The Independent Game Festival (IGF) is the equivalent to the Sundance Festival for games… It honors and promotes games by independent developers (the definition of independent developer is a matter of heated debate, best left for another article), and it is not uncommon for a game that wins some of the categories to go to bigger things (publishing deals, better sales, etc).
On it’s 13th edition, it takes place at the same space and time as the Game Developer Conference.
There are 391 entrants this year, and I’ve decided to do some featured articles on the ones I found more interesting, plus an article at this series end with my thoughts of the IGF in general… Note that my analysis of these games is done on the most part by looking at the information at the IGF site. Some of these I actually delved a bit deeper, but mostly I stuck with the information provided… This has the disadvantage that I may have skipped some worthy entrants because they lacked videos or demos of their games, or that I got swindled by nifty videos! 🙂
But in an indy game, presentation is everything, since you depend on the internet’s mass-judgment to get your game out there…
So, without further ado, here’s the first part of my list (which has more than 50 games on it):
While the game presented in “A Mobius Proposal” seems to be very neat (puzzle/co-op sort of thing), the motivation for it is what actually caught my eye: the game was designed as a marriage proposal… That for itself is very cool, but the game also seems interesting, with two characters going in diferent sides of a Mobius strip, helping one another progress in the levels.
This game will either be a revolution in RTS games, or a huge failure… and it all boils down on how complex is playing around with time is.
The premise behind Achron is the same as in all RTS games, with the difference that in this one, you can go back in time with units and manipulate the events in the “present/future”. This means that you can go to the past with a unit, and destroy the facility that’s creating all the units that are currently beating the crap out of you, before they’re actually built!
Of course, this lead to paradox (if you “go back in time and destroy the factory that created the unit that you sent back in time”-sort of thing), but the way Hazardous Software is dealing with this problem is also interesting… Check out the video below for more information, it’s pretty enjoyable:
This game was developed by Frictional Games, the people that have brought you Penumbra. This one has actually been already released on Steam, and it’s already on my wish list (I’ll get to it as soon as I can find the time… lots of games to play!).
The game takes a bit of a Lovecraft vibe, in terms that you can’t actually do anything against the enemies. You just need to avoid them (because looking at them, and being around them will make you go insane over time), and try to stay in the light (since it will restore your sanity). Your character wakes up in the dungeon of a castle and doesn’t have memories, and the game is a mixture of exploration and puzzle solving, while avoiding the monsters. Pretty good atmospheric stuff, if you’re into that kind of thing.
Not much info on this one, but I’m a sucker for unconventional RTS… In this one, you control an army of amoebas, fighting for the primordial soup! 🙂
To be honest, this game seems like standard platformer fare, but I really liked the visual style… it has an old-school pre-rendered sprites vibe to it, but vibrant colors and some humor that made me want to mention it.
This one seems one of the most interesting arcade/puzzle games on display on this years’ IGF. Looks hard as hell, though! 🙂 Basically, combine atoms to form complex molecules, according to some predefined level goal.
Beautiful is the only word that comes to mind when I look at “Bastion”. Everything in the game looks so polished and pretty it hurts… It comes from Supergiant Games, which apparently is a company founded by ex-devs of the Command & Conquer series. Seems like a huge departure from that, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing… From what I could gather, this is a isometric semi-RPG game, with some co-op (which is awesome, love that kind of game in co-op), with everything hand-drawn (which leads to the amazingly beautiful visuals!).
Another nice puzzle platformer, in this one you can draw and erase blocks for the player to stand inside… watch the video above, it does a much better job of explaining the key mechanics than me…
If you’re familiar with the indy scene, “Cave Story” (and his developer, Daisuke Amaya) isn’t a stranger to you, since it’s one of the most known titles in indy history. Although the original PC game goes back to 2004, the version on the IGF is the Wiiware version that’s been released earlier this year.
Although it is a “generic” platformer, the balancing and the gameplay makes this a title that stands way above most.
And that’s it for this first part… I’ll have part 2 up soon… Until then, you can explore the entrants yourself, or just wait for it… 🙂
Don’t forget, people, support indy games! They’re usually cheap for all the fun they have inside, and most just need some dollars/euros/qwanzas/etc so they can keep doing that!
Independent Game Festival 2011 – Part II « Shadow Covenant
November 11, 2010 at 9:21 pm
[…] Hi again, and welcome back to another post in my series about the IGF2011 finalists… If you’ve missed my previous entry, you can check it out here. […]