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Independent Games Festival Finalists Announced

Posted by Zonk on Mon Dec 03, 2007 01:41 PM
from the who-doesn't-like-some-decent-goo dept.
Entertainment Games
GameSetWatch notes that the 2007 finalists for the Independent Games Festival have been announced. The IGF is an annual event meant to highlight and praise the work of independent game designers of all stripes; it's run by Slashdot Games editor alumni Simon Carless. Simon puts the spotlight on the Seamus McNally Grand Prize finalists, the 'best of the best' at this year's IGF. My vote goes to World of Goo: "Building off the concepts from Tower Of Goo, one of Kyle Gabler's projects from the Experimental Gameplay Project at CMU, the first game from Bay Area duo 2D Boy uses the hitherto unexplored structural ability of blobs to make an addictive construction-based puzzle action title. There's no release date or demo for the game yet (aside from Tower Of Goo, a kind of 'prequel'), but there's screenshots and a trailer on the official site."
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[+] The Ten Most Important Games 577 comments
Taking a page from the National Film Preservation Board, the History of Science and Technology Collections at Stanford University and a group of five prestigious games industry figures have inducted ten games into a sort of 'canon'. The New York Times reports that some of these titles represent the start of weighty gaming genres, while all are laudable for their place in gaming history. "[Henry] Lowood and the four members of his committee -- the game designers Warren Spector and Steve Meretzky; Matteo Bittanti, an academic researcher; and Christopher Grant, a game journalist -- announced their list of the 10 most important video games of all time: Spacewar! (1962), Star Raiders (1979), Zork (1980), Tetris (1985), SimCity (1989), Super Mario Bros. 3 (1990), Civilization I/II (1991), Doom (1993), Warcraft series (beginning 1994) and Sensible World of Soccer (1994)." Most likely, future years will see additional titles inducted into this game canon.
[+] IGF 2008 Main Competitors Announced 14 comments
GameSetWatch points out that the big list of entrants for the 2008 Independent Games Festival is now online. Can't tell the winners without a program, right? GSW points out some of the names to watch in this year's showdown: "Gish 2 - Gish 2 is the long awaited sequel to the IGF 05 grand prize winner Gish. In Gish 2 you take the role of physics based blob whose movement and control are physically modeled around the shape and texture of his body. When his girlfriend Brea is murdered, Gish sets out to the Isle of the Dead to make a deal with Quietus (the god of death) to bring her back to life. Noitu Love 2: Devolution - In Noitu Love 2: Devolution you're thrown into a classic action and beat-em-up scenario but with a twist to the gameplay that creates a new and fluent style of play using the mouse. Pixeljunk Racers - Simple addictive puzzle racing game based loosely on slot-car racing, with 32 types of game and up to 7 players simultaneously."
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Independent Games Festival Finalists Announced 20 Comments More /

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  • You spelled it wrong, ass!

    Okay, I know there are some twenty ways to spell our name. I kid, I kid.

    Also, I know . . . Seamus McNalley died a few years ago. I'm glad positive things continue to be done in his name.

    By the way, it'd be awesome if more of these independent games could reach XBOX Live and PS3 systems. It seems that when those companies talk about their online markets being a venue for indie game producers, they mean "companies with a few million bucks and dedicated development".

  • Two things (Score:5, Informative)

    by Enderandrew (866215) <enderandrewNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Monday December 03 2007, @02:22PM (#21562981) Homepage Journal
    This is the 2008 awards, not the 2007 awards. Secondly, I hate when people link to an article that largely just links to another article. Here is the original article.

    http://www.igf.com/02finalists.html [igf.com]

    • Oh, come on... they just want advertisements hits too!

      If it's not already termed, I'd love to call that type of thing "ad hit leaching".

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by bateleur (814657)
        Oh, come on... they just want advertisements hits too!

