Posted by Kieron Gillen on February 9th, 2010.
Share ·
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…
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Kieron Gillen on February 8th, 2010.
Share ·
It’s Monday morning. As such, we should gracefully ease into the working, gaming week with a webgame. Too many to name people mailed us this over the weekend. It’s a one-button web-game based on a cheery Rick Dangerous/Spelunky theme. One Button Bob manages shows that, if you limit the context smartly, you can actually create a lot of the “traditional” gaming problems on a single button. It’s also a bit of a giggle. Go play.
Posted by John Walker on February 3rd, 2010.
Share ·
Do you like smashing stuff? I do. Glasses, plates, Fabergé eggs, jars containing the souls of lost children. So games about smashing stuff make me very happy. Red Faction: Guerilla being the most recent highlight. And now thanks to the kindly stranger (I’ve forgotten who it was, sorry) who tipped me off to Rubble Trouble, I’m having a gleeful smashing afternoon.
Posted by John Walker on February 1st, 2010.
Share ·
Today’s best thing ever: An entrant to the Australian sector of the Global Game Jam, GNILLEY was originally intended to be a game about pitch and colour. It’s a game about shouting. Really loud.
It’s the creation of Glen Forrester, who has been making peculiar indie ideas for a while, which can all be found here. Below is his presentation video for GNILLEY at the Sydney Jam, and there’s to be no more introduction than that.
Posted by Kieron Gillen on February 1st, 2010.
Share ·
I started the week by playing the experimental gameplay game that Jake Elliot sent us – Beluah & The Hundred Birds. The current theme is 100 things – Jake’s is a dream-like platformer, which externalises the inevitable collectibles to tiny birds which follow you around. While the main platform levels are a little uninteresting – I suspect an attempt to work a frustration/euphoria sort of dynamic between the flying and platforming bits, but while it does works like that, it doesn’t quite work well enough to justify it – I kept playing due to some lovely crystalline music and the simple joy of building this flock behind me. It’s like Syndicate, without miniguns. It also put me in the mind to listen to Grandaddy’s The Crystal Lake…
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by John Walker on January 26th, 2010.
Share ·
An awful lot of indie games come our way. Some of them are great fun. Some of them are properly great. But what about the floaty spaceship platforming adventures of the worryingly named Bob Came In Pieces? Read on to find out wot I think.
Posted by Kieron Gillen on January 26th, 2010.
Share ·
After four (count ‘em) years, Serious Sam Forever releases something. It’s planning to basically be a total conversion to run the old games in the Croteam’s Serious Engine 2 and… wait, I don’t want to think about it too hard. Relevantly, they’ve released a MP demo with four maps and game modes. Which doesn’t sound very interesting, until you realise it’s got a fancy bot system that allows you to have more players than usual in a level. How many?
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Alec Meer on January 22nd, 2010.
Share ·
This feature was originally published in PC Gamer early last Summer – I republish it here, slightly revised and updated, as it’s a few of the indie names we’ve mentioned often on RPS – 2D Boy, Solium Infernum’s Vic Davis, Edmund McMillen… – talking about what drives, defines and binds the independent development community, and why it’s on such a roll at the moment. It’s also a love letter to a form of gaming and imagineering only the PC can offer.
What is indie? It’s a term so overused, in everything from music to movies to comics and, of course, games that it’s almost lost its meaning. “Independent” is the untruncated form, of course – but, by that token, Valve are indie. Is that a term that can sit comfortably around a multi-million dollar studio that juggles multiple franchises at once? Or is indie more of a statement, a specific state and ethos, where profit and success play second fiddle to the unfettered creativity?
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Kieron Gillen on January 22nd, 2010.
Share ·
John mentioned this last year, but we never talked about it being released. You can get it for 10 dollars, minus the five customary pence. But maybe you’ll need something to help you make you decision, either for or against it. Well, developers Exor studio have an idea which may help you. They call it a “demo” (pronounced “dem-oh”), and it basically gives you a small portion of the full game you can use to evaulate their full product. Crikey. Brilliant idea. You can get it from here or watch some moving magic pickytures below.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Kieron Gillen on January 19th, 2010.
Share ·
Remember when I raved about the PC-version of the ancient Amiga/BBC platformer Qwak? Well, if the thirteen quid-price-point turned you off, here is USEFUL NEWS. Jamie Woodhouse writes, saying that until the 22nd he’s taking a page from World of Goo and Crayon physics playbook, and doing a Pay What You Want sale. In other words, you can have a crack at the demo and then paypal what you want. I’m going to go and do it now. You can stay here and look at the video beneath the cut, if you like.
Read the rest of this entry »
