Puzzlers and indie games have been one in the same for quite some time now as the puzzle genre allows for great creativity and innovation on very reasonable budgets. Narrow Monolith, a small indie studio from the UK has taken a leap of faith into the puzzle genre with Polarium an abstract minimalistic puzzler.

Polarium combines some rather intense and rapid gameplay mechanics with many of the classic mechanics of more cerebral puzzle games and from what I have played it works well. The game sets out the basic premise rather nicely and slowly begins to build on it adding new and interesting mechanics.

The difficulty curve seems in line with most puzzlers and although the mechanics to begin with seem rather basic. With some further development Polarium can indeed become a very interesting and unique puzzler.

Although the game is still in the early stages of development there is a great deal of potential here starting with a solid framework that holds some great ideas. Polarium is still in the early stages and because of this Narrow Monolith are looking to get further investment from the public to allow them to fully realise the potential of Polarium.

Narrow Monolith started a Kickstarter just the other day in the hope of raising £30,000 in funds to finish the project. Polarium can be played as an alpha via IndieDB which should give you a better understanding of the project and really it does speak for itself.

Be sure to check out the Kickstarter for additional information.

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – ‘Polarium’ A Brand New Abstract Puzzler That Has You Play With Cubes

Together, the games discussed in today’s Indie Links include more than sixteen million levels! Okay, that’s largely because one of the games discussed in today’s Indie Links has more than sixteen million levels by itself, but the other games may have much to recommend them as well.

Austin Wintory’s Journey to the 2013 Grammys (Joystiq)
“On the day Grammy nominations were scheduled to be announced, Austin Wintory didn’t get much work done. As the composer for Journey, Wintory had an inkling that he might be nominated in Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media, and he was distracted all day, constantly refreshing the Grammy page, scanning for his name. By evening the list still wasn’t posted and he gave up on trying to focus. He got in his car, determined to go home, make dinner and then check the page again.”

Top Indie Games of 2012: Dev Redux Part 1 (IndieGames)
“The developers from our Top 10 Indie Games of 2012 (+2!) list have agreed to share their must-play games of 2012. Today’s list features the picks of Jonas Kyratzes, Anna Anthropy, Vince Twelve, Jim Crawford, Justin Ma, and Matthew Davis.”

Project Gert: Recon (Indie Gamer Chick)
“There’s exactly one good thing I can say about Project Gert: Recon.  The paintings featured in the game’s cutscenes are beautiful.  So at least one person involved in this project has an amazing talent.  Seriously, watch the trailer below.  The actual in-game graphics are spoiled by awful animation and piss-poor collision detection, but the paintings are spectacular.  I would totally commission this guy to do a portrait.  But that’s where any complements end.  Project Gert is yet another December entrant to the ‘potential worst game of the year’ category.”

Review: Teleglitch – A Fast-Paced Arcade-Style Roguelike. Yes, It Is. (Indie Game Reviewer)
“Sometimes roguelikes are not always turn-based. Sometimes shooters are not always First Person. Three years in the making, Teleglitch is both and neither. It is at once a fast-paced arcade-style action game inspired by DOOM, and a randomly generated, single-life, intense roguelike.”

The Game With Sixteen and a Half Million Levels – The Review (Independent Gaming)
“This game has 16,777,216 levels. I didn’t beat the game before I wrote this, just warning you. This is a totally new concept to me, and I like it, if only the execution was better. The Game with Sixteen and a Half Million Levels is an game made in Engine 001 by tower07.”

What AAA Can Learn From Indies — According To Indies (Gamasutra)
“Yesterday we asked some leading indie game developers about the lessons they had learned in the past year. Today, we ask what — if anything — big triple-A publishers could have learned from the indie game community in the last 12 months.”

A Common Thread: Renaud Bédard (Quote Unquote)
“My name is Renaud Bédard. I’m a 27 years old tall, skinny guy from Montréal, Québec, now living in Toronto. I’m mainly a C# programmer but will use other languages if forced to do so. I’ve been working with XNA a lot in the past few years, but FEZ, the project I’m known for, was my first project using XNA. Before that I was using an engine called TrueVision3D, and now I’m into Unity when doing game jams and personal projects.

