Today’s Indie Links comes bearing gifts such as an awesome list of free games, an indie game tribute music video and Haikus about Ludum Dare entries.

Scrolls, Lists and Freeware Games (Gnome’s Lair)
“So, yes, it did have to happen. After years of playing through hundreds of free games and after writing about dozens of the things, well, the time has come for me to finally set up a nice and update-able list with the best of the lot or, to be precise, those I enjoyed the most. Have a look and worry not; more playable freebies will be added to it.”

Boy Band Pays Tribute To…Steam Sales & Indie Games (Kotaku)
“New Zealand “boy band” (read: StarCraft tribute act) Viva La Dirt League have released this track called Indie Game Anthem (Thrift Shop). It’s an ode to both the affordability of indie games and the fact you can buy them en masse during Steam sales.”

The Wonderful, Rare Sloppiness Of The Monaco Soundtrack (Kotaku)
“Of all the terms one could use to describe a video game soundtrack—exhilarating, emotional, sad, uplifting, lonesome, boisterous—the word “sloppy” almost never comes up. Seriously, pause for a minute and name a video game with a sloppy soundtrack. Unless you’re talking about a poorly-played Rock Band track or a bar pianist in Red Dead Redemption, they’re few and far between.”

Gaming’s New Frontier: Cancer, Depression, Suicide (Polygon)
“Brian Ramage has made traditional hardcore games for all his professional life, and still does. He recently encountered a very different kind of experience, one that altered his view of what games can achieve.”

Bennett Foddy’s Speed Chess is QWOP designer’s take on classic game (Shacknews)
“Bennett Foddy, the creator of games like QWOP and GIRP, debuted a new take on chess at New York University’s No Quarter exhibition. Kotaku caught a look at what Foddy describes as “anti-Chess,” a 8v8 multiplayer game that rewards reflexes more than long-term strategy.”

The Ludum Dare Haikus (RPS)

Review: Machines at War 3 (IndieGameReviewer)
“Machines at War 3 suffers from a dated presentation that makes it difficult to engage with whatever strategic or tactical challenge the game may have to offer. In many ways it does reminds of Command & Conquer—a game I played over fifteen years ago, and which has been improved upon by other titles in the genre. The game leans heavily on nostalgia for the classic RTS games of the 90s, and thus runs the risk of overplaying its hand. It feels very much like a fan mod of one of those old games rather than a new production, and not entirely in a good way.”

Teslagrad (Pixel Prospector)
“Teslagrad is an upcoming story driven puzzle platformer about magnetism and electromagnetic powers. It’s story is purely told through visual means which means the game does not have any text or dialogue.”

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Indie Links Round-Up: Moving On

Just a quick announcement to let you know that The Indie Game Magazine  is now available through Google Currents!

Search for us there!

To learn more about Google Currents, visit the official website. Apps available for both Android and iOS devices.

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – The Indie Game Magazine Now Available On Google Currents

Games based on depression, an award winning game we’ll never get to play, and other interesting titles in today’s Indie Links.

How Jason Rohrer Won The Game Design Challenge (RPS)
“A real high-point of every GDC is the Game Design Challenge. Well, was. Sadly the tenth year of this annual treat was the last, with organiser Eric Zimmerman bringing proceedings to an end. And wow, did it go out in style. With the apposite topic, “Humanity’s Last Game”, some of the biggest names in the industry put forth their pitches for the last game we’d ever need. And one man entirely stole the show. For a second year, that man was Jason Rohrer.”

Voiceless and forgotten: facing depression through play (VG247)
“Depression Quest and Actual Sunlight are two games based on depression. Dave Owen speaks with their creators to find out how they can help.”

The Cat that Got the Milk sequel revealed, leaps from freeware to commercial (IndieGames.com)
“The Button Affair super stylish developers, now called Modern Dream, have announced The Cat that Got the Milk will receive a sequel. Titled Abstract No.3, it will expand on the series’ twitchy, path-weaving gameplay and will be the team’s first commercial release.”

Mobile review: Ridiculous Fishing (Shacknews)
“Fishing is a tough endeavor, one that isn’t as easy as it looks on TV or in the movies. Homer Simpson once had an idea to dump a plugged-in bug zapper into a lake and it resulted in a whole lot of easy-to-catch (if somewhat high voltage) fish. That’s a ridiculous idea. Yet it’s not as ridiculous as some of the heavy artillery that’s used in Ridiculous Fishing, the latest iOS title from Vlambeer (Super Crate Box), Greg Wohlwend (Puzzlejuice), and Zach Gage (Halcyon).”