        Yeah, and he just wants the karma for the automatic +5 Informative, so it's all good.
    • When an site just links to another article (and is submitted to a high traffic social site)
      When an site links to and steals all of the thunder from another article, usually linking it in the bottom left, as a 'read' link - this is almost, if not, copyright infringement

      #1 filthy link fucker: engagdet

      However, since they were right-place-right-time in their treacherous link fucking activities, the web was glib to use their rss feed on new 'news portals' of the 2003 era.

      [read]

  • Tower of Goo (Score:4, Interesting)

    by dazedNconfuzed (154242) on Monday December 03 2007, @02:45PM (#21563269)
    Oh, Tower of Goo was hysterically fun, ideal for casual gaming.

    It was one of the offspring of the www.ExperimentalGamePlay.com project, an exploration of "starting from scratch, create a unique game in a week". Some of the results were very creative, some were valliant attempts that fell flat, and some were incredibly absorbing and enjoyable with really unique concepts and gameplay.

    I've been hoping for versions of those games with the rough edges polished up, as little things like odd/inconvenient window sizes kinda hindered play at times.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by flyingsquid (813711)
      It was interesting to see that a couple of the games (The Path, Tri-Achnid) have women listed as the head designer. I tried Tri-Achnid briefly... I found the interface a bit frustrating but the visual design and the world it created are weird and beautiful.

      Anyhow, it seems like people are always complaining that games don't do a good job of appealing to women, maybe having more women actually design some of the games is part of the solution.

  • Battleships Forever (Score:5, Interesting)

    by stoolpigeon (454276) * <bittercode@gmail> on Monday December 03 2007, @03:08PM (#21563585) Homepage Journal
    I just downloaded Battleships Forever [wyrdysm.com] and I'm really looking forward to playing it tonight. I also just downloaded the inspiration for BF - Warning Forever [big.or.jp]. Both look to be entertaining freeware games that should work on my laptop - always nice to find.

    I was checking the forums at the Battleships Forever site and saw that a tournament has been hosted by some folks over at the Penny Arcade forums. (Tournament Rules [penny-arcade.com] and the Tournament Results [penny-arcade.com]) What is cool about that is, they have the results linked to videos on youtube showing the actual battles. Very smooth.

  • The best part about independent games.. (Score:4, Funny)

    by Cathoderoytube (1088737) on Monday December 03 2007, @03:24PM (#21563747)
    You know the BEST part about independent games?

    If somebody give them a bad review the game maker can't have the reviewer fired.

  • How can sombody vote to a game . . . (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    . . . that wasn't realeased yest, AFAIK? Just looking at screenshots and its prequel? What am I missing here?
    • The entry rule was that the game had to be playable and have at least one complete "level" but they weren't too strict on that. They also had you check off a webpage checkbox that made you promise that your game was created in the Indie Spirit.

      I had fun last night playing Iron Duke: http://onetonghost.com/ [onetonghost.com] , one of the web browser finalists, for its art and humor rather than its gameplay.

      Self-toot warning: I entered my game ChipWits II http://chipwits.com/ [chipwits.com] . Didn't win but admire the winners and plan to ent
  • I wish that games had to actually be released to be eligible. Last years winner "Aquaria" STILL hasn't been released.

  • For those who can't wait to play Goo... (Score:4, Informative)

    by clragon (923326) on Monday December 03 2007, @08:05PM (#21566593)
    you can try LiquidWars [ufoot.org] while you wait.
    • Or how about Construo [nongnu.org], which seems to be rather close in terms of gameplay to Goo and is Free Software as well.

      PS: Sorry, shameless advertisment.
  • About 6 months ago an early version of Hammerfall was floating around various places and it was pretty amazing. It's a physics based game where you use the mouse to control this helicopterish contraption armed with upscaled versions of various medieval weapons. The weapons and shields all have their own momentum and inertia which greatly affect how the craft handles and your maneuvers help determine how the weapons move. The music and visual presentation is superb and there is quite a visceral feeling wh

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