Scoregasm (PixelProspector)
“Scoregasm is one of the best arena shooters I have ever played (and I have played a lot of them). The game was over 2 years in development and it really shows: Smooth controls, super fun gameplay, colorful graphics, a great variety of levels and well thought out bullet patterns.”

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Indie Links Round-Up: Slices of Life

For anyone who has followed IGM for sometime may actually remember me covering Cello Fortress way back in September of last year. Back in September Joost Van Dongen was getting the tech ready for the Indigo exhibition in the Netherlands.

Since the early unveiling of this rather inspired project Dongen has worked even more on this project, and has recently just released a new trailer for the technology. Needless to say the trailer has really gotten the internet buzzing with anticipation for the full project.

The idea behind Cello Fortress however should not be confused with other conventional music games like Guitar Hero. In Cello Fortress you are actually commanding a real Cello. The game operates does also operate as a twin stick shooter, with up to four players work together to take down as many turrets as possible.

The turrets are of course not controlled by the computer but rather by the Cellist and this is where the magic happens. The game works by processing differnt chords differently and as follows; dissonant chords will turn on flame-throwers, aggressive notes will activate the burst-cannons, and an ominous melody charges a bombardment. This creates a novel fusion of a classic musical instrument with the modern day video game market. It’s an interesting fusion and one that would be very interesting to see more of in the not to distant future.

Although the current build of Cello Fortress is still in the early beta stages it already looks a marvel to watch and play, really creating a unique experience for everyone. Even with a working prototype in existence there is still much work for Dongen to do as he tries to prefect the game and create the most engrossing experience possible.

Expect to see Cello Fortress touring more over the course of the year and maybe you will even be lucky enough to get to see this wonderful piece of technology live in action.

Be sure to follow the future developments at the official Cello Fortress website.

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – ‘Cello Fortress’ A Twin Stick Shooter Like No Other

What happens when a Hollywood studio approaches an indie game developer to make a movie tie-in game?  Read today’s Indie Links to find out.

Modern! Minecraft Adds ‘Local Area Network’ Support (Rock, Paper, Shotgun)
“‘LAN’ is available as an option in the latest Minecraft snapshot, and can essentially turn any singleplayer game into a server which any PC on the same network as yours can then join, with practically zero lag, no risk of unknown undesirables from the other side of the globe popping in and burning your creations to the ground, and without the need for server expenses.”

Scared Stiff: Amnesia And The Evolution Of The Modern Horror Game (Joystiq)
“Unlike the basic action and platform genre, the evolution of horror titles has followed a slow, twisty path. By the mid-nineties, it was known for its signature talent: the ability to reel you into a dark, unknown world like a helpless fish. Titles like Silent Hill and Resident Evil acted as some of the first passports into the journey we now refer to as “psychological horror.” System Shock, Parasite Eve, Fatal Frame, and Siren were memorable trips into less-than-reassuring territory. Throw in some unexplained, mysterious figures, watch the world spin out of control, and you’ve got one hell of a recipe for an addictive genre. Who would have thought that fog-choked towns and shambling creatures who greet you with a spray of vomit could be so appealing?”

Indie Goes To Hollywood (Beefjack)
“It’s Monday morning on the Tube, and black-suited city execs sit shoulder-to-shoulder along the carriage in a noir-ish paper chain. Most stare dutifully over the left ear of the suit opposite, but one is hunched in his seat to get a better look at the iPhone cradled in his lap. Tap, tap, tap, he goes, incessantly. The better part of today will be spent launching his on-screen counterpart over the rooftops of Canabalt’s miniature dystopia. That’s the best explanation I can muster as to why, when outsourcing a teaser game to accompany the release of multi-million dollar teen phenomenon The Hunger Games, film studio Lions Gate forewent the mainstream tie-in specialists at Ubisoft and EA and instead called Canabalt creator and indie hero Adam ‘Atomic’ Saltsman.

