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

Today’s Indie Links get back to basics by addressing the fundamental question of just what is an indie game?  Whatever it is, the games discussed here clearly qualify, including Environmental Station Alpha, Gravity Bone, Ruin Diver III, Thirty Flights of Loving, and lots more.

What Makes A Game Indie: A Universal Definition (Sinister Design)
“I’ve been content to stand on the sidelines of the “what is indie” debate for a number of years now, satisfied that whatever the outcome, it wouldn’t really matter. I no longer think that. When a multi-million-dollar game with a team of nearly 50, created with the backing of a major publisher, can get into an ‘indie’ bundle with nothing more than a collective shrug of indifference, the indie community is in deep trouble. This article is an attempt to address a root cause of the problem.”

Play This Awesome Free PC Game. It’ll Take 15 Minutes, And You Will Enjoy Yourself. (Kotaku)
“Look, I’m not gonna mince words here. If you own a PC, you owe it to yourself to play Gravity Bone. I don’t want to tell you what it’s all about, since the game is so short that even telling you the setup would give you information in the same amount of time that you could just experience it for yourself.”

Kickstarter Katchup – 25th August 2012 (Rock, Paper, Shotgun)
“The loser column is sadly busy once again this week, with no winners we’ve been following. But as usual there are a lot of other Kickstarters in progress, and a bunch of new ones. Don’t forget to note the rules below, and the next person who writes “Why no love for…” in the comments is going to be buried on the moon. Have a great Saturday!”

Environmental Station Alpha (PixelProspector)
“Environmental Station Alpha is an upcoming platform shooter that is inspired by Metroid. It features charming ultra low res graphics and is made by the developer ofThe Mushroom Engine, Timerocketxby, Generic and many other games”

Live Free, Play Hard: The Week In Free Indie Games (Rock, Paper, Shotgun)
“Porpentine of Free Indie Games returns with another selection of the web’s weirdest and wonderfullest indie fare from across the last few days. What have you got for us this time, Porpentine?”

Perfection Takes Time: Spy Party Dev On New Additions, Waiting ‘Til It’s Right (Ars Technica)
“When Chris Hecker talks about Spy Party, the video game he has been making almost entirely by himself for over three years, he likes to use the word ‘perfect.’ Based on a 30-minute conversation from his office in Oakland last week, he runs at approximately 26 PPH (‘perfects’ per hour).”

Go Back In Time, Destroy Warships At Austin’s Fantastic Arcade Next Month (Joystiq)
“Fantastic Arcade, the annual independent game showcase attached to the Fantastic Fest film festival, revealed its official selections for this year’s event this week. Capy’s Super TIME Force, Vlambeer’s Luftrausers, and Dennaton’s Hotline Miami are on display as the ‘main competition,’ along with FTL, Super Hexagon, Unmanned, and McPixel.”

Every Exit Is An Entrance: You Must Play Thirty Flights Of Loving (Hookshot Inc.)
“Thirty Flights of Loving is a short game that deserves a very long post. A long post would ruin the pleasures of discovery, however, so it’s going to have to wait. For now, all you need to know is that Brendon Chung’s latest is a wild tale of love, revenge, and stray cats, told in dazzling synaptic flashes. It destroys pretty much every other story-based video game I’ve ever played. References The Great Gastby, too, old sport.”

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Indie Links Round-Up: Bringing It To The Table

Today’s Indie Links include a game where level design is also music composition, a game with a non-linear narrative, and a game where the “line” actually runs backwards.

Split Community: Kongregate To Host Contest For Ludum Dare (IndieGames.com)
“The indie dev community appears splitover Kongregate’s new contest which attaches a monetary prize to this weekend’s Ludum Dare 48- and 72-hour competitions. Kongregate’s prizes total $2,400 for the three games which are the highest voted on their service. From the judging rules, they are ’100% popularity based on the average five-star user rating on Kongregate.com as of 11:59:59 p.m. PT on September 28, 2012.’”

Retro/Grade Review: Time Machine Music (Joystiq)
“Retro/Grade is a game about distraction. On a surface level, there’s a complicated premise that has you playing a side-scrolling shmup in reverse, avoiding enemy bullets as they return to the back of your ship and rushing to catch the projectiles that your ship fired when time was moving forward. You know, because you don’t want to damage the timeline by having a missile shoot out of nowhere.”

