark of the Ninja Brings 2D Stealth With Style (Ars Technica)
“Mark of the Ninja is utterly defined by the lack of information it gives players in key situations. If you want to know if there’s a guard in the next room, you have to lean up against the door and look through the keyhole (and be sure to dart away if he’s about to open that door). If you want to know if you’ll be spotted when you climb up over that ledge, you need to carefully peek your head up around the corner first. When you duck back down, a hazy, slowly fading red outline will tell you the guards’ last observed position, but you can still track their movements by watching the small grey circles that represent their subtle footfalls.”

Wot I Think: Closure (Rock, Paper, Shotgun)
“How many lives must be expended to put in a lightbulb? If a tree falls in a forest but there is no light to show its final position, can it bridge the gap across a chasm? These and other philosophical quandaries are answered in Tyler Galiel’s Closure, a platform-puzzler that constitutes a sinister journey comprised of a thousand tricks of the light. Here’s wot I think.”

[PAX] Turning Into A Chicken: A Hands-On With Guacamelee (Twinfinite)
“Metroidvania games have become as numerous as the leaves in a tree. Two classic series with admirable gameplay? Who wouldn’t want to mash them together and try to make a game. More often than not, the game is mediocre or just plain bad. Sometimes it turns out pretty good. Rarely, the right ingredients come together to make one damn good game. Guacamelee falls in this last category. Hit the jump to see why.”

Portabliss: Super Hexagon (iOS) (Joystiq)
“I feel weird about rendering a verdict about a game I’ve played for, at most, 48 seconds in a single session, but that’s just how Super Hexagon works. Besides, that 48 seconds was hard-won after dozens of less successful, even briefer attempts. I’m reasonably sure I get the idea.”

Storyteller Is An Incredibly Original And Surprisingly Deep Indie Game (FULLNOVAZERO)
“…His own game, Storyteller was going to be shown for one hour the next day. I, as always, was curious to see what this was all about. My friends and I got locked into a match of Natural Selection 2 the next morning and when everything was done I checked my phone and ran over to the Spy Party booth with only 10 minutes left. Now I’m glad I did, because this is one of the most original games I’ve played in a long time.”

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Indie Links Round-Up: Big Smile

The games discussed in today’s Indie Links include a game made up entirely of simple geometric shapes, a game that only existed for a day, and a game where you can use your computer to simulate using a computer.

GlitchHiker: The Game That Was Programmed To Die (Indie N)
“By some blessing, GlitchHiker’s creators didn’t have to see it go. The  team of five game developers and one musician were sat in a nearby bar when the text came in – like the hushed doctor, arms folded mutely in front of him – to say that the game didn’t have long left, that they should make their goodbyes before the end. This pioneering group of indie developers had built a game that was programmed to self destruct. Now, the curtain was falling.”

When Thief, Rainbow Six And Uplink Come Together… (Gamasutra)
“Whenever I’m asked who I believe to be the most exciting indie developers of the moment, without fail I mention Blendo Games. My love for Brendon Chung’s work began with the wonderfulGravity Bone, and extended to Flotilla, Atom Zombie Smasher and pretty much anything else he puts out.”

Kickstarter Katchup – 8th September 2012 (Rock, Paper, Shotgun)
“The winners keep pouring in. Another long list of successful projects this week, which I always like to think of as, “ones I don’t have to think of a new sentence for any more.” A few losers too, but so far the Katchup column is bucking the trend for Kickstarter success rates. Clearly I’m a lucky charm. Unless I show any confidence that your project will inevitably succeed, at which point I’m a curse and a millstone around your neck. As ever, please read the rules before huffing in the comments – I don’t know how to get more passive-aggressive about this.”

Play This: ‘Super Hexagon’ (The Verge)
“Super Hexagon is the latest game from Terry Cavanagh, creator of the sadistic VVVVVVand somewhat friendlier CatLife: ChatChat. As a triangle cast into an unforgiving world, you must defend against attacks from all sides. Six of them, in fact, as you’re restricted to moving around the corners of a hexagon, at least at first — we won’t spoil the other shapes that come up.”

