August's Best Indie Games

cyrus_zuo writes "Game Tunnel has just published its August Independent Video Games Round-Up. This month's article looks at ten indie titles and is highlighted by the seemingly Katamari-inspired freeware game The Blob, Kudos, from the same mind as last year's amazing Democracy, and DevastationZone Troopers, a 3rd person shooter that lets you redefine your landscape by blowing holes through the walls to get into and out of tough scrapes. A panel of four game industry veterans reviews and rates every game giving a variety of opinions on each of them."

Re:

[Lerc]

I'm not sure how much research the critics should do. They play the games and tell you what they think of them. If a reviewer approaches a review with more preperatiion than the average gameplayer then their review may be less useful to people who want to play the game.

A game May be brilliant if you know ancient chinese dialects. A keen reviewer might go out and learn those especially for the review. Then they say the game is awesome. Then we all download it and find that it sucks because _we_ don't kn

Re:

[AmazingRuss]

Maybe you will know the wonder of the comma when you turn 21.

Best Place to Find Independent Games?

[QuantumFTL]

I'm very much into independent/homebrew games... is there a site that's "the place" for the indie/homebrew scene?

Re:

[QuantumFTL]

indie and homebrew are two separate entities.

Precisely. That is why I listed them both.

Re:

[i.of.the.storm]

http://happypenguin.org/ [happypenguin.org] has a lot of open source games, mostly indie and mostly linux, although some have windows ports.

Re:Best Place to Find Independent Games?

[Lerc]

Well there is Gametrove [gametrove.net] which is a fairly good place for the shareware titles.

If you want to see some more radical or experimental ideas, try Ludum Dare [ludumdare.com] which is for the 48 hour game development competition. The site isn't 100% at the moment, but the competitions have turned out some great ideas. The Games are not totally polished and some aren't very finished, but there are some gems to be had.

My own past LudumDare Games: ( Not the best ones out there, I've yet to win a LudumDare)

A lemmings style game only the critters are even smaller, and they are Ninja!
http://screamingduck.fileburst.com/Cruft/TTN.zip [fileburst.com]

This one was actually a 12 hour game written a week before the LD48 as a warmup
http://screamingduck.fileburst.com/Cruft/LDWarmup. zip [fileburst.com]

Same as above only for linux.
http://screamingduck.fileburst.com/Cruft/TailV.tar .gz [fileburst.com]

Urm.. Not sure how to describe this one.
http://screamingduck.fileburst.com/darkvslightinst aller.exe [fileburst.com]

All free. I do shareware games too but I'll plug those another time :-)

Re:

[MiceHead]

I'm very much into independent/homebrew games... is there a site that's "the place" for the indie/homebrew scene?

It's not quite "the place," but Indie Superstar [indiesuperstar.com] (shameless plug) does video webcasts (iPod video podcasts too) about games that mainstream media doesn't cover.

"da blob" install error and fix.

[Anonymous Coward]

After reading TFA, I downloaded "da blob".

When I tried to install it, I got some obscure error about a missing DLL. After reading a little about the issue I realized I needed the .net framework. So I went and grabbed that. The .net framework needed "windows installer 3.0", so I followed the link and grabbed that (after doing some "windows genuine advantage" non sense).

After all that was installed, the game works great.

Just thought I would mention it since the project website seems to be slashdoted, leavi

I misread the comment

[CrazyJim1]

I thought someone made Katamari-Democracy.

Virtual Villagers

[Mantees de Tara]

Virtual Villagers is a Palm OS classic game since some time. It is a very well done Tamagotchi style game with goals to archive and a plot line. It is something nice to do when you are bored in a train with your palm, but I can't imagine anybody playing it seriously on their PC.

Submitter links with referals

[Anonymous Coward]

Get the game Democracy direct from the authors [plimus.com] and avoid giving the submitter a referal cash.

Greasy greasy greasy...

Re:

[KDR_11k]

Or you can go into a store and pick up the box in case you lack a credit card.

What's wrong with that site?

[Conspiracy_Of_Doves]

Many of the pages on that site, like the previous month listings, are displaying as raw HTML.

This isn't really news - It's a monthly feature

[Chronus]

And it's already the second time this column has been slashdotted.

Correction - At lest the 4th time

[Chronus]

Zonk, lay off.