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If you liked Star Control (and I loved it!) try Starscape: http://www.moonpod.com/English/about_ss.php

Everyone I have ever spoken to about this, including non tech-savvy people, make it clear that they have never clicked an advertisement on a webpage. Except maybe when they first started out.

I don't know, if the item being advertised is actually interesting to me, I'll click on it to check it out and give the website the click revenue.

For example, on Penny Arcade they were advertising Starscape and the ad was good enough to capture my interest in the game. So, I clicked through to it. In the end, I liked the demo enough I bought the game.

Ads aren't a bane of existence and the internet. They can live in harmony and even add value; but, the advertisers haven't accepted that device they are sending their ads to provides the end user with a lot of control, and if they become too obnoxious, we will exercise that control.

Ah, Mr. Robot!
http://www.moonpod.com/English/about_mr.robot.php

There are so many freeware and shareware games that have been released online by independent developers and programming hobbyists.

The Independent Games Festival is a good start. And to make things easier, there are a many sites and blogs that review indie games and make recommendations: the2bears and Shoot the Core cover shoot-em ups/STGs; Jay is Games handles flash and casual games; and TIGSource (for which I'm an editor), Independent Gaming, and Game Tunnel cover all genres of games. You can expect to find some overlapping, but they each have plenty to search through.

Bah - highstreet games - tsk tsk (shakes head), get in the indie scene. The games are different/unique (usually), they actually all run on my PC (eek! - faints) and you aren't lining the pockets of faceless corporations. Sure there are plenty of dogs, just like high street games, hence lists like these are great.

Starscape http://www.moonpod.com/Starscape/
by http://www.moonpod.com/
This is a classic top down any direction scrolling shootermup, imagine asteroids but then go nuts with the artwork and add a giant space station that follows you around like a portable base, multiple fighters docked within it, research, construction and customisation plus a pretty cool anime rendered story adventure.

Spacetripper http://www.pompomgames.com/spacetripper.htm
by http://www.pompomgames.com/
Whilst PomPom's second game mutant storm definitely has a hardcore appeal that we like, we've found ourselves coming back to their first offering more and more. At it's core a tribute to Williams arcade classic Defender, it'll leave you wondering why they don't make games like this anymore.

Alien Shooter
http://www.sigma-team.net/alienshooter/index.htm
by http://www.sigma-team.net/
A great control system (move with the cursor keys, and aim with the mouse) , and gorgeous graphics made this our favourite Robotron-A-like. Alien Shooter likes to take gore to the max. We were sold on it once we picked up the minigun and started to mow down hordes of aliens; literally, painting the rooms red with alien blood :D

Platypus
http://www.squashysoftware.com/platypus.php
by http://www.squashysoftware.com/
Whilst it won't come anywhere close to being one of the top shoot-em-ups of all time, this is still solid. We found especially that the graphical style kept us wanting to see more (the entire game - even the effects, are made using claymation techniques. The whole game is built from photographs of plasticine models!)

Outpost Kaloki
http://www.ninjabee.com/outpostkaloki.html
by http://www.ninjabee.com/
Outpost Kaloki takes a well established genre and makes a very well polished pretty implementation that manages to avoid being too cliche by injecting just the right amount of humour. Each mission sees you create your very own space station purpose built to fullfill the story linked mission objectives. You can add modules for entertainment, research, food production, defence and many more.

Bah - highstreet games - tsk tsk (shakes head), get in the indie scene. The games are different/unique (usually), they actually all run on my PC (eek! - faints) and you aren't lining the pockets of faceless corporations. Sure there are plenty of dogs, just like high street games, hence lists like these are great.

Starscape http://www.moonpod.com/Starscape/
by http://www.moonpod.com/
This is a classic top down any direction scrolling shootermup, imagine asteroids but then go nuts with the artwork and add a giant space station that follows you around like a portable base, multiple fighters docked within it, research, construction and customisation plus a pretty cool anime rendered story adventure.

