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Game Tunnel's Indie Games of the Year 2006
cyrus_zuo writes "Creating off-beat, original, and carefully crafted games is the heritage of Independent Game developers, and the Top 10 Independent Games of 2006 does its ancestry proud. Each of the 10 games selected this year is a winner in its own right, an undiscovered gem just waiting to be found. So dim the lights and warm up your modem, as Game Tunnel presents The Top 10 Independent Games of 2006." The annual Independent Games Festival will also be giving a nod to indie games from 2006, and via features you can have a look behind the scenes at some of Game Tunnel's winners. Check out the entries on Kudos , Gumboy Crazy Adventures , and Virtual Villagers .
The way things are going I hope there are still independent games that don't suck in 2010. Is id considered independent?
When I read "Gumboy Crazy Adventures" by "Cinemax", my first thought was that it was some type of cartoony play on late night skin flicks. Now that would be quirky! Happy New Year everyone
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It's that one where you snort cocaine from a hooker's breast. Very addictive gameplay, and great graphics. I don't play it that often though, because the ongoing fees and medical expenses are a real bitch.
... and then they built the supercollider.
Dawnspire looks like a very good game. I have yet to try it, but judging by what I have so far seen, I am amazed that it was ranked so poorly (relative to the other ones, at #6), considering, especially, that Gumboy got #1.
Oh... I guess I'm too naive.
It's what it made me think of anyways.
Seriously, they put some lame-looking thing called "Gumboy Crazy Adventures" at #1 but they don't have Defcon anywhere on their list? I'm pretty sure Introversion counts as "Independent", and Defcon is fantastic, so what gives?
Hmmmmm those games all look pretty professional, at least concerning graphics. What is defined as indie currently because these games are certainly not the work of a few individuals working in their basement on a game in my opinion. For me indie development are games like geometry wars or armadillorun. E.g. one person developed games with less than 10 months development time. Are small scale game developers just branding themselves as "indie" just to take advantage of the current indie hype?
...what matters is what you like, not what you are like...
another notable is Minions of Mirth. It's a respectable MMORPG written by one programmer in one year. While it's not open-source, you can host your own servers, develop mods, and he's done a nice job of publishing details about the back-end.
I read about a game a few months back ( I think on /.) and I've been trying to remember the name or find it on the internet, but no luck so far. It's an indie free game developed for Linux (I think). It's a networked 2 player co-op game where the 2 players have to escape from a maze together while co-operating to solve the puzzles.
It's a 3d third person adventure and a lot of the puzzles revolved around communicating while not necessarily being able to see the other persons screen.
Any ideas?
Battle of Wesnoth
* http://wesnoth.org/
SuperTux
* http://supertux.berlios.de/
Frozen Bubble
* http://www.frozen-bubble.org/
- #1 action and #4 graphics - Titan Attacks
- #2 casual - TubeTwist
- #3 rpg and technical excellence - Minions of Mirth
- #3 multiplayer - Rage of Magic 2
- #4 sim and #2 innovation - Toribash
- Arkanoid/kid's - Fizzball
Of all the games, I've only tried the demo of the Torque-based TubeTwist, which I liked enough to give as a birthday gift, although I have yet to purchase it for myself. Another great game in the same genre is Enigmo (which I actually like better than its three-dimensional sequel, Enigmo 2).Hey, you stole my idea... of course, I used to have it full screen to piss off my friends. The school's security system meant there was no way to kill it!
I see the author hasn't played Defcon.
Where's Defcon?
If there's a game that deserves to be on that list, it's definitely Defcon.
Or perhaps they are not indie enough? If that is the case, I really wonder what those Game Tunnel guys are thinking about.
[Enter fun stuff here.]
Free shooter:
http://www18.big.or.jp/~hikoza/Prod/
Warning Forever is also amazingly good.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Jardinains 2 was released in 2006. It's a breakout/arkanoid game, sort of. Loosely speaking.
It is immensely fun, and works on Mac, PC, and Linux systems.
Hard to imagine a list of indie games not listing it; it is a wonderful game.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
I bought fizzball a couple of months ago for my 5-year-old and both of us have enjoyed it a lot. It's a clever game, which appeals to both adults and kids.
Good graphics and sound-track.
I can't play any of them on my Linux desktop, some of them seem interesting.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
http://www.starportgame.com/ Starport Galactic empires is a strategic space MMO akin to Tradewars. Its free to play and has been up and running for 2 years now. Its been constantly improved and developed on and they just got a really cool soundtrack.
best mounted combat game ever for PC and I had never heard of it before I saw a posting on a forum.
I was suprised this game exists.
this is the main website.
http://www.taleworlds.com/
Master of Defense looks like it follows in the footsteps of 'Tower Defense' maps for starcraft and warcraft, if not rehashing the fomrula completely. There is nothing wrong with that as far as the game is concerned, but I am disappointed that the author in TFA apparently did not know this. Given that there are thousands of Tower Defense maps it is especially important to know how Master of Defense compares to its look alikes.
People are always saying that PC gamming is going the way of the doto. But when I look at this list of independent games they are all PC games. Independent games or games that most studios wouldn't pick up sometimes are great and can drive a new genre. Now I believe that the main reason why you will see more of these games on PC is that you don't a developers kit and most people have the machine already. Costs are then lower and so its nothing to a good programmer to go and develop for the PC. So I ask if PC gaming does go away where will these developers end up? Or maybe PC gaming(like I believe) will be around forever. Or maybe console makers will start making a profit off the console and release the dev kit for free like the gp2x.
Not a single one of those games runs on Linux. Curious, isn't it?
I'm still trying out virtual villagers, that one seems entertaining....but the graphics are horrible and I don't think I have the patience the game requires as it runs even while your computer is off.
There's another one on that site called Tasty Planet which is kind of a down and dirty 2D version of Katamari Damacy, right down to catchy music. Its fun for a bit and amusing, and well put together, however there is little diversity between the levels, at least initially, and you end up having to hunt around for tiny insects and things that respawn frequently to get your size up instead of there being enough static objects to engulf.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
Just to set the record straight - GameTunnel does not sell games. They only link to them. GameTunnel makes no money off of sales of games that originate from their website. That's why there's no GameTunnel store.
The way of the fuckin dodo for bunnies sakes!
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
The best game I played last year was some stupid game I made for my niese last summer. She, age 8, designed the gameplay and drew all the graphics. I believe it was done in BlitzBasic or something during 3-4 days. Even if the game was lame and the graphics sucked, it was hours of fun for the whole family and of course, my niese loved it :)