UC Santa Cruz does the chat
By Alec Meer on January 30th, 2012.
Next up in our series of chats with this year’s Independent Games Festival finalists is Mike Treanor and Josh McCoy from the UC Santa Cruz team behind ambitious high school-based social simulation/strategy game Prom Week – which is in the running for the Technical Excellence gong at IGF 2012. Here, they talk flirting, ‘social physics’, bathrooms and their answer to the most important question of all.
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Ed Key and David Kanaga do the chat
By Alec Meer on January 27th, 2012.
Today in our series profiling (almost) all the PC/Mac-based finalists at this year’s Independent Games Festival, we turn to wondrous freeform exploration game Proteus. Here, developer Ed Key and composer David Kanaga talk about the game’s origins, the role of music in games, quitting work to go full time on Proteus, wandering hobos and their answers to the most important question of all.
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State of Play does the chat
By Alec Meer on January 25th, 2012.
Charming paper cut-out adventure game Lume from State of Play is up for the Excellence in Visual Art award at this year’s IGF. As part of our series of chats with the (PC/Mac-based) finalists, here we talk to State of Play director Luke Whittaker about Lume’s origins, the British invasion at IGF this year, games with a handmade aesthetic and his response to the most important question of all.
Damp Gnat does the chat
By Alec Meer on January 24th, 2012.
Next in our series of interviews with the finalists in this year’s IGF is gorgeous, isometric adventure golf course opus Wonderputt, which is up for the Excellence In Visual Art award. Here’s what creator Reece Millidge of Damp Gnat intends from and for the game, how it saved his bacon, and his answer to the most important question of all. Read the rest of this entry »
Blendo Games does the chat
By Alec Meer on January 23rd, 2012.
And so our series of interviews with the finalists in this year’s IGF continues… High-speed, high (un)death toll strategy game Atom Zombie Smasher is up for the Excellence in Design prize at this year’s Independent Games Festival. Here, we chat to Blendo Games’ Brendon Chung about his origins as an indie dev, how people are creating their own narrative arcs in AZS, and his answer to the most important question of all.
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Die Gute Fabrik does the chat
By Alec Meer on January 20th, 2012.
Next up in our series of chats with this year’s Independent Games Festival finalists is Doug Wilson of Die Gute Fabrik, creator of Mac-based, screen-free party game Johann Sebastian Joust, which quite rightly has a bit of a Zeitgeist thing going on right now. It’s up for the Nuovo award and the Seamus McNally Grand Prize. Here, Doug talks about graphics-free gaming, deliberately broken games, his disappointment that there isn’t a writing/story category at the IGF, and tackles the most important question of all.
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Tom Francis does the chat
By Alec Meer on January 16th, 2012.
Next in our series of chats with this year’s impressive roster of Independent Games Festival finalists is Tom Francis, lead brain behind future-noir stealth game Gunpoint, which is up for the Excellence In Design gong. Here, he’s quizzed about what, why, when, who and the most important question of all.
Important conflict of interest disclosure: I used to play badminton with Tom.
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Mode 7 Games Do The Chat
By Alec Meer on January 13th, 2012.
In 2010, we ran a series of cheerful chats with (almost) all of the lovely indie developers whose PC games had been nominated as finalists in that year’s Independent Games Festival. In 2011, we forgot. In 2012, we haven’t forgotten. We’re the best! So, here’s the first: Ian Hardingham and Paul Taylor from Mode 7 Games, whose high-speed turn-based strategy game Frozen Synapse is in the running for both Excellence In Design and the Seamus McNally Grand Prize. Read on for what went right and wrong with their game, how they feel about their IGF rivals, what comes next and their answer to the most important question of all.
By Alec Meer on January 10th, 2012.
Aaaaand hot off the presses is the rather long list of exciting finalists for this year’s exciting Independent Games Festival. A truly corking selection of indie games here, and a chance to take bets, guesstimations and wild speculations on what might go home with a gong or two. They haven’t nominated my game, I note. Maybe I should have actually made one.
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By Adam Smith on October 17th, 2011.
It has been five years since Introversion last entered the Independent Games Festival, with Darwinia, and the studio have just announced that they have entered their latest game into IGF 2012. However, the submitted game is not Subversion, the stylish, procedurally generated urban heist sim that the team have been working on, which is now on indefinite hiatus. Instead, there is to be an entirely new game, of which we know nothing, apart from the fact that it isn’t a sequel to a previous game. Chris Delay was candid as ever in explaining the decision and his words and more of mine are here to enlighten you.
By John Walker on March 22nd, 2010.
Today, because someone told me to, I’ve taken a look at the winner of the Student Showcase from this year’s IGF. It’s called Continuity. It’s one of those Good Ideas.
It’s a cross between a sliding tile puzzle and a platform game. If you’ve been a long-term sufferer of mediocre-to-crap adventure games, the words “sliding tile puzzle” should drive a spike made of terror directly into your heart, but fear not, it’s not that way at all. Instead you must find variant ways the small scenes can be perfectly aligned (from one of four sides) to others, thus allowing your little stick man to move from one to the next. In pursuit of keys.
