Rock, Paper, Shotgun

A while back I was ranting about how the indie developers creating AGS adventure games have a great deal to teach those currently making the games professionally. If you look in other areas of development this truth is beginning to emerge – major development studios are taking notice of indie teams, mimicking them, or even hiring them to creating games of a similar vibe (Dragon Age: Journeys being the most recent example of this). But adventure development still seems to be sticking to its non-indie guns. Which makes a couple of articles on A Hardy Developer’s Journal well worth reading for anyone making the genre professionally.

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Picked up from the relentless, irresistible, magnificent Juggernaut of indie-gaming coverage TIGsource, Harmony is a clear labour of love. It’s a stand-alone game based on the ZDoom code which is – apparently – 8 years in the making. Crikey. My favourite feature is that the enemies are all based on actual creatures moulded from clay. More of that sort of thing, game designers. I want a retro-Trap Door shooter, pronto. BERK! FEED ME! FEED ME BULLETS! Anyway, you can get it from here and the video follows…
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Mr Smee provided the heads up for Devil’s Tuning Fork. Which is… well, striking, to say the least. It’s an Echo-based first-person indie puzzle game. Get it from here or watch it beneath the cut. When your main influences are the optical illusions of Escher and Dolphin’s echolocation, you know you’re onto something. From a team from DePaul University, this is probably the most striking conceptual indie 3D-puzzle game I’ve seen since… ooh, Narbacular Drop. It’s also profoundly atmospheric and a genuinely unique aesthetic. It’s got “Must play” written all over it. Or, at least, it’s got “Must play” written in a blog-post about it.
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Yeah, I ruin the Zombie theme of the day by posting this. OR DO I? It’s a castle defence game – which, of course, are normally zombie-themed – from the creator of full-on-mentalist Rogue-game Elona. It’s called Elona Shooter and it’s proper full-on-mentalist. The idea is basically an Operation Wolf (Or, really, Walker) clone mixed with a party-based RPG mixed with the aforementioned full-on mentalism. And… oh, watch these videos in a compare and contrast…
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I’m not one to leap with joy at news of a new racing game, but when I see a trailer like the one below the joy-leaping muscles begin to clench. Proun, which is a splendid word, is a 3D obstacle-avoiding puzzly racing game set in a bizarre world of geometric shapes. You rotate around a cable, rather than steering, in a gorgeous looking environment. The project by Joost van Dongen is due to be released early next year, and will be freeware, according to IndieGames.

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A lot of indie games have just changed their names. Remember Fez? It’s now Fedge. Tyler Glaiel’s Closure is now named Closure: on the EDGE of reality™. The forthcoming iPhone game Critter Crunch is henceforth referred to as Critter Credge. And the enormously enjoyed Canabalt is now called Canabedge. Although Atomic Edge Games aren’t too pleased about it all. Other new games have been announced including Ted Marten’s Edgeward McEdgington, Secret Exit promises to bring us LEDGE, Steph Thirion’s Eliss declares a sequel, Edgeliss, Tyler Glaiel is back with a new game, Edgeform: On The Edge Of Insanity, and there’s rumours of a new game from Dejobaan, EeeeeEEeeeEEEeeEEEEeEEEEEdge! A Feckless Disregard For Poopieheads. You may have noticed a pattern. This is a solidarity movement amongst the indie development community to stand up to the legal actions of Tim Langdell, who has recently launched another attempt to remove a game from Apple’s iTunes store due to including the word “Edge” in its title.

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Alphaxion noted that old romantic partners of RPS, UK Resistance has broke the news of a new Sonic the Hedgehog PC game. It’s clearly an entirely legitimate product from Sega, and in a Modern-Warfare-2 piece of relevancy, the eponymous spiked-creature is now homeless, living under a bridge and doing drugs. Nice one Sega. Developed by one chap in four days, it’s simultaneously a revisionist masterpiece which makes us reconsider our relationship with the medium and total crap. More details over at UK:R. Send our love.

I’ve been wanting to post about Sacraboar for a while. Because I like its name. Alas, there’s been no video to link to and no demo, so little reason to do so other than “Crikey! Nice name, eh?”. However, with its release imminent (Steam, Impulse, Gamersgate if you want to pre-order), they’ve released a demo so people can have a taste of it. You can get it from here. What is it? Well, it’s a “real-time capture-the-pig strategy game”. The ghost of Psycho Pigs UXB lives. The full thing is actually on our Steam press accounts, but no-one on RPS has had time to have a crack yet – Jim did, but it crashed his PC (Which he thinks is a bad download rather than the game). Impressions will have to wait. But it certainly has a splendid name.

IndieGames have a really interesting story about Symantec’s response to Zach Gage’s indie game, Lose/Lose, that Kieron wrote about here. The impish game’s a shmup that deletes files from your computer every time you shoot an enemy ship. Which is something anti-virus computer-protecting Symantec have now identified as a threat, and labelled it a trojan.

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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.

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