Indiecade
Latest
IndieCade early bird submission fee deadline is February 29
The early submission deadline for IndieCade ends on the final day this month, February 29, with prices jumping from $50 to $75 until the standard submission deadline ends May 1. We know procrastination is an art form, but that $25 could be spent on more essential items like ramen.IndieCade got in contact with us to help spread the word that the only major disqualification factor for a game is if it's funded by a major publisher. Beyond that, the group accepts a variety of games, which are detailed after the break.IndieCade's track record, with past winners including Limbo, VVVVVV, Superbrothers' Sword and Sworcery EP and Fez, is a great springboard for mass attention. If you're a developer or team that thinks it's got the next big indie game, take the chance and submit an application.
IndieCade's 2012 'Festival of Independent Games' accepting submissions
Indie devs take note, submissions for IndieCade's 2012 "Festival of Independent Games" are now open on the event's official website.IndieCade's track record is stellar, giving budding designers and developers the exposure their hard work deserves and the money their growing debt so richly desires. Past winners include darlings like Limbo, VVVVVV, and Superbrothers' Sword and Sworcery EP. Of course, bills only get paid if the games launch -- unlike Fez, which by our heart's count has been in development for the last seven hundred years.Teams that submit a game will receive a main festival pass and an invitation to a day-long networking and workshop event. Games selected are set to be featured during the annual IndieCade Festival from October 4 through October 7.
IndieCade 2011: Tom Sennett cares about Deepak Fights Robots
When Tom Sennett stepped on stage to pick up the Game Design award at this year's IndieCade, his entire speech suggested strongly that he doesn't, um, really care. But here's his secret: He actually does. "I take the work very seriously," he said. When it comes to Deepak Fights Robots (currently available on Mac, Windows and Linux), Sennett actually cares very much. Sure, the graphics look like they were created with free software and a mouse (they were), the action ranges from surreal to nonsensical, and the game's funky soundtrack and aesthetic (that extended even to the signs around Sennett's IndieCade display, as seen above) might make you think Deepak Fights Robots is just a joke. It is funny, but once you dive into the game mechanics at play here, there's a surprising amount of depth and insight built on just a few standard platformer-style tropes.
IndieCade 2011: Molding The Swapper out of clay
The Swapper is one of IndieCade's most fascinating finalists this year. While the trailer will definitely pique your interest about the title (it features some really interesting "create-a-clone" gameplay -- more on that in a bit), what's most incredible about this one isn't how it looks or plays. It's how it was made. The Swapper was created by Facepalm Games, which is actually two teenagers named Otto Hantula and Olli Harjola (along with a sound designer) from Helsinki, Finland. They've created a few games, "but nothing as big as this one," they told me. You may think, given the amazing textures and bump-mapping on the game, that they used some kind of high-end engine to create it. Unreal Engine 3? CryEngine, maybe? Nope. "They're actually made of clay and some other stuff," said Harjola. As in, actual physical clay, which he modeled, photographed, and then put into the game with lots of dynamic lighting. "I probed a lot of different graphic styles," he says. "I don't really like 3D modeling, but I really like doing stuff with my hands, and this is what I came up with."
IndieCade 2011: Desktop Dungeons' inspiration, past, and future
If you enjoy PC games, especially action RPGs like Diablo, but you've never once played Nethack, you probably should. No, seriously -- go, right now, download it, and check it out. Sure, it's hard, not very accessible (there are no graphics, only ASCII symbols to represent the player, items, and monsters), and enormously complicated. But it's also essentially the root of the "roguelike" genre (named after a game called Rogue), featuring random dungeons with dozens of levels, exciting turn-based combat, and plenty of unpredictable magic. Desktop Dungeons is a game that continues in that tradition, though with one important twist: While Nethack, Rogue, and all of the other roguelikes take place over huge dungeons with multiple levels and lots of complexity, Desktop Dungeons champions simplicity. It takes place on basically one screen, in one grid, and that dungeon will cause you to level up from start to finish in just about ten minutes. It's the roguelike genre, boiled down into its most essential ingredients. And it's glorious.