Spacetripper http://www.pompomgames.com/spacetripper.htm
by http://www.pompomgames.com/
Whilst PomPom's second game mutant storm definitely has a hardcore appeal that we like, we've found ourselves coming back to their first offering more and more. At it's core a tribute to Williams arcade classic Defender, it'll leave you wondering why they don't make games like this anymore.

Alien Shooter
http://www.sigma-team.net/alienshooter/index.htm
by http://www.sigma-team.net/
A great control system (move with the cursor keys, and aim with the mouse) , and gorgeous graphics made this our favourite Robotron-A-like. Alien Shooter likes to take gore to the max. We were sold on it once we picked up the minigun and started to mow down hordes of aliens; literally, painting the rooms red with alien blood :D

Platypus
http://www.squashysoftware.com/platypus.php
by http://www.squashysoftware.com/
Whilst it won't come anywhere close to being one of the top shoot-em-ups of all time, this is still solid. We found especially that the graphical style kept us wanting to see more (the entire game - even the effects, are made using claymation techniques. The whole game is built from photographs of plasticine models!)

Outpost Kaloki
http://www.ninjabee.com/outpostkaloki.html
by http://www.ninjabee.com/
Outpost Kaloki takes a well established genre and makes a very well polished pretty implementation that manages to avoid being too cliche by injecting just the right amount of humour. Each mission sees you create your very own space station purpose built to fullfill the story linked mission objectives. You can add modules for entertainment, research, food production, defence and many more.

One of the best 2d games I have seen in a while was Starscape. Great visuals, great gameplay. Just a ton of 2d goodness. I'm just waiting for Moopod to finally finish up War Angles now.

No "Digital Rights Management" type scheme. Once you download it, it's yours to put on any computer you own.

Black women own Europeans.

Serriously, this truly is kick ass, if only so I can still get some shooters from Japan and other places before the Internet literally becomes the, uh...internets.

Which is why it's a good idea for indie developers to know their audience and advertise appropriately. Moonpod, for example, has ads for Starscape (a really nice shoot-em-up/management mix) displayed with gaming related comics like Ctrl+Alt+Del or 8-bit Theater - people who read those comics are likely to be interested in obscure and/or old-school-like games and having the advertisement on the site also serves as some kind of approval by the artists - after all, if they wouldn't like the game they wouldn't advertise it, right? (Actually, concerning how pissy web artists can get I'd figure that the probability of them knowing what games they're advertising for is quite high.)

Independent companies often produce stuff that is in some way superior what you usually get - one example would be Decker (Coral Cache), a graphically unimpressive freeware game for Windows that just happens to be the best simulation of breaking into computers in the Shadowrun world. Please don't click the link unless you really are interested, it's a private site and has a lot of images up front.
However, these innovative or otherwise extremely cool games need to be advertised to the right people. The usual gaming magazine reader will not be interested in games that deviate from the well-known genres like Uplink. But gaming geeks, "real" gamers and the like might want to know about it - which is where specialized advertising comes into play. If a company advertises with the bigger gaming comics it can reach a decent audience that is most likely more interested in their work than the average gamer. If they manage to get mentioned on Penny Arcade it's jackpot... And as Tycho is fond of letting the world know of obscure games he likes just getting PA to notice them might be a way of generating sales.


Indie game companies will always be able to reach an interested audience as long as there are internet celebrities who are willing to display their banner/discuss their latest game. It's not the megabuck business that mainstream gaming is, but there is an ecological niche for games that are just too far out for the regular gamer.

• Starscape - the undisputed king of indie space shooter adventurey type games.
• Darwina and Uplink - I have to admit, I could never get into either, but you have to be impressed with what they have done, and their fanbase is huge (so I probably didn't put the time in).
• Gish - which you know don't you?
• War World - possibly the best looking indie game out there. Currently thin on gameplay but still loads of fun, plus they are working on lots of improvements for it.
• Fate - a nice diablo clone.

