If you remember Frogger, then you remember being broke at the arcade very quickly.
Archive for the 'Independent' Category
May 26th, 2006
May 25th, 2006
Remember the old board game, Battleship, where you call out the coordinates/numbers and hope you hit your opoonents battleship? Well Sink My Ship is an online version of that, where you can play against others via your web browser. It includes a chat room so you can talk with others while waiting to join a game, or create your own game.
May 24th, 2006
Best Buy was wooed into stocking their store shelves with a boxed edition of IG: Independent Games ($28). These are games that won at the Independent Game Festival. This is a great way to expose some creative, and fun, games that wouldn’t have gotten a chance for mass exposure otherwise.
“Indie games aren’t commonplace outside of the World Wide Web. Despite that, Moondance successfully wooed Best Buy to stock ‘IG: Independent Games’ on their shelves beginning last fall. The disc features such casual games as the engineering sim ‘Bridge Construction Set’ and the popular robot battle game ‘Dark Horizons Lore Invasion.’ ‘Our strategy is to have games for all kinds of gamers: traditional gamers, family gamers and now independent gamers,’ says Chris Koller, merchandising director for video games at Best Buy.”
May 13th, 2006
E3 wasn’t too kind to independent game developers, as the panel at the event told aspiring game developers to just give up, there’s no room in the game industry for their kind anymore. Perhaps the harsh reality is that most independent game developers won’t be able to secure funding and make a profit, but they are forgetting why most indies create games: passion. Most of the games they create are done either for fun, as a learning experience, or a combination of both.
“You have a zero percent chance of success,” said Warren Spector, a game industry veteran and the current president of Junction Point Studios, a company that develops games for consoles and PCs. “The barrier to entry in terms of cost, quality required, access to a market… forget it.”
I’d hate to see a bad omen like this stifle creativity in the industry. Independent game developers are the only ones willing to take risks these days, and without that, we face a period of stagnation. Remember when Serious Sam first came out? People mocked the name, they scoffed at the idea that a small team in Croatia (Hey, where’s that at? We’d say.) Then the demo came out, it was insanely fun, and the rest was history. It would suck to not see little treasures like that pop up out of nowhere again.
May 2nd, 2006
Clash ‘N Slash is a fun Flash game to kill time a bit. The aliens want to invade, so grab powerups, upgrade your ship, and keep the planet safe from the anal probing aliens.
May 1st, 2006
There’s nothing quite like a free game, especially one modelled after the classic Tribes series. Legends is a multiplayer first-person shooter for both Windows and Linux that features Tribes-like qualities, such as the ability to ski down slopes, use a jetpack to manuever around, and weapons that has the characteristics of the series.
The game uses the Torque engine from GarageGames, which is a quality engine used in a lot of superb games (I still fire up Marble Blast every once in a while for a quick fix.) Legends is in beta, and features skinnable GUI’s, an editor to create your own maps, and its own server browser.
April 24th, 2006
If you are old school enough to remember playing Die by the Sword, you’ll remember how the game had a unique control scheme that was fun once you’ve mastered it. Recently I was pointed to a multiplayer flying sword-fighting action game called Determinance that takes the unique control of Die by the Sword and improves upon it to allow unprecedented control of your sword while in the air.
Developed by Mode 7 Games, they recently showed off the game at a LAN party, and posted on their blog about the event, plus provide a teaser video (.mov - 1.5MB) you can check out.
More information should come out in June, when the game is expected to be finished.
A Shacker created a little, fun game called Fling that has you catapulting rocks at enemy castles to claim the land. Includes multiplayer support. You can see a movie of the game in action, or download it directly.
April 21st, 2006
If you’re like me, you love anything that’s free, which is why TwitchGuru’s Ten Free Games Worth Downloading is quite the serendipitous gem.
James Francis, the author of the article, shares his opinion on what you would typically find in regards to free games offered online:
Most free games are terrible and that’s when you can even find them. Type the phrase into a search engine and the water goes murky with links to demos, flash games and a whole lot of online poker.
Games like Sandbox of God and Seiklus, a quirky puzzle playground and a surreal and soothing sidescroller stand out in the article as well as a few others that even I had never heard of.
It’s certainly worth a look and a download.
April 14th, 2006
As mentioned a couple of days ago, the classic game, Out of this World (also known as Another World), has been rereleased with new, higher resolution graphics, yet still has that excellent gameplay of old. FileShack has the shareware version, and the full version can be unlocked for $8.50. Michael Heilemann who works with IO Interactive on the Hitman series, has an article about this new rerelease and is very excited playing it.
April 12th, 2006
Remember the classic game, Out of this World, released in 1991 and sported some amazing visuals and gameplay (back in those days.) Well if you did, you may delight in the fact that Eric Chachi, the creator of the game, has updated the graphics and will re-release the game as Another World in a couple of days. It’ll cost 5 Euros, which may translate to $5-6 if sold Stateside. You can see a screenshot here.
You can now try out the Bone: The Great Cow Race demo, which puts the comic book character into an adventure game. Grab it from the official site, 3D Gamers or 3D Downloads. The full version of the game will set you back a measly $13 if you enjoy the demo.
One of my favorite indie games, Mount & Blade has been updated to version 0.750.
April 6th, 2006
Warning Forever is for the top-down shooter addict in all of us.
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