VVVVVV coming to 3DS in late 2011
Terry Cavanagh's topsy-turvy challenge, VVVVVV, is coming to the Nintendo 3DS courtesy of Nicalis. It'll be available on the 3DS eShop later this year, complete with "full 3D awesomeness." VVVVVV's cheerful 8-bit aesthetic will stretch across two screens now, with a real-time map on the bottom screen offering some direction in the action platformer that takes great pleasure in eschewing basic navigational rules. The 3DS version will also feature new levels and "future content updates." If you want to play VVVVVV's new incarnation before it launches, head to the ongoing Indiecade in Culver City, California, and ... track down Terry Cavanagh. Remember, it's pronounced with six Vs.%Gallery-136044%
Fez, Johann Sebastian Joust win at the IndieCade 2011 awards
The 2011 IndieCade Awards were held in Santa Monica last evening and, in a pretty informal event, Phil Fish's Fez came away with the biggest wins of the night. It received two awards, one for Story/World Design, and the second for the Best in Show prize. Johann Sebastian Joust, a physical game that challenges players to hold PlayStation Move controllers still while getting audio feedback in musical form, also picked up two awards: one for Best Technology, and another award for Impact on the community. Tom Sennett's manic Deepak Fights Robots won the award for best Gameplay Design, Superbrothers' Sword and Sworcery EP picked up the award for Visuals, and Proteus, in which players are offered up a musical environment to explore, won for best Sound. Interaction went to German physical game Ordnungswissenschaft, and the Special Recognition award went to side-scrolling puzzler platformer The Swapper. The ceremony itself was short but wacky. Presenters like Samm Levine and Martin Starr (of TV's "Freaks and Geeks"), as well as web video stars Team Unicorn and Sandeep Parikh, cracked sometimes awkward jokes, while the indie developers themselves acted (unsurprisingly) indie. Joust's team used one of their awards speeches to silently demo the game, and Tom Sennett took the stage to simply announce, "I'm Tom Sennett, and I don't give a fuck!" Fish himself (above) laughed maniacally after winning his second award, and then joked that he thought the Canadian Sword and Sworcery team was going to win. "Take that, Toronto!" he joked. We'll be at IndieCade over the rest of the weekend, so stay tuned for more coverage.
Indiecade 2011 preview: Ten games to watch for
IndieCade 2011 kicks off this weekend in Los Angeles' Culver City, shining a spotlight on some of the biggest and best games the indie gaming community has to offer. The full list of finalists was announced a while ago, and all of those developers are expected to be live in person during the event, with demo units of each game available for the public to play all weekend long. The event really gets into gear this evening at the IndieCade awards, where developers and their games will be chosen for a series of categories like Fun/Compelling, and the Jury and Audience Choice awards. We'll have more on the results of those later on this evening, but before the festival begins, here's a look at ten of the biggest finalists, including some you can load up and play right now.
Activision teams with Indiecade for second Independent Games Competition
Activison's indie games competition was such a rousing success last time -- from its announcement to the year-and-a-half of silence that followed to the reveal of winners -- that the publisher's doing it again, offering up another $250,000 to two indie developers. Activision's doing it differently this time. For one thing, right there in the press release, it notes that "Ownership of submission remains with the creator." Last time, the competition had a caveat that if Activision decided to publish the winning entry, it would own the IP. The announcement of this contest mentions nothing about an Activision publishing deal being on the table. Additionally, Activision is working with Indiecade to run this contest. Submissions are open now through December 31. Winners will be announced sometime in the next couple of years or whatever.
TUAW's Daily App: Today I Die Again
I seem to have started off the week with some quality experimental gaming on the iPhone, so let's continue that trend with this great title called Today I Die Again from indie developer Daniel Benmergui. I met Daniel at IndieCade 2009 in Culver City, CA, and this is one of a few "games" he's brought to life. I put quotes around "games" because they're more like interactive stories. Benmergui's apps combine sometimes absurd graphics with words and sounds to create vignettes of experience, sometimes uplifting and witty, and sometimes sad and thoughtful. As of this writing the app is a free download, though I'm not sure how long it will stay that way given that it's being featured as a Free App a Day. But even if the price has gone back up, you can play through the game in its entirety for free online, then go buy the app if you want to support Benmergui and his terrific work. Make sure to play some of his other titles, too. I especially like I Wish I Were the Moon and Storyteller, but they're all good. Benmergui was doing his work even before Apple's platform was publicly available, but the App Store has been and continues to be a great breeding ground for very independent developers. Maybe we'll do a whole week here of interesting experimental games like these.
