By Kieron Gillen on February 15th, 2010.
How beautiful, how wonderful can you make a sliding puzzle game? With a steam-punk flourish, Lazy 8 Studios’ Cogs shows exactly how far the genre can be pushed. Comrade Walker – our official master of puzzles – totally adored it upon its release. Now that it’s picked up a nomination for Excellence in Design, we thought it time to talk to their Rob Jagnow about all things indie-games. Footage and chattage follows…
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By Kieron Gillen on February 12th, 2010.
Part of you wants to be upset with Pocketwatch Games. Why haven’t they given us 2009′s Unknown Pleasure Venture Dinosauria yet? That part is soon quashed when you see what Andy Schatz is working on. Monaco is a four-player co-op stealth game that’s been shortlisted for both the Design and the Seumas McNally Grand Prize. Minimalist graphics. Exciting theme. Stealth. This one has RPS written all over it. Our interview with Andy, and footage of Monaco follows…
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By Kieron Gillen on February 11th, 2010.
Strange Loop Games’ Vessel picked up a nomination for a technical award this year, in its fluid-based character-puzzle game with a mass of glorious steampunkisms. We talk to John Krajewski and Martin Farren about it, the IGF and the future…
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By Kieron Gillen on February 10th, 2010.
We’ve talked about Daniel Benmergui’s poetic work before, when Alec wrote about I Wish I Were The Moon and – relevantly – when John Wrote about this. It’s poetic, short-form work which has been shortlisted for the Nuovo award in this year’s festival. You can play it here, watch the spoiler-filled-video walkthrough below and then read what’s on Daniel’s mind in our interview.
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By Kieron Gillen on February 9th, 2010.
As the Independent Game Festival approaches, I thought a series of short interviews with all the PC-relevant short-listed entries would be an idea. First up is indie-Godhead Cactus who received a nomination for the Nuovo Award for the abstractly beautiful platformer Tuning, which looks like Nebulus as re-imagined by Escher. The interview and footage follows…
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By Kieron Gillen on January 25th, 2010.
Let’s start the week with a little pre-release Indie-hype. You may remember Closure from us posting about it exactly a year ago (minus one day). You can still go and play the flashgame now. However, Messrs Glail and Schubbe are working on a full commercial downloadable version (The scale of difference being, to steal their metaphor, the difference between the first Mario Bros Arcade game and Super Mario World for the SNES). It’s already picked up an Indiecade innovation award, and has been shortlisted for 3 IGFs – in Technical Innovation, Sound and the Nuovo Innovation Award. More on their site and the first trailer below…
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By John Walker on January 20th, 2010.
Limbo looks amazing. We’re all certain we’ve posted this video before, but there’s no evidence of that on the site. Indeed, the short clip is three years old, but Limbo is up for the Technical Excellence award at this year’s IGF, and the trailer is haunting and brilliant. So throwing caution to the wind, risking that snorted comment, below you can see why it’s been nominated, and join us in wanting to see whether the game is able to pull of such seemingly natural movement. I mean, when he jumps, he jumps like he doesn’t have springs in his shoes and isn’t made of floaty polystyrene. That alone makes this game stand out.
By Kieron Gillen on January 4th, 2010.
That the new year starts with the short-list of spangly new indie things is one of my favourite things about the gaming calender. Here’s what the 160 (Count ‘em!) judges – including Jim, Walker and Myself, though our total judging record wasn’t (er) that (um) impressive – thought were the finest Indie achievements in each category. Well worth digesting this. The previous winners have included some of the most important Indie games of recent times – Darwinia, Braid, World of Goo, etc. The list and initial thoughts follow…
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By Kieron Gillen on December 18th, 2009.
I’ve finally started my judging the IGF. Only 4 days past the deadline, eh? Anyway, one of the things I was looking at is this. It’s called The Fly On the Wall and is a human-versus-fly death-match. He is enormous and fat with big swatty hands and a tendency to send all the furniture in the room flying. You are sneaky, capable of rolling in poop to get diseases and infecting the foolish chubby human. It’s very short and not terribly good, but it’s certainly got an idea. I especially like the optional fly-vision eyesight, as shown above. You’ll find footage below and can get it from here.
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By John Walker on November 3rd, 2009.
Kieron spotted this in the 2010 IGF list. Called 78641, it purports to be an English translation of the classic Esperanto game, Pato Viro Simulilo. It’s, um, sort of an adventure game, but mostly an exercise in surrealism. And unlike most things that people label “surreal”, this isn’t just “silly” or saying “fish” a lot – it’s a genuinely surreal and often unsettling experience. In the game you play Doug Beachez, a frying pan. Who sells dildos.