Storyteller preview: In the eye of the beholder (Joystiq)
“”Wait, save that. No one’s done it that way before. You made it more complicated.” Daniel Benmergui reached out to grab the mouse and save a screenshot of my panels in his comic-book narrative game, Storyteller, where I had just concocted a tale of love and loss based on the page’s prompt, using a trio of static characters. One click and Benmergui let me regain control – he resumed his place over my shoulder in a quiet room off of the main GDC concourse, paper and pen in hand, taking notes on my visible thought processes as they played out on-screen.”

Preview: Hiversaires (TIGSource)
“After years of releasing engaging short-form games, prolific digital artist Aliceffekt is nearing completion of his first independent commercial project, Hiversaires, for iOS. Committing himself to full time development at the beginning of February, Aliceffekt has worked solo on the game, handling design, code, art, and music.”

Little Inferno scores big sales (Destructoid)
“Little Inferno didn’t have a lot to help it become a financial success. A fireplace simulator made to parody and critique current trends in videogames isn’t exactly what the big publishers would call “a surefire hit with a huge pre-installed fan base.” Thankfully, word of mouth, positive reviews, and the reputation of the game’s all-star development team seemed to have made up for any lack of marketability.”

Second Thoughts with the Chick – Terraria (Indie Gamer Chick)
“I reviewed Terraria for PlayStation Network/Xbox Live Arcade. I said that I did have fun playing the title, but I didn’t recommend it because it was too glitchy and unfinished. I also said that I had lost interest in the game. Since then, there hasn’t been a review up at my blog. Why? Because I’ve been busy playing Terraria. So allow me to eat some crow and do a 180 here. Terraria IS worth your time, glitches and all.”

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

Last year, indie developer Hitbox Team released their first game, Dustforce, on Steam. A little over a year later, Hitbox Team is happily reporting on their financial success and providing valuable feedback to other developers within the indie game scene.

In a blog post, on the official Hitbox Team website, developer Terence Lee went into detail about the specifics of the team’s financial strategy going into developing their first game as a team, and the inspiring outcome of their risky endeavor.

“Now that we’ve finished our own first project, we’d like to contribute our own data about Dustforce to the growing trend of transparency in indie game development,” Lee explains. He goes onto explain that the origins of Dustforce began in the rush to complete the original prototype in the months leading up to the 2010 IndiePub Games Independent Game Developers Competition. In the end, the prototype won the team a $100,000 check, and armed with financial stability, the team was able to completely focus on developing their prototype into the game as it exists today.

Though, Lee pointed out, just like motivation and patience, money will eventually run out, and so the team set a strict deadline: have Dustforce completed by January 2012. An invitation by Valve to release Dustforce on Steam and some positive press following the prototype’s award provided the extra boost to get the project rolling.

Lee goes on to discuss how the four-man team figured out living expenses, and established monetary goals that Dustforce would have to meet, in order to be considered a financial success.

“We had no idea what to expect. We could only speculate, using sparse data points and ballpark figures. Was the past year and a half worth it? Of course it was, —we worked the hardest any of us have ever worked, and we created something we were truly proud of. Yet, there was a lingering uncertainty of financial expectations. Our goal was to just make enough money to be able to do it again. If we could work on our next project independently and without being restricted by a financial cut-off date, then we’d consider Dustforce a financial success.”

Nine days following Dustforce’s January 17th, 2012 release date, the game was a financial success. After the initial surge of post-launch sales, Dustforce was selling 30-50 copies daily. Then, in the first week of May, Hitbox Team got their first taste of a Steam Sale.

“Over the 3 days of the promotion, we sold 17,462 copies of the game, more than the amount we sold during the first 3 days of the January launch. Of course, at 50% off, the revenue was a bit less, but it was still an instant 37% boost in lifetime revenue.”

Hitbox Team’s Steam Sale Figure

When the Humble Bundle 6 launched in September of last year, Dustforce was one of the games included. The Humble Bundle promotion not only brought Hitbox Team roughly $153,915, but they also saw an uptick in Steam sales, following the conclusion of the promotion.

“Dustforce was our first finished game, and we went into it without much experience, especially in the business side of things. Through this project, we learned firsthand that time is money, and that sacrifices have to be made when resources are limited…We are really grateful to have a strong start, and are very happy with how the game turned out…We are all humbled and elated by how well Dustforce has been received. The joy from our players is enough to keep us making games, —the financial success is just an incidental blessing.”

In January, following the one-year anniversary of Dustforce’s release, Hitbox Team announced their next title, Spire.

Follow Hitbox Team on Twitter, and visit the team’s official website.