Best Games of 7 Day FPS… That Don’t Have Any Shooting (Rock, Paper, Shotgun)
“I was going to start off by explaining in excruciating detail the precise meaning of “7 Day FPS,” but I see Alec already took care of that – though admittedly, I tend to believe Doom evolved from tadpole creatures after John Romero’s hair collided with the laws of physics and caused the Big Bang. Oh well. To each his own. So then, that out of the way, how about we dive right in? The 7 Day FPS challenge yielded hundreds of bite-sized manshoots, but honestly, many of the most inventive first-person shoot-ers chose to do things that hard way and not laboriously slaughter 534853 armed thugs. Let’s have a look, shall we?”

Glen Forrester On Enough Plumbers 2 (IndieGames)
“A sequel to 2010′s platform puzzler Enough Plumbers is coming in the next couple of months to Flash-installed browsers. Glen Forrester tells IndieGames Enough Plumbers 2 will be ‘a bigger, prettier, expanded version of the first game. The original was made in under two weeks and wasn’t really meant to be successful (instead it’s had millions of plays. oops), so this one is intended to revisit the idea and do things properly.’”

Brand-New Indie Game Resonance is the Best 1990s Adventure Game I’ve Played in Years (Kotaku)
“I am a big fan of adventure games. They’ve been my favorite genre for decades. I like them quite a lot. Enough to have named my cat Guybrush. I have sampled and enjoyed many indie adventure games, both old and new, this year. And I mention all of this so that you will realize the weight of my words when I say: Resonance is the best classic-style adventure game I’ve played in ages. Go get it now.”

Let’s Multiplay: 7DFPS Online Multiplayer Games (IndieGames)
“Our seven-day FPS challenge coverage continues, this time with a handful of online multiplayer games that I hope we can all explore together. Skimming through 200 entries and randomly stumbling upon multiplayer games with empty lobbies can be disappointing.”

Unlimited Hyperbole #3 (Hyperbole)
“This week Unlimited Hyperbole talks to Brendon Chung, the designer of Atom Zombie Smasher and Gravity Bone, about his favourite game and the very definite effect it had on him as both a fan and an independent game developer. Released in 1998 by Looking Glass Studios, Thief: The Dark Project has been repeatedly hailed as not just one of the first true stealth games, but also one of the best games ever made. Looking back, Brendon discusses both what makes Thief such a triumph of world design and how it shaped his own games more than a decade later.”

A long-awaited documentary film recounting the story of the British video gaming industry between 1979 and 1996 has taken to Indiegogo in an attempt on the part of its producers to see it through to its conclusion.

The film, entitled From Bedrooms To Billions, is targeting a crowdfunding goal of $35,000 before the campaign’s July 17th deadline, and has amassed just over $4,000 as of this writing. Its directors, Nicola and Anthony Caulfield, wish to present a thorough account of how the British gaming scene evolved from the primitive days of reclusive anoraks jabbing away at home computers big enough to serve as a nunnery to the heady days of sophisticated 3D graphics and ogling at pixelated triangular breasts.

It looks as though revered indie studio thatgamecompany’s three-strong Playstation 3-exclusive games lineup will be coming to retail stores later this year.

The news comes after Kotaku columnist Superannuation posted details of a product called Journey Compilation via Twitter. The finding was subsequently confirmed on thatgamecompany’s official Twitter feed, along with the revelation that the collection will include Journey, Flower and flOW, bringing together all three of the studio’s Sony-exclusive titles to disc-based media for the first time.

While a solid release date hasn’t been officially confirmed by either thatgamecompany or Sony, PlayAsia has laid down the marker for a potential August drop, a window that also falls in line with a since-removed product listing on GameFly.

Yarr, me hearties! New indie game on the starboard bow! Or was it port? I can never remember which. Either way, Windward is a rather fancy-looking multiplayer-centric nautical action game running on the Unity engine, and being developed by Tasharen Entertainment. It’s still early days on the project, although players can jump in and try it out in the form of a public alpha build. It even handily runs in a browser window.

They say a picture speaks a thousand words, so 15 minutes at 30 frames a second must be a grand epic, right? Here’s IGM contributor Tanoy Sinha with his video hands-on with the current version of the game:

Looking interesting. Kinda like a blend of Sid Meier’s Pirates! naval combat and DOTA-style team warfare. We – and hopefully Tanoy – will be keeping an eye on this one as it develops further.

Here’s a pipe bomb for you. If the official website of the Danish Film Institute is to be believed, Limbo developers PlayDead might just have inadvertently had some light shed on their next gaming project.

