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Indie Links Round-Up: New Heights

Erik Johnson — Fri, 17 May 2013 14:29:43 +0000

Indie Links today has freeware before commercial, personal instead of professional and hot Monaco on Monaco action.

Four perspectives on personal games (Gamasutra)
“The personal games movement is providing an important, exciting new avenue for expression and a new understanding of design, many believe. At the Different Games conference in New York this weekend, four panelists presented on the theme of personal game-making and why it matters to them.”

Review: Starseed Pilgrim – A Game of Discovery by Droqen (IndieGameReviewer)
“You could be forgiven for initially dismissing Starseed Pilgrim as little more than a curiosity. Droqen’s latest endeavor is a strange, abstract title that does little to endear itself to new players; spending ten minutes with the game might leave you with the vague impression that something is missing. Spend an hour with it and you may come to the conclusion that it was designed with the specific purpose to bewilder and confuse its audience. If you stay a little longer though, you’ll begin to see something compelling and altogether worthy of your time emerge from the blankness.”

Analog Investigations in Arkham (Gnome’s Lair)
“Deduction, despite what Sherlock Holmes would have you believe, is not a science. It’s a method. A method that could arguably make the life of all fictional investigators much easier and can definitely be applied to board-games as the classic Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective so effortlessly proved over 30 years ago. What’s more, deduction is what you’ll be using when playing the freshly released and rather excellent Arkham Investigator.”

Why Vlambeer won’t stop making freeware first, products second (Polygon)
“Earlier this week, Vlambeer — an independent developer who receives as much ink for their critically acclaimed titles as they do for unscrupulous developers’ tendency to copy them — got hit once again. SkyFar, an iOS game from Bangalore’s Rubiq Lab, was criticized for nearly duplicating Luftrausers, a browser-based Flash game Vlambeer released in 2011, which the studio later planned to turn into a full retail release.”

Live Free, Play Hard: The Week’s Finest Free Indie Games (RPS)
“Heterosexual narc. More than a few games about the demise of balls. CANDY ANT PRINCESS.”

Two Game Developers Travel The World, Playing Games And Helping People (Kotaku)
“Earlier this year, Battlefield producer Daniel Matros and former colleague Tim Kjell set up something called Charitystream. The idea was simple: stream games online, raise money for charity. It’s a noble goal, yeah, but it’s also something countless others are engaged in.”

Monaco made good on Indie Fund $100K before launch, what it means (Joystiq)
“Since 2010, Indie Fund has helped launch high-profile games such as Dear Esther, QUBE and Antichamber, each one recouping investment within days or even hours. The first game in which Indie Fund ever put its faith (and money), Monaco, launched last week and made back its $100,000 investment in negative time, before the game went live on April 24.”

Monaco: What’s Yours Is Mine offers the thrill of the heist (Shacknews)
“Andy Schatz’s IGF award-winning Monaco: What’s Yours Is Mine is all about staying in the shadows and avoiding detection. In fact, it’s succeeded almost too well, remaining out of the spotlight since it first took the Seumas McNally Grand Prize at IGF 2010. After years of tireless work and dedication, Monaco has finally been released and like a fine French wine, it was worth the wait.”

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IGM Let’s Try – Mini Motor Racing EVO!

Zephyr Moore — Fri, 17 May 2013 00:06:15 +0000

IGM Let’s Try – Mini Motor Racing EVO!

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May 16th, 2013 | By Zephyr Moore

An overhead racer that plays out with a bumper car vibe as it aims for some serious racing fun without actually taking itself seriously. Mini Motor Racing EVO lets you nitro boost your way across sunny beaches, rainy city streets, and everything in between. Combined with a track editor, this one comes with nearly unlimited multiplayer mayhem in a non-chase cam racer!

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‘Among The Sleep’ Funded, Walking Dead Sound Studio Joins Project, Public Alpha Available

Tom Christiansen — Thu, 16 May 2013 05:35:44 +0000

It has been a busy month for Krillbite Studio, the developer currently working on the horror title, Among The Sleep. Their Kickstarter met it’s funding goal just days before the campaign ended, the team announced Oculus Rift support for Among the Sleep, they have released a public Alpha for the game, and Studio Jory (The Walking Dead, Tales of Monkey Island) has joined the team to do the game’s dialog.

