Ridiculous cloning, surgical simulation, and another chapter in the indie support debate between Sony and Microsoft – in today’s Indie Links.

Cloned at Birth: The Story of Ridiculous Fishing (Polygon)
“The interview is over. The story, told in pieces at least a hundred times in bars, at hamburger joints, on stages and in private circles of up-and-coming game developers, has now been told for the first time in its entirety. It is a story about the little guy getting bullied and making a stand. And winning. It is the story of Ridiculous Fishing, and how two men from the Netherlands rallied the worldwide community of independent game developers to take on the practice of game cloning and reclaim their invention to launch what will become (for a time) the best-reviewed iOS game of 2013.”

Microsoft hasn’t lost touch with indies, insists XBLA dev (Eurogamer)
“Microsoft’s relationship with indie studios remains strong, the developers of forthcoming XBLA title Max: The Curse of Brotherhood have insisted – and while it might seem that the platform holder is losing its grip on indie gaming as Sony attracts more and more developers to PlayStation, there’s plenty going on behind the scenes to ensure that won’t be the case come the next generation.”

Review: Spyleaks (Independent Gaming)
“*wipes sweat off face* Gee, that game can be tough at times. What game am I talking about? Spyleaks, an old-school stealth-puzzle game by HeartBit Interactive using the XNA engine (it is available on XBLIG and on the PC).”

Super Brain Eat 3 (Indie Gamer Chick)
“PlayStation Mobile is to the Vita what Xbox Live Indie Games is to the Xbox 360. Whether that’s a good thing or not is in the eye of the beholder, I suppose. I wasn’t around for the early stages of XBLIG, but based on what I hear from my buddies Ryan, George, and Justin, the early days were nowhere near the desolate wasteland that PSM is turning into. Looking at the slate of recent releases, nothing really has caught my fancy for it. But then again, nothing really caught my eye on iPhone either. My Vita has been getting a bit dusty though. Nothing like my Wii U, which currently wears the same amount of dust as your average mummy.”

The Amusing Messages to Gamers Tucked in Monaco’s Credits (Kotaku)
“Are you planning to steal the wonderful new co-op heist game Monaco? Please consider the above message. It appears in the $15 game’s credits. “

I’m Mexican. Am I Supposed To Be Offended By Guacamelee? (Kotaku)
“I remember being told I was a bad Mexican. To some of the white friends I hung out with, I was one of them. Once someone told me that because I played video games, read science fiction, and spoke with no accent, that I was whiter than they were. Now that was weird. Maybe I should have worn a sombrero or poncho around campus. Maybe then I would have been a Mexicano auténtico. To my extended family, my choppy spanish and awkward adolescence was a sign of my absolute assimilation into a destructive other.”

Wot I Think: Surgeon Simulator 2013 (RPS)
“As a games blogger, the question I am most often asked is: “When are you going to go back to school so that you can get a real job, like an accountant or a doctor?” To which I reply: “Look, Mum, Dad, writing about videogames is a real job now. I’ve paid my rent unaided for at least several years.” Then I show them games like Surgeon Simulator 2013 and ask why I would want to be a real anything, when I can be a simulated everything?”

Live Free, Play Hard: The Week’s Finest Free Indie Games (RPS)
“THIS WEEK: Fridge magnet story engine. 2012 so .exe, 2013 so .ppt. Dinosaur dating sim. “The ONLY LGBT-friendly anglerfish dating sim!””

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Indie Links Round-Up: Among Foes

Are games art? Are gamers artists? What do you suck at? Is it launching your game? So many questions (and luckily plenty of answers) in today’s Dev Links.

Are Game(r)s Art(ists)? (Gamasutra)
“”Interactivity’s a very interesting word, because it implies that this is something we didn’t do in art before, which is complete nonsense, because the only interesting art experiences are the ones that engage you in that way; in which you are invited to become part of the authorship of something in some way or another. And usually in some more meaningful way than choosing whether to open this door or that door.” - Brian Eno”

What do you suck at? (Develop Online)
“Mike Bithell on why it is important to be aware of the gaps in your game development skills.”