Currently posing under the pseudonym of Project 2, the game is described as a 2D platformer operating on a 3D plane, perhaps serving as yet another nod to the 2.5D gaming experiences that have become very much à la mode during the last few years. As the listing suggests, it’ll be a similarly macabre experience to that of Limbo, recounting the story of “ one boy’s struggle against evil forces through questionable experiments on human bodies, trying to take over the world.” Spooky stuff.

Having said that, writing the project off as being cut from exactly the same cloth as Limbo would appear to be a misguided assertion. For starters, Project 2 will ditch the former’s chilling black-and-white colour scheme in favour of a more conventional palette, albeit one that evokes a comparable sense of foreboding doom. There’s also talk of “unique puzzles and changing scenarios,” perhaps suggesting a similarly cognitive, yet potentially more dynamic, story-driven experience to that of its predecessor.

The listing notes that Project 2 is undergoing development for Xbox 360, Playstation 3, PC and Mac, although an estimated release window remains conspicuously absent.

While further details remain scarce, there’s more than enough reason to check out PlayDead’s magnificent début production. In fact, as of this writing, there’s still a few hours left to purchase Limbo as part of the latest Humble Bundle, so we’d suggest that you seriously consider forking out some cash and savouring a truly unparalleled venture into the black abyss of independent gaming if you haven’t already. In the meantime, why not take a look at Peter’s recent retrospective take on the game? I’m sure he’d appreciate it.

Nubuwo is back again with another album full of indie game music available to those who help fund it on Kickstarter. The main reason for setting up this Summer Bundle is to develop a 2-CD soundtrack album for Rokka Chan, which will come with the original music and a number of remixes too.

Those unfamiliar with Rokko Chan should know that it’s a Megaman inspired indie game available for free on Flash, you can play it here. The developers have done a wonderful job with the game and the money made from the album will be the first they have received from the game’s two year development.

It’s not just that album up for grabs though, there are actually eight other musicians who are participating in this bundle. These are divided up into separate packs which can be yours if you meet the right price on Kickstarter.

First up is the Originary Pack which features Super Meat Boy Choice Piano Cuts, Omodaka by Sanosa and the soundtracks to Closure and Splatterhouse. Secondly you have the Arranged Pack which includes Black Materia: The Remixes, Varia Suite, 8 Bit Democracy and Rokko Chan Soundtracks.It doesn’t stop there though. If you buy into the full bundle and higher, then there’s music from The Binding of Isaac, The Swapper, Retro City Rampage and plenty of other soundtracks in CD, digital and vinyl form. The Digital Voyage pack is rather good we think, it being all high quality music from a number of indie games.

We advise heading over to the Kickstarter page to get a full view of what’s on display, though that video above does a good job. You’ll obviously need to head over there to throw your money at the project anyway, which we’re sure you’re keen on doing.

Robots and mechs are known for their satisfying stompy-ness. Imagine the controversy of this then – a game in which you control a robot which isn’t stompy in the slightest! Shock! Horror! Over reaction? Of course. MechLore is an isometric action RPG, a pretty typical one in fact, except that it contains plenty of robots and explosions.

Like many indie games, MechLore is a hobby project developed by a single person, Jesse Norman, and so far it’s been three and a half years since the project was started. Over that time, Jesse has managed to spruce the game up very well; you’d never guess that it was made in Game Maker. What is on show at the moment is just the game’s forest level, but with plenty of textures, shadows and other effects the game looks pretty polished.

As the genre demands, MechLore consists mostly of combat and the occasional solving of puzzles. Things start off with character selection of course with a choice of three types of armor: stealth, flight and power. Though balanced, playing as each of these types will require a slightly different approach to combat, causing players to be more subtle in their attacks or rushing in head first. Players have freedom to explore the world in MechLore, so all types of enemies and bosses can be encountered as the player sees fit, or by accident of course. Levelling up is a familiar experience with a skill tree and we’re assured that doing so will greatly alter things rather than having minor, passive effects.

MechLore is slated to release some time this summer for PC. More details about the game are still to come, such as the other locations, enemies, item crafting and different traits. So, if the game catches your fancy make sure to follow development over on the official website.