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Games Entertainment

Independent Games Festival 2005 Entries Announced 91

Posted by Zonk from the from-whence-puzzle-pirates-came dept.
simoniker writes "The Independent Games Festival has just announced its list of entrants for 2005, the seventh annual contest. The awards, to be given out at next year's Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, are all about 'Rewarding Innovation In Independent Games,' and there's a total of $40,000 in prizes, including a $15,000 grand prize for both the 'Open' and 'Web/Downloadable' categories. Notable entries this year include Nayantara's online CCG Star Chamber, Chronic Logic's ball-o'-tar platformer Gish, and Digital Eel's forthcoming Weird Worlds: Return to Infinite Space, the sequel to Strange Adventures In Infinite Space."
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Independent Games Festival 2005 Entries Announced More

Independent Games Festival 2005 Entries Announced

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  • Anybody played these games and can recommend one? I haven't run into a single one of these before.

    • Re:unheard of (Score:5, Informative)

      by Dracolytch ( 714699 ) on Monday September 27, 2004 @03:45PM (#10366386) Homepage
      Actually, the poster put up some good ones.

      The Gish demo is a little short, but it's fun platformer none-the-less.

      Puzzle Pirates has a free demo, and can be a lot of fun if you find some cool people on-line. Lots of innovation and good ideas there.

      Star Chamber involves a fair amount of thinking ahead, strategy, and adaptability. It's card-based strategy game like Magic, but provides multiple ways to win, allowing for a lot more thinking.

      ~D

    • Re:unheard of (Score:5, Informative)

      by Nos. ( 179609 ) <`ac.srrekeht' `ta' `werdna'> on Monday September 27, 2004 @03:45PM (#10366391) Homepage
      No, but two I would highly recommend (if you have hours to kill) are Frozen Bubble and Battle for Wesnoth. Not sure why these aren't on the list.

    • Re:unheard of (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I haven't played any from that list. Zaxxoids [zaxxoids.com] was pretty good (first original puzzle game I've seen in ages), but I don't see it as an entry. It was on download.com earlier last week. It may have just missed the entry cutoff (the Zaxxoids site says a September 12 release date; the contest site says September 2 deadline).

    • Gish rocks! (Score:5, Informative)

      by cryptochrome ( 303529 ) on Monday September 27, 2004 @04:09PM (#10366592) Journal
      If you've ever wondered why anyone would bother to use complex and accurate physics in a side scroller, Gish is the answer. You can only do five things - move, jump, get sticky, get slippery, and get dense - but it's how well you can control all that and what you do with it that makes it interesting. Momentum is everything.

      Some of those levels are really hard though, until you teach yourself some new tricks. Like how to maximize your ability to bounce and jump. Jump in the air, go heavy to drop faster, go sticky when you hit the ground to spread yourself out more, then go normal and jump again, and repeat. You can go real high real fast with that one.

      • Re:Gish rocks! (Score:5, Funny)

        by American AC in Paris ( 230456 ) * on Monday September 27, 2004 @04:54PM (#10367047) Homepage
        You can only do five things - move, jump, get sticky, get slippery, and get dense - but it's how well you can control all that and what you do with it that makes it interesting. Momentum is everything.

        Dude, that game is as old as life itself.

        • Ahem. That was why I specifically said "get dense" instead of the equivalent (I think preferred also) "get hard".

          A game where you are moving and jumping deep inside a cave while getting hard, slippery, and sticky just wouldn't be appropriate for all ages.

          Not that I wouldn't download such a game in a heartbeat.
    • I haven't demoed Gish yet, but I have played Pontifex II (Bridge Construction Set) by Chronic Logic and I can definitely say that it's a blast.