Launch Day 2.0 (AltDevBlogADay)
“I didn’t sleep well the night before our Sunday launch of Vex Blocks. Despite the weeks we’ve had the game in the hands of testers, a new bug had come to light late Saturday evening. While not game breaking it still needed to be addressed. I stayed up working on the problem until solved. Chat messages, frantic on my part, went back and forth between myself and my partner until between the two of us we were able smooth things out. I then prepped the build for the next morning’s launch and finally after a long day allowed myself to push back away from my desk just after 1am. I tried and failed to sleep after that.”

BattleBlock Theater (Beta): User Created Levels (The Behemoth)
“Ah, yes… the BattleBlock Community Theater. Even after 3 years of playwriting levels, how those Beta builders still managed to surprise me! And kill me. And then surprise me again! Whether I was flung through explosions into rooms made out of teleporters or flung through teleporters into rooms made out of explosions, the experience was quite the rollercoastery deathtrap of emotion.”

A tree killed his Granny! Jack is STEAMing (Owlchemy Labs)
“Mobile’s most poplar game is now available on Steam! Stack beards, chug syrup, and rock flannel as you axe your way through the forest on your PC/Mac/Linux machine and make your Granny proud.”

Receiver’s Greenlight Journey (Wolfire Games)
“Receiver was finally released on Steam today — check it out here! There is a one-week launch sale bringing the price down to $3.99. If you already have Receiver or Overgrowth, then you can claim your Steam key on your Humble Store download page (linked from your purchase email). Whenever a game is greenlit, there are always two questions that come up over and over: “How did it take THIS LONG for this game to get greenlit?”, and “How did THIS game get greenlit?” In this post I will try to answer both questions about Receiver!”

New HUD Layout (Krooked Gaming)
“So after a lot of adjustments, I think I’m finally happy with the new HUD. While I have a few concerns about how complicated it may look to new users, it does contain a lot of useful information.”

Indie Tools: PolyVox (IndieGames.com)
“PolyVox is (according to its developers admittedly) “a fast, lightweight C++ library for the storage and processing of volumetric (voxel-based) environments” that can be used for anything from games to scientific applications.””

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Dev Links: The Next Plateau

Remember the days before online multiplayer? Your group of friends would huddle around the television screen with wired controllers, trash talking and laughing while giving you the occasional, jovial shove. With online multiplayer changing how we play our games together, few games have been able to achieve the same level of comradery as the pre-internet console era did. But the Columbus-based start up Multivarious Games aims to change that with their game on Kickstarter, Dangerous.

Dangerous is a two-dimensional action platformer and shooter designed for local multiplayer on the Xbox 360. With an ancient island realized in watercolor as its landscape and local multiplayer as the vehicle, Dangerous is aiming to bring back the best in competitive gaming: with your friends in your living room.

Multivarious Games’ design sensibilities are inspired by the best competitive classics such as Worms, Goldeneye, Mario Kart, and Bomberman. With this competitive attitude in mind, development started in 2012 with the creation of a  physics engine that would support the amount of adaptability the developers wanted for the action. The environments feature destructible terrain to allow the unique world to play an important role in the game. If you’re trapped, you can channel water to push your enemies back. If you’re pinned by a sniper, you can shoot off a tree limb or cropping of rocks above them to take them out. By allowing so much freedom in each level and adding in other dynamic elements in the environment, the action is sure to keep you on your toes.

Dangerous also boasts a hand-drawn, watercolor art-style. The game is still running off of place holder assets at the moment so it’s hard to gauge what the final product will look like, but what the developers have shown so far in their videos looks promising. This visual style will make the set of customizable characters even more exciting. After choosing one of the two factions, either the outsiders or island natives, you build up this character’s strength through multiple fights. During battle, you can acquire new weapons, power-ups, and other character altering items which will alter your character over time as they become stronger, but also let you specialize in different abilities like the use of heavy weapons or lighter, quicker weaponry. At the same time, the character modifiers can be disabled so that everyone can join in the fun at the same level and enjoy a purer experience.

Since I have been doing this daily column there is one genre that I have actually managed to avoid for the most part, even though it makes up a rather big percentage of online indie games. I am of course talking about the much loved tower defence genre and even though there is so much competition in this market I think I’ve found a very special one here.

