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January 2009 Indie Game Round-Up

Posted by Soulskill on from the new-year-new-games dept.

cyrus_zuo writes with this month's round-up of independent game reviews by the folks at Game Tunnel. The top rated game this month is Defense Grid: the Awakening, a tower defense game which "does not revolutionize the tower defense genre, but is solid in every aspect with a few interesting twists." Also scoring highly were cloudphobia and The Tales of Bingwood: Chapter I. "Bingwood is a very clear and unabashed homage to The Secret of Monkey Island. It succeeds because it manages to reference and mimic the style of the original with a fresh and engaging story and a consistent, clean presentation."

22 comments

  1. Questionable Content by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    How does a game that doesn't run on half of the reviewers' machines not get last place?

    1. Re:Questionable Content by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      It's based on the Torque Advancd engine by GarageGames.

      They have been known to pay for placement on various sites.

    2. Re:Questionable Content by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      What, people still use that piece of crap?

      Somehow, I'm not surprised that the game is crash-happy.

    3. Re:Questionable Content by cliffski · · Score: 1

      No way in a million years did torque pay to be listed on gametunnel. The reviewers are probably just understanding of the fact that PC's being PC's, there are sometimes cases where a newly released game might have issues on some peoples computers.
      The reviewers at gametunnel are just indie developers, not people with a bank of 10 PC's they can try a review copy on.

      --
      DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
    4. Re:Questionable Content by KDR_11k · · Score: 1

      Because it's sorted by scores and "can't run it" gives an n/a score instead of 0?

      --
      Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
    5. Re:Questionable Content by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      False. Also, Stickman Studios (makers of Buccaneer) used an unreleased version of the engine that is used by GarageGames to test new features. That is, it's probably

    6. Re:Questionable Content by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Blah! That is, it's not the most stable version of the engine they could have used, and has almost nothing in common with the most recent versions.

  2. Braid by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Still waiting for Braid.

    1. Re:Braid by renegadesx · · Score: 1

      For PC? The Braid port is March release.

      --
      Make SELinux enforcing again!
  3. Tower Defense by AKAImBatman · · Score: 3, Informative

    If you're a big fan of Tower Defense, go check out http://www.towerdefence.net./ They catalog nearly every variation of Tower Defense known to man. You can easily waste days on that site. So click through at your own risk! ;-)

    --
    Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
    1. Re:Tower Defense by aCC · · Score: 1

      Arghhh! Thank you very much for stealing 45 minutes from me. Me reading your comment and thinking "what are tower defense games? Let's click on the link." Good idea! Then wasting 44 minutes on playing Onslaught instead of working...

      It is fun though. I can recommend it. Just not when you're meant to be working.

    2. Re:Tower Defense by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Arghhh! Thank you very much for stealing 45 minutes from me. Me reading your comment and thinking "what are tower defense games? Let's click on the link."

      Same here. Mod GP down "-1 Dangerous Time Sink".
      Now, back to Bloons Tower Defence...

    3. Re:Tower Defense by Dolda2000 · · Score: 1

      Damn you! You just made me waste hours on that site. Why didn't you warn me?!

      Oh...

    4. Re:Tower Defense by electricbern · · Score: 1

      If you are a Windows user, you had it coming.

      --
      alias possession='chmod 666 satan && ls /dev > il && tail daemon.log'
  4. Is GameTunnel really testing the games? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    6/10 for MiniOne Racing? That's not fair. I bought the game 3 weeks ago for me and my son and we still having fun with it.
    I can't understand one of the reviewer saying the game "lacks any feeling of speed", on the 200cc difficulty the cars speed is excellent!
    If you take 2 minutes to think about it you'll understand that not having car to car collisions isn't a drawback : with collisions the game would be chaotic and absolutely not fun.
    None of the reviewers have saw that there is 3 cameras angles (not 1, not 2).

    Anyway... I have to agree that the two game modes (Equilibrium and Jump) are the funnier.

    A quick note about Buccaneer : the demo is now available so give it a try, it's a fun game.

  5. Monkey Island! by troll8901 · · Score: 1

    You fight like a diary farmer!

    (In the meantime, Elaine Marley is lying on the bed, sweat glistening from every pore...)

  6. Innovation! by Goaway · · Score: 3, Insightful

    So two out of three games mentioned are good because they're just like some other game?

    1. Re:Innovation! by Chris_Jefferson · · Score: 0, Troll

      Yes, why not look for something original, like (I believe), my iPhone game :) iTune Link. While there has been a lot of real problems with apple and the iPhone store, I believe it is a great place for indie games, providing a way of getting some money out of small, fun games.

      --
      Combination - fun iPhone puzzling
    2. Re:Innovation! by Goaway · · Score: 2, Funny

      Thanks for walking in and taking a big shit on my comment. ":)" indeed.

  7. Cloudphobia? by KDR_11k · · Score: 1

    I remember getting a version of that from HOTU ages ago, I guess it got expanded and made retail or something like that?

    I found the game too hard BTW, having to worry about your health AND the health of the mothership AND the time limit was too much for me.

    --
    Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
  8. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 1

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  9. What about OCW? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Any chances of the materials being available on OCW( http://ocw.mit.edu/ ) :P