In an email sent out to media outlets earlier today, and posted to Among the Sleep’s Kickstarter, the Krillbite Studio team is seen celebrating the recent funding success of their game. Hard work does pay off.

“What happens when you mix a child’s perspective and imagination, with the surreal nature of dreams?” asked Krillbite Studio on Kickstarter. “Quite a lot, I guess, but we think one of those things is an interesting premise for a horror adventure.” Nearly seven thousand backers think so too.

The game puts players in the perspective of a two-year old, who cannot fight back, and simply must hide to survive. The concept is akin to the hide-or-die mechanic seen in Amnesia, but in Among the Sleep players are even more vulnerable, since they are playing as a baby.

“We’re aiming to include some puzzle and adventure elements as well, but our main focus lies on exploration, atmosphere and horror.”

Players interested in checking out the Alpha build can find PC, Mac, and Linux downloads available on the Among the Sleep Kickstarter campaign, which currently still has a couple days left.

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‘Teslagrad’ Preview – Mad Magnetism

Kim Berkley — Mon, 13 May 2013 19:28:43 +0000

Slated to be Norwegian developer Rain Games’s first release, Teslagrad is a steampunk-styled 2-D puzzle platformer currently in development for the PC, Mac and Linux. Set in the titular capitol city of Elektropia, the game promises to be an electrifying escapade full of perilous puzzles designed specifically to test and tantalize one’s brain.

This is technically Rain Games’s second game; their first project, a multiplayer game titled Minute Mayhem, was put on hold in favor of finishing Teslagrad first. Despite vastly differing gameplay, both are set in the fictional universe of Chroma, and the developers have hinted at a desire to continue exploring Chroma in future releases.

The tale of Teslagrad, which comes first chronologically, is told through “voiceless storytelling,” in which bits and pieces of the narrative are subtly revealed via visual clues as you make your way through the game. These scattered hints recall a not-so-distant past when Elektropia was ruled by an apparently beloved king (at least, that’s what the adoring masses in the posters seem to say), whose reign came to its end when a new, somewhat less loving leader rose to power by dark means and – presumably – with darker motivations.

In the game, you play as a young boy who, for reasons not immediately known, appears to be on the run from very Russian-looking guards. If they catch you, instead of being arrested and thrown in jail for the remainder of your miserable days you will be automatically sent back a few feet to try again. These aren’t your average walking-obstacle type guards, either. When you jump, they jump, and are happy to pursue you relentlessly until you manage to climb up out of reach (apparently, they don’t like heights), at which point they will shake their fists furiously while you continue prancing across the city rooftops on your merry way to Tesla Tower – which is where the real fun begins.

The tower is a steampunk fanatic’s fantasy, combining dark Victorian-esque architecture with climbing vines, rusting gears and contraptions, and the crackling delight of high-voltage electricity. Tesla Tower is also where you’ll finally pick up some power-ups. So far, these include a glove that allows you to punch either a positive or negative charge into certain conductive objects (and creatures), a suit that allows you to change your own charge at will, and a staff that emits, as the developers say, a “long range beam of magnetized death.”

Animate curiosities of both organic and mechanical origins prowl the premises, and some are more malignant than others. While fighting or fleeing from enemies such as shadow-lurking Grues or creepily skeletal mechabirds (not to mention big baddies like the aptly-named Fernus), players must also muster their wits and resourcefulness in order to solve mind-bending puzzles and progress through the tower. Some solutions are obvious, like punching a blue charge into an obstacle to cause it to rise up (and out of the way) to stick to a red, oppositely charged object above. Others are more intricate, involving spatial reorganization, precise timing, and, often, a little bit of creativity.

Why are you risking life and limb to ascend this dangerous (and seemingly abandoned) tower, and what on Chroma did you do to get the police on your case? The current alpha build poses many questions and few answers – but from the way development is progressing, chances are good those answers will prove to be well worth the wait when the final game is released. There is no set release date as of yet, but Rain Games are working toward putting out a demo sometime in the (hopefully very near) future. Meanwhile, there’s the alpha, and if you’re interested in keeping track of updates be sure to keep an eye on the developer’s blog and the official Teslagrad Indie DB page.

