After the success of their previous titles in the well-received Iron Grip universe, ISOTX has moved out of their elaborately created universe to make space for a new one in March of War. March of War is a free-to-play turn-based strategy set in an alternate universe during World War II. March of War calls itself dieselpunk, so expect some twists you wouldn’t normally see in a 1940s strategy game.

One of the most interesting aspects of ISOTX’s description of their cross-platform game is how the story will work in the game’s universe. The tagline goes “rewrite the twentieth century – join forces in March of War.” There is a lot of potential in this, and I am curious about how it will all come together with the game’s optional pay-to-play system. Playing games will earn the player gold and research points, but the player can “speed up some of the game elements” by using real world money to buy gems in the game.

Do you think this sort of system encourages a form of ‘cheating’ by letting players speed up, or even bypass the more tedious moments of the game? Or in a social game does this make things easier for those who do not have time to invest? Let us know in the forum thread here!

If you want to see the game in action, why not sign up for the recently released beta? All you need to do is sign up on the March of War website, and you are all set.

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – ‘March of War’ Enters Closed Beta

Auroch Digital  has released a new relevant game, Cow Crushers, around the recent scandal about fast food beef tainted with horsemeat. I’ve written about GameTheNews’ previous titles, My Cotton-Picking Life and Endgame Syria, and mostly concluded that although I admired the motivation behind relevant games, both titles ultimately fell flat for me.

But Cow Crushers is exactly what relevant gaming should be.

The mechanic is clear and engaging, and never deviates from the message. At it’s most basic, Cow Crushers is a pattern matching game. Animals appear in front of the players, as if brought in a conveyor belt, and the player needs to tap a burger, steak or chop button to smash that cow into the assigned cut of meat. Blood splashes up as animals become meat, and it’s surprisingly gristly for a stylized 8-bit game. As the game progresses, horses come in with the cows, and the player’s goal is to makes as many cow-burgers as possible without tainting the meat with too much horseflesh by accidentally making horse steaks. The contrast of gristly blood splash and the cute burger icon is particularly effective.

An effective message game needs a solid, playable mechanic like Cow Crusher’s pattern matching. Players engage the game, and then Cow Crusher’s message, through the conveyer belt, the repetitive actions, and the scoring system that allows a certain percentage of horsemeat into the food. Hey, that’s just a simple mistake made by someone hitting buttons on a hurry to make steaks and burgers. The player is that “someone”, not some faceless baddie, and we’ve already seen how effective it can be to put the player in the role of the villain in many other serious games like Train and McVideogame.

Cow Crushers is available to play online, like Auroch Digital’s previous titles, but it’s also available for iOS, despite Apple’s policies against publishing serious games. The policy has been well discussed, but the crux is this passage from Apple’s developer guidelines.

We view apps different than books or songs, which we do not curate. If you want to criticize a religion, write a book. If you want to describe sex, write a book or a song, or create a medical app. It can get complicated, but we have decided to not allow certain kinds of content in the App Store.

(The full text is available here.)

LittleLoud’s Sweatshop game, Molleindustria’s Phone Story, silly border-crossing game Smuggle Truck, and even Auroch Digital’s Endgame:Syria have run into App Store trouble on this account. Endgame: Syria was renamed Endgame: Eurasia, the specific names were changed, and the game is now available on the App Store. Molleindustria’s Phone Story is a snarky satire about iPhone manufacturing, including sweatshop conditions and worker suicides, so it’s not entirely surprising that there would be some difficulty in getting it onto the App Store. Still, a policy against messages in games and serious games is distressing information for developers of serious indies and other devs experimenting with pushing the art form in new ways.

I’m glad that Cow Crushers made it onto the App Store to allow more potential players to check it out, and try such an engaging, and clever relevant game.

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – ‘Cow Crushers’: A Message Game Done Right

Samurai Gunn is incredibly easy to pick up and play, but hard to master.  Levels wrap around vertically and horizontally so it’s important to keep an eye on your character and keep moving.  After losing my first few matches, I learned how to utilize the directional buttons for downward gunshots and devastating sword uppercuts.  There’s also the cunning tactic of hiding among the dead bodies that pile up throughout the level.  With the game’s stylish anime inspired death highlights and fast paced action, I found myself yearning for more maps to battle on.  I found it very hard to put down my NES controller (nice touch BTW) and move onto the other games.