      Chronic Logic's main website [chroniclogic.com]

      The civil engineer / Lego building side of you will appreciate this game... this is one of the few games that I've paid for to play on the Mac. Also, to give you an idea of quality, it was an Independent Games Festival winner in 2002 or 2003. The original concept has been in development since at least 2000 when the 2-D version was rele

    • Lore is getting good marks everywhere. Unfortunately, the Linux client doesn't run on my new machine (it runs fine on the one at work, but obviously I couldn't do more than check whether it runs at all there :-) ).
      • Tom, we should have an update to the Linux demo out soon. As you can guess it's incredibly difficult getting a 100% happy Linux install going considering all the varients and flavours on the market. Thanks for taking interest in the product though. If you like you can send an email to us to test out the next Linux installer.
        • I was on your beta team a while ago, but I don't have the time, what with real life, my own game, and work.

          But I'll be happy to wait for the update.
  • "without backing from large corporations"? Indy smindy, a good game is a good game regardless of who wrote it.

    • Re:So does "Independent" simply mean (Score:5, Insightful)

      by cubicledrone ( 681598 ) on Monday September 27, 2004 @03:47PM (#10366404)
      "without backing from large corporations"

      Translation: without a 97-page "agreement" where the people who do all the work give away every last shred of value in the product in exchange for NOTHING so the people who do no work can stuff their pockets.

      • Translation: without a 97-page "agreement" where the people who do all the work give away every last shred of value in the product in exchange for NOTHING so the people who do no work can stuff their pockets.

        Translation: without an ambitious game design that will require millions of dollars of capital to develop before haivng any hope of becoming a saleable product and recouping those costs.

        Disclaimer: I'm a professional game developer and no lover of publishers...I just don't think it's productive to th

        • I just don't think it's productive to think of them as nothing but evil money-grubbing corporations.

          Should have seen the last "agreement" I had to help talk another company out of signing. "Universal perpetual royalty-free rights to everything" seems quite common. Amounts of money greater than $1000 paid to developers seems quite uncommon.
    • Actually I believe "Independant" as far as the IGF is concerned, just means that the company hasn't had anything published by a game publisher.

      Three years ago a game called Shattered Galaxy [sgalaxy.com] won four of the six awards from the IGF. It was a game created by Nexon, a huge game company in Korea (second to NCsoft). Shattered Galaxy had a budget of just under 1 million dollars. I know that because I worked on it. Last year Savage was entered into the IGF. Savage is a game developed with a multi-million doll

  • I nominate (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 27, 2004 @03:40PM (#10366335)
    emacs.

    M-x tetris

  • Ok (Score:4, Interesting)

    by cubicledrone ( 681598 ) on Monday September 27, 2004 @03:45PM (#10366389)
    'Rewarding Innovation In Independent Games,'

    Wouldn't it be nice if the game industry could do that? $40,000 is pisswater for a major game publisher. They spend more than that restocking the vending machines.

    Oh wait. The game industry doesn't want innovation. They want maximum money grab.

    • Re:Ok (Score:2)

      by hyphz ( 179185 ) *
      Yea, and $10000 is ridiculous for anyone else.

      I mean, do you have $10000 lying around to spend on writing a game that probably isn't going to recoup that?

      It's ridiculous to even call these games independant. Someone must have put up the money for them to have had that much to spend.

      At least this year they don't seem to have anything stupid like Savage: The Battle For Newearth (budget $100,000+) considered an "indie" game.
      • I believe Alien Hominid [alienhominid.com] has about a million dollar budget and is entered this year.

        It did start as an "indie" game and I believe it still retains that feel even though it has managed to secure financial backing.

  • Online CCG? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by EvilGoodGuy ( 811015 )
    "Nayantara's online CCG Star Chamber" If I am right, CCG stands for collectable card game. Not to be cruel to the author of the article, but more towards the game creators. I suppose I should try it to see how it works. But is it really neccessary to have pictures of cards? They could have maybe called them something else. Anyway, just my half-a-cents worth. I used to be a huge Magic: The Gathering [wizards.com] fan, and when I see "online CCG," that just doesn't appeal to my senses at all.