Wait, Why’s Pirate Bay Promoting An Indie Game? (Rock, Paper, Shotgun)
“If you’re a frequent RPS reader (or an infrequent RPS reader with uncannily good timing), the image on the front page of ubiquitous, recently-banned-in-the-UK-under-extremely-dubious-circumstances torrenting site The Pirate Bay might strike you as a bit familiar. If not, you may have still been able to guess that it heralds from Sos Sosowski’s McPixel because, well, the first four words on the page will tell you all of that. This, however, is the first time a game has ever been featured as part of Pirate Bay’s “Promo Bay” program – wherein, a creator gets to leverage the site’s incredible reach for exposure. But how’d this come about?”

Sense Of Wonder Night 2012 Highlights Experimental Indie Games (Gamasutra)
“Organizers for the Sense of Wonder Night competition have selected ten experimental indie titles that will be showcased at Tokyo Game Show later this month. Modeled after the Game Developers Conference’s Experimental Gameplay Workshop, SOWN seeks to feature games with unconventional ideas and designs, and to give developers an opportunity to present their projects to a game industry audience.”

Driftmoon (Bytten)
“It’s been a strange day. First you get a message to head into the village and find your father. His letter didn’t say what it was about, just that it was urgent. When you arrive, your mother pushes you down a well, which is pretty out of character for her. When you finally find your way out, you find everyone in the village has been turned to stone and your father has been taken prisoner by unknown invaders. Whatever is going on, and how can you put it right?”

Kickstarter, Contests Bring FTL To Life (Gamasutra)
“Since late last week, three simple letters have been floating around on Twitter as devs and gamers alike discover a new release on Steam that could very well be “the next big thing” in indie games. FTL – or Faster Than Light – is a space-faring simulation in the same vein as the wonderfulWeird Worlds, as players blast off with a custom crew, visiting randomly-generated planets and taking care of randomly-generated business.”

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Indie Links Round-Up: Gas Burning

In addition to the game links you’ve come to expect, today’s Indie Links include articles on experimental games, Steam Greenlight, and XBLA vs. XBLIG.

Indies On Steam Greenlight, Part 2: Possible Futures (Rock, Paper, Shotgun)
“Here, primarily in the interests of good, honest decency, I simply wish to allow those who spoke in the first part of this planned series to finish their pre-charge thoughts about Greenlight – what changes they’d like to see to it, and how democratic it can ultimately be… Rather than form this into an editorialised feature as before, given the newly changed nature of the topic I shall simply present it as it was arranged – two questions, and the answers to them as they were given by a raft of indie developers big and small.”

Why Indie Fund Is Backing An XBLA Flop (Gamasutra)
“Indie Fund, a group of independent developers that offers “angel”-style funding to other indie game makers, has decided to back The Splatters, an unusual puzzle game that failed to find an audience when it launched on XBLA in April.”

Zeboyd: Microsoft Should Merge XBox Live Arcade And Indie Games (GamesIndustry International)
“Robert Boyd, one half of Penny Arcade’s On The Rain-Slick Precipice Of Darkness 3 developer Zeboyd Games, has told Edge that Microsoft should merge Xbox Live’s Arcade and Indie Games categories. ‘I’d like to see [XBLIG] kind of merge into XBLA,’ Boyd commented. ‘Keep Indie Games free to everyone but if you have a really good game, you could submit it to Microsoft for it to be upgraded to an XBLA title. Right now, becoming an XBLA developer is fairly difficult for a small team, so reducing the barrier of entry to XBLA could only help Microsoft, I think.’”

Wot I Think: Snapshot (Rock, Paper, Shotgun)
“Photography-based puzzle-platformer Snapshot is the latest from depict1 dev Retro Affect (one half of which is Kyle Pulver, he of Offspring Fling fame). Long-anticipated, it finally gave itself to the world last week. Here’s what I made of it.”

Harold Preview: The Goofy Savant (Shacknews)
“Harold is deceptively wacky. The racing-platformer from indie start-up Moonspider Studios carries a sense of humor reminiscent of the frenetic pacing of old Looney Tunes cartoons, but the game itself is complex enough to invite serious play. After some hands-on time at PAX 2012, Harold won me over.”