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Hitbox Team Reveals ‘Dustforce’ Earnings, Talk Steam Sales And Humble Bundle Participation

For just $1 or more, you can get a DRM-Free copy of Flotilla, Atom Zombie Smasher, and Air Forte, as well as Thirty Flights of Loving if you pay above the average.

Learn in today’s Developer Links why to use the Lua scripting language, what kind of social media policy to decide on, and how a developer raised money from pirates.

Mew-Genics Teaser Week 17, Cat Fight! (Team Meat Blog)
“As many of you might have guessed from the song “Cat Fight” in the Ridiculon video post, Cat fights are a large part of Mew-Genics. How will these fights go down?  How will the game actually play?  Why have i been using faked graphics for all the cats ive posted in the past 17 weeks of updates? find out next week! when we finally announce what this damn game is!”

The Video Game Kickstarter Report – Week of Feb 15 (Zeboyd Games)
“Not much this week in terms of new kickstarters to look out for, but I did spot two that I thought sounded interesting. The first is Throw Trucks With Your Mind – a multiplayer FPS where ‘you’ll fight entirely through NeuroSky’s MindWave headset peripheral that reads the electrical activity of your brain.’ It’s up to $11k of its $40k goal with 26 days left to go. The second is Genocide Dolphins. I have no clue why it’s called that, but it’s a FPS with a really trippy visual style. It’s only at £417 raised of its £5k goal with 12 days left to go, but the goal is modest enough that I could see a last-minute recovery.”

Democracy 3 Development Blog #1 (Cliffski.com)
“A short video with me going through the new stuff in Democracy 3:”

Why Lua? (AltDevBlogADay)
“A question that I get asked regularly is why we have chosen Lua as our engine scripting language. I guess as opposed to more well-known languages, such as JavaScript or C#. The short answer is that Lua is lighter and more elegant than both those languages. It is also faster than JavaScript and more dynamic than C#.”

Drafting A Social Media Handbook Policy For Developers (Gamasutra)
“Big companies have recently gotten into hot water by trying to govern employee social media use — but the right way to do this is even more complicated than you might expect, so Gamaustra presents this article, written by an attorney, to help put you on the right track.”

The Witness Audio: 1000 Subtle Layers (The Witness)
“I didn’t think Witness was going to be an easy project by any stretch, but I certainly didn’t expect it to be one of our biggest creative challenges. I’ve worked on nearly 80 projects spanning feature film, games, ads and other sorts, and my job as sound designer had always been to broaden the experience in every possible way. The Witness inverts this notion.”

Indie Dev Makes $12k Through Piracy Promotion (Develop)
“An indie developer has made more than $12,000 after advertising its game through the Pirate Bay. In a blog post, Sean Hogan wrote a post-mortem of the experiment to advertise action-adventure RPG Anodyne through piracy channels, and noted a significant upturn in website hits, Steam Greenlight votes and sales.”

Rocket Report #6 (Rocket Bear Games Blog)
“Last week was quite exciting, development-wise. Guess what?  Those helicopters that I added to the game last time can now do airstrikes.”

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Dev Links: Interest Groups

I hope by now everyone is fully aware of the fantastic FPS Natural Selection 2 (NS2). Released last year by Unknown Worlds NS2 was the long awaited sequel to the original mod and one of the best asymmetrical FPS of all time.

Unknown Worlds have been working tirelessly over the past year to develop NS2 continually post release along with fostering an e-sport community,  and considering it is an online only shooter this is vital. Amongst all of the new maps and updates that have come out over the past few months we now see the actual Decoda integrated development environment (IDE) being released to the public. Decoda was the IDE used to create NS2 with, no doubt many developers have eagerly anticipated this day.

Unknown Worlds co-founder Max McGurie stated the studio was now in a position to give something back to the community and felt Decoda would be a great open source asset for all. Unknown Worlds hope the community will now look to play around with NS2 and their own games using this powerful development platform to create something awesome.

This is great news for developers and modders looking to tinker with some of the tools in the IDE or to start developing their own projects using this powerful system. This should also encourage user mods for NS2 and in time maybe a whole new genre defining game itself.

It’s really great to see Unknown Worlds opening their IDE to all, who knows what next. You can always find out more about Decoda on the official Unknown Worlds site.

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Unknown Worlds Release Decoda IDE Open Source

A dungeon editor, a movie-themed puzzle racer, and a game about a robot photographer (that is, a robot who takes photographs, not someone who photographs robots): these are some of the subjects of today’s Indie Links.

