Indie

During GDC 2010 on Thursday night the award ceremonies for the 2010 Independent Games Festival were held. While more and more contests and awards have been launching as of late for the indie games scene, the IGF still remains the most prestigious of all these awards with many award winners turning into big critical and sales hits.

The top award, the $20,000 Seumas McNally Grand Prize for Best Independent Game, was won this year by Monaco, the co-op themed crime caper title from developer Pocketwatch Games. Monaco also won in the Excellence in Design category. In the Vision Award category, which nets the winning team $10,000 as sponsored by Direct2Drive, the winner was Max and the Magic Marker, the unique puzzle-drawing game from developer Press Play. You can check out the full list of winners after the jump.

The indie game scene is not only getting bigger it's also getting more incestuous. Witness today's announcement of the new developer Tomorrow Corporation. Besides having a cool name and retro logo, the new company was co-founded by Kyle Gabler, who also is the co-founder of the two man team at 2D Boy, makers of the terrific puzzle game World of Goo.

For Tomorrow Corporation, Gabler gets a bigger team; besides himself there is Allan Blomquist and Kyle Gray. All three men were formerly employed at Electronic Arts. There no word yet on what Tomorrow Corporation's first game will be like. There's also no word on what Gabler's involvement in his new company means for the future of 2D Boy.

Welcome to Freeware Friday, a weekly column showcasing excellent games that you can play free of charge!

There are games that are replayable thanks to how complex the interaction of gameplay and story mechanics are. There are games that are replayable due to their incredible multiplayer component. Then there are games that are replayable simply because they are fun. Rescue: The Beagles falls solidly into this last category. It's not particularly hard to understand, anyone can play, but it consistently draws you back with charming graphics, good visuals, and entertaining gameplay. We originally covered it for the TIGsource competition that spawned it, but it's time we went more in-depth, especially since it's the only game from that competition we continually find ourselves returning to.

We don't know how your week has been but ours has been kind of crazy and its just the week before GDC starts. So like we always do around this time we like to sit back and relax with some games. If you are looking to do the same and save some money while you are at it, we have some suggestions for you:

• For this weekend only three indie game developers have put three of their titles in a special price bundle. From now until March 9 you can get Gratuitous Space Battles (plus its expansion pack The Tribe), Solium Infernum, and AI War (plus its expansion pack The Zenith Remnant) for just $49.99. Normally you would pay $90 to get all three games.
• Steam has a few weekend sales including Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising for just $7.49 and the casual game Toki Toki for a mere $2.49. They also have a new Railworks bundle with the original game and four of its DLC content together for just $29.99, a 66 percent savings;
• Direct2Drive has put all of its Mac-based games on sale from now until March 11 with some games selling for 50 percent off their normal prices. They have also put their Sims 2 and Sims 3 bundles on sale for 50 percent off. Finally Flock is on sale for just $3.95.
• Impulse has quite a number of games on sale including sales of all of their Hearts of Iron related titles.
• GamersGate also has several games on sale including the original Condemned for just $3.79.
• GoG.com has put Real Myst and Uru: Complete Chronicles on sale for 25 percent off.
• Global Agenda's web site has cut the price for the recent MMO for this weekend only to $39.99. Also a two-pack price is just $69.99 and a four pack price is just $119.99.
• Finally Microsoft's Games For Windows Live client has put Street Fighter IV on sale for $19.99 this weekend.

In a somewhat unusual move, publisher Electronic Arts has revealed that they have bought the publishing rights to two upcoming and highly anticipated downloadable indie games. The titles are Shank, the action title from developer Klei Entertainment, and DeathSpank, the humorous action-RPG from classic LucasArts adventure developer Ron Gilbert and the team at Hothead Games.

While EA's publishing deal for Shank includes the PC (to be released sometime this summer) their deal for DeathSpank is for consoles only. However, PC fans shouldn't panic just yet as Hothead Games could have kept the PC publishing rights to itself. It owns the indie-themed PC game download service Greenhouse and could distribute any PC version of DeathSpank via that route. We plan to follow up with Hothead to get some more clarification on the matter.

Update: We have now spoken to Hothead Games' PR content who told us that they are not able to talk about a PC version of DeathSpank at this time.

The independent game development community has seen some major success stories in the past few years with small and even one-man teams creating PC games that have been both popular and received critical acclaim. Now a number of the more successful indie game developers are teaming up to create a new source of money for their fellow developers.

The venture is called simple Indie Fund and was established to help "indie developers get financially independent and stay financially independent." The seven backers of the fund include the two man team of 2D Boy, makers of World of Goo and Jonathan Blow, the creator of Braid. Gamasutra has some more info about Indie Fund from its spokesperson Ron Carmel of 2D Boy. More info about the venture will be announced next week at the Game Developers Conference. The first game projects to receive funding from Indie Fund will be announced "soon".

Jonathon Blow's acclaimed indie puzzle game Braid generated a ton of attention for the developer. Now he and a small team are working on his next project, titled The Witness. Over the weekend he launched a blog site about the game and decided to post a few concept artwork pieces from the game, followed by some early screenshots

The concept artwork comes from an artist named Eric Urquhart. Some of the art depicts a rather fantasy-looking village which the captions say is surrounded by a force field. There's also a blog post about the lighting details for the game's engine that shows off some screenshots such as the one above (although he doesn't really want them to be called screenshots yet since the elements are still place holders). There's no word about gameplay in The Witness yet but it reminds us a lot of The Prisoner at this point, which is a good thing.

