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gametunnel1 brings us the February round-up of reviews for recent independent game releases. The top game this time around was Crayon Physics, which was also celebrated at the Independent Games Festival. Also scoring high were Ragdoll Cannon and adventure game Emerald City Confidential, about which they say, "The game is set in the mythical land of Oz, but not quite the same one as the movie/books. Rather than a cheery and fun-filled world, Oz is depicted like a 1940s film noir, so things are much bleaker. ... The highlight of the gameplay would have to be the gathering of information, via investigation of the environment or questioning characters in the game. Talking to characters for leads and clues is fun, especially since sometimes you'll have to figure out if what they're saying has any significance or not."

The Independent Games Festival has made this year's picks for the ten best student games. More detailed descriptions of each of the games are available at the IGF's website. These are games (and developers) to watch because, as Gamasutra points out, "Notable previous IGF honorees include many of today's breakthrough independent games, from Number None's Braid through 2D Boy's World Of Goo and Invisible Handlebar's Audiosurf. Previous Student Showcase winners have included Narbacular Drop — subsequently evolved into Game Developers Choice Game Of The Year winner Portal — and Cloud, from the student team who then created downloadable titles Flow and Flower."

GameSetWatch notes that the 2007 finalists for the Independent Games Festival have been announced. The IGF is an annual event meant to highlight and praise the work of independent game designers of all stripes; it's run by Slashdot Games editor alumni Simon Carless. Simon puts the spotlight on the Seamus McNally Grand Prize finalists, the 'best of the best' at this year's IGF. My vote goes to World of Goo: "Building off the concepts from Tower Of Goo, one of Kyle Gabler's projects from the Experimental Gameplay Project at CMU, the first game from Bay Area duo 2D Boy uses the hitherto unexplored structural ability of blobs to make an addictive construction-based puzzle action title. There's no release date or demo for the game yet (aside from Tower Of Goo, a kind of 'prequel'), but there's screenshots and a trailer on the official site."

GameSetWatch points out that the big list of entrants for the 2008 Independent Games Festival is now online. Can't tell the winners without a program, right? GSW points out some of the names to watch in this year's showdown: "Gish 2 - Gish 2 is the long awaited sequel to the IGF 05 grand prize winner Gish. In Gish 2 you take the role of physics based blob whose movement and control are physically modeled around the shape and texture of his body. When his girlfriend Brea is murdered, Gish sets out to the Isle of the Dead to make a deal with Quietus (the god of death) to bring her back to life. Noitu Love 2: Devolution - In Noitu Love 2: Devolution you're thrown into a classic action and beat-em-up scenario but with a twist to the gameplay that creates a new and fluent style of play using the mouse. Pixeljunk Racers - Simple addictive puzzle racing game based loosely on slot-car racing, with 32 types of game and up to 7 players simultaneously."

GameSetWatch points out that the big list of entrants for the 2008 Independent Games Festival is now online. Can't tell the winners without a program, right? GSW points out some of the names to watch in this year's showdown: "Gish 2 - Gish 2 is the long awaited sequel to the IGF 05 grand prize winner Gish. In Gish 2 you take the role of physics based blob whose movement and control are physically modeled around the shape and texture of his body. When his girlfriend Brea is murdered, Gish sets out to the Isle of the Dead to make a deal with Quietus (the god of death) to bring her back to life. Noitu Love 2: Devolution - In Noitu Love 2: Devolution you're thrown into a classic action and beat-em-up scenario but with a twist to the gameplay that creates a new and fluent style of play using the mouse. Pixeljunk Racers - Simple addictive puzzle racing game based loosely on slot-car racing, with 32 types of game and up to 7 players simultaneously."

The title Everyday Shooter isn't just special because it's a pretty good game, blending Geometry Wars-like gameplay with great music. It's also the winner of numerous accolades from last year's Independent Games Festival, and as of this week it will be headlining on the PlayStation Store. "The $10 game may be coming into a market clogged with dual-analog shooters, but I don't think it will have a hard time fitting in. 'Some days I would spend all day tweaking a level, sleep for a few hours, and then go back and tweak some more,' Mak told me at E3. 'The challenges I faced in this game were creative, not technical.' The sense that someone slaved over this across many, many sleepless nights comes through pretty clearly. This is one to watch, and keep the name Jonathan Mak in your head. I doubt this will be the last thing we see from him." For more on the background of this unique title Gamasutra interviewed Mak, the game's sole creator, prior to the IGF last year.

