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Top Indie Games Of 2003 Discussed
Mr.Wiggin writes "Specialist indie site
GameTunnel recently announced its top ten indie games of 2003. Each game was scored by its regular review panel, and the list highlights the growing craftsmanship and quality being brought to the niche low budget independent games scene. There are also awards for specific genres, such as best graphics, best sound, most original concept, best adventure, etc. Why should we be concerned by low budget offerings like this - isn't it just the usual cliched crop of puzzle games? Thankfully, no, since these are the elite cream of the indie crop. Some say indie games are the home of innovation and the birthplace of future star developers (remember id, anyone?). It is also one of the few remaining mediums where we (the gaming public) actually get listened to and can often make a difference."
Why isn't Puzzle Pirates on the list? How about Star Chamber? And why did Samurai make the list? It's just a computerized version of an already existing board game, not very original if you ask me.
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One of the best on there, and I've played tons of them, is free and highly recommended by me: Notrium At first it seems sort of hard, especially if you don't play as a human but it doesnt take long to learn and you can beat it in a short period of time, perfect for anyone playing a long and involved game like KotOR that needs to take a break but doesn't feel like actually doing anything productive.
So: 2D shooter, 2D shooter, 3D shooter, puzzle game, 3D shooter, isometric adventure, isometric shooter, hex strategy, adventure, adventure with lots of shooting.
Maybe it was just me, but seemed as though a good number of those games were just "shooters" of some sort, concerned with kill-or-be-killed gaming. Not that that's not fun...I like blowing the snot out of my enemies as much as the next alpha male...but I mean, how much are we going to trumpet the originality of games that are basically Xevious/Raiden or Robotron/Smash TV with lots of added stuff or a different perspective?
Sure, I'm generalizing, but these games aren't "novel" like that "falling down the stairs" game was a while back. If this is the "best of 2003", then sounds like a pretty hum-drum year.
Feel free to flame. I'm sure you've already started typing your angry reply.
Curmudgeon Gamer: Not happy
Falling down the stairs game?
Can you be more specific?
I think he means this. Called "Stair Dismount". Has a followup game called "Truck Dismount".
Small Rockets, the company that did the game in 9th place, Ultra Assault was another one of the European games companies that went down the pan this year.
Well, I say went down the pan - what actually happened was that three days after the team finished the PC Sinbad game (having spent many months working their arses off on it) they were rewarded by all being laid off. The two Directors are now the only remaining employees, presumably keeping the profits for the continuing sales o the games we all worked so hard on for themselves. Of course, they claim that Small Rockets is still alive and well, so as not to damage relations with any of their business partners despite the fact that they only have the MD (who can program) and the other director, the MD's girlfriend. Yup, that's no art, no sound, no mission design...
I'm not entirely sure how they're offering support to all their new customers either, now that they have no offices and nobody who actually worked on the games left...
Ah well. The games are good.
http://www.smallrockets.com/
abstract it to that level and nothing is original. i mean, at that level The Lord of the Rings is just a FedEx quest and The Matrix was a 'blue key, blue door' shooter.
;p
in general, there is genre innovation and gameplay innovation. genre innovation is something like stair dismount, or tetris (when it was released). this is very difficult and very rare. if this is your sole qualification for 'innovation', you're going to be disappointed an awful lot.
gameplay innovation is more like the sims, pikmin, or gta. it's the refinement of a fairly well-known genre with a fresh focus. the sims is just an isometric sim in your abstraction. but the -play- is so wildly different from any other previous title in the genre, you can't help but hail it as a great innovative achievement.
Of course, I haven't played half of those games, and the ones I am familiar with i'd be dubious about calling 'innovative', I just think you're being a little overly strict in your definition of game innovation.
and frankly, at this point in the indy game industry, just getting a fun game finished and out there is deserving of an award, even if it is inappropriately titled for the achievement
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
I recently wrote a game using Perl and the Tk module. It's a tetrisesque game with an awesome variant (I don't want to spoil the surprise), and it has been known to induce motion sickness.
I included the source code and a windows binary (compiled using perl2exe).
Give Spewtris a try!
Don't mind my redundant sig...
OddManIn: A Game of guns and game theory.
He actually meant to say pushed down the stairs! For your protection!
Would have been nice to see a little variety - as otthers mentioned, there are a lot of similar games here - and some that are just new versions of older games.
How about Live For Speed? It's a great independent race sim game.
I don't know how to put this very well, so my post may not make sense. That being said, there seems to be a similarity between indie games and indie music.
If I were itching to play a FPS, would I rather play Half-Life 2 (hypothetically) or a indie FPS created by a 3-man team? Personally, I'd choose to play HL2, and I think 9 out of 10 people would make the same choice.
Likewise, if I were itching to listen to some rock, would I rather listen to some Led Zeppelin or some indie band that sounds a little bit like Led Zeppelin? Again, the mainstream choice would probably win.