Demonrift TD is a game that has been developed by Menara and offers a bit more than just a rather average tower defence game, by including a strong narrative and some interesting overarching resource management Demonrift TD is a very well designed tower defence game.

A key point in Demonrift TD is as you progress through the game world and take over towns you are able to collect resources from these places each turn. You must then spend these resources on various upgrades  that will determine just how well you do on the following levels.

Average play time – Less than an hour

Demonrift TD features a great deal of content that fits together very well, it is easy to see just how much time has been put into the game. Demonrift TD offers much more than just a mediocre tower defence by giving you strategic resources to manage, spending them on upgrades that really adds another level to this game.

To play Demonrift TD head to Kongregate and see just why this tower defence shines above the rest.

If you are a developer with A fun indie game that can be played over a coffee break, we want to hear from you! Private message us on twitter @IndieGameMag or shoot us an email at editors@indiegamemag.com with the subject “Indie Intermission” and you could be our indie intermission pick of the day!

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Indie Intermission – ‘Demonrift TD’ Not Your Standard Tower Defence

IGM had a chance to chat with Laurent Lavigne of Elefantopia on his hectic tower defense game, McDroid. McDroid is a gorgeous cel-shaded tower defense and 3rd person action adventure game where you collect strawberries. The game is currently still in Beta and available for PC, Mac and Linux.

When did you start developing games? What got you into programming and designing?
I started when I was 10, made a few rooms in a first person adventure game on my TI 97, then at 15, I completed the graphics for a game that was inspired by RTYPE, horizontal shooter with wave gun and modular weapon system in the back that doubled as a shield. Sold it to Thalamus, the company went under before the game became anything more than one level on the Amiga but it was a really fun level.

What game inspired you to make games?
RTYPE but MULE and Gauntlet are close second, what am I saying, Marble Madness and Buck Rogers, The Pawn, Tass Time… they all build such a rich canvas of feelings.

What is your favorite indie game right now that you are playing? Why?
I am not playing any indie game at the moment, the free time I have I dedicate to McDROID and the real world. But I did spend hours on FTL and loved it, it was scratching that grinding itch and showed me some really tight gameplay and subtle bindings I’ll re-use.

[This Content is Exclusive for Insider]

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – ‘McDroid’ Interview with Laurent Lavigne of Elefantopia

This week seem to of mostly focused on the rather simplistic pixelart arcade games and today fits into this idea rather nicely. Bat Country by Greg Sergeant is a point and click helicopter shooter that is almost entirely mouse controlled and contains a rather interesting running narrative and bats… lots and lots of bats.

In Bat Country you take control of a helicopter and must make it through the four levels whilst avoiding the rather large and sinister looking bats that keep flying at you in an attempt (I assume) to clog up your rotary blades with bat entrails.

The game follows some very basic pixelart style with rather standard simplistic backgrounds, but everything comes together rather nicely to give Bat Country a genuinely retro arcade feel that is just brilliant, showing that sometimes the best ideas are the simplest.

Average play time – 20 minutes

Bat Country is an intensely challenging game that throws everything it can at you from start to finish. Unrelenting yes, but the game does contain a suitable amount of variety and story that you are compelled to play through the levels and exterminate all these massive bats.

Bat Country can be played online on Greg Segeant’s site.

If you are a developer with A fun indie game that can be played over a coffee break, we want to hear from you! Private message us on twitter @IndieGameMag or shoot us an email at editors@indiegamemag.com with the subject “Indie Intermission” and you could be our indie intermission pick of the day!

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Indie Intermission – ‘Bat Country’ Giant Mutant Bats Can Put A Damper On Your Day

With over twenty days left for the Kickstarter campaign, KING Art Games is sitting comfortably above the goal they initially set. The current count has Battle Worlds: Kronos sitting just above $165,000, which is $4,500 over their starting goal. Now, the developers are trying to keep their momentum going, by pushing for success on Steam Greenlight.

Earlier this week, Valve revealed they would announce the next batch of titles to be Greenlit on Steam on April 17th. KING Art Games undoubtedly would love to see Battle Worlds: Kronos included in that announcement, and seeing the success that they found with the Kickstarter Campaign (fully funded within seven days), being approved for Steam in twelve days doesn’t seem like such the impossible feat.

