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Independent Games Festival 2005 Entries Announced
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."
Actually, the poster put up some good ones.
The Gish demo is a little short, but it's fun platformer none-the-less.
Puzzle Pirates has a free demo, and can be a lot of fun if you find some cool people on-line. Lots of innovation and good ideas there.
Star Chamber involves a fair amount of thinking ahead, strategy, and adaptability. It's card-based strategy game like Magic, but provides multiple ways to win, allowing for a lot more thinking.
~D
This sig has been enciphered with a one-time pad. It could say almost anything.
No, but two I would highly recommend (if you have hours to kill) are Frozen Bubble and Battle for Wesnoth. Not sure why these aren't on the list.
Last year's winners are still very fun to play with. Puzzle Pirates gets daily use around my home by both myself and my fiance, and Bontago got some heavy play at the last LAN party I attended.
As a long-time player of Strange Adventures in Infinite Space, I have this to say about Weird Worlds:
It rocks!
It has smooth, OpenGL-based 3D graphics. The universe is bigger. The images are sharper. But it still retains the quirky, simple gameplay that made the original so great.
Strong work, Digital Eel!
James
If you've ever wondered why anyone would bother to use complex and accurate physics in a side scroller, Gish is the answer. You can only do five things - move, jump, get sticky, get slippery, and get dense - but it's how well you can control all that and what you do with it that makes it interesting. Momentum is everything.
Some of those levels are really hard though, until you teach yourself some new tricks. Like how to maximize your ability to bounce and jump. Jump in the air, go heavy to drop faster, go sticky when you hit the ground to spread yourself out more, then go normal and jump again, and repeat. You can go real high real fast with that one.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
Ob-Plug: Two of those games have Linux versions available:
Dark Horizons: Lore and eXtreme Demolitions.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
M:tG has an official online version now. I'm not sure how its popularity compares to the paper version, but it's certainly not a negligible market.
Actually I believe "Independant" as far as the IGF is concerned, just means that the company hasn't had anything published by a game publisher.
Three years ago a game called Shattered Galaxy won four of the six awards from the IGF. It was a game created by Nexon, a huge game company in Korea (second to NCsoft). Shattered Galaxy had a budget of just under 1 million dollars. I know that because I worked on it. Last year Savage was entered into the IGF. Savage is a game developed with a multi-million dollar budget. I know that because I talked with some of the developers, but you can read about it, as well as some of the controversy here or here.
Whether you feel that these relatively high budget games should be considered "independant" is your decision. I'm happy that my game won the awards that it did, and I don't feel that the budget of a project should have an impact on its inclusion into the IGF. Small games with excellent gameplay, such as Insaniquarium or Bontago, have shown that they will get their deserved spotlight.
I welcome our new 99% overlords.
Of the games that I have enjoyed most lately, the following top the list:
Neverwinter Nights
Morrowind
Chromatron
Tales of Symphonia
E.V. Nova
Advance Wars 2
Of these, Neverwinter Nights is probably the most graphically advanced. None of them hold a candle to Doom 3, or Far Cry, or any of the other engines you mentioned.
I dunno about you, but for me gameplay comes first. If I really want eye candy, I'll go look at 3D Renderings. Yes, the masses can indeed enjoy games with weak graphics, and it does open your game to a wider audience. If you need any convincing of that, I implore you to check out the sales figures for any of the Sims games.
If EV Nova had been 3D rendered with dynamic lighting and reflections and all the other goodies, it would not have played on my laptop very well, and I never would've purchased it.
Random and weird software I've written.
"I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
Absolutely, in fact, TW-Light not only runs on Windows and Linux, it's also Open-Source. It's a lot of fun, you should check it out! :-)
TW-Light's Homepage: http://tw-light.berlios.de/
(Disclaimer: I'm a developer on the TW-Light project)
No one has ever fired for blaming Microsoft.
Some players don't like the fact that you have to actually -balance- a game of Star Chamber's caliber so not just one race (as there are 10 total) rule the roost. Balance and power levels are a huge part of what CCGs are about, yet Star Chamber adds another level implementing board game like play.
Disgruntled players who enjoyed the advantages of broken abilities and/or unfair cards are entitled to their opinion, and those who can't handle it play something else. There are hundreds of players who are more than happy to enjoy the game as it exists now, and another expansion (and total gameplay change) is coming.
It's garnered great independent success and word of mouth for a reason. Don't let one naysayer keep you from trying this excellent game.
Full disclosure: I am the Community Manager (Evan Erwin) for Nayantara Studios. I do work for them, but began as a player like anyone else.