The Independent Games Festival awards a lot of stuff on their own and they will do so again next month during the 2010 Game Developers Conference, However one of their awards, the Vision Award, is given out with the help of the PC game download site Direct2Drive. The award gives $10,000 to a game that has "new ideas and concepts that will help spark innovation in gaming".

The five finalists this year for the second annual award include games about a daredevil cyclist, a magic drawing device and a living piece of meat. We will see which one of the five games below gets the Vision Award during the IGF 2010 ceremonies on March 11.

• HurricaneX2
• Joe Danger
• Max and the Magic Marker
• Nyxquest: Kindred Spirits
• Super Meat Boy

The Direct2Drive download site has offered up bundles of a number of indie games for limited times on a couple of previous occasions. Now the service is doing it again as it puts together 10 of the most well known indie games together in one downloadable package from now until March 12.

The bundle costs just $29.95 which is a massive savings compared to the $134.50 that you would have to spend for each game separately. The list includes the puzzle game Cogs which just won $100,000 in GameStop's first annual Indie Game Challenge. The full list of games in the bundle is below:

Braid
Osmos
World of Goo
Cogs
Machinaruim
The Maw
Crayon Physics Deluxe
Aaaaa!
Puzzlegeddon
Gish

Introversion Software's next big game got a big reveal over the weekend with the first real gameplay details on Subversion. Now the developer has released the first true in-game screenshots from the tactical spy-action game. The development of the game itself is still in its early stages but what has been revealed is most promising.

According to a post on the game's official blog site, the game will have players control "a team of skilled operatives" as they attempt to infiltrate a building with tons of security measures. Sometimes players will be able to accomplish missions without any alerts. Other times the alarms will be tripped and then a plan of escape will have to be made. While the screenshots released so far are not the game's final look, it will be designed to look like 3D blueprints. Overall it looks like Subversion, even in this early stage, is going to be a game to look forward to playing.

Gallery: Subversion Screenshots

Introversion Software was one of the first small innovative indie game development teams to emerge in the new digital download era. Games like Uplink, Defcon, and Darwinia showed a preference for simple graphics but terrific gameplay. For some time the company has been working on their next big project called Subversion. Now Rock Paper Shotgun reports on a brief gameplay demo of the title that was shown at a BAFTA event in London.

While the dev team said the demo is very early, the report describes the game as using a procedural system to generate a virtual city. Then the action shift to one floor in one building in the city where the objective is to take out a server room. From what is described, Subversion seems to be about spies, infiltration and sabotage. The game is still a long way off (indeed the developer hints that a proper demo for the game is still a year away) but it certainly seems to fit in what Introversion has done in the past.

GameStop's first annual Indie Game Challenge promised to give $100,000 each to games made by pros and amateurs. Last night at the DICE Summit they did just that, giving the $100.000 professional award to Cogs, the impressive puzzle title made by the three man team at Lazy 8 Studio. Cogs also won two smaller $2,500 prizes for Achievement in Art Direction and Achievement in gameplay.

The $100,000 non-professional indie game award was given to Gear, a 2D puzzle platformer created by a team of students at the Digipen Institute of Technology in Redmond, Washington. In addition Altitude, a 2D side scroller from Nimbly Games, won the $10,000 Gamers Choice Award and $2,500 for Technical Achievement.

GameStop has already announced they will sponsor the second annual Indie Game Challenge which will officially launch on May 1.

The 2010 DICE Summit is well under way and Activision's CEO Bobby Kotick just dropped a huge bombshell during his keynote addess at the event in Las Vegas. According to our sister site Joystiq, he revealed the company's plans to launch a indie games competition with a $500,000 prize purse.

That's all the info that's been released about the contest so far but you can bet that we will be emailing and calling Activision to get more details. Ironically, the DICE Summit is also the place where the Indie Games Challenge, sponsored by GameStop, is scheduled to give out their two $100,000 grand prizes later tonight.

Update: Activision has just posted up a PDF file which gives a little more info about the competition including word that the grand prize will be $100,000. Submissions for the contest will start sometime in early March.

Last October, word got out that the acclaimed Xbox Live Indie game Clover was being ported over to the PC. Today, the game's developer Binary Tweed and its publisher Blitz 1Up announced that the game, renamed as Clover: A Curious Tale, will be released via digital download on March 3. The PC version retains the unique water colored art 2D art style of the original game as well as its main political themed storyline.

The PC port will contain new animations, graphics and effects along with new puzzles that make the game over twice as long to play as the original. There's also four new endings to the game along with a full voice cast, Spanish and French translation and more.

We've already had a lot of PC game sales this Valentine's Day weekend but we are not quite done yet. Even more sales have been spotted at various download sites.

• There's a new collection of six indie games (And Yet It Moves, Osmos, Auditorium, Eufloria, Machinarium, and Aztaka) that you can download and purchase for $20 from until Friday.
• Direct2Drive has the indie game The Void on sale for a mere $5.
• Steam has a 50 percent sale of all of THQ's family and casual game titles until Friday. Also the puzzle game Quantz is on sale for $2.99.
• The super hero MMO Champions Online has a permanent price cut on several download sites. You can now purchase the full game for a mere $19.99.
• Finally, Electronic Arts' online store has a three game bundle deal for he PC downloadable versions of Dead Space, The Saboteur and Dragon Age Origins for $99.95. This sale ends today.