• Girls Inc. Team up. - opinion is divided on this - I like it, and everyone else is wrong :)
• super gerball, and hamsterbal - great marble madness type games.
• Chuzzle - crack like in it's addiction levels, and guaranteed to turn your girlfriend/wife into a furball popping addict (I am thinking of setting up a Chuzzle widows club to support all the neglected men since Chuzzle came out)
• Altitudes - a favourite puzzler of mine, that I keep coming back to and hacking away at.

• Starscape - the undisputed king of indie space shooter adventurey type games.
• Darwina and Uplink - I have to admit, I could never get into either, but you have to be impressed with what they have done, and their fanbase is huge (so I probably didn't put the time in).
• Gish - which you know don't you?
• War World - possibly the best looking indie game out there. Currently thin on gameplay but still loads of fun, plus they are working on lots of improvements for it.
• Fate - a nice diablo clone.

• Girls Inc. Team up. - opinion is divided on this - I like it, and everyone else is wrong :)
• super gerball, and hamsterbal - great marble madness type games.
• Chuzzle - crack like in it's addiction levels, and guaranteed to turn your girlfriend/wife into a furball popping addict (I am thinking of setting up a Chuzzle widows club to support all the neglected men since Chuzzle came out)
• Altitudes - a favourite puzzler of mine, that I keep coming back to and hacking away at.

Eh, don't overgeneralize, please.

I couldn't care less if tomorrow the RIAA goes completely bankrupt, and Britney (or whoever is popular these days, I don't know) is found on the street gathering food from garbage cans. It's not like music will suddenly disappear in that case. There will still be modarchive.com and the Unreal Tournament soundtrack.

On the other hand, I'm very much interested in seeing nice companies like Moonpod prosper and make more nice stuff :-)

You know, the fact people decide to infringe some law doesn't mean they can't be selective. And no, it's not theft, dammit.

Try some of these. Starscape from MoonPod is one of my favorites. :-)

Oh, and Cas would kill me if I didn't plug his awesome 2D Shooters. :-)

Soldat, Pontifex and Starscape are three of my personal favourites.

Which reminds me, what about the Roller Coaster Tycoon games? Weren't they largely a one-man effort?

Here are some examples of hardware accelerated 2D games for you (just to prove this guy has a point).

Starscape by moonpod
Wik & the fable of souls by reflexive
alien hominid by thebehemoth All these games are good (IMO), 2D and hardware accelerated. The first 2 have free demoes available and you can just buy online but the last one shows the problems that go with success. Alien Hominid was lucky enough to get a publishing deal and is available on PS2 and GC, but as a result they haven't made a PC version. So there is no free demo and if you buy it you have to wait for the snail mail CD to arrive. All the games above could be implemented without hardware acceleration, but you would need an extremely powerful PC to run it. It isn't just the number of sprites being thrown around it is also the colour blending special effects being displayed. So maybe there are new markets for 2D even amongst graphics whores.

Three recent trends lend credibility to the image of those modest studios (indies) developing games: 1) the fact that many such developers are are coming from industry proper; 2) the actual nomenclature "Indie" being a positive term; and 3) small studios' newfound ability to create games that are visually appealing.

First: An interesting but not-well-known fact is that many members of the indie gaming community come from a background of well-known companies. Take, for example, the Moonpod team, which had experience at Gremlin and Infogrames before starting out on their own. Monkeystone is headed by none other than id's John Romero. I would argue that games industry experience is not a prerequisite for the development of a good game; but the recent movement of folks from big gaming companies to their own studios makes independents more credible. Put simply: if folks who have worked on shipped, big-budget games are now part of the indie community, there must be something to the indie community.

Second: The actual term used for smaller studios (Independents or Indies) is an important one. You could call many of the products in this category "Shareware Games," but there's a horribly negative connotation to that term. "Indie Games" evokes the notion of a small, dedicated team of professionals crafting out something new and interesting. By contrast, the term "Shareware Games" evokes the notion of some dude in his basement churning out a buggy arcade clone that looks like it was written for the Intellivision. To parahrase someone, (I want to say Chris Barrie): A rose by any other name might smell as sweet, but may be less appealing if it were called "sewage-weed." The adoption of the "Indie" label has helped legitimize games made by smaller studios.