Sweet Mother Of Pearl, There’ll Be A Lot Of Indie Games At PAX This Year (Kotaku)
“This kickin’ trailer shows the 30+ games that will be on display at the Indie Megabooth at PAX Prime next week in Seattle. Can you name all the games? I… can’t. (Hmm, maybe that’s because I watched this with my mouse over it so the Vimeo logo blocks where it totally says the names of the games.)”

Sound Shapes Review (Shacknews)
“As a huge fan of music gaming, my enthusiasm for Sound Shapes was palpable. The latest game from Jonathan Mak, the man behind Everyday Shooter, this eccentric platformer promised to combine music creation with platforming to create a brand new experience. Not only would gamers be able to play interactive “albums” from Jim Guthrie, Deadmau5, and Beck, they’d be able to create their own as well.”

Joe Danger 2: The Movie – The Nintendo-Flavored XBLA Game With Jetpacks (Joystiq)
“The only place Joe Danger hasn’t ended up is on a Nintendo console. Which made Hello Games founder Sean Murray’s statement on the game’s inspirations distinctly confusing when he told me this last week during Gamescom:”

Wot I Think: 30 Flights Of Loving (Rock, Paper, Shotgun)
“Like its predecessor Gravity Bone, Blendo Games’ Thirty Flights of Loving is a short-form tale of cool criminals in a cuboid world, told from a first-person perspective with a hyper-compressed, non-linear narrative that focuses only on the drama and comedy, not the filler. Here’s what I made of it.”

Pitiri 1977 (PixelProspector)
“Pitiri 1977 is a physics based adventure platformer about a boy with special abilities (telekinesis, fireball etc.) The strengths (visuals, story) and weaknesses (bit unfinished) of the game are pointed out by Indie Game Mag and the german gaming blog Superlevel.”

SpyParty’s Graphics Leap From 1998 To 2012 In One Gallery (Joystiq)
“Up until now, the most interesting thing about SpyParty was its ridiculously deep gameplay. That remains the case, actually, but the game’s new look is certainly something to write home about. We’ve got a full feature with Chris Hecker detailing how the changes took place, but if you just wanna take a looksy, here you go!”

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Indie Links Round-Up: Everyone’s Invited

In today’s Indie Links: art in games, going at it alone as an indie developer, and the return of an indie developer from before “indie gaming” was a thing.

Legendary 1979 TRS-80 Game Developer Returns To Rebuild in Unity (IndieGames.com)
“Leo Christopherson must have been a great math teacher, we’ll probably never really know, but we will always be certain of the fact that he was an excellent TRS-80 programmer and game designer that wowed computer gamers back in the late 70s and early-to-mid 80s. He was also very close to the archetype of what we’d today describe as an indie developer, what with him being a one man team with unique and quirky ideas, who still fondly remembers ‘the successes I had with graphics and sound on the old TRS-80 as being some of the best moments of my life…’”

Hands-On: Hawken (Rock, Paper, Shotgun)
“If anyone was keeping count, they’d probably tell you that I died a lot more often than I killed at Gamescom. Whether having my head knocked off by a hammer or huddling around a fire and failing to survive the Eastern Front, I spent a lot of time meeting makers. Let it be known, however, that I was actually quite good at Hawken, but that’s not the only reason I’m an admirer of the multiplayer deathmech delight.”

Letters From A New York Indie #4: The Loneliest Number (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.”

Joe Danger 2: The Movie Flipping To XBLA ‘Probably In The Next Month Or So’ (Joystiq)
“Joe Danger 2: The Movie from UK dev Hello Games is leaping to your Xbox 360 in the not-too-distant future. “We’re pretty much complete,” Hello Games head Sean Murray told us at Gamescom during a demo of the upcoming 2D Xbox Live Arcade racer. ‘We’re showing the full game here, and hopefully people like it. Hopefully that means we’re nearly finished,’ he said with a smile.”

A Minecraft Experiment: 30 Players, Two Months, All-Out War (The Verge)
“What happens when you put 30 Minecraft players in a small, closed map for two months with a limited number of resources? An intriguing experiment earlier this year asked the very same question, and got a somewhat expected (but nevertheless disconcerting) answer: all-out war. The participants were unaware of the experiment’s goal, and were only given one rule, “never leave the bedrock walls.” Instead of banding together, the players broke into four factions — The Axe, The Brotherhood, The Dwarves, and The Merchant’s Guild — and began fighting for scarce resources on the 350 x 350 block map.”

