Slashdot Mirror
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."
'Rewarding Innovation In Independent Games,'
Wouldn't it be nice if the game industry could do that? $40,000 is pisswater for a major game publisher. They spend more than that restocking the vending machines.
Oh wait. The game industry doesn't want innovation. They want maximum money grab.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
"Nayantara's online CCG Star Chamber" If I am right, CCG stands for collectable card game. Not to be cruel to the author of the article, but more towards the game creators. I suppose I should try it to see how it works. But is it really neccessary to have pictures of cards? They could have maybe called them something else. Anyway, just my half-a-cents worth. I used to be a huge Magic: The Gathering fan, and when I see "online CCG," that just doesn't appeal to my senses at all.
I haven't played any from that list. Zaxxoids was pretty good (first original puzzle game I've seen in ages), but I don't see it as an entry. It was on download.com earlier last week. It may have just missed the entry cutoff (the Zaxxoids site says a September 12 release date; the contest site says September 2 deadline).
Anyone know if Bontago will run under wine? It looks like they only have a windows version, but it looks like a pretty sweet game, and I'd love to give it a shot, but I dont have any windows boxes anymore.
I'm sorry but these games are all basically utter crap to the masses. And the Torque engine that someone mentioned is nowhere near the level of the 'pro' engines.
Put Torque next to many modern engines and it doesn't hold a candle to any of them:
1. CryEngine (Far Cry)
2. UT2k4 Engine (UT2k4)
3. UT2k3 Engine (UT2k3, Lineage II)
4. Source (HL2, that one MMO coming up later)
5. Doom 3 Engine (Doom 3)
Now granted, I just dropped the list of absolute toppers or whatever, but isn't that the type of products that the masses want?
Let's not be ridiculous here. We shouldn't tout something as a great product just because it is open source or indie or whatever. The product quality is first, and the fact that it is open source/indie/anything else is second.
The problem with Indie Games is that unless a RELATIVELY LARGE group of programmers are willing to gather together and pour their time into a world-class product, it will simply remain on the back-burner.
Actually, it isn't even on the back-burner now, it's just getting marinated.
I don't want to start a war or something here, but it is the simple truth so you're gonna have to square with it some day if you want to move on to the next level.
It plays like your typical platform-puzzle game with two major things that stand out. The first is the excellent physics incorporated into the gameplay. The second is the fact that you are playing as a ball of tar. You can make yourself sticky, slippery, heavy, and any combination of these things in order to navigate the cleverly designed levels.
There is a demo available here. If you like it, definitely buy the full version and it will be well worth your $20.
Scratchware manifesto
Technoli
To save me from visiting the websites of all 78 entries...
Do any of these games work on Linux? Or WINE, even?
WeRelate.org - wiki-based genealogy
1) I'm a game developer. Therefore, don't whine to me about how hard it is to make a living writing games. Trust me. I know.
2) Yes, I would have removed it from their HD afterwards. (Isn't it funny that everyone immediately assumes I'm lying about that?)
3) As a consumer, I found their copy protection overbuilt and will not be buying games from them in the future. They also lost at least one other sale on their current game because of this. I know of absolutely nobody who decided to buy it because it was made marginally harder to pirate due to this copy protection. Therefore, the copy protection method has failed.
Honestly - why does this make it harder to pirate? Because it requires you to spend seventeen seconds more looking for a crack? I don't see how anyone can possibly argue that their copy protection is effective, or even a net gain from their perspective.
Breaking Into the Industry - A development log about starting a game studio.