Tower of Heaven

By: Brandon McCartin (BMcC)

On: August 14th, 2009

Tower of Heaven is Askiisoft’s debut game, a four— no, three color platformer with particularly devious challenges. I love the variety of death animations. Which is good, ‘cause that’s what I spent most of my time seeing.

To celebrate the release, a speedrun contest is being held on the forums. The current best time is 2:29. I took longer than that trying to beat the third screen.

The PAX 10 Announced

By: Derek Yu

On: July 16th, 2009

The 150+ submissions have been culled into this list of 10 games that will be featured at the Penny Arcade Expo on September 4-6. Congratulations, guys! Here are the PAX 10:

– CarneyVale: Showtime
– Closure
– Fieldrunners
– Liight
– Machinarium
– Osmos
– Puzzle Bloom
– Tag: The Power of Paint
– Trino
– What is Bothering Carl?

2010 Independent Games Festival Opens Submissions

By: Derek Yu

On: July 8th, 2009

I’m really looking forward to seeing the giant banners with Dan’s naked torso on them hanging everywhere at next year’s IGF/GDC. Although, why does his face look like Matthew Modine in Full Metal Jacket meets Rick Moranis? Is there a Photoshop filter for that?

Anyway, submissions are go! The deadline for the Main Competition is November 1st.

TIGSource Presents: The Adult/Educational Competition

By: Derek Yu

On: June 27th, 2009

The first-ever TIGSource dualcompo is upon us! The themes are Adult Games and Educational Games, and you can choose to do one or the other… or BOTH! The compo officially starts tomorrow, and you have six flippin’ weeks to come up with an idea and implement it. Start your entry today, before the game burnings begin!

Sex and education – they’re both better when they’re interactive.

Edgy

By: Derek Yu

On: June 26th, 2009

Mobigame’s Edge is available once again on both the US and UK App Stores. I shot David Papazian and the rest of the team an email to ask them if they could explain what happened, exactly, and will update this post if and when I receive a reply. Thankfully, I don’t see a “Used under license” notice anywhere on the site!

While you’re at it, you should check out the entries for the unofficial

that some members started here on the forums. These games, which were made as parodies and solely for entertainment purposes, are pretty damn funny! Shown above is Edgecrement, an entry by well-regarded independent developers and artists Adam Atomic Burrito Farts, Pootoing, and Brandon McFartin.

Game Jolt Contest

By: Xander

On: June 13th, 2009

Gamejolt are apparently a portal for freeware/opensource games similar to Kongregate. They’re also running a weeklong contest ending on the 20th of June where contestants are being asked to finish a game simply surrounding the theme of SHOCKING..
whatever that exactly means to you!

The twist here is that the three chosen winners will be placed into the closed beta of Gamejolt’s Ad Revenue Sharing system, which is designed to allow games featured on the site to accrue income via advertisments. First place also wins a free game from Steam, which whilst not exactly as exciting as the other prize is still pretty damn swell given there’s plenty awesome out there you should have your eye own if you’ve somehow missed them. Good luck to any entrants!

Swedish Game Awards 2009

By: Derek Yu

On: May 29th, 2009

The final deadline for this year’s Swedish Game Awards (i.e. Ragnarök) has just passed, and the winners will be announced soon. Tim W. picked out a few cool trailers for IndieGames.com and here are my three favorites of those:

Bloodline Champions is a really nice-looking team-based multiplayer game that’s made for professional competition. It’s inspired in part by DoTA and League of Legends. No release date.

Paperworld is a “friendly and cozy” simulation game that has a fantastic papery look. That’s about all there is to know about it at this point.

Unlike a lot of the other entries, Haven and Hearth is playable, although in an alpha state. It’s an MMORPG based on Slavic and Germanic folklore where the player’s actions can have a permanent effect on the game world. Read the about page on the site, it sounds very interesting.

O.H.R.RPG.C.E. Terrible Games Contest

By: Paul Eres

On: May 28th, 2009

The goal of this contest for the Ohrrpgce engine was to make a terrible game. The games are terrible, intentionally, but interesting. The creator of the Ohrrpgce, James `SPAM Man’ Paige, posted great video reviews of all the entries. I thought these videos were very entertaining to watch, even if you don’t play any of the “terrible” games.

Among others the games include a game where the fate of various people are determined by a random button push, an RTS where babies face off against robots, a randomly generated bacon dungeon, the Village People: The Videogame (which is exactly what it sounds like), and a game which was so terrible it wasn’t even released, even though it too is an entry in this contest (see video above).

You can find the rest of the video reviews of each game after the “jump”.

Ludum Dare 14: Results

By: Brandon McCartin (BMcC)

On: May 12th, 2009

Results from the 14th “tri-annual 48 hour solo game development competition” Ludum Dare are in. This time around there were a whopping (sweet, I seldom get to write “whopping”) 123, wait, 132 entries — all of which you can find here, with nice little thumbnails of each and the top games neatly divided into categories. This round’s theme was “The Advancing Wall of Doom.”

Let’s get a torrent up, people! I would seed that all kinds of generously.

Once again, the entries and results can be found here. Also, time-lapse development footage of a handful of the games can be found here. (Nice desktop, agj!)

The next Ludum Dare (15) will begin in August. Be ready.

Cockpit Compo: Results!

By: Derek Yu

On: May 4th, 2009

The results of our Cockpit Competition are in, and the decisive winner, with nearly 15% of the votes, is Justin “Crackerblocks” Smith’s Enviro-Bear 2000: Operation: Hibernation. What else can I say about this game except that it was “bear-y” well made! HAW.

Really, though, the basic concept is enough to make me bust a gut, but what I really love is the look on the bear’s face as he’s grabbing at things in his car. It’s a great use of the theme, too, since it’s very hands-on (paws-on?). Humor, style, creativity, interesting mechanics, and wildlife in motor vehicles – this one’s got it all.

Here are the top ten entries of the compo:

1. Enviro-Bear 2000 – Crackerblocks

2. Okkuplektor – 0rel

3. Star Cannon – tocky, compound, and EEsoteric

4. vectorLocust – jph wacheski

5. Cockpit Crash 1984 – David Pittman

6. Flying Dutchman – astrofra

7. Vessel-IV – muku

8. Aqua Kitty Sub-Sub – moogled

9. Landfall – toastie

10. Viewpoints – agj

To be honest, when I announced the compo I wasn’t sure whether the implied third dimension of theme was going to be a problem for people. Thankfully, I was rightly shamed by the 41 games which got submitted. This was a really fun one to watch develop!

Congratulations to Justin and all the other entrants! Many thanks to everyone who participated and/or helped out with the competition. Coming up next: the one you’ve all been waiting for…