GameSetWatch has the announcement that entrants for the 2007 Independent Games Festival have been announced. The complete list of entrants is available on the IGF site. There's a breakdown on some of the best entrants at Indiegamer.com, if all you care about is "What should I play?" From that post: "Bang! Howdy! -- The follow up to Puzzle Pirates by Three Rings took years and a big team. It's also innovative and fun. And it pushes a microcurrency system. Lookout IGF. Perplex City -- This real-world/online crossover game gives riddles to players in which they have to solve problems in the real world, on the internet, and in the game. Definitely Oscar... uh I mean... IGF bait. Plus they appear to have crazy funding and just announced a deal to distribute in Gamestop. These guys mean business."

Sune Nielsen writes "The Independent Games Festival main competition has a lot of great games from independent developers, who will all be presenting their games in the IGF booth at the Game Developers Conference in San Jose. The IGF has an Audience Award, and has just opened voting. Demos are available for most of the contestants. You need a Gamespot login (free) to vote, but not to try the demos. The award ceremony will take place on March 22nd at the GDC." Free demos, folks, of some of the most out-there games you're likely to play this year. I'm rooting for Darwinia and Dad n' Me.

Via GameSetWatch, the announcement of the 2005 finalists for the Independent Games Festival to be held at the 2006 Game Developer's Conference. Gamasutra has a few more details. From that article: "Following a record total of 118 entries, competition was especially fierce, but the forty IGF judges, picked from mainstream and indie game creation and journalism circles, have singled out their pick of the outstanding indie titles. In particular, the finalists for this year's $20,000 Seumas McNally Grand Prize include Introversion's cult action-strategy title Darwinia, Ankama's French strategy-RPG MMO Dofus, Grubby Games' fiendish puzzle platform game Professor Fizzwizzle, Digital Eel's innovative 'short' space exploration title Weird Worlds: Return To Infinite Space, and Pocketwatch Games' ecosystem-building title Wildlife Tycoon: Venture Africa."

The Seventh Annual Independent Games Festival doesn't start until tomorrow (indeed, the kiosks at the Moscone Center aren't even set up yet), but if you're interested in the contenders you can play many of them at Gamespot. While not all of the games have demos, the ones that do are definitely worth checking out.

Ubisoft announced this morning that they have come to an agreement with 3 Rings Design to publish Puzzle Pirates in retail stores. This exciting news couldn't come for a better game, winner of the IGF 2004 Technical Excellence and Audience Awards for Online games. From the Puzzle Pirates site: "Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates is an online game in which you play a Pirate character in an ocean world. Hundreds of your fellow player Pirates swarm these Isles and Sea-lanes. For Pirates who love acronyms, Puzzle Pirates is an massively multi-player online roleplaying game, or mmoarrrrpg." Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates is available for Demo on PC/Mac/Linux.

Alef writes "The winners of the 2005 Independent Game Festival Student Showcase have been announced. However, at least one entry appears to have been ignored by the judges. This makes me wonder whether the elaborate description of their judging process merely is empty words." Update: 01/28 22:45 GMT by Z : Goodman simoniker wrote in with an update to this story in the comments. Basically, miscommunication reigns.

Alef writes "The winners of the 2005 Independent Game Festival Student Showcase have been announced. However, at least one entry appears to have been ignored by the judges. This makes me wonder whether the elaborate description of their judging process merely is empty words." Update: 01/28 22:45 GMT by Z : Goodman simoniker wrote in with an update to this story in the comments. Basically, miscommunication reigns.

frood writes "In a follow-up to slashdot's previous mention of the 2005 Independent Games Festival they have gone ahead and announced the finalists. There are 20 different games all produced without any outside publisher funding. Budgets range from 1.3 million dollars down to $0.00, with the majority coming in under 10k. There are at least 3 that can be run on Linux (Gish, Lux and N)."