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Indie Links Round-Up: Among Foes

Erik Johnson — Sun, 12 May 2013 13:59:33 +0000

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!””

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Dev Links: Natural Wonder

Erik Johnson — Sun, 12 May 2013 03:38:03 +0000

Quality-of-life, DRM, Piracy and other discussions reverberate in today’s Developer Links.

Indie Fund Now Backing “Panoramical” (IndieFund)
“We are super excited to announce our support of Panoramical, a collaborative project by Fernando Ramallo, a game developer from Argentina, and David Kanaga, best known for his work on Proteus and DYAD. Panoramical is something really different from what we’ve funded in the past, and its difficult to describe it in words. It uses an input device like an iPad or MIDI controller to explore hand-crafted musical landscapes, allowing the player to alter the visuals and music to their touch.”

Game Developer Quality-of-Life Survey (Gamasutra)
“”Game Developers: How are you doing?” That’s the question we asked approximately 1,000 of you at the end of 2012. We know that between the long hours, frequent layoffs, and crunch phases, the game industry can be a notorious grind. While we perform a yearly Salary Survey every April to check the pulse of developers’ financial health, we thought we’d supplement that with a quality-of-life survey to see how you’re doing in ways not measured by dollars and cents. Are you satisfied with your pay? Are you confident in your current project? Do you want to be in this industry five years from now? Read on to find out how your colleagues responded.”

Meat Boy dev: DRM hurts more than piracy (Games Industry)
“The troubled launch of EA’s SimCity due to its always-online requirement has raised the issue of digital rights management and the effectiveness of anti-piracy measures once again. In a post on his own blog, Super Meat Boy developer Tommy Refenes gave his own take on the subject, arguing that developers’ attempts to keep their games from being pirated are hurting themselves first and foremost.”

Vlambeer: Mobile devs mustn’t be scared of charging more (Develop Online)
“Mobile developers should not be scared of charging more for iOS and Android games, a developer from Vlambeer has said. Speaking in a Reddit Q&A, developers from the Super Crate Box studio said that indies needed to be sell a countless number of titles at the standard $0.99 (£0.69) price just to survive on the platform, and encouraged more developers to start charging more.”

Sony easier to work with as an indie, Guacamelee dev says (Shacknews)
“With Guacamelee’s release on PS3 and PS Vita imminent, developer Drinkbox Studios took a moment to praise Sony’s continuing efforts to reach out to developers–smaller indie studios, in particular.”

Democracy 3 development blog video #2 (Positech Games)
“Another short video showing off new color schemes and some new features.”

Overgrowth a198 video changelog (Wolfire Games)
“Here is the new Overgrowth alpha video!”

Penny Arcade’s On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness 4 Trailer! (Zeboyd Games)
“Our first trailer for our upcoming new game, Penny Arcade’s on the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness 4 is now live! “

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Dev Links: A Fresh Start

Erik Johnson — Thu, 02 May 2013 07:16:56 +0000

The contents of today’s Dev Links come together to demonstrate how many different stages of development there actually are. (Hint: a lot.)

The Making of: ROM City Rampage (8-BIT Hardware Accurate Prototype) (VBlank Entertainment)
“How Retro City Rampage’s core was crunched down to a REAL 8-BIT game and how 8-BIT games are made!”

Yet Another Technology Status Update (Gaslamp Games)
“Last time I wrote a programming team update about Clockwork Empires, I made a comment that was somewhere along the lines of “the game is starting to hit that point where it transitions from a bunch of technology bits to something that looks like a game.” Well, we’re a lot closer to that goal than we were last update.”

Race Selection Screen (StarLife)
“Our new race selection screen. The custom race button will take you to another screen, which I will be working on the next few days.”

More about the complexities of Democracy 3 income… (Positech Games)
“Wealth is a complex thing in Democracy 3. far more so than before. I’ve been wrestling with bugs in it today which have reminded me how intricate the new income simulation is. How does it work? Well here is a rough synopsis.”

