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 .

Comments

Gumboy has gum where?

[Salvance]

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

My favorite game of 2006

[dangitman]

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.

indie or just small scale

[angrymilkman]

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?

Re:indie or just small scale

[Anonymous Coward]

The game "Kudos" was developed by one guy over a mere eight months. The graphics are mostly static, save small touches like snow and rain - I don't think you can get more indie than that, by your above definition.

Re:indie or just small scale

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, in this case it's because one has to distribute one's game through a Game Tunnel sales affiliate to have a good chance of being reviewed on their site. So take everything about "indie" games you read at Game Tunnel with a huge grain of salt.

Re:indie or just small scale

[ghowland]

Do you sell indie games? Because this doesnt sound like the voice of experience.

When youre selling indie, you distribute (really market, you may only have 1 place that handles the CC transactions which is the true distribution point, but they promote affiliation generally) through EVERYONE you can, even places that take 30% of your sales usually, because even if only 5 people buy your game from that site you still made 5*70% of what you're asking that you likely would not have made selling it only on your own site.

So that means you push info about your game everywhere, allow everyone to sell it for you that you can, making it pretty much 100% sure that a site like Game Tunnel will be able to have an affiliate link to somewhere that sells your game.

Will Game Tunnel reject games that they cant affiliate? Why dont you ask them or post that as their listed requirements instead of making a guess.

Game Tunnel also reviews freeware games, so it sounds to me like your guess is wrong.

minions of mirth

[cathector]

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.

Re:minions of mirth

[Da3vid]

I have played MoM extensively. The entire "staff" of the game consists of 2 people. Their accomplishments are... amazing. I'll go ahead and admit my bias upfront: I'm also a community volunteer for the game. I'm a guardian, moderator and developer. It is definitely better than old school EQ in my opinion (I played from just past launch til mid-Kunark era), but is much more community and player driven than WoW. A lot of player input is taken and adapted into the game... a lot of mods that people have made for their own uses have been incorporated into the main servers. There's all kinds of cool little things in there... lets see... its officially supported on both OSX and Windows, but I know we have some Linux players too. Hm... no monthly fees! One time payment. You can play a single player version off-line as well as the MMO aspect online. Through quests, you can unlock monster templates you can play (ie, you can be a bear character, or even as high as a dragon!) And you can multiclass into as many as 3 classes... and you can even play a fair amount of the game for free. It is MORE than enough to decide if its worth buying or not
hmm, guess thats the basics of what I think are some of the most interesting bullet points :) Then again, I admit my bias ;) But maybe my bias says something too. I started as a player, bought the game quickly, played and played... was enlisted to help with moderation, and then volunteering for game development as well. I wouldn't commit, devote myself to and support something that was shy of greatness.

Re:2010

[omeomi]

Is id considered independent?

I'd say so...I mean, they're very small, and not under the thumb of any major publisher...they pretty much do whatever they want. They just happen to be an incredibly successful indie company...

Fizzball

[aaronwormus]

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.

Re:2010

[Osty]

I'd say so...I mean, they're very small, and not under the thumb of any major publisher...they pretty much do whatever they want. They just happen to be an incredibly successful indie company...

I'd disagree. Indie games are published either directly by the developer or by other smaller publishing houses. Id games are published by Activision, which is definitely "mainstream". If id went back to the Apogee days, I'd consider them indie. As it is, they're just another third-party developer building games for mainstream publishers (although id has rightly earned a lot of lee-way in their development -- id decides what they want to do and Activision publishes it, rather than having Activision tell id that they have to do a Quake 5).

By that definition, Valve could almost be considered "indie", though they're closer to a mainstream publisher these days (publishing other developers' games on Steam).

Re:Wait a minute...

[cyrus_zuo]

http://www.gametunnel.com/articles.php?id=536#Defc on Defcon wasn't a big hit with the Game Tunnel panel. War on Folvos (also not on the list) got a much better response: http://www.gametunnel.com/articles.php?id=565#war% 20on%20folvos

Re:No linux games?

[Anonymous Coward]

According to TFA, two of them run on Linux.

Re:Master of Defense

[Perky_Goth]

They do. This article is not a review, though. If you check the actual review here, you can see for yourself.

Kudos

[Lord_Dweomer]

I DL the demo of Kudos and played it and I have to say it was certainly an intriguing concept and seemed to have a lot of depth....however there is absolutely no excuse for the mouse being as slow and stuttery as it was. I felt like I was playing Far Cry on a Pentium 2. However there is a fix involving tweaking one of the data files to display 16 bit color depth as opposed to the default of 32. My other gripe with it was you start out in a crappy job in a crappy life. That would be fine and all if the demo actually lasted long enough for you to actually accomplish something to make the game fun. The other thing that would be nice is if you could change your initial settings to setup your own initial starting point in life, perhaps to make it more similar to your own life.

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.

Re:A gumboy and his blob, perhaps?

[LilGuy]

No one remembers that game anymore. Just the other day I was mentioning to my friend that I hope they release that for the Wii, and he had never heard of it before. That game RULED!