“We’re blown away by the support we’ve already received on the Greenlight campaign; it’s great to know we have so many committed people behind us on this,” Said Jan Theysen, Creative Director, KING Art Games. “We’re expecting to reach our first Kickstarter stretch-goal very soon, so that with the help of our loyal backers and community, we can bring an even more amazing experience to Steam.”

On Wednesday, KING Art Games posted a new update to the Battle Worlds: Kronos Kickstarter campaign page, featuring the Greenlight announcement, as well as the second video in their Battle Worlds Academy tutorial series.

The developers plan on providing Steam keys to Kickstarter backers, if the game becomes Greenlit, at some point in the future.

“We talked to some other developers with Kickstarter and Steam experience and it looks like we’ll be able to provide enough codes for every backer interested… if we get on Steam, so please vote,” KING Art Games said in the newest Kickstarter update.

Visit Battle Worlds: Kronos on Kickstarter, and visit the game’s new Greenlight campaign page. KING Art Games has setup a donation method through PayPal, if that is preferred, which can be found on the game’s official website.

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Amidst Sucessful Kickstarter Campaign, ‘Battle Worlds: Kronos’ Pushes Momentum For Greenlight Approval

Today’s Indie Links include six top ten lists, and nine top five lists. So… I guess you can pick your top five or ten top ten/five lists, if you really want to.

The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Ravaged (Joystiq)
“Indie developers are the starving artists of the video-game world, often brilliant and innovative, but also misunderstood, underfunded and more prone to writing free-form poetry on their LiveJournals. We believe they deserve a wider audience with the Joystiq Indie Pitch: This week, 2 Dawn Games’ Carsten Boserup talks crowdfunding and indie publishing with his Steam game (now on sale!), Ravaged.”

Little Inferno (Indie Gamer Chick)
“Tis the season of gifts.  Or, if you want to be a killjoy, the season to burn toys in a fireplace.  That’s the idea behind Little Inferno, an independent game for the Wii U.  It’s by the guys behind World of Goo, which was probably the best digital-download game on the original Wii.  But World of Goo got by on being a quirky, addictive physics-puzzler.  Little Inferno, on the other hand, feels like the type of time-sink you would find on the iPhone market.  In fact, there are lots mechanical issues with Little Inferno that make me think it started life as a micro transaction-oriented mobile game, like Doodle God for arsonists.  Only such games typically cost $1 or less and make their money by nickle-and-diming you to speed up the gameplay.  Little Inferno charges you $15 upfront, and keeps the action nice-and-slow.”

Top 10 Best Indie Games of 2012, Honorable Mentions and IGR’s Most Anticipated Games of 2013 (Indie Game Reviewer)
“At IndieGameReviewer.com, we began compiling our Top Ten indie Games 2012 edition sometime around June. This is because we wanted to remember the impact of the games that came out in the first half of the year, and from that point forward, we looked at every game that crossed our path with the same consideration, regardless of its size…”

Music of the Spheres – Mathematical Beauty in Action (Independent Gaming)
“What kind of person are you, that you hunt angels?! Er, sorry. Music of the Spheres is certainly a simple concept at first glance, and is always interesting. But it gets more complicated. The theme certainly isn’t angel genocide, but something much more beautiful.”

Live Free, Play Hard: The Week’s Finest Free Indie Games (Rock, Paper, Shotgun)
“First off, lists are bullshit. But these are indie games, not some Triple A Shooter that everyone knows about already, so we threw together our top 5 in the following categories to entice you to take a second look at some of the best games of the year.”

Top 10 Indie Horror Games of 2012 (IndieGames)
“Horror, just like humor, is an ancient, fickle and hard to tame beast. Going beyond mere jump-scares and evoking the feeling of proper fear can be particularly tough, but more than a few indie developers seem ready to tackle such tasks. This particular roundup hopes to cover the best and, well, most scary horror releases of 2012 and is featuring both freeware and commercial titles for a variety of platforms.”

