I was checking out this years Independent Games Festival this morning. There are quite a few impressive games.
I think I was most impressed by Kisses. It’s very polished and it was made by students. Awesome work guys!
Some others that stuck out for me:
Steer Madness. It’s basically a GTA type of game except the main character is a cow trying to save animals. They claim a budget of only $10k. The graphics seem almost on par with GTA3 which is pretty impressive as well.
Creatrix was an interesting idea. It’s a tetris like puzzle game but instead you build machines and send those machines to the other guy’s side. The simplest example you can drop a wheel and send it all by itself over to the other side. More complicated you could drop a few wheels and stack other parts on top of them before you send it over. Whatever parts make it over end up being turned into boxes that stack up like blocks in tetris make it harder for the other guy to make stuff.
If you both send stuff over to each other as they cross the road between one side and the other they will fight, the stronger destroying the weaker so there’s reason to do more than send just single wheels. You can also build defense systems for your side.
Unfortunately with so many options it seems too complicated to actually get into. I mean it’s practically more complicated than the most complicated RTS game. Still, at least it’s a new idea.
There’s a ton more indy games over here. I’m going to have to check them out!
Harumph, I only play derivative, non-experimental games and their sequels (as long as they’re EA approved). Just kidding
. Thanks for the link, its nice to know there are independent game makers out there.
Wow those are some cool games. I am downloading a few now! Thanks so much for posting about it Greg, also those amazon short films were interesting as well. I have checked your site often for two years I think but this is my first comment, keep it up and good luck. My wife is from Osaka and I went there last Spring, I think we will go together to visit her family next year after we earn enough miles to get another free ticket.
I wasn’t terribly enamored of Eskimo Kisses, it seems mostly like an animal crossing rip-off.
That it resembles Animal Crossing is not the point. That it looks better than Animal Crossing and was made by a few students for free vs by Nintendo for several million dollars is what makes it impressive.
I really enjoyed playing N and my friends from schoool made Dynamite Car Plane and Stop Drop Clock… the latter won some awards elsewhere, but didn’t make it into IGF. Oh well, next year!