This Game Lets You Show Cammy Your Thailand (Kotaku)
“Did you know that, over the weekend, there was an indie game get-together called Jean Claude Van Jam? And that it was all about making games based on Jean-Claude Van Damme? And that it happened only a few days after Van Damme gave perhaps the greatest Street Fighter-related interview of all time? What an amazing time we live in.”

Panel Video: Sony Devs On Art In Games (IndieGames.com)
“Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios president (and indie game champion for Sony) Shuhei Yoshida, Giant Sparrow creative director Ian Dallas (The Unfinished Swan), thatgamecompany co-founder Kellee Santiago (Journey), and Adam Volker from small start-up Moonbot Studios (Diggs: Nightcrawler for Wonderbook) discussed the role of art in games at Gamescom 2012 last week.”

Dust: An Elysian Tail Review – A Classic Formula Revisited (Joystiq)
“Every so often, a game comes along that reminds me why I play games. They aren’t always perfect, but they’re memorable experiences and that’s what really matters. Dust: An Elysian Tail is one of those games. It certainly has its flaws, but when you get past all that you’re left with a beautiful, quirky tale of self-discovery that still manages to be engaging and consistently surprising throughout.”

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Indie Links Round-Up: Forest Flora

Today’s Indie Links cover a game that was a huge success for its developers on XBLIG, and a game on iOS that wasn’t.  Plus, games about debating and skating; fast-moving ninjas and very, very slow-moving monks.

Going Broke With Success: How An App With 200,000 Downloads Led To Developer Homelessness (The Penny Arcade Report)
“This may seem like one of the happy success stories on the iOS platform, but the reality of the situation is more grim than it may at first appear. Gasketball was released for free, with a one-time in-app purchase that unlocks the rest of the game offered for $2.99. The conversion rate to the paid version of the game sits at 0.67%.”

CastleMiner Z Crests 900,000 Sales, Becomes Fastest-Selling XBLIG (Joystiq)
“As of August 15, Xbox Live Indie Game CastleMiner Z, which is priced at 80 MS Points ($1), has exceeded sales of 900,000 – making it the most successful XBLIG to date, developer DigitalDNA Games claims.”

Dust: An Elysian Tail (TIGSource)
“Dean Dodrill’s beautiful brawler Dust: An Elysian Tail was released this week on Xbox Live Arcade. In development for four years, Dust was the winner of the 2009 Dream.Build.Play competition. Impressively, Dean (a professional animator) is responsible for almost all of the animation and programming for the game. The soundtrack was created by Hyperduck SoundWorks, who also did the OST for Iji.”

Cherno Plus: Hall On Day Z’s Standalone Future (Rock, Paper, Shotgun)
“Earlier this week I sat down with Day Z creator Dean Hall to talk about the new standalone game. Read on for information on why the mod version of the game will now ‘open up’, how dogs work, how original Op Flash developers came back to work on the new title, how ‘underground construction’ might work, and for an explanation of why there won’t be a military simulator mod of Day Z. At least not yet.”

Sean@Gamescom: Indies Are Pregnant With Creative Solutions (Joystiq)
“‘That’s not what I thought you meant when you said this project was your “baby.”‘ This and dozens of other ‘pregnant game developer’ jokes crossed our mind as we stopped to watch someone play a video game strapped to some guy’s chest on the Gamescom business floor today.”

Super House Of Dead Ninjas (PixelProspector)
“Super House Of Dead Ninjas is a fast paced action platformer in which you fight your way through an enemy filled tower. Clean the floors from enemies in a speedy manner and collect a massive amount of upgrades. It is a really awesome game that pays much attention to details and I hope it will also be released as a downloadable version soon (with fullscren mode). IndieGames.com also reported about the game.”

A Game About Debating Is Way More Fun Than It Sounds (Kotaku)
“A Game By Its Cover is one of the coolest independent game jams going around. It tasks entrants with picking an existing piece of fake video game art – often a cartridge from Meteor’s awesome Famicase exhibition- and making an actual game out of it.  This year’s edition kicked off in June and closed over the weekend. One of the entrants is Argument Champion, based on the Famicase cart below and pitched as a game in which you detect audience sentiment and use it as a means to beat your opponent in a formal debate.”

Live Free, Play Hard: The Week In Free Indie Games (Rock, Paper, Shotgun)
“Porpentine of freeindiegam.es returns with another round-up of cost-free treasures discovered on the internet over the last few days. Here’s last week’s, if you missed it. What have you got for us this time, Porpentine?”

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Indie Links Round-Up: Robot Rumble

Along with the usual articles about new or upcoming indie games, today’s Indie Links discuss minimalism in level design, the importance of story in games, and why indies should start on PCs.

