A Look at the Independent Games Festival
GameDailyBiz has a look at the whys and wherefors behind next week's Independent Games Festival. The yearly celebration of independent games is compared by the article to the Sundance Film Festival, and the kind of exposure that gathering has provided to smaller film makers. From the article: "One of the earliest entrants in the IGF, Vicarious Visions, went on to create major games such as Spider-Man 2 for handhelds for Activision. In addition, last year's multi-award winner, online puzzle game Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates, has got almost 10,000 subscribers, each paying $10 a month to keep playing, and is now being published by UbiSoft in a retail version..." The quote is from Simon Carless, co-chair of the IGF and editor of Game Developer Magazine. (As well as the first and fabulous Slashdot Games editor.)
Here's the list of entrants for the 2005 festival.
If you want to try any out, start with Alien Hominid. It's a great side-scroller that they've ported to PS2 and GameCube.
Too bad they don't tell which games work on which platforms, though. I'm always looking for some new Linux games.
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I've only played the demo, but expect this one to turn a few heads in 2005.