Indie Games Uprising 3 Costs You $11, Max (Joystiq)
“The Indie Games Summer Uprising is almost upon us: the coordinated rollout and promotion of high-profile (for XBLIG) games will begin on September 10 with the “arcade/documentary” Snake game, qrth-phyl. Find the full schedule for the two-week promotion after the break.”

Blendo On Quadrilateral Cowboy, Experimental Games (Rock, Paper, Shotgun)
“‘Twentieth Century Cyberpunk.’ That’s Quadrilateral Cowboy’s elevator pitch, but ‘hacking that’s not just some awful minigame’ would work just as well. I played Blendo’s latest during PAX, and my heart grew three sizes that day. Also, my brain turned into a copy of William Gibson’s ‘Neuromancer.’ I quite like it, is what I’m saying. Afterward, I sat down stood in a deafeningly loud convention center corner with dev dynamo Brendon Chung, and we discussed Quadrilateral Cowboy, Thirty Flights Of Loving, how to tell a good game story, and the difficulties of integrating such things into, well, games. It’s all after the break.”

Din’s Curse Review (ProvenGamer)
“In a culture of gaming that often demands a constant stream of new substance and material, it is quite ambitious to reignite some of the basic mechanics that many great games-of-old flaunted. Din’s Curse takes what seems to be a leap back in time, implementing components that many Diablo, Gauntlet and Warcraft fans will immediately recognize.”

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Indie Links Round-Up: Gator Attack

Heard about the new $100 fee charged by Steam Greenlight?  Well, today’s Indie Links include articles discussing it… along with games about bootleggers, hexagons, and space trees.

You Probably Can’t Last 30 Seconds In Super Hexagon, But Buy It Anyway. (Kotaku)
“After two weeks of careful study, I have determined that Super Hexagon is the bullriding of video games. It may not look it. It may look and sound like an old Atari game that fell through a timewarp and re-emerged on the iTunes store today. But it is, in fact, an experience that will break you, repeatedly.”

Eufloria Adventures Bringing Procedural Fun To PlayStation Mobile (Gamasutra)
“Eufloria Adventures, the game’s working title, is set within the original universe, but it has very different gameplay mechanics. You control a single seedling ship this time around, sent out to study and collect ancient artifacts with which you can enhance your ship’s abilities.  As you explore deeper into the world, survival becomes far more taxing, and constant upgrades to your ship are necessary for defeating enemy colonies and discovering your exact role in the underlying story.”

Cannon Brawl Brings 2D RTS To The PAX 10 (Joystiq)
“The PAX 10 picked some excellent titles to show off right outside of PAX’s Indie Megabooth in Seattle last weekend. Of the indie games on display, a 2D real-time strategy game calledCannon Brawl was my favorite. Cannon Brawl (formerly called Dstroyd) is the product of four developers calling themselves Turtle Sandbox Games, and was a winner of the Activision Independent Games Competition last year, picking up $175,000 and a chance to be published with Activision.”

“Super Hexagon Doesn’t Hate You,” Cavanagh Tells MCV (MCV)
“Having enjoyed a brief pseudo-launch last week, yesterday Super Hexagon finally arrived proper on the Apple App Store.  And if your Twitter feed is anything like this author’s, last night was abuzz with chat about the title. And for every ‘Wow this is amazing’ there was a common caveat.”

This Old-School RPG Might Give You One More Reason To Buy A Vita (Kotaku)
“Here’s another look at Dragon Fantasy Book II, out for PlayStation 3 and Vita early next year. As you can see, it’s very SNESish. Gotta love that fake Mode 7.”

You Light Up My Life: What Steam Greenlight Is For Indies, From Indies (Joystiq)
“Steam Greenlight isn’t for everybody. Literally – five days after pushing Greenlight live, Valve implemented a $100 barrier to entry in the hopes of eliminating the barrage of prank game ideas by people who don’t ‘fully understanding the purpose of Greenlight.’ Before the fee, it was difficult to know what Greenlight was going to mean for the indie community, since its ‘new toy’ sheen hadn’t yet dissipated. It’s even more difficult to gauge what Steam itself wanted Greenlight to accomplish, with or without the fee.”