Indies Should Start On PCs, Says Frozen Synapse Dev (Develop)
“Independent developers should make the PC their primary platform, the developer behind Frozen Synapse told Develop.  Mode 7 Games’ joint managing director Paul Taylor said the PC’s open nature is what makes it a strong gateway platform for independent developers and new talent.”

Sound Shapes Q&A: Prototyping For PlayStation Consoles (IndieGames.com)
“Queasy Games’ Sound Shapes for PlayStation 3 and PS Vita is a sidescrolling platformer, where level design generates sound design. The game allows you to customize your own stages in its level editor, incorporating building blocks designed by guest artists like Beck and deadmau5, and share those results over the PlayStation Network.”

‘Why Hasn’t Story In Games Advanced?’ Amnesia‘s Designer Has Some Opinions! (Gamasutra)
“In his incredibly animated talk at GDC Europe on Wednesday, Frictional Games co-founder Thomas Grip (Amnesia: The Dark Descent, Penumbra) discussed horror and storytelling in games, explaining his personal theory of what’s vital in telling game stories. His prime thesis is that in games, ‘story is not just the plot.’ In fact, regarding what’s important in interactive storytelling, Grip postulated: ‘We want the player to play through the story, not just sit through it.’”

Zineth (TIGSource)
“Developed by a group of students at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute during their Spring semester,Zineth is a non-linear action game that mostly lets you skate around, but also gives you the option to fiddle around with fetch quests, races, Twitter, and a strange Pokémon-esque minigame that’s accessible through the player’s mobile device. The main draw, however, is the skating, and it feels fast and fun. It’s complemented by a cool aesthetic and an expansive world that offers plenty of opportunities to grind, glide, and wall jump across huge distances.”

Kickstarter Katchup – 18 August 2012 (Rock, Paper, Shotgun)
“The loser column is sadly busy this week, with a couple of high profile projects not making it. But then there’s also a big surprise in the winner’s section too. And as ever, an awful lot of other Kickstarters in progress for your perusal. Don’t forget to note the rules below before throwing your cash in every direction.”

Joe Danger 2: The Movie – ”No Mr Danger I Expect You To Fly!” (Hookshot Inc.)
“A first play of Joe Danger: The Movie is like mainlining endorphins: a proverbial explosion in a sweet shop. As you play through the various films Joe’s a stuntman for a huge variety of level-types are thrown at you – outrunning avalanches on skis, police bike chases after Team Nasty in a city centre an Indiana Jones mine cart. Amazingly, meanwhile, each vehicle is as much fun to pilot as the last.”

This Whacked-Out, Wicked Cool Music Game Does Everything Backwards (Kotaku)
“The new video game Retro/Grade takes that same idea and runs with it. In this game, you read music from right to left. You also play the game backwards—not just from right to left, but rewinding through time. It’s just as cool as it sounds.”

Taking The ‘Less Is More’ Approach To Level Design (Gamasutra)
“Eufloria‘s Rudolf Kremers believes that “less is more” is the perfect approach for indie developers on a budget when it comes to level design, and his GDC Europe talk today described the various ways this approach can be achieved.  Procedural generation in particular, as seen in such indie titles asSpelunky, Minecraft and Kremers’ own Eufloria, can help free up development time for other areas of your game, and is “a great way to create enormous amounts of content” in a short space of time, he argued.”

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

Cheap? Then today’s Indie Links may be for you, as they contain links to a number of free games.  There are articles and interviews about some good non-free games, too, though, for you folk with all your fancy money.

Live Free, Play Hard: The Week In Free Indie Games (Rock, Paper, Shotgun)
“Presenting the first of a new weekly series, in which Porpentine of the excellent Free Indie Gamestakes us through some of the most splendid, er, free indie games released/discovered over the last few days. You may notice this column is in need of an appropriate title image, a la Bargain Bucket and Sunday Papers – if you fancy creating one, in exchange for IMMORTAL GLORY, please email a 600x250pixel JPG here and we’ll see what we can do.”

Review: Sound Shapes Makes Beautiful Music, Platforming (Ars Technica)
“Music games can generally be divided into two broad categories: games that ask you to take part in making the music, and games where the music drives the gameplay.Sound Shapes straddles the line between those two types of games while layering an incredibly satisfying, abstract take on 2D platform games on top as well.”