simoniker writes "The Independent Games Festival has just announced its list of entrants for 2005, the seventh annual contest. The awards, to be given out at next year's Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, are all about 'Rewarding Innovation In Independent Games,' and there's a total of $40,000 in prizes, including a $15,000 grand prize for both the 'Open' and 'Web/Downloadable' categories. Notable entries this year include Nayantara's online CCG Star Chamber, Chronic Logic's ball-o'-tar platformer Gish, and Digital Eel's forthcoming Weird Worlds: Return to Infinite Space, the sequel to Strange Adventures In Infinite Space."

simoniker writes "The Independent Games Festival has just announced its list of entrants for 2005, the seventh annual contest. The awards, to be given out at next year's Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, are all about 'Rewarding Innovation In Independent Games,' and there's a total of $40,000 in prizes, including a $15,000 grand prize for both the 'Open' and 'Web/Downloadable' categories. Notable entries this year include Nayantara's online CCG Star Chamber, Chronic Logic's ball-o'-tar platformer Gish, and Digital Eel's forthcoming Weird Worlds: Return to Infinite Space, the sequel to Strange Adventures In Infinite Space."

simoniker writes "The Independent Games Festival has just announced its list of entrants for 2005, the seventh annual contest. The awards, to be given out at next year's Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, are all about 'Rewarding Innovation In Independent Games,' and there's a total of $40,000 in prizes, including a $15,000 grand prize for both the 'Open' and 'Web/Downloadable' categories. Notable entries this year include Nayantara's online CCG Star Chamber, Chronic Logic's ball-o'-tar platformer Gish, and Digital Eel's forthcoming Weird Worlds: Return to Infinite Space, the sequel to Strange Adventures In Infinite Space."

Thanks to GameTunnel for its editorial discussing the outcome of last week's Independent Game Festival awards, as previously covered on Slashdot Games, and part of a comprehensive GameTunnel IGF section. The writer is particularly concerned that the relatively high-budget, but still publisher-less Savage: The Battle For Newerth won major awards: "IGF has this year shown that a team's ability to raise money is as important as innovation itself. Consider this, if Savage was done on a $50,000 budget instead of a $1.5 million dollar budget, how would it be different? Would things that are in the game have been left out? I believe that the clear answer to this question is yes." What defines an 'indie' game for you, and should there be a maximum budget for IGF-entered games?

Thanks to Frictionless Insight for its article recounting the proceedings of the 2004 Game Developers Choice and Independent Games Festival Awards, which were held last night in San Jose. Multiple GDC Award winners included Call Of Duty and Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time, and Savage: The Battle for Newerth won the IGF independent game award, with Oasis triumphing in the Web/downloadable category. Among the highlights: "When the Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates team moved to the stage to accept the [IGF Web/Downloadable Audience Choice] award, dressed as buccaneers, they basked in the most thunderous applause of the night", and the piece also notes that "...the audience was [almost equally] vocal when HK-47 (from Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic) took the award for [GDC] Original Game Character of the Year." There's further coverage of the events over at GameSpy.

after writes "GameDev.net is reporting events at the Game Developers Conference 2004. The coverage of the conference spans five days, and the first day is complete already. It has plenty of pictures of some of the activities. Finalists of the IGF are also posted with some amazing pictures. Also, an interview with Iain McNeil of Slitherine Software. More updates come on a day-to-day basis, so check it out."

M0b1u5 writes "Mistaril is a small company with an intriguing product: Space Station Manager. It's a finalist for the Independent Games Festival and a follow-up game is planned: Luna Base Manager. However, the SSM project has a developer post-mortem which is well worth a read if you're thinking about launching a game development company, or are just interested in game development."

Thanks to the IGF website for revealing their list of nominees for the 2004 Independent Games Festival awards, which have been running since 1998 "to encourage innovation in game development and to recognize the best independent game developers." The finalists in the 'Open Category' include everything from "blend of puzzle and action" Fuzzee Teevee, budgeted at a mere $10,000, to the $1-1.5 million "FPS and RTS [hybrid]" Savage: The Battle For Newerth. The 'Web/Downloadable' category also has some interesting entries, from seeing "two possessed cue-balls duke it out in realtime battle" courtesy of Kung-Fu Chess follow-up Billiard Boxing, to recently-featured "puzzle-based massively multi-player online roleplaying game" Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates.

Anon-E-Mouse writes "The Independent Games Festival has finally announced the entrants for the 2004 IGF Competition. It's worth mentioning that they have doubled the prizes this year, and opened up a new category for web/downloadable games."