XXL Love for Serious Sam Double D (Mommy’s Best Games)
“Serious Sam Double D XXL is out now on XBLA–go download the demo if you’ve not yet! Critics are chiming in with some intense praise, see what they have to say.“

Oddy Smog, Oddy Smog EVERYWHERE (PlayMedusa)
“What a huge week for Oddy Smog’s Misadventure. The game that was our second title, back in 2010, has been released for Android and has received a big update in the App Store.”

The Video Game Kickstarter Report – Week of March 1 (Zeboyd Games)

Playnomics partners with Unity to help indie developers (Polygon)
“Games-focused data science company Playnomics has partnered with the Unity Technologies Asset Store to provide indie developers with better tools to engage audiences and monetize their games, Playnomics announced today.”

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‘Dangerous’ Aims To Bring Local Multiplayer Back To The Masses

Emerson Smith — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 22:20:52 +0000

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.

You can support Dangerous‘ development by pledging to the Kickstarter campaign. Follow development on the Multivarious Games Facebook Page to learn more about development on this exciting title.

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IGM Let’s Try- ‘Cubemen 2′

David Johnson — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 21:17:26 +0000

IGM Let’s Try- ‘Cubemen 2′

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April 25th, 2013 | By David Johnson

Tagged in: 3 sprockets | Cubemen 2

Cubemen 2 is a fast paced, action packed, original 3D Strategy game where you use your little Cubemen units to defend and attack enemies in a range of awesome game modes including CTF, Skirmish, Territory and more.

Cubemen 2
Steam

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Indie Videos – Spies And Monster Hunters

Tom Christiansen — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 20:41:03 +0000

Black Annex from Man Fight Dragon is an upcoming isometric espionage action game. Currently, the developers are seeking support through Greenlight, and developer Lance E. McDonald’s Twitter feed is always full of Black Annex media.

Black Annex official website

Announced last May, The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing has received a promotional “Pre-order and play the Beta” trailer, for the game’s impending May release. Neocore Games put The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing through a make-over last fall when they announced that the original concept of playing as young Van Helsing didn’t feel adequate. They allowed fans to choose from three new character-concepts (The Mysterious Stranger, The Chevalier, and The Veteran) and fans ultimately chose The Mysterious Stranger concept.

“Being indie is a great challenge and a very exciting experience with incredibly long working hours and plenty of difficulties,” Neocore says on their developer’s blog, “but it’s worth it! We consider it a gift that we can create something permanent and fun. Independence allowed us to keep you up to date during every phase of the development. Thanks to you, now we already have a very supportive and active community who are eagerly looking forward to the launch of The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing.”

Visit the official website, where pre-orders are being taken. Pre-ordering gets access to the current Beta-build as well.

Gunpoint Gadget has been floating around for awhile now. For at least two years, Tom Francis has been developing this quaint spymaster game that relies on player’s cunning to successfully complete the missions presented. A recent trailer, narrated by Francis, demonstrates a number of the tools at the player’s disposal, to solve the various puzzles in each level. In the trailer, Francis also reveals that Gunpoint Gadget will be coming to Steam, when the game launches. Steam contacted him awhile ago, but now is the first time he’s been allowed to say anything about it, Francis explains in the video.

Visit the official website to learn more, and follow the game on Twitter.

If you are a developer and have a new video you want to show off, or if you’re just a fan and really stoked to share a video, email tom@indiegamemag.com with “Indie Video” in the subject line!

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Indie Links Round-Up: New Heights

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IGM Let’s Try – Mini Motor Racing EVO!

IGM Let’s Try – Mini Motor Racing EVO!

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‘Among The Sleep’ Funded, Walking Dead Sound Studio Joins Project, Public Alpha Available

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‘Teslagrad’ Preview – Mad Magnetism

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Indie Links Round-Up: Among Foes

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Dev Links: Natural Wonder

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Dev Links: A Fresh Start

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‘Dangerous’ Aims To Bring Local Multiplayer Back To The Masses

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IGM Let’s Try- ‘Cubemen 2′

IGM Let’s Try- ‘Cubemen 2′

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Indie Videos – Spies And Monster Hunters

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