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The magnificent reappearing act of Richard Hofmeier
Richard Hofmeier was an early superstar of modern indie games. In 2010, he released Cart Life, an unassuming, grayscale title that he described as, "a retail simulation for Windows." In actuality, it was a poignant and powerful portrayal of modern existence. Cart Life captured the loneliness, triumphs and hopeless frustration of maintaining friendships, providing for a family and dreaming big in the capitalistic rat race, all tenderly animated in a sharp noir palate. Cart Life became an underground hit, and then a mainstream success. It landed on Steam in 2012, and in 2013, it was nominated in three categories at the Independent Games Festival Awards, where it battled giants of the day, including Hotline Miami, Kentucky Route Zero, Gone Home and FTL. Cart Life won all three categories. Hofmeier was the first-ever winner of the Excellence in Narrative prize, plus he secured the $5,000 Nuovo award for innovation and the $30,000 Seumas McNally Grand Prize. And then, he vanished.
World of Glue, Gurney, Spy Parity, more free in Mumble Indie Bungle
Pippin Barr is up to his academic tricks again, this time with a bundle of six new games based on popular indie titles as if they were misheard in conversation: Gurney, World of Glue, Spy Parity, Proteas, 30 Flights of Loathing and Carp Life. These make up the Mumble Indie Bungle, and five of them are completely free, available to download for PC and Mac on Barr's site. Carp Life – a play on IGF mega-winner Cart Life – is extra special, available for $1 or any price over it."The idea for the collection, in keeping with the titles, is that it's meant to be this set of crappy indie games that someone perhaps bought for you, mistaking them for the originals," Barr writes on his blog. "So you might excitedly unwrap your new bundle of games to find something like Subpar Meat Boy and Flour (Instead of Super Meat Boy and Flower). Not that I'm using those two titles, though both were originally near the top of the list."Gurney – a title parody of thatgamecompany's Journey – has players type out religious phrases as they scroll across the bottom of the screen, over the rolling, flickering lights of a hospital ceiling and anxious faces of doctors. The words become jumbled as the player loses consciousness, and Barr warns that eventually the game can cause seizures, so be careful with that one. Or, have fun.World of Glue is a platforming play on World of Goo, Spy Parity is a jab at Chris Hecker's Spy Party, Proteas is an experiment on Proteus and 30 Flights of Loathing is a step away from Blendo Games' Thirty Flights of Loving.Check out all the games your aging aunt thinks you're talking about on Barr's site, and buy Carp Life for whatever you think it's worth right here.
Trespassing at the IGF awards: Cart Life dev directly after his big win
Half an hour after winning three IGF awards, including the $30,000 Seumas McNally Grand Prize, Cart Life developer Richard Hofmeier stepped backstage, stripped off his suspenders and over-the-shoulder gun holster, and said he wished his game would drop dead."I want it to die, frankly," Hofmeier told Joystiq. "I can't wait for it to die. People keep resuscitating it."Don't get it wrong – Hofmeier was cripplingly humbled by the praise from the IGF, but he wasn't convinced he deserved any of it. After a big win, passionate creators usually speak of the post-awards high, of feeling unreservedly ecstatic. After picking up the IGF's grand prize, Hofmeier rode a different wave."Highs and lows I guess," Hofmeier said. "I had high opinions of the other nominees and I kind of want to share this with them. I feel like I've already overstayed my welcome with this game and I'd like it if maybe some of this esteem and elevation could go to some games that deserve it more. I already got so much more out of this game than I ever thought I would. I thought it would just be my friends and me playing this thing. The other games are so well-made."
IGF grand prize winner gives his booth away to 'Howling Dogs'
IGF Seumas McNally grand prize winner Richard Hofmeier, the man behind Cart Life, vandalized his own booth on the GDC show floor and handed it over to Porpentine, the developer behind text adventure Howling Dogs.Hofmeier hit up Porpentine on Twitter on Thursday morning, to kindly request he show Howling Dogs at his "booth thing." Oh, you know, just that booth for the awards that Cart Life totally swept last night. No big deal. Porpentine responded in the affirmative, and Hofmeier got to work tagging his own sign."IM REALLY EXCITED ABOUT HOWLING DOGS WINNING THE IGF," Porpentine later tweeted. For those at GDC, check out Howling Dogs in the IGF booth roundup in Moscone South. You can't miss it. Everyone else, play it here.
Cart Life follow-up, Blood of the Ortolan, sets the table in a few weeks
Cart Life developer Richard Hofmeier wants to launch his follow-up game, Blood of the Ortolan, in the "next few weeks or so" on PC, he told Joystiq during Wednesday's IGF awards. Blood of the Ortolan is, perhaps unsurprisingly, inspired by the humanity behind obtaining, consuming and interacting with food."It's about food," Hofmeier said. "It's a food-themed murder mystery in the way that Cart Life is a retail simulation. I haven't said much about it yet because I don't want to over-promise and under-deliver, which I did with Cart Life."That last part is debatable – at the IGF awards, Cart Life picked up the Seumas McNally Grand Prize, the Nuovo Award for innovation, and the Excellence in Narrative award, for a cash total of $38,000. Blood of the Ortolan streamlines Hofmeier's development approach: It uses only mouse and touch interfaces. Yes, touch, since he has an "explicit interest" in getting Blood of the Ortolan onto mobile devices and consoles. First he'll see if Steam is interested in putting another one of his games on its service.Blood of the Ortolan, if it flows in Cart Life's vein, will be about food only on the surface, while the true tale unfolds within the interpersonal relationships and emotional, introspective tensions of real life."Money is of concern to everyone, much more so than, say, ammunition or military fundamentals or the vocabulary of racing," Hofmeier said. "We all worry about money. Also we all have to eat and we all confront the neuroses of food. It's one of those things that mainly when we're alone we feel that we are especially perverse in our relationship to food and then we find, maybe through catharsis, through art, that other people have these experiences too and maybe we have more in common than we might have thought otherwise."Don't expect Blood of the Ortolan to take it easy after Cart Life's positive public reception."If people put up with Cart Life, I feel like I've gotta try harder to upset them," Hofmeier said.
IGF 2013: And the awards go to... Cart Life!
The 2013 IGF awards have wrapped up at GDC in San Francisco, with Richard Hofmeier and Cart Life taking home the Seumas McNally Grand Prize of $30,000, the Nuovo Award for innovation, which snags $5,000, and the Excellence in Narrative award for $3,000. Cart Life is a simulation game about the hard times facing food cart vendors in small-town, USA, and as demonstrated by the screenshot above, it's more dramatic than you may expect.If you want to brag to your friends about playing the latest in hot indie games, you can pick it up on Steam now for a sale price of $3.50.Subset Games' space-based strategy game FTL: Faster Than Light picked up two awards at IGF 2013, Excellence in Design and the Audience award. Kentucky Route Zero and Cardboard Computer grabbed the Excellence in Visual Art award, 140 got the Audio prize and Little Inferno is Technically Excellent, according to the IGF.Check out the entire list of winners below. Congrats to all the winners!