Fifth (20 years from now, we'll be those old farts still making Python references to people born in twenty-oh-one): Independents can make games that look good. It may be because indies now have access to tools that would have made Pixar cry during its formative years. (Maya, for example, can be had for about $2k, and is even free for personal use.) It may also be because there's great talent now available. Either way, I think indie titles, taken as a whole, have become visually appealing. During the '90s, shareware titles had a bad reputation for being ugly, because they lagged so far behind the cutting-edge. These days, titles like Starscape, Dark Horizons: Lore, and Wik & The Fable of Souls are (IMO) looking pretty good. And, while indie titles may not be as spectacular as those developed by a major studio, (our own Inago Rage focuses on bright colors, but doesn't quite outdo Tron 2.0, for example), decent sales suggest that gamers like what Independents are doing.

However, given the dearth of posts in this thread, I still believe we have a long way to go. :) So, if you haven't already, check out the DIY and Game Tunnel coverage of the 81 IGF entrants. You may find that precious diamond in the rough.
_____________________

Three recent trends lend credibility to the image of those modest studios (indies) developing games: 1) the fact that many such developers are are coming from industry proper; 2) the actual nomenclature "Indie" being a positive term; and 3) small studios' newfound ability to create games that are visually appealing.

First: An interesting but not-well-known fact is that many members of the indie gaming community come from a background of well-known companies. Take, for example, the Moonpod team, which had experience at Gremlin and Infogrames before starting out on their own. Monkeystone is headed by none other than id's John Romero. I would argue that games industry experience is not a prerequisite for the development of a good game; but the recent movement of folks from big gaming companies to their own studios makes independents more credible. Put simply: if folks who have worked on shipped, big-budget games are now part of the indie community, there must be something to the indie community.

Second: The actual term used for smaller studios (Independents or Indies) is an important one. You could call many of the products in this category "Shareware Games," but there's a horribly negative connotation to that term. "Indie Games" evokes the notion of a small, dedicated team of professionals crafting out something new and interesting. By contrast, the term "Shareware Games" evokes the notion of some dude in his basement churning out a buggy arcade clone that looks like it was written for the Intellivision. To parahrase someone, (I want to say Chris Barrie): A rose by any other name might smell as sweet, but may be less appealing if it were called "sewage-weed." The adoption of the "Indie" label has helped legitimize games made by smaller studios.

Fifth (20 years from now, we'll be those old farts still making Python references to people born in twenty-oh-one): Independents can make games that look good. It may be because indies now have access to tools that would have made Pixar cry during its formative years. (Maya, for example, can be had for about $2k, and is even free for personal use.) It may also be because there's great talent now available. Either way, I think indie titles, taken as a whole, have become visually appealing. During the '90s, shareware titles had a bad reputation for being ugly, because they lagged so far behind the cutting-edge. These days, titles like Starscape, Dark Horizons: Lore, and Wik & The Fable of Souls are (IMO) looking pretty good. And, while indie titles may not be as spectacular as those developed by a major studio, (our own Inago Rage focuses on bright colors, but doesn't quite outdo Tron 2.0, for example), decent sales suggest that gamers like what Independents are doing.

However, given the dearth of posts in this thread, I still believe we have a long way to go. :) So, if you haven't already, check out the DIY and Game Tunnel coverage of the 81 IGF entrants. You may find that precious diamond in the rough.
_____________________

For a nice shooter I recommend Starscape. It's 2D in 3D (as in requires any cheap 3D capable card, but doesn't really have anything in 3D), and only runs on Windows though.

You are getting confused by a review trying to explain a game by making references to familiar genres. If you are looking for someone to go "check out this game it is truley unlike ANYTHING you have ever seen" then you will play one game every 5 years. Just because someone explains a new game to you based on familiar themes and genres doesn't mean the game is identical to others.

Any decent indie developer lives by the rule "make something people cannot buy elsewhere" - it's common sense. If you can buy a big publisher mainstream version of an indie game from a year or two ago it will always be better and probably cheaper. So it makes no sense for indies to just replicate mainstream titles. Hence GOOD INDIES DON'T.