TUAW's Daily App: Hunters' Moon
Hunters' Moon is more of an experience than anything. It's a very beautiful app in a lot of ways, and it does have some game elements, but really it's a chance to sit and enjoy a piece of software that evokes a mood and an atmosphere. It was more or less inspired by a talk given by Brandon Boyer at last year's IndieCade conference; I did go to that show, but I didn't see Boyer's talk, unfortunately. Hunters' Moon is a great example of how personal and how simply beautiful video games can be. As the app's description says, it's "an interactive illustration and a drawing that shares an idea through game mechanics. It is best heard with headphones and played patiently." We get so caught up in the give and take of the business of software and the functionality of what we download and use that sometimes we neglect to see how powerful just sitting and enjoying these games can be. Give Hunters' Moon a try if that sounds intriguing. This iPad-only game is US$1.99 on the App Store.
IndieCade 2010: Spirits preview
This past weekend at IndieCade 2010 in Los Angeles, I bumped into our old buddy Steph Thirion. He's the creator of the great Eliss iPhone app and a title that he's still working on called Faraway, which despite still being in development, was actually chosen as an IndieCade finalist this year. He introduced me to a developer named Marek Plichta, whose German company, Spaces of Play, was showing off another iPhone finalist called Spirits. I asked for a quick demo and got to check out the game in progress. Spirits will instantly be intriguing to anyone who's a fan of the old Lemmings title (which hasn't officially made it to the App Store yet, though there are a few games like it). Spirits' basic gameplay is the same as Lemmings'. A set of creatures slowly enters an environment, and it's your job to guide those creatures (or at least some number of them) to an exit by using certain abilities that they have. Where Spirits really innovates is in its look and feel. Rather than little cartoony, pixelated creatures, you feel like you're controlling beautiful little beings. When the wind physics start to do their thing, the experience is pretty magical.
TUAW's Daily App: feelforit
I visited IndieCade here in LA this past weekend, and I got to play some of the best indie games on offer over the past year. There are a few more write-ups on upcoming iPhone and iPad titles coming out later on today, but feelforit is one of the finalists that's already out for you to download (for free) on the App Store, so I suggest you give it a try. Developer Chris DeLeon is quite a character -- he made "an experimental interactive thing every day for ~7 months" for a game-a-day project. Just loading up feelforit shows you what he's talking about: interactive experiences that make you consider the world from a new angle. That's exactly what feelforit does -- it offers up random puzzles that require you to tilt the iPhone or iPad to a certain place in order to line up colored lines in the right locations. Even after playing around with the app for a while, I still feel like I have no acuity for it (pardon the angular pun). But DeLeon was right when he told me that you can't think your way through it. You need to move the iPhone around until it "feels" like you're in the right place. It's barely a game since there's no time limit or requirement; there's just a reward once you've reached your goal. It's fascinating, though, and even more so because it only uses the iPhone's accelerometer, not the gyroscope or compass. Anyway, the concept is hard to explain, but just trust me and give the game a download. DeLeon and his games are one reason that the iPhone and the App Store are so popular with indie developers -- they can easily release their experiences to a wide audience without having to worry about commercial pressure. App Store customers should be glad to have them around.
IndieCade 2010 award winners announced
Last night's IndieCade 2010 awards ceremony recognized some of the best independently-developed games released over the past year, as well as Tim Schafer, who was not released over the past year. The full list of winners can be found after the jump. You're probably familiar with some of them, provided your gaming tastes wander off the beaten path -- there's Playdead's haunting platformer Limbo, Ian Bogost's Atari 2600 gem A Slow Year, and Steph Thirion iPhone title Faraway, which won something called the "Sublime Experience Award." We're sure the other honors are just as prestigious, but that's the best name for an award we've ever heard.
Tim Schafer to be honored with lifetime achievement award at IndieCade 2010
IndieCade will be awarding its Honorary Trailblazer Award for Lifetime Achievement to none other than Tim Schafer, he of the Secret of Monkey Island series, Psychonauts and most recently Brütal Legend. Schafer was chosen for the honor as a role model to indie gamers everywhere, and for personifying "the risk-taking, boundary pushing spirit at the heart of the indepedent gaming community," according to a statement from the conference. IndieCade 2010 takes place in about a week on October 8-10, 2010 in Culver City, California. Schafer will get his award presented to him by former (and current) colleague Ron Gilbert at the ceremony on Thursday night, hosted by Levar Burton.