The Sequel To The Best Reverse-Tower-Defense Game Is Superb, If Barely A Sequel (Kotaku)
“Anomaly Korea is actually very, very much like 2011′s Anomaly: Warzone Earth, the reverse tower-defense game. You still command a slow-rolling column of tanks and transports through a maze of evil enemy towers. You can still map out your route through the city streets using your fingers. You can still tap special power-ups into existence to briefly buff your vehicles or baffle your foes. You can still kill towers, collect money and upgrade your vehicles. You still need to get to a goal point with some vehicles. The game still checkpoints, makes you think, plan and re-plan, getting tough nice and quickly.”

Skulls of the Shogun Devs Interested in Cross-Platform Purchase Promotion, But Microsoft Can’t Yet Do It (Polygon)
“Buy one version of Skulls of the Shogun, get another for free? Developer 17-Bit would like to make that happen, but CEO Jake Kazdal told Polygon that the indie studio is hamstrung by Microsoft — the company doesn’t have anything like Sony’s PlayStation 3/PlayStation Vita Cross Buy promotion set up across Windows 8, Windows Phone, Windows RT or Xbox Live Arcade titles.”

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Indie Links Round-Up: Spin The Wheel

The Indie Game Festival Awards are at the end of this month and in this issue we talk with Cardboard Computer about their grand prize nominated game, Kentucky Route Zero. There’s also a hands-on preview of Kentucky Route Zero Act I along with other previews such as Path of Exile. Read reviews of Skulls of the Shogun, Antichamber, Primal Carnage and Croizleur. Other feature articles include Comedy in indie games, and interview with Sakevisual about Yousei, Symmetry in Game Design, and an Editorial on the Land of Indie. Stay up to date with the indie game scene by grabbing this issue of the indie game magazine.

Here’s a quick walk through of all our purchase options.  So just answer these questions to find the right purchase link. If you are interested in subscriptions, please click the link here and check them out!

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Issue 31: March 2013

By Mike Gnade in Indie Game Magazine

30 pages, published 3/1/2013

The Indie Game Festival Awards are at the end of this month and in this issue we talk with Cardboard Computer about their grand prize nominated game, Kentucky Route Zero. There’s also a hands-on preview of Kentucky Route Zero Act I along with other previews such as Path of Exile. Read reviews of Skulls of the Shogun, Antichamber, Primal Carnage and Croizleur. Other feature articles include Comedy in indie games, and interview with Sakevisual…

Do you want to read the Magazine on your iPhone/iPad?

If you have an iPhone/iPad, you can grab our App for Free and download individual issues.  You can buy future issues or get a subscription from right within the App.  Plus the app allows us to embed some sweet indie game videos, trailers, and reviews – which is pretty cool.

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Kentucky Route Zero and Cardboard Computer featured in Issue 31 on SALE NOW

Friday Double Eleven, the studio behind the successful Little Big Planet PS Vita release issued a statement on their website stating they are going to venture into video game publishing.

In their statement they talk about how independent studios focus largely on the PC, iPhone and Android markets, however see very little presents on the PSN store. It is indeed true that the PSN has not seen a great deal of indie titles over the years and has somewhat lost that market to Microsoft, making this is a rather interesting move to say the least.

Double Eleven however are hoping to change this in the hope of bringing some of the best indie developers to the PSN. They state in their blog that indies are “…missing out on the huge 100 million strong PSN membership.” and claim they can greatly increase the audience size by bringing their titles to the PSN.

It’s very interesting to see Double Eleven looking to bring more indies over to PlayStation and begs the question; are they are working on behalf of Sony. It is of course no surprise to anyone that Sony have over the past year have been trying to improve their PSN service in an attempt to draw more people away from competition, and in my opinion it has been working well.

With the amount of free game giveaways and goodies Sony already offer on the PSN is it really much of a surprise they are making a move on the indie market. This feels like a pre-emptive strike from the Sony camp in-line with the next generation of consoles, no doubt Sony has seen how lucrative the indie market is becoming and wants in.

This revelation from Double Eleven is an interesting one and does raise a whole host of new questions about this new publishing venture. For me the most prominent question is have Double Eleven struck up a deal with Sony to do this?

With 2013 promising to be another huge year for indie developers how will this move to bring indies on to the PSN effect the indie market? And can they compete with the likes of Microsoft and Valve for this heavily contested market? Be sure to leave your comments below.

to read the full post check out Double Eleven’s official site.

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – ‘Double Eleven’ Announce Entrance Into Indie Publishing On PSN