RPGs: Stop Making Bad First Impressions 
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Why Kotaku Australia Should Never Work With Children... Or Robots 
Three Words I Said To The Man I Defeated In Gears Of War That I'll Never Say Again 
New Doom 3 For Xbox 360 And PlayStation 3 Supports Head-Mounted Displays 
Far Cry 3 And The Stranger In A Strange Land Too easy. If there’s one complaint that gets lodged almost universally about modern-day video games, that’s it.
“Hi, I’m Phil Fish and I’m here to talk about Japanese games.” Referencing the controversy over his recent remarks, the Fez designer’s opening line during the Indie Soapbox got big laughs.
Back in 2011, innovative platformer Shadow Physics seemed poised to reap loads of love from the video game cognoscenti. The ambitious shadow adventure showcased impressive tech and was part of the freshman class of games getting money from Indie Fund. It looked like their path to success was set.
Mojang, the makers of Minecraft, invited over some friends this weekend to build video games from scratch and raise a load of cash for charity. Mojang, Oxeye Game Studios and Wolfire Games have already raised more than $US200,000. But don’t forget, you can play the end product of their build-a-thon, when it ends in about 30 hours.
I know I’ve been waiting for that for a while, anyway. This video was sent in from the recent Global Game Jam, an indie meetup where developers have 48 hours to build a game. Any game. The theme at this game jam? “Ouroboros,” the snake eating itself. Or, as the presenter here says, “Basically, a snake fellating itself.”
How can a game made over the course of a weekend remind me of Rez and Crayon Physics Deluxe? By sending me soaring through the universe with simple controls and quirky hand-drawn artwork. Made by a team of 5, The Universe Within puts in the control of a pixellated dot that you need to steer through obstacles as it advances from the the galaxy through the stratosphere and into a human being’s cells.
Well, that didn’t take long. The foaming outrage over the arrest of Kim Dotcom and the shutdown of his MegaUpload empire needed all of five days to result in this, MegaUP: Upload If You Can, a protest title released Wednesday on Xbox Live’s Indie Games service. Proceeds from the sale of the game (after Microsoft takes its cut) benefit its maker. Kim would be so proud.
Tower defense hasn’t had its day just yet, judging not only by the large percentage of games on the App Store that hail from the genre, but also this insane-looking monstrosity from developer MCRO. Eight-player online co-op and an additional dimension are the game’s selling points, as is an 8-bit soundtrack, which may or may not pillage the sanctity of your eardrums.
At first blush, the environs and first-person perspective of puzzle platformer Q.U.B.E. might look familiar. The game tasks you with manipulating a series of coloured three-dimensional cubes that have various effects on the environment.
Ken Silverman was definitely on to something with that voxel stuff. The man was batty about them before they were big and now, everyone’s getting in on the action. The latest is this upcoming Xbox Live Indie Games title called, simply, Block Zombies.