All the games in the IGF have been approved for Steam, so I hope to see Samurai Gunn released at some point with a lot more content.  It would be great to have online multiplayer and some form of single player tournament or practice mode in a final release.  Check out Beau Blythe’s website for more information and updates on Samurai Gunn.

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – IGF: Samurai Gunn Swords + Guns = a Bloody Good Time

Jason Rohrer is at it again with a massively-multiplayer game with disturbing implications. While a both, a game of defense and a game of burglary, The Castle Doctrine asks the player to make some tough decisions that will determine whether or not you are victorious.

Every player starts with a house, two children, and a wife. Charged with building defenses for your home to protect them, you spend money to build traps and barricades. But the only way you can afford to protect yourself is if you steal from your neighbors, the other players.

What seems justified in the beginning all of a sudden becomes disturbingly dark. As you enter other people’s houses, you find that they have families just like your own. But as long as they don’t put up a struggle, it will be alright, won’t it? You can take what you need to protect your own family. What if your neighbors try to take their money and run? Will you chase them down and kill them to protect your own family? Jason Rohrer asks you these questions all through the gripping, multiplayer game and forces you to do the unthinkable to save yourself.

You can purchase the alpha for $8, 50% off of the full release price, on the official website and try it for yourself. The Castle Doctrine is DRM free and cross-platform Mac, Linux and PC.

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Jason Rohrer Releases ‘The Castle Doctrine’ Alpha

Anyone who has ever played a squad based game is more than aware of just how bad AI can go wrong and this often ends in frustrating restarts. Now it is time to actually create your own AI from the ground up as Var And The Vikings: Smash Robots & Learn AI (Var) actually educates you on how to make AI and allows you complete control over it.

It’s interesting to see a game in development that encourages learning of vital programming skills in a fun way that make learning fun. In Var you control one central Viking (although you can take a step back and even build AI for all of them) whilst you must construct behaviour trees for your AI Vikings. These trees resemble elements that are used in real game programming and because of this allow a great deal of learning to be had whilst having fun.

This gives you complete control over what your allies do and for a change it is now your fault when they decide to run off and get killed, but you can also change that with some subtle changes. The concept is a great idea and once put into a fun game about Vikings smashing robots you can’t go too wrong with the execution.

Brainworth have had a great deal of support from the gaming industry and have some exceptionally talented people on board the project and have been working with some of the top art and music creates in the industry. However they desperately require extra funding to ensure that Var is completed and beyond that the team have a great deal of excellent ideas on how to create an even better game. With extra funding Brainworth hope to add a full level designer, Player Vs Player multiplayer, Extra character classes, and even an iPad version.

Var And The Vikings: Smash Robots & Learn AI looks to be an educational game that actually provides a great deal of fun to both young and old creating a new standard of educational gaming. To find out more be sure to visit the Kickstarter page or try the demo! If you like what you see consider funding this very interesting new project.

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – ‘Var and the Vikings: Smash Robots & Learn AI’ Bringing A New Standard To Educational Gaming

IndieRoyale presents another great bundle that features both classics and newer releases: The Evolved Bundle.

Unmechanical is a highly atmospheric puzzle platformer by Talawa Games that blends exploration elements with over 30 puzzles to challenge your logic, memory, and understanding of physics. Are you prepared to brave the vibrant, factory-like depths?

The Path is a dark and moody horror game by Tale Of Tale Games that’s based on the story of Little Red Riding Hood. In The Path you control different young girls and guide them to their grandmother’s house with only one rule to follow: stay on the path.

Krater is a blend of different genres by Fatshark. Featuring action-rpg styled action with the tactics of old top-down strategy games like X-Com, Krater charges the player with the responsibility to manage their team of persistent characters and craft unique weapons, abilities and items to face the climactic end-game.

Sugar Cube: Bittersweet Factory is a puzzle platformer by Turtle Cream that won the IGF China 2010. In Sugar Cube: Bittersweet Factory, you guide a sugar cube across levels with two different backdrops that change the environment based on how you play.

OIO: The Game is an intricate puzzle platformer by Uncanny Games in which you guide a wooden character named OIO who awakens in a strange universe made of wood. On a journey to discover why his wooden companions are petrified, OIO throws special seeds to grow wooden beams and navigate the gigantic levels.

You can grab your own copy of The Evolved Bundle on the official IndieRoyale page.