What I'm getting at is, indie developers should strive to innovate like the previously mentioned Puzzle Pirates and Stair Dismount. The same goes with indie music where bands who do something interesting get recognition. The band Cursive comes to mind for including a cello along with their guitar rock.
It's circular logic, but indie games that copy mainstream games have a problem. A new twist on the game concept is added, which may be very cool, however the entire package doesn't stack up to the original material. But if the entire package was/is great, the chances of being bought and published by a large company goes up.
I'm not even considering the presence of indie snobs who define themselves by being "indie", and automatically assume a game published by EA is the worst thing ever.
I'm on top of my game like I'm standin' on Xbox.
I think the biggest mis-conception people are having is that they don't understand what an indie game is.
Independent means free of the studios influence, but that does not necessarily mean that the game is innovative.
What independent games do typically offer is game play that is easy to pick up and games that are something you can play for an hour, but not have to devote your life to in order to be any good at the game or figure out what you are doing.
Independent is really a niche market, perhaps it is the old arcade market. The type of game you play while waiting in a theater lobby for a movie to start. Most of mainstream gaming is centered around playing games for hours on end. Independent gaming is not.
If you are looking for a game that will take you several hours to figure out and master, and then even more hours to become the best of the best of the best, indie gaming is not for you.
If you are just looking for a diversion, something that you can pick up, IMMEDIATELY be able to play, and then put it down 30 minutes later, then Indie Gaming might work for you.
There is some innovation and cross-genre games that you won't find elsewhere, such as Dungeon Scroll and Pontifex II, but not all games are that way.
I think the major problem most people responding are having is that they are comparing apples and oranges.
Indies don't make FPS games, so why would you play one instead of HL2? Well you couldn't b/c there isn't one that exists comparitively. However, if you play Orbz or even Alien Shooter can you tell me a mainstream game that is similar...that was made in the last year...?
That is where things are different, comparing mainstream and independent is reasonable, but if you are going to do so, make sure you have some idea what you are talking about!
Check out positech.co.uk. They do games like StarLines INC (and Starship Tycoon) which certainly aren't run of the mill shooters.
Or if you really like shooters, and remember missile command, you could check out planetary defense on their website also.
Can anyone find any evidence of this as I can't seem to find anything anywhere. Also he was 56 just FYI.
Posted Anonymously for your protection
What about the game Dope farmer?
Personally, i cant get enough of a game called "Tenmado". I think the first version was released last year, but I'll mention it anyway, because it deserves it.
Like 2d fighting games, 2d shooters have a bit of a cult following. One of the greats is called "Ikaruga". Its a decent game, and i recommend it to anyone who misses challenging 2d games.
It inspired a GPLed shooter called "Tenmado". Tenmado has no graphics to speak of, but the gameplay is masterfully done. I expect it to become the nethack of shooters.
PS: its in debian, and its worlds above anything I've seen come with a distro. Repeat after me: "apt-get install tenmado".
So, given that we now have "indy" game producers, does that mean that an RIAA style conglomerate for the gaming industry will soon arise and oligopolise the market? So games will cost $150 and developers will get maybe $1 from each game sold, after they are signed onto prohibitively oppressive exclusionary contracts?
Then the new GIAA will sue grannies for downloading ISOs off Kazaa. Or am I too late in noticing this is already in place?
I am government man, come from the government. The government has sent me. -- G.I.R.
I just noticed this site - GameTunnel - does reviews on a pay basis, ie. you pay to get them to review your game.
Ouch.
Don't expect low scores from reviews the game's developper directly bought, no matter how shitty it is.
And we thought IGN and Gamespy were biased...
As an indie developer.... but one small enough not to get notice from sites like that... I think it's somewhat frustrating any time you have to deal with a list like this.
It raises the old question - What is an indie game?
Huge fights break out over the IGC because several of the award nominees clearly have WAY more money than most of the others, or in some cases, at least some sort of implicit corporate sponsorship, based on their product revolving around licensed IP.
On the other end, there's HORDES and HORDES of freeware games released all the time. Sure, they did mention one freeware title, and that's great. And sure, a lot of that freeware stuff is crap. But for the most part, a shareware/"indie" game review/collection site wants to focus on people making downloadable games for sale. They charge minor fees to weed out people who aren't 'serious' - those fees are NOTHING if you're planning to sell even 10 copies of your game, but they're everything to the 15-year-old who's been working for 4 years on his/her homebrew RPG and has no CC.
So really, their GOTY is just as flawed as any retail game magazine's GOTY - "Best game, out of the games we deigned to notice." (In Game Tunnel's defense, they did ask around for suggestions in case they'd missed something great.)
And their categories are clearly determined by "what we got a lot of" more than "what deserves recognition in its small field".
So, well, life is never perfect.
And Starscape was crap.
The problem with indie games is they don't get that much coverage even though it might be a good game.
Kris Holland