A $100 Lottery Ticket: Indies Discuss Steam Greenlight’s New Fee (Ars Technica)
“So to help ‘cut down the noise in the system,’ Valve announced late Tuesday that it was immediately instituting a one-time-per-developer fee of $100 to gain access to the Steam Greenlight submission system, with all proceeds going to Penny Arcade’s Child’s Play charity (so Valve doesn’t make any money directly from the new rule). ‘It was obvious after the first weekend that we needed to make some changes to eliminate pranksters while giving folks in the community the ability to focus on ‘their kind’ of games,’ Valve UI designer Alden Kroll told Ars.”

Land Ahoy: Proteus Gets Big Update, Oct Steam Launch (Rock, Paper, Shotgun)
“Oh how I adore Proteus. It’s equal parts minimalistic, enchanting, and really, really difficult to describe to people who haven’t played it. I mean, the point is to just walk around an island that looks like heaven as imagined by the tiny, tribal colony of Atari 2600s that have been forever exiled to your closet. And then things kind of just… happen. Except when they don’t. (See what I mean about the description thing?) Ultimately, though, it’s about taking in wondrous sights and sounds. And, as part of a brand new beta update, you can now share yours with everyone else. And not just with screenshots.”

Thirty Flights Of Loving And The Invention Of Videogame Space (Game On)
“Usually, videogames inhabit spaces. They set them up to be populated, they create functioning, navigable environments that in some way or another have an unbroken connection to a previous space, even if it is only by virtue of the player’s memory. There is usually no cut. Like a long take from A Touch of Evil or Children of Men, the player wanders throughout a space at leisure, bearing witness to spatial connections unable to be hidden or emphasised through montage. But not always. Thirty Flights of Loving is a very unusual videogame. Thirty Flights of Lovingis a videogame that cuts space up.”

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Indie Links Round-Up: Cannon Law

Today’s Indie Links include everything you’ve ever wanted to know about Steam Greenlight, unless there’s something you want to know about Steam Greenlight that isn’t included.  Tautology notwithstanding, there’s also a game about hacking, a free video game emulating tabletop games, and more.

Want To Bring Your Indie Game To PAX? It Could Cost $11,758.70. (Kotaku)
“Got a hot new game? Want to bring it to PAX? Hope you’ve got a trust fund. The people at BitFlip Games have written an entertaining (and eye-opening) blog post that breaks down how they managed to spend close to $12,000 just to get their game Minion Masterout on the show floor.”

Indies On Steam Greenlight, Part One: The Present (Rock, Paper, Shotgun)
“Steam’s light has turned green, which means indie games which are not already available on Valve’s market-ruling online PC gaming store can now petition users to vote for them, in the hope that the eye of benign Sauron will turn to their game and grant it a coveted spot on Steam. I could all too easily hold forth about the pros and cons of the Greenlight system, enthuse about the potential democracy it might mean, muse about whether it’s an attempt to prevent Kickstarter stealing Steam’s thunder, wonder why a company so boundlessly rich can’t just employ a huge team of experts to assess every game submitted to them, why the blue blazes they’d include the troll-gift that is a downvote option, and offer hope that it means a bright new age of bold games finding larger audiences.”

PixelProspector’s Greenlight Picks (PixelProspector)
“I just wanted you to know that I have created a little site called Greenlight Picksthat showcases promising Greenlight Games…
(site will be updated every green moon once in a while).”

The Future Of Garry’s Mod (Rock, Paper, Shotgun)
“There are two versions of Garry’s Mod: the standard version that’s been in the same shape for a while now, and the beta. The beta, aka GMod 13, is a relatively recent arrival, built to allow Garry to overhaul the whole game without breaking the one everyone’s playing. It uncouples the development from the main fork, and that serves two purposes. Firstly, it gives Garry the opportunity to make big changes without constantly dealing with complaints that the game is broken, and secondly, it gives everyone a look at what’s being done to prepare for when the release arrives. The base game will be better, but other things will break. I asked Garry to walk me through the most important future updates. ”

Snapshot: A Virus Named Tom (PC) (Joystiq)
“There are so many games out there we couldn’t possibly review them all. Welcome to Snapshot, where we highlight games that might fall outside our usual coverage but are still something we think you should know about. Today: A Virus Named Tom for PC.”

