Rock, Paper, Shotgun

The_B flagged up this IGF entry immediately, and you can see why. Attack of the 50ft Robot! from Digipen is the sort of thing which just begs for posting. It’s a retro-50s B-movie Rampage-esque homage with lots of physics malarkies. Its most obviously striking element is the Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow-esque black-and-white footage, shot through with the vivid-laser reds. The secondary striking element is the ability to throw your own head as a striking element. A little twitchy – it crashed a couple of times when I played it – but it’s splendidly silly stuff. You can download from here (EDIT: NEW LINK WITH NEW BUILD) and see footage below…
Read the rest of this entry »

It’s that time of year again. The 306 (Count ‘em!) entries to the 2010 IGF awards have been announced. You can browse them at your leisure, with many of them actually including stuff which you can download if you want to play at home. Interestingly, at first glance, there appears to be more already released completed games than usual – and there’s a fair helping of games which RPS have previously championed. I’m a judge again this year, and hope to do a better job than last time round, when I was terribly slack. Good luck to everyone who’s entered. Scanning the list, anyone see anything which looks particularly interesting? I’ll post about one of them in a bit…

Michael Todd of Spyeart mails to mention he’s thrown a beta-vertical-slice-thingy of his game online. It’s clearly the three-level IGF demo sort of thing, which I had a quick play at now, and find it quite promising. It’s an indie RTS with a psychonauts-esque theme and a striking art style which reminds me of one part 3D Ant Attack and one part a gothy-iconic comic an Ex of mine used to really like whose name currently escapes me. Oh – and the We Share Our Mother’s Health video. You can download it from here and find some footage below. The finished game will apparently be on Steam next year…
Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been an astonishingly busy few weeks and I’ve neglected to mention a few bits and pieces of work that fell outside the RPS net. One such was this mini-history of the Total War games, which ends with a little clue from developer Mike Brunton as to where the Creative Assembly team might go after Empire. Oh, and my review of Empire: Total War will be in the next PC Gamer UK. A world first, and all that.

Elsewhere, I’ve played through all the IGF Grand Prize finalist games, and written some impressions over here. Blueberry Garden is wonderful, but my favourite by far is Dyson, which we posted about last summer, but which has progressed somewhat since then and will hopefully go even further. The new v1.08 build is definitely worth a look. So, so relaxing. Mmm.

Also: I’ll have more Planetside War news tomorrow. It looks like there’s some kind of special event in the works, and a big push from this weekend. 8pm GMT Saturday Join us!

And the IGF shortlist has gone live. It’s quite the selection of games – some already released, some only hinted at, some not even online. But it’s worth remembering, there’s been a solid classic amongst the shortlist for every year of the competition. What’s this year’s World of Goo? Can’t wait to find out. The full list is beneath the cut, including links to all the site sites I could find. Some, as far as I can work out, don’t have a web presence yet.
Read the rest of this entry »

Continuing my prodding at the IGF entries, I found this. It’s called Pictures For Truth and it’s a French/Canadian made Amnesty International game about exposing human rights abuses leading up to the Beijing Olympics. It’s a short little thing, but strikes me as a cross between Global Conflicts and Jet Set Radio. It’s more of a model for a game than a full game, but some more thoughts beneath the cut…
Read the rest of this entry »

This came out at the weekend, but I think it could be fun to talk about a wee bit (If only to remind the Indie Devs who read us, you’ve still a few days to put yourself forward). The full list of judges for the IGF have been announced. It’s quite the list of luminaries, plus Jim and I to represent the riff-raff. The thing is… the IGF is actually the one award in gaming which actually means something. Winning it can genuinely change a developers path, in terms of both visibility and the deals with visibility leads too. So, I think it’s actually worth turning our eyes to consider who’s going to get to decide this stuff…
Read the rest of this entry »

And – hark! – there was a great call across the land. And with it, there was a sound like locusts, as a million coders started typing code and similar. The Independent Games Festival have made their call for entrants for the 2009 competition. People who want a crack at the assorted prizes – past winners include everything from World of Goo to Darwinia to Audiosurf to Braid to Aquaria to other splendid pieces of awesomeosity – have from now until November 1st to get their entrants in. People for the Student competition have another couple of weeks, until the 15th, as presumably the IGF people know students are slack. They’ve announced new judges for this year too, including Kyle “World of Goo” Gabler, Rod “Sims” Humble, Soren “Civ4″ Johnson, Chaim “Spore” Gingold, Petri “Crayon Physics” Purho and Jim “Rock Paper Shot…” waitaminute! Jim! You never told me about this.

I’d mock Jim more, but I’m doing it too. Any excuse to play Indie games, us.

The results are in, with the winners announced for the 2008 IGF Awards.

The standard of entries this year was just stunning, and when we’ve tried to pick out our favourite of the top prize entries, it’s been impossible. For us it came down to three. Audiosurf has taken over our lunchtimes (and mornings and afternoons and evenings) this week, and is obviously a triumphant achievement. Crayon Physics Deluxe is so charming and serene, while letting you feel like a wizard as your drawings come to life. And World of Goo evoked memories in us of the first time we played Lemmings (a high compliment indeed). Winners lie beyond.

Read the rest of this entry »

Finally some new footage of IGF competition finalist Fez.

I’ve played the first level, and oh boy. Need more.