    • Re:Online CCG? (Score:3, Informative)

      by pjt33 ( 739471 )
      M:tG has an official online version now. I'm not sure how its popularity compares to the paper version, but it's certainly not a negligible market.

  • Last Year's Winners Still Rawk (Score:5, Informative)

    by Zonk ( 12082 ) on Monday September 27, 2004 @03:48PM (#10366418) Homepage Journal
    Last year's winners [igf.com] are still very fun to play with. Puzzle Pirates [puzzlepirates.com] gets daily use around my home by both myself and my fiance, and Bontago [bontago.com] got some heavy play at the last LAN party I attended.
    • Anyone know if Bontago will run under wine? It looks like they only have a windows version, but it looks like a pretty sweet game, and I'd love to give it a shot, but I dont have any windows boxes anymore.
      • No dice here.

        $ cedega --version
        Cedega 4.0-1

        The install goes okay, but cedega won't start the .exe... it just fails, silently.

        Google gives just about nothing, as does the transgaming site and forums. So, it looks like no.

        But I'd love to hear otherwise!

  • The obvious choice (Score:3, Funny)

    by djdavetrouble ( 442175 ) on Monday September 27, 2004 @03:50PM (#10366435) Homepage
    This contest is so much BS there are only 2 real indy games worth playing: Nethack and BZFlag.

    and Nethack is the obvious winner.

  • Watch that space (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Tom ( 822 ) on Monday September 27, 2004 @03:58PM (#10366504) Homepage Journal
    The indy game scene is definitely to be watched. Two main reasons why I believe that it won't be long before the next big things come from there instead of one of the big studios:

    One: The studios are producing ever more sequels. It just is commercially safer. You know for a fact that BigTitle 2 or HugeSeller 4 will sell at least a few ten-thousand copies to people who buy it because they liked the first, second or third part.

    Two: With stuff like Torque [garagegames.com] and others, the indies are closer to the pros than ever since C64 and Amiga days. The big shots have todays ubercool engine, but the indies already have access to yesterdays engine, which runs better on most users machines anyways.

    The critical part in all indie games I've seen (and I've seen many, beta-tested quite a few, and had my hand in the development of one or two) is the artwork. Good coders are rare, but average coders are a dime a dozen. Even average artists, however, with all the skills required to create textures, 3D models, music or sound-effects ready for use in a game - those guys are not that easy to find.
    • Yes, finding a good graphics artist is hard.

      Luckily with 3D engines, even if you sneakily only use them in a 2D manner, you can use off the shelf textures (e.g., one of the RPGs in the article looks like it looks a lot of standard brick/mud/rooftile/etc textures) ... and even better use the 3D hardware to do the hard work of making it look good by lighting it, shading it and so on.

      It's a lot easier to do graphics when you don't have to worry about the shading. A brick+mortar pattern turns into a few textu

  • Weird Worlds rocks! (Score:5, Informative)

    by jncook ( 4617 ) on Monday September 27, 2004 @04:02PM (#10366533) Homepage
    As a long-time player of Strange Adventures in Infinite Space, I have this to say about Weird Worlds:

    It rocks!

    It has smooth, OpenGL-based 3D graphics. The universe is bigger. The images are sharper. But it still retains the quirky, simple gameplay that made the original so great.

    Strong work, Digital Eel!

    James

  • Uhhh... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by vectorian798 ( 792613 )
    I'm sorry but these games are all basically utter crap to the masses. And the Torque engine that someone mentioned is nowhere near the level of the 'pro' engines.

    Put Torque next to many modern engines and it doesn't hold a candle to any of them:
    1. CryEngine (Far Cry)
    2. UT2k4 Engine (UT2k4)
    3. UT2k3 Engine (UT2k3, Lineage II)
    4. Source (HL2, that one MMO coming up later)
    5. Doom 3 Engine (Doom 3)

    Now granted, I just dropped the list of absolute toppers or whatever, but isn't that the type of products that the

    • Re:Uhhh... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by john_anderson_ii ( 786633 )
      I see you point about those huge and powerful game engines and such. The only problem is those games require a ridiculous amount of $$$ dropped into hardware in order to play them. Some (most?) of these independ games are fun to play, not as pretty, but they run quite well will less horsepower.