]]> http://www.diygamer.com/2013/01/the-evolved-bundle-offers-five-great-games/feed/ 0 http://www.diygamer.com/2013/01/dog-sled-saga-sheds-light-on-an-under-represented-sport/ http://www.diygamer.com/2013/01/dog-sled-saga-sheds-light-on-an-under-represented-sport/#comments Tue, 22 Jan 2013 23:30:03 +0000 Matt Suckley http://www.diygamer.com/2013/01/dog-sled-saga-sheds-light-on-an-under-represented-sport/

Ah, the age-old (and possibly exploitative) method of using canine-powered transportation in snowy terrain. It’s not something that has featured too heavily in video games over the years, but development collaborators Dan Fitzgerald and Liska_B intend to put this right with their upcoming game Dog Sled Saga. The game is set in the highly competitive world of sled dog racing, and intends to capture the spirit of the sport via simple arcade gameplay dynamics. It is slated for a 2013 release on Windows, Mac, Android and iOS.

Interestingly, the player is not given direct control of the dogs’ movement in Dog Sled Saga.  Instead players are positioned as the human rider, trying to maintain and optimize the performance of their dogs in order to secure first place. This is where the game’s core gameplay comes in —the primary challenge is to keep the balance between the dogs’ hunger level and their finite food supply in check by continually feeding them throughout the race. There are food restock points along the way, but if you use all of your food for a short term speed boost immediately after restocking, your speed is likely to be hindered by hunger before the next restock point. It is essentially a risk vs. reward dynamic, with a focus on strategy and timing.

As the rider, feeding the dogs is no simple task either. The food needs to be thrown across to the dog who needs it, but this is fraught with potential issues — the presence of wind can significantly alter your trajectory arc, and thrown food will also ricochet off any in-range trees. Whilst dealing with this, there are also some boulders which need to be jumped over during the race, dealing out hefty speed reductions to those who fail to avoid them. In this regard, the game seems like a kind of action-packed example of on-the-fly resource management, without any of the complicated or tedious connotations.

Dan and Lisa are boyfriend-and-girlfriend collaborators (awwww!). Dan is responsible for all the technical aspects of development, as well as the audio side of things, whereas Lisa is responsible for the Dog Sled Saga‘s retro visuals. The pair seem keen to point out that the art is very much in progress, so the screenshots featured here may not be representative of the final game. Nonetheless, I think that its current state is rather pretty. Below is an example of Lisa’s work, a .gif of the dog’s running animation.

Strangely enough (as if anything else about the game is normal) Dog Sled Saga won’t be released in the traditional manner. In the “Arcade Version”‘, which is scheduled for a release in Quarter 1 of 2013, players will be presented with a series of steadily more difficult races and challenged to win their way to the top. Some kind of “endless mode”, with leaderboard support, is also being considered. Following this initial release, the developers are planning to release ‘Saga Mode’, a game type which seems to echo the ideas of sports management simulators by putting the player in control of the management, money, and morale of their team over the course of a season. This mode offers more depth and longevity than the initial “arcade” release, and a 2013 completion is predicted.

If the FIFA and Madden franchises aren’t pleasing you this year, why not give a lesser-known sport a try? You can keep up-to-date regarding all things Dog Sled Saga by following the official devlog. You can also find Dan on Twitter: @Dorkus1218, and Lisa: @Liska_B.

Ah, the age-old (and possibly exploitative) method of using canine-powered transportation in snowy terrain. It’s not something that has featured too heavily in video games over the years, but development collaborators Dan Fitzgerald and Liska_B intend to put this right with their upcoming game Dog Sled Saga. The game is set in the highly competitive world of sled dog racing, and intends to capture the spirit of the sport via simple arcade gameplay dynamics. It is slated for a 2013 release on Windows, Mac, Android and iOS.

Interestingly, the player is not given direct control of the dogs’ movement in Dog Sled Saga.  Instead players are positioned as the human rider, trying to maintain and optimize the performance of their dogs in order to secure first place. This is where the game’s core gameplay comes in —the primary challenge is to keep the balance between the dogs’ hunger level and their finite food supply in check by continually feeding them throughout the race. There are food restock points along the way, but if you use all of your food for a short term speed boost immediately after restocking, your speed is likely to be hindered by hunger before the next restock point. It is essentially a risk vs. reward dynamic, with a focus on strategy and timing.