Damascus And Golgotha (The Ontological Geek)
“Dear Esther resolutely, and I think intentionally, resists any kind of complete analysis, but over the months since I first played and replayed the game, a kind of shape has been forming in my mind, one that grows and builds upon itself each time I go through it. The narrative in Dear Esther is famously opaque, but hopefully this commentary on the dialogue and events within the game will help to flesh out the underlying themes of the work, if not the specific narrative details.”

Card Hunter Combines Tabletop Gaming With Digital Magic (Joystiq)
“While Card Hunter may look shallow on the surface, it’s anything but. Chey and his team have crafted what’s essentially a love letter to tabletop gaming, combining mechanics usually meant for traditional board gaming (like game boards, cardboard cutouts, dice, and action cards) with a high-quality and well-designed video game.”

Hacking Done Right: Quadrilateral Cowboy (Rock, Paper, Shotgun)
“I think I have every right to consider myself a master hacker. I mean, videogames told me so… But anyway, let’s be honest here: hacking minigames tend to have zero basis in reality, and often end up feeling annoying, awkward, and out-of-place. In Blendo‘s  (they of Gravity Bone, Thirty Flights Of Loving, and Atom Zombie Smasher fame) Quadrilateral Cowboy, however, hacking is the entire game. So, how’s it work? Incredibly well, if the demo I played during PAX is any indication. “

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Indie Links Round-Up: PAX It In

In the games covered in today’s Indie Links, you can control time travelers fighting alongside your own ghosts, a worm with aspirations to become a tree, an alien Amazon who ages the men she mates with, a creature that can be built out of limbs and muscles, or 30 ships on the screen at once… among other things.

Live Free, Die Hard: Ludum Dare 24 Special (Rock, Paper, Shotgun)
“This week is special. This week is the Ludum Dare edition. Ludum Dare is a massive game design competition where the goal is to make a game from scratch in 48 hours, a pressure cooker of insomnia and brilliance. We also have the Jam variant, where the rules are relaxed a bit and you have 72 hours. Anyone can enter–in fact, many people make their first game in Ludum Dare or one of the monthly MiniLDs.”

Incredibly Stylish Flight Game Luftrausers Coming to PC & Mac, May Cost $5000 (Kotaku)
“Here’s a new trailer for the upcomingLuftrausers, a game based on the very addictive flash game of the same name. The game is developed in conjunction with indie game duo Vlambeer (creators of Super Crate Box & Radical Fishing) and Devolver Digital.”

Super Time Force – Ingenious Game Mechanic, Funny Trailer (Hookshot Inc.)
“We have already written about Super TIME Force, the latest pixelated pleasure bomb from Capybara, but I just wanted to point you right at the latest trailer, which was made for PAX and is really rather funny. In case you accidentally didn’t read Will’s thing on the game, it’s essentially Gunstar Heroes or Contra (depending on your retro references of choice), but with a very clever little mechanic. Your sideways scrolling heroes are time travellers, and when you die, they zap back to the start of the level – and then you play alongside the ghost data of your previous attempt(s). That’s right, every time you die you make the current level a little easier for your next go, because there are your previous selves, blasting away at enemies.”

Xbox Indie Darling Shoot 1UP Finally Makes It To Mobile (Kotaku)
“Back in 2010 when we were first getting to know Windows Phone 7, indie developer Mommy’s Best Games demonstrated the platform’s power with a mobile version of its unique Xbox Live Indie bullet-hell shooter, Shoot 1UP. Two years later…”

Super Puzzle Platformer Deluxe (PixelProspector)
“Super Puzzle Platformer Deluxe is the upcoming sequel to the awesome arcade game Super Puzzle Platformer.”

I Spy A New Look For Spy Party (Rock, Paper, Shotgun)
“Hecker told Joystiq that ‘We really wanted the art style to reflect the same level of subtlety that the gameplay has. I didn’t want it to be too realistic or too exaggerated, and I think we hit it on this really nice, call it naturalistic or illustrative – they look like illustrations. I’m super excited.’ He’s adamant that the new look shouldn’t/won’t affect the game outside of aesthetics, however.”

Preview: Incredipede (TIGSource)
“This is a new trailer for Colin and Sarah Northway’s Incredipede, which features artwork by Thomas Shahan. Slated for a late October release, Incredipede is a physics-based platformer where you control Quozzle, a little creature that can be built and rebuilt using jointed limbs and muscles. According to the game’s website, it will come with 60 levels and a level editor.”