      Plus a few of them have native linux versions so there's no screwing around with wine or winex or whatever.

    • Look, turd burglar, the best games from our collective childhoods were made by teams of three and four men sitting in a room and hacking away at code to get it to fit onto a 512k floppy, a 16k Atari cart, or something even more unfathomably miniscule.

      And they still rocked. I'll bet you played the fuck out of Zelda, and it wasn't even in 3D.

      Indie games can be just as good, if not better than commercial releases. Just because they don't look photorealistic doesn't make them any less playable.

      YOU, sir, have

    • Parent illustrated an important point (Score:5, Insightful)

      by TiggertheMad ( 556308 ) on Monday September 27, 2004 @04:46PM (#10366972) Journal
      The problem with the game industry is that it gets distracted by pretty pictures. The parent compaired the Torque engine with 5 other engines. What was their common thread? They are all newer and prettier. How are these engines 'better'? More realistic physics models? Curved surfaces? Support for DX9 shaders? How do any of these things make a game more fun? The only way an engine is truly better is if it simplifies development with a better API than other engines, or allows you to do more with the same system resources than other competing engines. And if an engine does everything your design calls for, who cares if it is modern?

      A good game is one that will be enjoyable, regardless of how it is rendered. For the last week, I have been playing all the MAME pac-man games, and it's amazing how well designed the original pac-man game was. (it really shows because a lot of the later variations were horrible. You can't improve much on a great design.)

      I expect that some people will blow indy games off as 'crap to the masses', but then, the masses also seem to enjoy Brittney Spears and the Third Matrix movie, so what do they know.

      • How are these engines 'better'? More realistic physics models? Curved surfaces? Support for DX9 shaders? How do any of these things make a game more fun?

        They help create a more believable world that more easily immerses the player in the gameplay experience.

        Are they the most important thing? Of course not, and yes they're often overemphasized. But I'd wager my HL2 gameplay experience is going to be considerably more compelling in the Source in than it would be in the Build (original Duke Nuke'm) engine

    • As someone who has used the Torque engine quite extensively I would have to say that it does come up to the table on par with any of the game engines that you have mentioned there. It is an awesome low-priced (but high-end) alternative that is well worth considering, especially if you don't want to be bent over a table just to make your game ;) The only real major different in features between something like Torque and the engines that you have mentioned are A) Shaders (which are easily solved, either by w

    • Re:Uhhh... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Wile_E_Peyote ( 805058 ) on Monday September 27, 2004 @05:10PM (#10367188)

      The problem with Indie Games is that unless a RELATIVELY LARGE group of programmers are willing to gather together and pour their time into a world-class product, it will simply remain on the back-burner.

      Wow, replace the word "Games" with "Films" and you'd have the same argument people used to have against Indie Films.

      We are getting to a place in game development where the graphics and coding for games is becoming easier and easier to do. In the not too distant future it will be trivial and the big game companies are going to get more and more competition from "indie" games. This is the same thing that happened to film once the complexity and cost of making film/video decreased.

      I note that your "review" of Indie games didn't even mention game play, just engines. I don't know about eveyone else, but I buy games for their gameplay. If I want to look at good graphics, I'll go to a movie.

      Look at some of the big hit online games (Everquest, etc.); the graphics are sub-par compared to the latest and greatest doom-unreal-etc clone yet they continue to do VERY good business.

      Anyway, enough of that rant...

      W.E.P.

    • What a stupid comment. Seriously. I still return to some of my playstation I games because they provide amazing fun. I am hardly the only person for who graphics and framerate take a second seat to gameplay.

      In fact, I have never played any of the games you listed, and don't care to.