As the rider, feeding the dogs is no simple task either. The food needs to be thrown across to the dog who needs it, but this is fraught with potential issues — the presence of wind can significantly alter your trajectory arc, and thrown food will also ricochet off any in-range trees. Whilst dealing with this, there are also some boulders which need to be jumped over during the race, dealing out hefty speed reductions to those who fail to avoid them. In this regard, the game seems like a kind of action-packed example of on-the-fly resource management, without any of the complicated or tedious connotations.

Dan and Lisa are boyfriend-and-girlfriend collaborators (awwww!). Dan is responsible for all the technical aspects of development, as well as the audio side of things, whereas Lisa is responsible for the Dog Sled Saga‘s retro visuals. The pair seem keen to point out that the art is very much in progress, so the screenshots featured here may not be representative of the final game. Nonetheless, I think that its current state is rather pretty. Below is an example of Lisa’s work, a .gif of the dog’s running animation.

]]> http://www.diygamer.com/2013/01/dog-sled-saga-sheds-light-on-an-under-represented-sport/feed/ 0 http://www.diygamer.com/2012/06/getting-better-robert-yang-lgbt-content-and-identities-in-indie-games/ http://www.diygamer.com/2012/06/getting-better-robert-yang-lgbt-content-and-identities-in-indie-games/#comments Thu, 21 Jun 2012 06:47:08 +0000 Meg Stivison http://www.diygamer.com/2012/06/getting-better-robert-yang-lgbt-content-and-identities-in-indie-games/

At Tuesday’s Rants panel at the Games For Change festival, game designer Robert Yang opened his talk by introducing himself as a practicing homosexual, and began a rapid-fire talk about identity in indie and serious games. He talked about his work on Radiator – the series of experimental semi-episodic single player mods for Half-Life 2a single-player mod for Half Life 2. For those that don’t know Radiator has the player sitting in a therapist’s office, being berated by their husband. It’s about gay divorce.

Yang also mentioned work on another game, Condom Corps XL – a sex-ed game in which the player looks through the windows of a building to the sight of men in their underwear. The player’s task is to shooting condoms of the correct size at the men’s bulges. Yang describes it as a play on the macho bravdo of mainstream shooters. It’s also an interesting play on the male gaze – both taking on the role of the lecherous viewer, and subjecting men to that appraising view.

Ok, so I probably wouldn’t play a package-size game, but it raises good points. Why not have handsome male NPCs ending up in strategically ripped clothes as often as female NPCs seem to?

Yang referenced Anna Anthropy, author of Rise of the Videogame Zinesters and designer of indie games with overtly LGBT content. Anna Anthropy’s games are very personal, and offer another, underrepresented identity. Another shout out went to Christine Love and in particular for her work on Analogue: A Hate Story – a game about transhumanism, marriage, loneliness and cosplay. Yang was shocked but very pleased to see such an interesting and complex game was sitting next to the likes of Call of Duty on Steam. A clear sign that changes in what games are and what they can be is taking place.

As an often-sidelined female player and designer, it’s quite easy for me to get caught up seeing gamer identity as either Mainsteam Male, that stereotyped angry 18-24 year old with a collection of AAA console titles, or the Female Other, forgetting how many other identities don’t even get a mention. A while ago, one of my players commented on some dialogue and characters that I’d developed for Next Island, laughing at an unrealistic age gap between a young woman and her much older suitor. It wasn’t meant to be personal expression; I’m constantly aware that I provide creative ideas on someone else’s project, according to a company’s vision, and yet, that piece of my experience slipped into the games’ content.

Yang seems enthusiastic about the future of queer themes and identities in games (I don’t think you can follow Jane McGonigal as a speaker, and then say anything negative about games). I’m glad that this shift towards more forms of identity and more nuanced identity is happening, especially in the realm of experimental indie games, and I hope it will continue to make its way into more mainstream games, such as Yang’s example of Mass Effect.

The indie game community is constantly growing, as new tools and tech allow more designers into game creation. More identities, more stories and more backgrounds coming into game creation can mean new experiences for us as players, and an example that mainstream games may want to follow. It’s great that indie games allow the freedom for these kinds of explorations to take place and continue to further the potential of the medium and human expression. You should most certainly check out the rant in Yang’s own words on his blog.

You may be interested in:

1. 