There’s Something Primal About Super Hexagon (Gamasutra)
“Super Hexagon‘s success on iOS has taken developer Terry Cavanagh very much by surprise. The game, an expansion on Cavanagh’s original Pirate Kart entry Hexagon, sold more than 10,000 copies in its first three days on sale in the App Store — a total that the dev never dreamed was possible for a seemingly niche experience.”

Joe Danger 2 – The Movie Review: High-Ish Voltage (Joystiq)
“Like a lot of film sequels, Joe Danger 2 sounds good on paper, in a bigger-better-more-explosions kind of way. Promoted from stuntman to star, Danger’s garage and scenery are now fuller and more diverse. One minute he’s skiing away from an avalanche, the next he’s jetpacking through a jungle and breaking dinosaur eggs. With an action-packed variety of backdrops and vehicles, the 2D puzzle-racer never looks the same from one level to the next. This is a quality not to be sniffed at; many games would do well to break out of their beloved grey corridors and empty brown plains.”

Friday Flashback #31: Watching It Hatch (Broken Rules)
“Refreshed and filled with new-found energy, we’ve looked at the feedback received during PAX Prime and are back to working our minds off to improve what needs to be improved and polish what needs to be polished. Faster than ever, Chasing Aurora fills up with content and takes more and more shape. It’s a bit like watching a bird hatch from its egg.”

Beyond Minecraft: Notch On Fame, Pressure, Sequels (Rock, Paper, Shotgun)
“Notch is Minecraft. Minecraft is Notch. A year ago, those statements might have been true to some extent, but not anymore. The man behind the most pervasive invention since the wheel (which he achieved by simply putting the corners back onto the wheel) hung up his pick axe late last year. That does not mean, however, that he’s escaped from the shadow of the monolith he created. Notch and his creation are still synonymous, for better or worse. And so, during PAX, I spoke with the quick-to-smile yet surprisingly introverted developer about the pressures of overnight fame, having people hang on (and quote) your every word, the current status of 0x10c, and tons more.”

Grimrock Dungeon Editor: Steam Beta (TIGSource)
“After four months of hard work the Legend of Grimrock team has released a level editor beta for their first-person dungeon crawl. Due to Steam’s rapid updating capabilities, the editor is currently only available for players who own the Steam version of the Grimrock. To try it out, right-click on ‘Legend of Grimrock’ in your Steam library and select properties. Then click on the ‘Betas’ tab and opt-in to begin downloading the editor.”

Snapshot: Snapshot (PC) (Joystiq)
“Finally, someone made a game for all the Instagram hipsters in the world. All those crazy kids with their fancy smartphones, taking too-close photos of burritos and Starbucks cups, only to crop them, blow out the saturation, and add kitschy comments bookended by less-than-three hearts for all their digital friends to see. Retro Affect’s Snapshot is exactly like all of that, except way cuter and not at all like that.”

Love, Hate, And Xbox Live Indie Games (Gamasutra)
“For all the bad press that the Xbox Live Indie Games platform has received over the years, it’s easy to forget that, for some developers, XBLIG is a dream come true — a way for them to publish their games to a proper home console in a relatively easy manner. And while it’s also easy to dismiss Xbox Live Indie Games as a breeding ground for Minecraftclones and silly Avatar games — as I myself have done numerous times before — there are, in fact, many wonderful gems to be found on the store if you know where to look.”

Interview: 600k Downloads But Gasketball Still “Feels Like A Dud” (Hookshot, Inc.)
“Following the success of Sopliskier, two-man indie team Mikengreg spent a year developing their follow-up: physics puzzler Gasketball. The game released a month ago to positive reviews from both critics and consumers. But the hope that offering their creation as a free download would lead to a dramatic increase in in-game sales hasn’t paid off.”

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Indie Links Round-Up: Stone-Faced

At the Eurogamer Expo earlier today, Introversion Software founders Mark Morris and Chris Delay revealed that their Kickstarter-like experiment acquired over $100,000 in only three days. Prison Architect’s funding was obtained through a setup akin to what we see from Kickstarter campaigns, with Introversion Software offering the game directly through the game’s official website, using a tiered-price system.

The price tiers range from $30, which get buyers instant access to the Alpha build and the full game when it launches, up to a $1,000 tier which allows the buyer to work with Introversion Software to design game assets, and of course, comes with all the rewards for all the previous tiers.

Morris and Delay reported that over 2600 sales have been made so far, four of which were for the $1,000 tier.

Launched only 72 hours ago, the alpha build of Prison Architect is reminiscent of 2005′s ‘Prison Tycoon’, which featured a similar objective of building and maintaining a prison. Introversion Software promises that players will have to deal with prison fires, tunneling prisoners, riots, staff budgets, gang activity, and more.