However, very rarely will someone make something so "off the wall" that it has no connection to any previous form of gaming. There is a good reason for this, there is a very good chance people will reject it. They wont understand.

Think about two truely innovative titles like REZ(ps2) and ViewtifulJoe(GameCube) - both of these lost their publishers a lot of money (FACT). These were rare titles that were good and totally new, yet people didn't get it and voted with their wallets.

Starscape - this one is very good, yet again I defy you to find anything remotely similar in a shop. It's like a shootemup crossed with command&conquer (kind of).

GISH - not my cup of tea, but certainly unique, you cannot buy anything like this in a shop.

Hamsterball - I enjoyed this, but it got really hard really quick. Again, you CANNOT buy this in a shop. Ok you could download marble madness for an emulator or a phone, but it isn't the same really, the true 3D environments here lead to much more interesting puzzles.

If you can find the proper top quality indie titles you will always see something you cannot get anywhere else. The serious indies would be out of business if they just copied mainstream titles. What idiot would spend more on something that they could get out of a Walmart bargain bin for half the price? Nobody.

There are some. Look for games made by small developers. For example, check Starscape by Moonpod. Works on any video card with more than 16 MB, looks great. Made by just 3 guys.

So I looked at it, and thought, what the heck, I can live with $30 less, and for once somebody is doing something fun and quite original.

This thread is stale, but since you ask questions I will answer:

There are plenty of indie game developers with teams of three (or less) who are making great games for less than 1/3 of the figure I threw out there. Look at MoonPod. Read their forum - all of your "How" questions are answered there. Who needs an office? Outsource the art and sound, etc.

Download the demo and play it. Starscape is a great game, and those guys are likely set for life, or at least wont have to work for "the man" ever again. You could write 15 Starscapes for what the guys in the article blew. The fact that those mistakes have been made many times before (as you said) just makes it all the more shameful.

As for what "we" do all day, I coded in the game industry for several years and made more money then than I have at any position since. The royalties were huge for those projects that sold big. The hours didn't jive with raising a family, though, so I had to move on. The reason I got feisty with my post is that I'd love to go back to games if I had the money to start my own crew.

Lately I've pretty much felt the same way, but not just with games. Every year we've pretty much been seeing the same things coming out of both Hollywood, the music industry and the games industry.

I have a slightly older friend who has always gone to see the latest subtitled film, listened to Belgian house, and was into retro gaming before the concept had even been invented. I always used to take the P*** out of him!

The past year I've been buying a lot of oriental films in a big way, in particular I'm getting heavily into Korean cinema and when I haven't been trying to get Mame games working on a shuttle mini pc that's sat under my tv, I've been really into the indie games scene. Gametunnel and games from moonpod, pompom and sigma team have kept my gaming urges alive this year. They might not offer anything new, but at least they are games offering gameplay, rather than chasing the need of the masses to immerse themselves in a movie. I suppose once you've seen so much media of any time, you begine to crave somehting new.

It's not old age, just boredom. Thankfully, I haven't felt the need to get into Belgian trance music yet...

I would have thought Starscape would have done better, it's a nice little game that is trying to do some different things i.e. mixing up some genres. Is it just the lack of real time 3D because the game still looks great without it IMO and it actually works for me (unlike some of the others). It should get an award just for that! The main reason I started looking at indie stuff is because I can't get most mainstream game to work. I don't even bother looklng if they don't have a demo - too risky.