   ‘Hubris’ – “Like Ico HD On Acid”
2. 

   Digging Deeper Into The IGF Pirate Kart
3. 

   Fract Mini-Review
4. 

   Call For Submissions – ‘European Indie Game Days’ Awards 2012
5. 

   Freeware Indie Game Roundup

]]>

At Tuesday’s Rants panel at the Games For Change festival, game designer Robert Yang opened his talk by introducing himself as a practicing homosexual, and began a rapid-fire talk about identity in indie and serious games. He talked about his work on Radiator – the series of experimental semi-episodic single player mods for Half-Life 2a single-player mod for Half Life 2. For those that don’t know Radiator has the player sitting in a therapist’s office, being berated by their husband. It’s about gay divorce.

Yang also mentioned work on another game, Condom Corps XL – a sex-ed game in which the player looks through the windows of a building to the sight of men in their underwear. The player’s task is to shooting condoms of the correct size at the men’s bulges. Yang describes it as a play on the macho bravdo of mainstream shooters. It’s also an interesting play on the male gaze – both taking on the role of the lecherous viewer, and subjecting men to that appraising view.

Ok, so I probably wouldn’t play a package-size game, but it raises good points. Why not have handsome male NPCs ending up in strategically ripped clothes as often as female NPCs seem to?

Yang referenced Anna Anthropy, author of Rise of the Videogame Zinesters and designer of indie games with overtly LGBT content. Anna Anthropy’s games are very personal, and offer another, underrepresented identity. Another shout out went to Christine Love and in particular for her work on Analogue: A Hate Story – a game about transhumanism, marriage, loneliness and cosplay. Yang was shocked but very pleased to see such an interesting and complex game was sitting next to the likes of Call of Duty on Steam. A clear sign that changes in what games are and what they can be is taking place.

As an often-sidelined female player and designer, it’s quite easy for me to get caught up seeing gamer identity as either Mainsteam Male, that stereotyped angry 18-24 year old with a collection of AAA console titles, or the Female Other, forgetting how many other identities don’t even get a mention. A while ago, one of my players commented on some dialogue and characters that I’d developed for Next Island, laughing at an unrealistic age gap between a young woman and her much older suitor. It wasn’t meant to be personal expression; I’m constantly aware that I provide creative ideas on someone else’s project, according to a company’s vision, and yet, that piece of my experience slipped into the games’ content.

Yang seems enthusiastic about the future of queer themes and identities in games (I don’t think you can follow Jane McGonigal as a speaker, and then say anything negative about games). I’m glad that this shift towards more forms of identity and more nuanced identity is happening, especially in the realm of experimental indie games, and I hope it will continue to make its way into more mainstream games, such as Yang’s example of Mass Effect.

The indie game community is constantly growing, as new tools and tech allow more designers into game creation. More identities, more stories and more backgrounds coming into game creation can mean new experiences for us as players, and an example that mainstream games may want to follow. It’s great that indie games allow the freedom for these kinds of explorations to take place and continue to further the potential of the medium and human expression. You should most certainly check out the rant in Yang’s own words on his blog.

]]> http://www.diygamer.com/2012/06/getting-better-robert-yang-lgbt-content-and-identities-in-indie-games/feed/ 0

We’ve just written up a post about the Develop Conference Indie Showcase which highlights the 10 finalists fairly and squarely, because that’s the right thing to do. However, out of those familiar games comes a DigiPen student creation that we’ve never met eyes with before but its blown some minds around here, thus making it very worthy of its very own post. Remember the first time you saw Fez in action and the 2D world suddenly became 3D? Well, take that to the next level and that’s what we’ve got going on here.

Perspective takes what would otherwise be a fairly typical 2D platformer and once again shoves it into a 3D world. This one isn’t confined to the four faces of a cube though, instead, the player is given control of the camera from a first person perspective. While doing this, the screen 2D character is locked in place and once the perspective has been shifted, they can then be unlocked and travel across the world. It’s basically like walking through a 3D level but having to bring a little 2D person with you, sort of.

As usual, these kinds of things always come out like nonsense when futilely explained with words such as this, so you better watch the trailer. You really should!

Impressive, no? We’ll pursue the student developer of Perspective if we can to find out how they pulled this rather marvellous feat off, and to see when are where it might be playable. It is a DigiPen student project which have a good track record of releasing excellent games for free, so we can’t see this being any different.