Judging by the staggering numbers already generated by the funding campaign, clearly fans have more faith in Introversion Software and Prison Architect, then they had with Virtual Playground and Prison Tycoon, which generated universally low scores upon its release.

Introversion Software developed 2006′s Defcon, and 2005′s Darwinia, which were both well-received by critics.

Join the Prison Architect alpha on the game’s official website, here. You can also follow Introversion Software on Twitter for more updates.

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – ‘Prison Architect’ makes $100,000 in Three Days

Disclaimer: These are not full reviews, and shouldn’t be treated as such. No final scores will be given, as these are extended opinions of a few hours of play at most, and may not give every aspect of the game a fair shake. Feel free to disagree, heckle, kvetch or even just discuss things reasonably in the handy comments section below.

The past few months have been amazing. There is no doubt in my mind that this is a golden age for gamers, if not developers. Between bundles, sales and new releases, I now have a backlog of indie games so massive, my brain struggles to comprehend just how long it would take to get through them all. Welcome to The Chopping Block, where I dive in and cut the pile to size. At least one game enters every single day, and none leave without judgement being passed from above.

Today’s Target: Eryi’s Action for Windows PCs. Developed by Xtal Sword & localized by Nyu Media. RRP: $5. Available Direct, via Gamersgate & Desura.

Well, clearly someone’s a fan of Kaizo Mario and I Wanna Be The Guy. The opening screen of the game tries to lull you into a false sense of security by showing you some easy, casual platforming, only to yank the rug away the moment you step into the game. Any attempt to walk off the very first screen – a short introduction, telling you that Eryi is off on an adventure to recover her stolen dessert melon – is greeted by an instantly lethal falling basin; a staple of Japanese slapstick comedy. There’s a lot of potential for frustration here, and that’s how the game bills itself – as a platformer for masochists.

That said, I think it manages to sidestep the worst of cruel and unusual behaviour that you’d expect to see in games like this. There’s still the occasional invisible platform hidden just where the apex of your jump would be, but those seem few and far between, with the focus of the game being on some rather clever puzzle-oriented gameplay with fairly regular checkpoints. It’ll take a few deaths to understand the rules of each puzzle, of course – an experience perhaps comparable with sweeping for mines by rolling your face along the ground – but you can learn over time, if you don’t mind some pain. At least you have infinite lives, right?

A good example is the end of the first level – there’s a Mario-esque level completion flagpole, and if you touch it, the game takes over and walks you off the right edge of the screen, right into a falling spike-ball trap. As the game is in control at this point, you can’t evade, avoid or otherwise do anything to escape death. The only way to survive is to somehow break the game. What you need to do, then, is pick up and carry a sprinkler (effectively acting as a jump-pad) from a screen or two back, and use it to vault over the level completion pole. You can now dodge the spike-ball, and exit the level, right? Well, no. You’ve not touched the pole, so you just walked off the level to your death. Go back to touch the pole, and you auto-walk into the (now stationary) spikes.

So, after a little experimentation, I found that in addition to bringing over the sprinkler, I needed to (carefully) pick up an explosive bomb-type enemy, jump over the flagpole with it, evade the spikes, throw the bomb and clear the path. THEN touch the flagpole, and let the level ending sequence play out properly. Bypassing videogame logic in order to get it working again – it’s kinda clever, in a weirdly dumb sorta way. This seems to be the general thrust of the gameplay – puzzles that bend or abuse the logic of the game and require some actual thought to get through, with the platforming itself being not too hard to get through.

Every few levels the game throws a boss battle your way, and these are genuinely tough platforming/reflex challenges that are probably the most frustrating element of all, although there’s nothing that can’t be conquered with a little patience. It’s nowhere near the sadistic difficulty of I Wanna Be The Guy. At least, not yet. The game itself actually looks quite nice, and the music feels appropriate for a Mario-inspired platformer. I’m still some way from the end of the game, but I’m actually having fun with this, which I honestly didn’t expect.

The Verdict: Maybe the difficulty spikes hideously later on, but in spite of frequent deaths, I’m actually having enjoying puzzling my way through Eryi’s Action. It feels almost like a puzzle game disguised as a sadistic platformer, and there’s a strong vein of humour running through it all, even if the player is the butt of all the jokes. I may well go back to this one once my backlog is a little shorter, so consider this a guarded recommendation. Now, on to the next – check back tomorrow for another indie game on The Chopping Block.

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – The Chopping Block – ‘Eryi’s Action’