TUAW's Daily App: Osmos for iPad
I first saw Osmos last year at the IndieCade festival in Culver City, California, and a few months back, (creators) Hemisphere Games shared the news that they were bringing the excellent art title to Apple's platforms. Now, Osmos for iPad has been released on the App Store, and it's just as beautiful and entrancing as the original indie game. The idea is that you control a kind of planet/blob thing by floating around a space-field; your goal is to "eat" the orbs that are smaller than you are by touching them. The challenge, however, is that the more you move, the smaller you get, so the goal becomes to navigate without becoming smaller than the orbs you need to eat. That may sound confusing, but the extremely ambient game is anything but. Excellently detailed graphics, a great electronic soundtrack, and intelligently considered controls make for a really intoxicating experience. I can tell you firsthand, especially since I heard from Hemisphere a few times during the development of this one, that a lot of thought has been put into this title and how to best implement it on the App Store. The game is US $4.99, but for the excellent experience you'll get from it on the iPad, it's more than worth the price. If you're looking for a great, original gaming experience on Apple's magical tablet, Osmos is it.
IndieCade 2009: The finalists
IndieCade 2009 was held in Culver City, CA this past weekend, and the local art galleries and restaurants were filled with independent games and their developers from all over the world. The festival billed itself as the "video game Sundance" and lived up to this self-made reputation, putting 29 different indie games on display, both throughout the weekend and during a Thursday night opening ceremony MC'd by Uncharted 2's Richard Lemarchand (shown above with festival founder Stephanie Barish).We've rounded up the festival's finalists in the gallery below. You may be familiar with a few of them, including Twisted Pixel's The Maw and a selection of well-known iPhone titles, but all of these titles deserve your attention -- and a playthrough!%Gallery-74606%
Indie party game beats New Super Mario Bros. Wii to the jump
The most identifiable new feature of New Super Mario Bros. Wii is the casually competitive multiplayer. Players are ostensibly competing for coins and score, but the gameplay is designed to encourage a fluid combination of cooperation and competition. The one game we had a chance to try at the IndieCade booth, Octopounce, features almost the exact same friendly-competition between jumping characters -- and it was released two months before anyone knew about Miyamoto's latest.Octopounce, by game designer Anna Anthropy and artist Saelee Oh, allows up to four players to control a little pixel octopus in a hand-painted underwater backdrop. The goal is to jump up and catch as many fish as possible, and each player can bounce on the other characters to reach the fish. Inactive player avatars remain on the screen, sleeping, so they can be used as convenient platforms. There's no real score -- an octopus becomes more opaque as it eats fish, and commentary about the game's progress appears in a text crawl at the bottom of the screen.Of course, NSMB Wii features divergent gameplay elements, like precision platforming and enemies, but in terms of the newest mechanic -- the multiplayer bouncing -- this game, designed for the Game Over/Continue? exhibit during GDC, anticipated that element before Nintendo revealed it. It sort of makes sense, then, that Octopounce is inspired by Super Mario War, a homebrew effort to make a multiplayer Mario experience -- but NSMB Wii resembles Octopounce more closely than it does Super Mario War.
Joystiq interview: Chasing pie in The Misadventures of PB Winterbottom
Everyone loves pie, and this year's IndieCade International Festival made our favorite delicious pastry even better, marrying it with time travel in The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom, one of the event's more interesting finalists. A product of late night brainstorming and drawing more than a little inspiration from silent film, the game offers an unique blend of platforming and puzzle solving as players guide the mischievous Winterbottom on his single-minded quest for more pie. We recently jumped at the opportunity to speak with the game's creator, Matt Korba, and over the course of the interview we picked his brain on a variety of topics, from the title's origin as a thesis project to similarities with fellow indie time travel experiment, Braid. And of course, pie.
Joystiq interview: Spooning with Dark Room Sex Game creators
One of the more unique finalists in this year's IndieCade International Festival, Dark Room Sex Game was a student project from the IT University of Copenhagen that require players to cooperatively "reach climax" by finding a mutual rhythm (by shaking a Wii remote) and speeding it up. We had a chance to speak with with developers Douglas Wilson and Dajana Dimovska about the origins of the game (and some its more humorous promotional material):Douglas Wilson: So let me introduce myself more formally - I'm DougDajana Dimovska: And I am Dajana%Gallery-32382%