Finding a 3D game that looks good and actually runs ok on my PC is quite a challenge. Add to that getting it working on my laptop and you are really struggling. I want more 2D and 3D games that:

1.look good
2.work on my 2year old PC (Athlon1700, 32MB Radeon7000)
3.work on my 1year old laptop (Celeron1600, 16MB GeForce4MX)

I think a huge number of people have this kind of hardware and have just given up trying to play games. Maybe this is why PopCap make millions with their puzzle games i.e. people can actually get them to work properly :)

I agree, Starscape may not be innovative in the strict sense, but can you buy a mainstream game that contains space-shooting / researching / resourcing / customising / adventuring. It's an odd mix of well defined genres that works well in this game and I don't see anyone releasing anything like that in the shops this year (or last). Orbz is really just a subset of golf, but what they have done with it is cool. So you have games innovating via completely original ideas and games innovating by taking genres to new places or in odd mixtures. Both seem valid and commendable to me. Sure they don't match up to the latest multi-million blockbuster - BUT THE GOOD ONES OFFER SOMETHING DIFFERENT AND THEY ARE CHEAP - so why not? Plus - you don't have to wait 5 years for one to show up, eh HL2 fans :) Please don't flame me, I can't wait for the game to finally get released.

If you like StarControl2 then you should download Starscape, definitely some inspiration from SC2 in that game. And it won overall in that list anyway - ho ho

PomPom have neato modernized clones/rehashes of Defender/Uridium and Robotron. Both are extremely pretty in that they don't fall into the now-standard be-as-naturalistic-as-possible trap ~ the graphics have an abstract and psychedelic feel to it that fit the simplistic arcade game concepts well.

"Egoboo is a 3d dungeon crawling adventure in the spirit of NetHack. It uses OpenGL and SDL. It should run on any Wintel, Unix, and MacOS X system." (I don't really see the Nethack semblance, but oh well. It's kinda wacky in a lovable sorta way.)

Starscape has some Asteroids-ish arcade sequences wrapped inside something more complex. Looks good.

Digital Eel's Strange Adventures In Infinite Space is a 2D Elite-esque space game (obviously) with, I thought, an emphasis on playability rather than complexity or sophisticated-ness. Link is to the screenshots page, they work as a description.

Spheres of Chaos might be a game but it looks quite like an early Amiga demoscene effort to me ~ psychedelic, chaotic, colourful and completely abstract. Something for the Jeff Minter fans maybe?

from Moonpod. Best $24.95 I ever spent.
It's Windows only, so no joy for the penguin lovers.

I wonder how they assessed the entries, I mean Savage is hardly what ANYONE would call independant with a $1.5million budget. Why are they in the competition? Surely not to win the prize money (which is miniscule in comparison to their budget).

Some of the others seem a bit poor quality too, especially compared to this years stars such as Starscape and AlienShooter.

Highly dubious - give the money to the developers that a)actually need it and b)show the potential to make something worthwhile.

That list is missing some corkers, what happened to Starscape for goodness sake. Still, GameTunnel gave it "best adventure of the year", so there is some justice in the world .

Don't forget Alien Shooter either, that was a classic, I'd say it has a lot more depth than Crimsonland too (don't flame me though, I know both are good).

Everything okay here, too, but some sites seem to be down. Moonpod software for one.

Indie games ROCK!!! - well ok some do and most don't, my favourites are;

1. Starscape (www.moonpod.com)
2. Alien Shooter (www.sigma-team.net)

I agree and as was mentioned the other day, Starscape is an excellent example of modern schmups trying to take things in new directions. Anyone who enjoys a good top down blast should check it out here, the only thing missing is multiplayer otherwise very good.

I just stumbled onto Starscape by Moonpod, an indie developer, and am extremely impressed by it. It's only the 2nd piece of software that I've ever bought online (the first being Kali).

It's sort of an evolution of Raptor by Apogee -- have ship, buy upgrades -- but adds research for better upgrades and a lot of exploration. And the game just oozes style and polish. Highly recommended.

--Jeremy

A company called MoonPod has released a game with the Internet being its primary distribution method.

You can pay more for a boxed copy if you want, but they have an instant-access online purchasing system that turns the crippleware demo into the full version.

The game is an asteroids-style 2d shooter with some turn based strategy mixed in.

I hope to see projects like this in the future from larger game developers. If the savings is passed on to me, I'm all for purchasing games, music, movies, or whatever else I could want, with no hard copy.

Another fine space themed game I've found recently is StarScape by MoonPod Games. Asteroids with a bit of resource management and research. Pretty darn addictive.