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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."
emacs.
M-x tetris
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.
'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.
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.
"without backing from large corporations"
Translation: without a 97-page "agreement" where the people who do all the work give away every last shred of value in the product in exchange for NOTHING so the people who do no work can stuff their pockets.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
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.
This contest is so much BS there are only 2 real indy games worth playing: Nethack and BZFlag.
and Nethack is the obvious winner.
music lover since 1969
The indy game scene is definitely to be watched. Two main reasons why I believe that it won't be long before the next big things come from there instead of one of the big studios:
One: The studios are producing ever more sequels. It just is commercially safer. You know for a fact that BigTitle 2 or HugeSeller 4 will sell at least a few ten-thousand copies to people who buy it because they liked the first, second or third part.
Two: With stuff like Torque and others, the indies are closer to the pros than ever since C64 and Amiga days. The big shots have todays ubercool engine, but the indies already have access to yesterdays engine, which runs better on most users machines anyways.
The critical part in all indie games I've seen (and I've seen many, beta-tested quite a few, and had my hand in the development of one or two) is the artwork. Good coders are rare, but average coders are a dime a dozen. Even average artists, however, with all the skills required to create textures, 3D models, music or sound-effects ready for use in a game - those guys are not that easy to find.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
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
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.
Plus a few of them have native linux versions so there's no screwing around with wine or winex or whatever.
Be Safe! Sleep with a Marine. Semper Fi!
The problem with the game industry is that it gets distracted by pretty pictures. The parent compaired the Torque engine with 5 other engines. What was their common thread? They are all newer and prettier. How are these engines 'better'? More realistic physics models? Curved surfaces? Support for DX9 shaders? How do any of these things make a game more fun? The only way an engine is truly better is if it simplifies development with a better API than other engines, or allows you to do more with the same system resources than other competing engines. And if an engine does everything your design calls for, who cares if it is modern?
A good game is one that will be enjoyable, regardless of how it is rendered. For the last week, I have been playing all the MAME pac-man games, and it's amazing how well designed the original pac-man game was. (it really shows because a lot of the later variations were horrible. You can't improve much on a great design.)
I expect that some people will blow indy games off as 'crap to the masses', but then, the masses also seem to enjoy Brittney Spears and the Third Matrix movie, so what do they know.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
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.
Wow, replace the word "Games" with "Films" and you'd have the same argument people used to have against Indie Films.
We are getting to a place in game development where the graphics and coding for games is becoming easier and easier to do. In the not too distant future it will be trivial and the big game companies are going to get more and more competition from "indie" games. This is the same thing that happened to film once the complexity and cost of making film/video decreased.
I note that your "review" of Indie games didn't even mention game play, just engines. I don't know about eveyone else, but I buy games for their gameplay. If I want to look at good graphics, I'll go to a movie.
Look at some of the big hit online games (Everquest, etc.); the graphics are sub-par compared to the latest and greatest doom-unreal-etc clone yet they continue to do VERY good business.
Anyway, enough of that rant...
W.E.P.
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 bought Gish, but after discovering how their copy protection worked, I ended up warning all my friends about it. None of them bought it. Quick summary: you get X activations (i.e. installs), and once you're out of activations, sucks to be you. You might be able to convince them to increase the number of activations, but don't count on it - I tried and they refused. (I was trying to install it at a friend's house so we could play multiplayer.)
:)
I don't really regret buying it - what I do regret is that I now have to keep a crack on a server so I can play it if I want. Several of my friends that don't want to deal with cracks simply didn't buy it.
If there was ever a perfect example of why overbearing copy protection is counterproductive, this is it.
Breaking Into the Industry - A development log about starting a game studio.
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.