Preview: Heaven Variant (TIGSource)
“This is a trailer for an upcoming horizontal shoot ‘em up called Heaven Variant, by the three-man team at Zanrai Interactive. Zanrai has made it clear on their FAQ that the game will not be bullet hell, but nonetheless aims to appease both hardcore and casual players. It currently has no release date.”

Exclusive Interview: Hidden Path’s Jeff Pobst (Tap-Repeatedly)
“Hidden Path Entertainment kickstarted the viability of commercial-grade tower defense games with 2008′s critically acclaimed Defense Grid: the Awakening, and has now turned to Kickstarter to partially fund the development of more Defense Grid - potentially up to the Big Prize, a full sequel.  I electronically buttonholed Jeff Pobst, the CEO of Hidden Path Entertainment, for an exclusive Q&A about the company, the Kickstarter, and the future of Defense Grid.”

The Games Of No More Sweden 2012 (IndieGames.com)
“The developers from the fourth annual No More Sweden have shared 15 game jam creations and the above presentation, starting with the three audience favorites. First up is Iji developer Daniel Remar with cooperative, three-game collection Bromancing Saga 2 (previously covered).”

Gasketball – Cure For An Olympic Hangover (Hookshot Inc.)
“Gasketball is a game one suspects was named before it was conceived. Sometimes, when a pun pops into your head, an entrepreneurial venture must follow, if only to provide a vehicle with which to share the brilliance of your wordplay. So it is with Gasketball, a game that combines robots and basketball into a future sports take on the puzzle game.”

Kickstarter Katchup – 11th August 2012 (Rock, Paper, Shotgun)
“A very busy week in the Katchup, with a piling of projects succeeding, another pile falling short, and more new additions than ever before. So grab your wallet, empty out the contents, and start throwing it all at your screen.”

What Dear Esther And Minecraft Have In Common (Gamasutra)
“Indie hit Dear Esther is “a bit like story Minecraft,” believes creator Dan Pinchbeck, as the evocative game allows players to imagine their own story, without forcing them into a particular narrative.  As part of his talk at GDC Europe today, Pinchbeck of thechineseroom noted that the abstract and ambiguous first-person exploration game barely gives you any real details about characters and plot, instead allowing the players’ imaginations to run wild.”

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

Today’s Indie Links deal with piracy, Playstation Plus, a puzzle platformer, a plush prototype, and paddles moved with pitches. Try saying that ten times fast (then make sure to wipe off your monitor).

We Should Be Calling The Designer Of These Games Some Kind Of Genius (Kotaku)
“Schneider’s turned out more than a dozen games in two years, a feat that’s impressive no matter what you think of his output. And that output from his RadianGames studio has been very, very good. From the hypnotic Joy Joy to the clever hybrid Inferno, Schneider’s games have taken familiar design templates and branches them out in challenging ways tweaks them to feel modern, re-invented and fresh.”

Interview: Subset Games Talk FTL (Rock, Paper, Shotgun)
“Last week Adam posted some impressions of the spaceship managing FTL, and you’re allowed to read them. And now, Craig’s spoken with its creators, Justin Ma and Matthew Davis. They talk about how the project came to be, how they’re still in shock over their massive Kickstarter success, and how it was that the game was inspired by text adventures.”

Experimental Gameplay: Audio Input Games (IndieGames.com)
“Developers created six games for the experimental gameplay project‘s July theme of audio input. The above-pictured Tone Death by Malcolm Brown uses a microphone for input; players must shatter glass by hitting the note next to it. A mismatched note equals a fiery death.”

Thomas Was Alone And A New Breed Of Reviews (Gnomes Lair)
“Thomas Was Alone is a game by Mike Bithell and Mike Bithell is one of the first indie game designers I started writing about sometime six years ago. He was still a student back then, but had already come up with more than a few intriguing ideas and was more than capable of creating beautiful games. Games like Reunion if you remember, which I deeply enjoyed and (hint, hint) would love to see evolved.”

Piracy Is A Fact Of Life, So Why Not Just Have Fun With It? (Gamasutra)
“Tackling PC game piracy is always an on-and-off talking point for indie developers. Every now and again a studio throws out awful piracy rate figures for its latest release, and the internet goes ballistic over how terrible it is and what can be done to prevent it. These discussions usually culminate in DRM being called the worst thing to happen to video games ever. One indie studio recently took a different approach to piracy, and ended up being called out by a number of other devs for actuallyadvocating piracy.”

Jim Rossignol On Sir, You Are Being Hunted (Hookshot, Inc.)
“As to why we’re making Sir specifically, well, it was too much fun as an idea. It exploded out of a conversation about what we should be doing, and grew from there. I want to play it. That seems like reason enough.”