A Brief History Of Garry’s Mod: Community Contraptions (Rock, Paper, Shotgun)
“According to Garry’s Mod creator Garry Newman: ‘There’s so much stuff going on in GMod that it’s hard to pull out individual addons. I think the real great thing about GMod is that all these addons exist. It has a rich user contribution community. It keeps itself entertained.’ It really is impossible to cover everything that the GMod community has made. I tried and gave up, instead creating an inexhaustive list of amazing things that have tickled me over the years as an on-and-off GModder. So this list includes my choices with a couple of Garry’s mixed in.”

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Indie Links Round-Up: Dithering

An edition of Indie Links includes an article interviewing indie artist Anna Anthropy!  (Let’s count “Indie Links” as a compound word so we can say all the words in that sentence started with vowels.)  Also, an indie game that looks like a big-budget title, a survival horror game set on the Moon, and SpyParty’s redesign.

‘Retro/Grade:’ If I Could Turn Back Time (The Verge)
“Matt Gilgenbach burned through his savings, went into debt, and — by his own admission — didn’t give his new wife the attention she deserved, to make downloadable shooter Retro/Grade.”

Sup Holmes Invites Anna Anthropy To Blow Your Minds (Destructoid)
“I am going to talk as little as possible on this week’s edition of Sup, Holmes?. The more I can keep my mouth shut, the more we get of Anna. She’s easily one of the most interesting people working in videogames today. I’m sad that show is only an hour and a half long. ”

Syder Arcade (PixelProspect0r)
“Syder Arcade is a faithful tribute to shmups in general and to the classic Defenderin particular. It offers really good visuals and challenging gameplay.”

SpyParty Redesign: The New Art Of Espionage (Joystiq)
“Last year, animator John Cimino turned down a cushy position at Zynga, pre-IPO, to work out of Chris Hecker’s garage redesigning Hecker’s ambitious, notorious indie gameSpyParty. Cimino worked in secret since September 2011 to transform the primary colors and block-based skeletons of SpyParty‘s characters into the artistic, realistic designs revealed today.”

Jack Lumber: All Logs Must Die (Hookshot Inc.)
“The sad tale of a swarthy chainsaw-wielder, murderous trees and a dear departed grandmother – Jack Lumber is a Fruit Ninja nod wrapped tight in some delightfully imaginative swaddling.”

A Routine Interview About Crafting Lunar Horror (Shacknews)
“The marketing geniuses behind the classic 1979 horror film Alien once noted: “In space, no one can hear you scream.” Aptly-named indie developer Lunar Software is in the process of exploring that adage through the development of a new first-person, survival-horror title set on the Moon, called Routine. The short teaser trailer for the game–which the developer debuted at this year’s Gamescom festival–is equal parts creepy and intriguing, even when taken at face value. However, after finding out that the game will ostensibly play out like a survival-horror roguelike, I had to reach out to Lunar Software’s Aaron Foster, to ask him about Routine’s revolutionary design, and get his take on what makes survival horror succeed in video games.”

Hawken Q&A: Khang Le On Resource Management On Illal (IndieGames.com)
“Adhesive Games, formed of team members of Project Offset, will release Hawken through a free-to-play model on December 12. It was announced yesterday that the game will support the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset. The developer is currently putting the finishing touches on the garage where you customize your armored vehicle and is working on tutorials to train prospective pilots before they engage in combat on the virtual battlefield. We met up with creative director Khang Le at the 2012 Anime Expo, taking place at the Los Angeles Convention Center, to hear how story and gameplay reinforce each other in the gritty mech combat title.”

A Team Of Seven Is Making A Game That ‘Shouldn’t Be Possible’ (Kotaku)
“This is hardly unusual for an indie game: critical hits like Braid and Minecraft were created by even smaller teams. What is unusual is that Natural Selection 2 looks like a triple-A, big-budget, $50 million title. It runs on an original engine that the team developed just for this game. It’s ambitious, competitive, and difficult to market: as Jeremy points out, it’s a simple game, but a ‘very hard concept’ to sell.”

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Indie Links Round-Up: Beaming