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Free indie games "magazine" launches
A new online magazine launched. Before we say something nice about it, a gripe: What's up with formerly usable websites deciding to bundle their content in user unfriendly PDF and chop it up in such a way that it must be printed in order to be understood and enjoyed? Instead of creating friendly layouts that are legible online, some websites instead perversely encourage readers to print out all of these web pages. What gives? It's annoying for us, and lethal for our leafy cohabitants. Plus, those of us who rely on RSS for our news usually can't even get at all the content once it's been stuffed into a PDF. Argh! Awful and abusive format choice aside, we welcome and congratulate the staff of Game Tunnel Magazine on a successful inaugural issue. There are some nice touches here: the scoring system for game reviews sports refreshing simplicity. The breadth and depth of the magazine also impress. Still, as with all first efforts, there are some rough edges. For instance, the nifty game scoring system is grafted like a Frankenlimb to rather pedestrian, wordy game reviews. The scores would work better at the end of snappier, more pithy reviews. (Advice for fixing this issue: less IGN-style writing, more Pitchforkmedia.) Game Tunnel's best feature is its mere existence: more writing on and about indie games can only bring much-needed positive attention. [Via EFYtimes]
Indie incidents in the month of May
Partially as a rebuke to an earlier article on the subject of the sparsity of indie game releases and partially because they can, Gametunnel has posted an article featuring just over ten reviews of independent games released this month. The titles reviewed range from Lux, a Risk-type game that features several scenarios based on historical battles (if you're a Risk fan, drop everything and download this game immediately) to Eets, a "solid and original puzzle game."An fun little indie game that I discovered recently is Open Fire, a casual point-and-click shooter which was released a few days ago. What indie games have you discovered lately?[Thanks, Russell Carroll]
