Independent Adventuring Leads To New Horizons

Thanks to DIY Games for its column discussing the state of freely downloadable independent PC adventure games for July. The author raves: "I don't think I'm exaggerating if I say that July was by far the best month for independent adventure gaming this year", and goes on to profile titles such as A Very Special Dog ("You play a German shepherd with the task to save a life and find the culprit... you'll sniff objects, bark at people or lick them, all in order to successfully complete the game") and Apprentice II: The Knight's Move ("top quality independent gaming... [with] a very deep story and great character development.") Talking of character development, I'm afraid this is my (simoniker's) last ever Slashdot story post. Read on for details... Firstly, thanks to everyone who's helped make Slashdot Games (as well as my work on the Slashdot main page) a pleasure to edit over the past 18 months (and 3000+ posts) or so. It's been a wonderful experience, and I'm really going to miss it. Unfortunately, this is the final story I'll be posting, since I'm off to videogame trade site Gamasutra.com, which I've written for fairly extensively in the past, to take up a managing editor position.

I believe there will be an announcement about a new Slashdot Games editor reasonably soon. However, I'm sure the other editors will pick up some of the slack in the interim, so hang in there, everyone. In the meantime, please inundate the submission bin with stories about obscure Japanese console re-issues, why the Infinium Phantom is going to trounce the Megaton, and why the Reggielution is absolutely, positively going to be televised. Later, all.

Comments

Thanks!

[keiferb]

You'll be missed, Simoniker!

You've always seemed to maintain one of the lowest dupe:post ratios of all of the editors. Well, either that or my memory's going... =)

Best of luck to you at Gamasutra!

Sure. Mod me off-topic if you must. I'll just go play that dog-licking game.

Add this to the pile...

[Axem]

You'll be missed simoniker. Ever since the games section has introduced on Slashdot, it was my most regularly checked section of the site (aside from the main page of course ;-)).

I gave up on reading IGN, and gamespot a long time ago. Way too many ads, flash elements, and sponsored garbage. But here, it was much easier to digest. Thanks for making it so enjoyable, and good luck on your new job. =)

PS I think it needs to be said that this color scheme is my favourite (No joke).

That would be incorrect

[Midnight Ryder]

Now, how can it be used in "NON-FREE COMPUTER GAMES" if its under the terms of the GPL? Doesn't the GPL force any derived work to be freed whether it wants to be or not?

You missunderstand the GPL. I can, with no problems, create a game that utilizes a GPL based engine, but copyright the content that makes up the game. Sure, the engine can be reused at will, and I do have abide by the terms of the GPL (making all of my programming changes available to PURCHASERS. Note that word - purchasers can redistribute it to non-purchasers, but I can choose to only make the source available to anyone who I provide a binart yo.) But the content? That CAN (your option) be strictly copyrighted material. Check the GNU site for more information on the subject.

Peasant's Quest!

[mh101]

How could a discussion about adventure games have missed Peasant's Quest!

I'm glad to see

[ricotest]

I'm glad to see such a strong community that has centred around adventure games. It's hopeless commercially, it seems, with many small projects still looking for a publisher. But free games keep getting cranked out!

I think this is because there is so much fun to be had in actually making these games. There are dozens of engines that can handle virtually all of the programming work for you. What's left is the art, dialogue, story, puzzles and witty responses. For a creative group of people this kind of thing enables them to do what they do best without being boggled down in engine specifics. That's why recent games seem to reach almost LucasArts quality with much less work.

I feel that the only issue is the number of one-man projects there are. It's very hard to collaborate on these projects with no source control or commercial incentive. People have their own independent visions for how the game will come out, and most of these guys are artists or writers, not leaders. With the tools that are already there, a group of 20 or so people could apply the open source methodologies and develop a game that would even surpass LucasArts standards, and be just as long and fun to play. I think - well, I hope - that this is the way forward for adventure games, because the results would be really promising.