Gamasutra Independent Games News

Get a job: Ubisoft and others hiring now on the Gamasutra jobs board

Fri, 25 May 2012 17:05:00 -0400

In the latest postings over the last seven days, Gamasutra's jobs board plays host to roles in every major discipline, including opportunities at Ubisoft, Majesco Entertainment, Powerhead Games, and others. Each position posted by employers will appear on the main Gamasutra job board, and appear in the site's daily and weekly newsletters, reaching our readers directly. It will also be cross-posted for free across Gamasutra's network of submarket sites, which includes content sites focused on ...

Gratuitous Tank Battles highlights this week's Best of Indie Games

Fri, 25 May 2012 15:30:00 -0400

This week on "Best Of Indie Games," we take a look at some of the top independent PC Flash/downloadable titles released over this last week. The delights in this edition include a run-and-gun shooter for the Xbox Live Indie Games service, a turn-based farming simulator from the recently-concluded Ludum Dare 23 competition, a fantasy interactive fiction by Adam Cadre, plus a top-down adventure game played in a tiny, tiny world. Here's some recent highlights from ...

Indie Royale raises $25,000 for worthy causes with 'All-Charity Pack'

Fri, 25 May 2012 15:20:00 -0400

Gamasutra sister site Indie Royale has revealed that its latest PC gaming bundle, the 'All-Charity Pack', raised over $25,000 for charities hand-picked by independent developers. The bundle's generous developers each hand-picked a charity that a share of proceeds would be donated to, with Osmos developer Hemisphere Games choosing UNICEF's Haiti aid, and Blueberry Garden creator Erik Svedang picking the vital human rights work from Amnesty International In addition, Die Gute Fabrik, the creators of B.U.T.T.O.N., ...

Nordic 2012: Fez's Phil Fish on where games fit between art and design

Fri, 25 May 2012 11:49:00 -0400

Dieter Rams' 10 principles of good design have long since been an inspiration for designers everywhere. But how do they relate to video game design? How does video game design relate to other forms of design? What can video games learn from industrial design, graphic design or fashion design? What is design? What is good design? "Design is a plan, a blueprint. To design is to enact that plan. Design is a process, a deliberate ...

Nordic 2012: Curran tells gamers to look beyond genres and play everything

Thu, 24 May 2012 12:40:00 -0400

Drawing comparisons between the decline of punk rock and video games, former Zo& euml; Mode creative director Ste Curran delivered a Nordic Game Conference talk calling on people to stop dismissing Justin Bieber and to play Draw Something. Curran is probably best known for his work with Edge magazine, video game radio show One Life Left, and for fabricating a forum populated by fictional users that eventually drew media attention. After opening his talk with ...

Facepalm Games hopes to be the next big Indie Fund success story

Thu, 24 May 2012 04:11:00 -0400

When you're two young guys from Helsinki, Finland, it can be hard to get your game a) funded; b) noted by the public; and c) finished. But Facepalm Games' The Swapper is hoping to do just that after February's announcement that it is being backed by Indie Fund. Facepalm Games is primarily the work of two people, Olli Harjola and Otto Hantula. Neither has much game development experience, with Harjola developing some minor personal projects, ...

Unpacking Johann Sebastian Joust

Wed, 23 May 2012 14:26:00 -0400

In the latest installment of Ian Bogost's Persuasive Games, the developer and professor takes a look at Die Gute Fabrik's indie darling of a game and debates whether it lives up to the ideals set by its own creator. In the early 1980s, celebrated designer and GDC founder Chris Crawford coined the term "process intensity" -- an aesthetic for computer games based around whether they crunch data or simply display audiovisual assets. While the art ...

First-person shooter design: What to save, and what to frag

Tue, 22 May 2012 14:42:00 -0400

While the first-person shooter is one of the most popular video game genres around, it often relies on tried and true mechanics and concepts. That reliance on stale ideas can often lead to creative stagnation. In a group interview, Gamasutra sister site IndieGames.com gathered the opinions of six independent first-person shooter developers, who discussed where the genre should innovate, and what old tropes should be revisited or retired. But first, a bit of relevant history. ...

Indie darling J.S. Joust caught in cloning controversy

Tue, 22 May 2012 11:08:00 -0400

The latest game from Whale Trail developer Ustwo is causing quite a stir today, due to its stark similarities to Die Gute Fabrik's PlayStation Move-controlled J.S. Joust. In J.S. Joust, players hold a PS Move controller each, and must try to knock the controller in other players' hands without letting their own controller be nudged out of sync with the music that is currently playing. Ustwo's Papa Quash features a similar concept, except it is ...

Row Row Row Remote hides practical potential under goofy guise

Mon, 21 May 2012 18:49:00 -0400

Tom Sennett (RunMan and Deepak Fights Robots) has paired with Salil Malkan to create the local crowd-player Row Row Row Remote, which runs on a computer and can use dozens of phones or tablets. Though the game looks simplistic, Sennett and Malkan aim to inspire and empower developers, while exponentially increasing the amount of players involved in a local multiplayer experience and creating "new, awesome games from the ground up" instead of "shoehorning new, awesome ...