October 15th, 2012 | By Erik Johnson
Tagged in: indie links | indie links round-up | industry news
What do titles “Colour Bind”, “FTL”, “Monaco”, “Orbitor”, “Organ Trail”, and “Wonderputt” have in common? They all have three syllables. Remarkably, they’re also games covered in today’s Indie Links.
Video: “Vornheim” Zak S Interview – IndieCade 2012 Tech Award Winner (Indie Game Reviewer)
“IGR interviews Zak S(mith) game master of “I Hit With My Axe,” a popular reality show featured at The Escapist and creator and author of Vornheim: The Complete City Kit a supplement for running city adventures in Dungeons & Dragons and source book detailing key rules, tables, monsters and places in Vornheim — the city at the center of the Axe campaign and the IndieCade 2012 Technology Award Winner.”
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Colour Bind (Joystiq)
“Indie developers are the starving artists of the video-game world, often brilliant and innovative, but also misunderstood, underfunded and more prone to writing free-form poetry on their LiveJournals. We believe they deserve a wider audience with the Joystiq Indie Pitch: This week, Melbourne developer Finn Morgan discusses the affects of color-coded gravity in Colour Bind, out today on Steam.”
If You Vote For This Game On Steam Greenlight, The Developers Might Add Linux Support. More Votes? Nude Patch. (Kotaku)
“The developers of Organ Trail, the zombified version of the educational classic Oregon Trailhave hatched a new scheme to get their game to the top of the charts on Steam Greenlight. They’ll add more features to the game, if more people vote for it. The game developers, knows as The Men Who Wear Many Hats call their plot a ‘content campaign,’ and they’re basically just scrambling. They believe they’re in the top 30 in Steam Greenlight, and they think that Valve will allow the top 10 games, as of October 15, to be sold on Steam.”
Wonderputt: Swallowed By UFO And Beamed Onto iPad (Hookshot Inc.)
“Wonderputt is eighteen holes of magic, now released for paid finger-taps rather than the free clicks in browsers of old. It’s a beautiful game – and one liable to hypnotise the businessman sitting next on the train as you dally with rocketry, henges and submarines trapped in ice.”
FTL, Fatal Frontier: Section 3 (Rock, Paper, Shotgun)
“With two sectors survived, things don’t look to good for the good ship Moggy, crewed by two Engis and a human named after cats I have known. The hull’s taken a beating, we’ve almost no cash and we don’t yet have any upgrades to speak of. Meantime, our enemies forever snap at our heels, and the challenges we’ll face in this next, Zoltan-ruled sector will likely be stiffer than that we’ve yet faced. Anything could happen, though. After all, space is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. It might even be big enough that I’ll find a gun in it somewhere. Oh, please dear lord let me find a gun.”
Doing Stealth The Monaco Way (Gamasutra)
“You’ve heard of Monaco right? The game caused a huge stir in 2010 when it won the Grand Prize and the Excellence in Design award at the IGF, despite having only started life a couple of months before the competition’s entry deadline. Shortly afterwards, the game’s developer Pocketwatch Games — aka all-round nice guy Andy Schatz — moved into the shadows to more privately concentrate on his stealth-based co-op title. Now, following successful public showings and the start of a closed beta period, Schatz is gearing up to show the world the fruits of his last few years of labor.”
A Gorgeous Indie Game That’s Giving Me Space Madness (Kotaku)
“This is Orbitor, a game from Evil Alien, an indie studio from Canberra, Australia. It’s about, well, orbits! Before you go saying it’s a fancier Angry Birds Space, don’t; I’ve actually seen this project before, at an earlier stage, and having been in development for a while it pre-dates Rovio’s game by a long shot.”
Valve On Steam Greenlight’s Failings, Fixing Them (Rock, Paper, Shotgun)
“Over the weekend, I attended Fantastic Arcade, an indie-focused gaming show in Austin, Texas. It was – as is often the case with these things – full of passion, creativity, and the guy who played that one kidin Dazed and Confused. You’ll be hearing tons more about it soon. First, though, we’ll look at what was perhaps the most incongruous moment of the event: a Valve panel. Steam Greenlight, of course, has had some pretty serious ups and downs since launching, and this panel gave the very people who are fighting to set up shop on the ubiquitous storefront a chance to voice their complaints directly. Here’s how it all went down.”
Erik Johnson (293 posts)