      The market for fun short easy to enter games is immense. My wife does not want to play Doom. She doesn't even want to play Sims. Give her a copy of Tetris, and she is one VERY happy woman though.

      My dad is the same way.

      Puzzle

    • Re:Uhhh... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Cecil ( 37810 ) on Monday September 27, 2004 @05:14PM (#10367232) Homepage
      Of the games that I have enjoyed most lately, the following top the list:

      Neverwinter Nights [bioware.com]
      Morrowind [elderscrolls.com]
      Chromatron [silverspaceship.com]
      Tales of Symphonia [namco.com]
      E.V. Nova [ambrosiasw.com]
      Advance Wars 2 [advancewars.com]

      Of these, Neverwinter Nights is probably the most graphically advanced. None of them hold a candle to Doom 3, or Far Cry, or any of the other engines you mentioned.

      I dunno about you, but for me gameplay comes first. If I really want eye candy, I'll go look at 3D Renderings [digitalblasphemy.com]. Yes, the masses can indeed enjoy games with weak graphics, and it does open your game to a wider audience. If you need any convincing of that, I implore you to check out the sales figures for any of the Sims games.

      If EV Nova had been 3D rendered with dynamic lighting and reflections and all the other goodies, it would not have played on my laptop very well, and I never would've purchased it.

    • Re:Uhhh... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by emilng ( 641557 )
      Your fancy engines don't mean crap to the masses who don't play FPS.

      The masses play more of "The Sims" and "Starcraft" than all the games made with all of the aforementioned engines.

      You can let the sales figures speak for themselves.

      As far as independent games go, there are more people who know about Bejeweled than Far Cry.
    • Well it is just, that Far Cry for instance, was done by a small german development house with a shoestring budget. It just happened that they sold so many copies in germany alone, that the international publishers became aware of it. Id software, yes they have the backing of activision, but they are not big either in international standards. They just do the same game over and over again and concentrate on the engine, to keep the effort and costs down. Not independend games, but the borders are relative i

  • Linux Games (Score:4, Informative)

    by Tom ( 822 ) on Monday September 27, 2004 @04:10PM (#10366597) Homepage Journal
    Ob-Plug: Two of those games have Linux versions available:

    Dark Horizons: Lore [igf.com] and eXtreme Demolitions [igf.com].

  • Gish (Score:5, Interesting)

    by th1ckasabr1ck ( 752151 ) on Monday September 27, 2004 @04:16PM (#10366640)
    Gish is excellent. It's very fun, addictive, and quirky. You play as a ball of tar out to save your girlfriend.

    It plays like your typical platform-puzzle game with two major things that stand out. The first is the excellent physics incorporated into the gameplay. The second is the fact that you are playing as a ball of tar. You can make yourself sticky, slippery, heavy, and any combination of these things in order to navigate the cleverly designed levels.

    There is a demo available here [chroniclogic.com]. If you like it, definitely buy the full version and it will be well worth your $20.

    • My complaint about ChronicLogic is that their demos are far too short, taking 15-30 minutes to beat. It was true for Bridge Construction Set - it looked interesting, but not interesting enough. For Gish, I couldn't tell whether it was an interesting game that I would enjoy, or whether I'd just get annoyed or bored after another half-hour. So, I erred on the side of caution, and ignored it.

      I think the demo should cover 10%-33% of the game, the more the better, and tell you how much you are getting. It

    • Slain by copy protection! (Score:4, Insightful)

      by ZorbaTHut ( 126196 ) on Monday September 27, 2004 @06:00PM (#10367582) Homepage
      I bought Gish, but after discovering how their copy protection worked, I ended up warning all my friends about it. None of them bought it. Quick summary: you get X activations (i.e. installs), and once you're out of activations, sucks to be you. You might be able to convince them to increase the number of activations, but don't count on it - I tried and they refused. (I was trying to install it at a friend's house so we could play multiplayer.)

      I don't really regret buying it - what I do regret is that I now have to keep a crack on a server so I can play it if I want. Several of my friends that don't want to deal with cracks simply didn't buy it.

