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PC Games (Games) Entertainment Games

December's Best Indie Games 20

Posted by Hemos from the go-out-and-play-em dept.
cyrus_zuo writes "As a last cry out to 2005, Game Tunnel has just published its monthly list of the top games of December. This feature articles takes a hard look at the Indie games released in (or around) the month of December with four different voices reviewing and rating each game, providing a variety of insights into what was and wasn't great in Indie gaming in December."
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December's Best Indie Games More

December's Best Indie Games

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  • How about a round of of the year instead? I don't really keep up that often, but I'm sort of interested to hear if there's any truth to the rumours than indie games are more fun than the big commercial ones.
    • You mean the link [gametunnel.com] that's near the top of every GameTunnel page? C'mon man, that page is two clicks away from this one (well only one click away now that this comment is posted)...
      • > You mean the link that's near the top of every GameTunnel page

        Thanks for that.

        Uh...games certainly have come a long way since the Public Domain scene of the Amiga, haven't they...look out EA!

        • Re:Ar Tee Eff Ay (Score:3, Interesting)

          by AKAImBatman ( 238306 )
          Uh...games certainly have come a long way since the Public Domain scene of the Amiga, haven't they...look out EA!

          Not really. Back in the Shareware days, games were of exceptionally high quality for such small studios. Plus you got a full game that was so good you wanted to buy more. Now all those Shareware companies have gone full commercial, and the Indies have replaced them. The Indies don't usually offer much more than a demo, and you often find that the full game isn't that much more interesting.

          Indies
          • > Back in the Shareware days, games were of exceptionally high quality for such small studios.

            I was talking about Public Domain, not Shareware. Anyway, they were both - with very few exceptions - utter shit. Crap games knocked out by idiots in a few weeks with terrible graphics and buggy, limited gameplay.

            Also, they weren't produced by studios, but one or two people (per game). Computer magazines were crammed full of adverts for people competing with each other to sell as many programs for as little m
            • I was talking about Public Domain, not Shareware. Anyway, they were both - with very few exceptions - utter shit. Crap games knocked out by idiots in a few weeks with terrible graphics and buggy, limited gameplay.

              Nonsense. Apogee, Id, Epic Megagames, Parallax Software, Arcanum Computing, Softdisk, Moraff (that guy was a machine!), Bungie Studios, and tons of other "little guys" produced some really great software. Sure, some of it was crap. But the crap didn't sell floppy disks, so it quickly got lost to th
              • > Nonsense. Apogee, Id, Epic Megagames, Parallax Software, Arcanum Computing, Softdisk, Moraff
                > (that guy was a machine!), Bungie Studios, and tons of other "little guys" produced some
                > really great software.

                Again, I was talking about the Public Domain Amiga scene, which might well have been largely a UK/European thing. As you've implied with your reply in general, and your "Amigas weren't really known for their games, but they were known for their multimedia capabilities" in particular, you're com
    • Saying Indie games are more fun then commercial games is like saying black chocolate is better then white chocolate, It all comes down to personal taste. For example I like Indie games when I need a quick fix of gaming that I can leave at any moment, something simple and fun. If I want something I want to get involved with at a deeper level I'll load up a commercial game. (that is not to say Indie games arn't deep and involving, I just don't come across them very much)
    • There's a link to Game of the Year at the top:

      http://www.gametunnel.com/articles.php?id=412 [gametunnel.com]

  • graphics looked decent (Score:3, Insightful)

    by cwtrex ( 912286 ) on Thursday January 26, 2006 @11:33AM (#14567717) Journal
    seemed to me that the games needed more focus on gameplay and stability. I like how the one guy points out that Mastermind didn't even include an uninstall option. My, how many time have I run into THAT problem with "indie" games. What's so hard about cleaning up the install for the user when they're done with your game?
  • You know, all these games are rated less than 8/10... and it looks like most of them kind of suck. Kinda wonder if they are just trying to make people give up on indie games and buy "good" games that were published by EA and the like.

    They do need to do a full year though- Darwinia [wikipedia.org] was freaking aweswome.

  • Considering the time investment to make a game (Score:3, Interesting)

    by hattig ( 47930 ) on Thursday January 26, 2006 @12:15PM (#14568317) Journal
    Then a lot of these people have done a lot of work.

    There's only so far a person, or a bunch of friends, can get when programming [in their spare time most likely] a game of any level of complexity.

    Tools are better than they were years ago however. What took a month to program in 1985 in assembler can be done in a couple of evenings now, motivation allowing. As long as someone has some graphical talent you can get good looking games out without too much effort. Sadly they aren't going to have the same level of gameplay as some modern games - it's hard to compete against a multi-million dollar game!

    It's easy for an indie band to get good and be better than a mainstream band. It's not too hard to do decent films on a budget either, if the skills are available. But game writing seems to be pretty hard to get something even 10% as good as a commercial offering. Is it a problem with the tools - Java has some pretty simple game libraries now however, but you still need to know some complex stuff if you do a 3D game, for example. Is game-writing the educated-geeks choice of creativity, another pasttime like knitting, a band, amateur dramatics, etc?
    • Is game-writing the educated-geeks choice of creativity, another pasttime like knitting, a band, amateur dramatics, etc?

      It certainly is for me. I consider myself an artist, and code is my medium. It's relaxing for me to write code and design systems -- it's somewhat therapeutic. It's my way to be creative, and what I enjoy doing to get out some good energy (even though I may do it all day as a job).

  • The problem with the vast majority of indie games is that they just lack to polish necessary to make them serious contenders. I realize that in same cases these developers simply lack the resources to properly refine their games. Even when they have a strong concept however, they often seem to lack the necessary understanding of what makes for good gameplay.

    I cant count the times I've played a game with frustrating control schemes, or unrefined interfaces, or atrocious graphics. I think anyone capable of pr
  • Does anyone else remember playing Motorama years ago when it was called Elastomania, or earlier still, Across(Action Supercross)? It's a great game!

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