Wooly Spaceships, New Frontiers: Launching An Indie Career With Voyager (Gamasutra)
“New-minted indie developer Ken Amarit is something of a jack of all trades, about to make his formal game dev debut on iOS withVoyager. Aiming to do the whole works on his own, he was drawn to emphasize perhaps the most unique of his many skills. It’s his approach to game creation that holds interesting takeaways for all beginning indies, and those about to fly solo for the first time.”

Knytt, Big Sky Sequels Coming Free To PlayStation Plus (Eurogamer.net)
“Indie publisher Ripstone has announced a trio of releases for Sony’s PlayStation Plus Presents label: retro platformer Knytt Underground, hypnotic ‘shmup Big Sky Infinity and a third, as-yet-unannounced game.”

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

Coincidentally, today’s Indie Links include a number of games about squares: a roguelike with the map on a parchment-like square grid, a puzzler involving pushing things around square grids, another puzzler that involves lining up squares and rectangles.  But don’t worry; we’re not all squares here.  You can also read about the Indie Megabooth, Xbox Live, and more.  (Note, however, that the ”MEGA” letters in the Indie Megabooth logo are also pretty close to squares.  Huh.  Never mind.)

Everything You Knew About Playing Tetris Won’t Help With This Clever New Puzzle Game (Kotaku)
“Slydris operates on the same falling-block template pioneered by Tetris and, yeah, you’re still aligning the tumbling shapes into horizontal lines to clear space on a vertical playfield. But Slydris finds unique ways to differentiate itself from other efforts to recapture the glory of Alexey Pajitnov’s all-time classic game.”

Video: Creating The Audio For Bastion (IndieGames.com)
“If there’s one thing the industry will remember about Supergiant Games’ Bastion, chances are it’ll be its audio. The game’s rich, ethereal score and iconic narration gave the game a very unique tone, and went a long way toward establishing its striking aesthetic. And at the 2012 Game Developer Conference, Bastion‘s audio and music designer, Darren Korb, discussed the ins and outs of how he made the game’s sound stand out from the pack.”

Brief Impressions: English Country Tune (Rock, Paper, Shotgun)
“At RPS, we’re hardy men. Jim can often be seen carrying a shed on his shoulders, packed with all his tools. Alec and Adam run a side business as fix-it gentlemen for logging machines, while Nathan is officially San Francisco’s Sturdiest Man. And I once fixed a tap. But English Country Tune is too much for us. (Well, for me and Jim, as we’re the ones who tried it.) A really beautiful puzzle game that Quinns once sent a biscuit. But by golly it’s hard.”

Mercury (Beta 1.1) (TIGSource)
“Described as an “experimental, winner-generated arcade roguelike”, Mercury is a simple dungeon crawl that allows the two top-scoring players at the end of each 4-day cycle to permanently add something new to it. Released as beta last month, the game began with only one monster, item, and class, but has since been expanded by the leading players in its community. There’s also a Chaos Mode, which allows anyone to add new entities to the game at any time (this is an easy way to see how the creation system works).”

Indie Megabooth Makes A Triumphant Return To PAX Prime (Joystiq)
“The Indie Megabooth proved to be a success at PAX East and is returning, bigger and better, to PAX Prime 2012, running August 31 – September 2. The PAX Prime Indie Megabooth will feature 29 independent studios and more than 30 games, each one shrouded in mystery and intrigue for now.”

Unepic (PixelProspector)
“Unepic is an action adventure platformer with RPG elements that draws inspiration from the Castlevania series.”

Kickstarter Katchup – 4th August 2012 (Rock, Paper, Shotgun)
“There’s an absolutely enormous winners’ list this week, which is always a pleasure to see. Unless they turn out to be international money laundering thieves who release mediocre games at best. Then it will be a bit of a shame. So at what will you throw your money?”

How To Fix Xbox Live Arcade (Hookshot Inc.)
“Microsoft’s most recent dashboard update (a bi-annual-ish freshening of the Xbox 360’s menu screen that rearranges its form and tweaks its function) has been widely-criticized. Its haphazard arrangement bespeaks Microsoft’s muddled vision for their console’s twilight months – ballooning the size of advertisements, emphasizing the system’s media hub capacity by putting movies, TV and apps front and centre and, largely, ghettoizing the ‘game’ aspects of the system.”

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Indie Links Round-Up: Just Around The Corner

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