      If there was ever a perfect example of why overbearing copy protection is counterproductive, this is it. :)

  • Scratchware Lives! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Conspiracy_Of_Doves ( 236787 ) on Monday September 27, 2004 @04:25PM (#10366720)
    Scratchware manifesto [the-underdogs.org]
  • And I don't just mean that "Open" doesn't refer to open open. Seriously, who gives a crap if they're written in Java or Flash (or whatever it means to be Web/Downloadable) or not? I care if the damn thing runs on my particular OS. It's impossible to even tell from their list what is worth bothering to check out. It isn't even clear they give any points to developers that support more than one platform. So while it might give the winner a prize and a nifty badge to stick on their web site, it isn't help
    • This is just a list of contest entrants. They haven't judged these games yet, so as far as you or I am concerned, these things are relatively trivial at this point.
    • It isn't even clear they give any points to developers that support more than one platform. So while it might give the winner a prize and a nifty badge to stick on their web site, it isn't help us gamers discover independent gaming at all.

      I believe the two categories refer to the size of the game. If it is playable through the browser or can be downloaded in a small package, then it can be eligible to enter the web/downloadable category. The rules page [igf.com], however, says that this is up to the discretion of

      • These people just want their games to get recognized and you are going to fault them because it doesn't run on Solaris? That's damn selfish.

        It would be, if that's what I actually said. My complaint is that the contest organizers actually prevent games from being "recognized" because I can't figure out what on the list of entrants is or isn't worth checking out. If, for example, you've never heard of Gish before, how would you have any clue that it runs on Mac OS X? I'm bitching because I have to end

  • Ironic.... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by IKnwThePiecesFt ( 693955 )
    that a Half-Life 2 banner is on the side of the article...

  • Linux? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by joeljkp ( 254783 )
    To save me from visiting the websites of all 78 entries...

    Do any of these games work on Linux? Or WINE, even?
    • The Witch's Yarn is written in Python and PyGame. The code ports without modification between Mac and PC. There is no reason it shouldn't run on Linux, but the developer (me) doesn't have a Linux box. Anyone? (I live in the SF bay area) Unfortunately, it's not a game for the slashdot crowd at large. It was written with middle-age and younger women in mind. So, let your girlfriend/mom/older-daughter judge it, before rolling your eyes at all the community/relationships/self-empowerment content.

    • Re:Linux? (Score:2, Informative)

      by youBastrd ( 602151 )

      Absolutely, in fact, TW-Light [berlios.de] not only runs on Windows and Linux, it's also Open-Source. It's a lot of fun, you should check it out! :-)

      TW-Light's Homepage: http://tw-light.berlios.de/ [berlios.de]

      (Disclaimer: I'm a developer on the TW-Light project)

  • These guys are lame... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Bodhammer ( 559311 ) on Monday September 27, 2004 @06:54PM (#10367961)
    Where is Starshatter [starshatter.com]? A massive title that was written by one guy!

  • I just downloaded and played StarChamber after reading this story. It seemed really cool at first, but it looks like this "free" game is just a way to hawk their Virtual Trading Cards [starchamber.net].

    Thanks, but no thanks.

    LK
  • "The Independent Games Festival has just announced its list of entrants for 2005, the seventh annual contest."

    And after this I don't want to hear ANYBODY bitch, whine or moan about how how there is no room for the little guy and how gaming will be swallowed by a few monolithic corporations with no originality. The death of gaming is a falicy. Thank you. Good night.
  • I nominate N from Metanet Software [harveycartel.org]. It's a simple premise, find gold, flip switches, get to the exit. The game gets incredably frustrating in terms of difficulty, but it somehow retains that "just one more game" quality that all quality games seem to share. It's simple, it's fast paced, and it's FUN.

    And once you're done getting your ass kicked by that last blue drone, you can watch other people's high score runs to see a master ninja at work. Truely, some people are spectacular at this game.

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