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Far Cry 3 And The Stranger In A Strange Land The iPhone game winners and finalists for the 2009 Independent Games Festival recently popped up in Apple’s App Store in their own section.
A mysterious picture popped up on the website for Independent Festival Awards winner Fez, leading some to believe that the unique platformer has a date with Xbox Live Arcade.
The Independent Games Festival has launched the voting site for the 2009 Audience Award, with 15 finalists seeking your nod as the best independent game of 2008.
Increasingly, the Independent Games Festival is where smart game publishers go to find tomorrow’s big hits. Games like Braid, World of Goo, flow and Everyday Shooter all had their start here.
Crayon Physics Deluxe, last year’s Seumas McNally Grand Prize winner at the Independent Games Festival, hits PCs tomorrow, developer Petri Purho emailed to let us know.
The 11th Annual Independent Games Festival opened their doors today, saying they’re officially ready to start taking submissions for the annual festival.
Submissions to the contest are due by this November with finalists expected to be announced in January.
In addition to the $US 20,000 Seumas McNally Grand Prize and the awards the festival already gives out for audio, art direction, design and technology, this time around the IGF will also be presenting a new Innovation Award. The award is “intended to honour abstract, shortform, and unconventional game development”.
As always, I expect to see a slew of interesting titles as I help judge the competition. Previous years have seen such greats as Everyday Shooter, Audiosurf and World of Goo.
I ended up doing a nearly all-nighter earlier this week so I could play through the finalists for the Independent Games Festival. There are, as always, a number of fantastic games in the mix. Most of them, unfortunately, can’t be played by the public. What can be played are the finalists for best Web game. My personal choice for the best of the lot? Tri-Achnid.
In the game you control a three-legged spider by clicking on its feet and moving the legs. The feet cling to things you touch them to and the ball of a body sort of follows along. Later on you also get to spin webs and attack things. The object of the game is to care for your egg sack, typically by carrying it from place to place in your mouth. Yes, the idea gives me the willies too, but at least it doesn’t involve accidentally drinking an entire spider.
Giancarlos Alvarado is an elementary school teacher in Trenton, NJ and he let us know that he’s written a piece on the unique approach he’s been taking in his fifth grade classroom – designing a video game called Earthquake Terror: After Shock with his students. There’s been a lot of attention given to the use of games in an educational setting, and it’s great to read about the success of one teacher-designed plan of action – kids love it and parents and other teachers are equally as enthusiastic. But Alvarado is also honest with the problems and limitations of implementing such a program:
Parents and co-workers have been overwhelmingly positive about the project, citing its originality as a catalyst for more independent reading and learning ….
Video game development in the classroom is not for everyone and is still very difficult to implement today. A teacher must be not only highly computer literate and programming savvy, but also well versed in a middleware program such as RPG Maker XP. In order for a project such as ours to be applied to an everyday curriculum, teachers would require vast amounts of training, which is a costly obstacle.
The game was submitted to the 2008 IGF Student competition, and Alvarado says the students will be working on the game through the end of the school year. The article is short and sweet, but explains how the project came to be and how the class is putting together their game.
Making Video Games … With Fifth Graders [Game Career Guide]
Trying to keep up with all the Independent Games Festival nominees is quite a chore, much less trying to actually play them. But, every once in a while, one really sticks out and really makes you want to play it. Such is the case with Kyle Gabler and Ron Carmel’s gorgeous and quirky World of Goo. Under the name 2D Boy, gabler and Carmel have created a captivating game experience that has netted them three award nominations in this year’s IGF: the Design Innovation Award, Technical Excellence Award and the highly coveted Seumas McNally Grand Prize.
Gamasutra got a chance to sit down with the boys and discuss some of the things that make World of Goo what it is. When asked what they felt the most interesting part of their game is, designer Gabler had this to say.
I first got a glimpse of Bit Blot’s PC game Aquaria at last year’s Independent Games Festival Awards at GDC, where creator Derek Yu hopped on stage to accept the $US 20,000 Seumas McNally Grand Prize. From just the tiny clips they showed during the reading of the nominees I was completely charmed by the concept and the art style of the game. Now 9 months later their baby is coming out. For the past six days they’ve been teasing us at the Bit Blot blog with concept art, selections from the game’s soundtrack, and stories about the development of Aquaria. Yesterday they released the final teaser, seen above, and soon the game will be available for purchase and demo. This game is truly a testament to what independent developers can accomplish – a true work of art. You owe it to yourself to check it out.
Official Aquaria Web Site [Bit Blot - Thanks Kyle!]
