The-Maw posts

Today seems to be a day for indie game development news. This morning OnLive announced that the streaming PC/Mac game service has opened up its SDK and development tools for independent game creators to get their game titles on OnLive's cloud servers. Developers interested in such a deal can email partners@onlive.com for more info.

In related news, OnLive will have yet another weekend sales deal starting on Friday at 5 pm Eastern standard time and running until 2 am Eastern time on September 20. A list of OnLive's indie games will be on sale at 50 to 75 percent off their normal prices for that time period. The games included in the sale are:

AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! - A Reckless Disregard for Gravity
Brain Challenge
Defense Grid: Gold
Madballs in Babo: Invasion
The Maw
Shatter
Trine
World of Goo

[Via email press release]

If you wanted to get into the indie games scene but were afraid to do so, Direct2Drive has just revised its Indie Games Bundle sale for its customers. For a limited time you can get 10 of the most well known and acclaimed indie games in one shot for just $29.95. That's compared to a price of $134.50 if you had to buy each game individually.

The games in the bundle include World of Goo, Puzzlegeddon, Gish, The Maw, Braid, Cogs, AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! -- A Reckless Disregard for Gravity, Osmos, Machinarium and Crayon Physics Deluxe. All of the above games are good in our opinion and some are true classics. It's a deal that you don't have to steal.

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

Games from independent developers continue to gain more and more traction, especially in this economy with smaller development teams making titles that are original and outside the normal mainstream game design. Beginning today in Culver City, California (just outside of LA), the annual IndieCade festival puts the spotlight on that growing genre.

From now until Sunday, the festival will showcase a number of indie game titles including well known games such as The Maw, Zeno Clash, and The Path. In addition to showing the games, there will be speeches and panel discussions with people like Will Wright who will give the keynote speech on Saturday night. Tickets for the event are being sold at the IndieCade web site.

Last month, Austin-based Twisted Pixel released two small downloadable content updates for their indie platform action game The Maw. Both the River Redirect and Brute Force levels were described as "deleted scenes" from the final game and were offered at $1.25 each

This week Twisted Pixel has announced that a third small DLC for The Maw will be released next Wednesday, April 29. Titled Speeder Lane, it will also cost a mere $1.25 to download. It will feature the game's main characters Frank and Maw stealing and piloting a speeder vehicle. Destruction ensues and it will also feature a good old-fashioned boss fight as well. This is described as the final DLC that will be released for the game.

Insomniac Games, Sony's poster-child for great PlayStation games, is often described as being a developer with Pixar-like qualities. Games that any child or adult can play and enjoy thanks to the layer of adult humor underneath a child-like outer coating. However, The Maw kicks the notion that Insomniac Games has a monopoly on Pixar-like games in the rear and straight out the window. This delightfully colorful romp, while not without its problems, is exactly what the doctor ordered for an industry filled with testosterone-driven games and games for grandma. It's no wonder that The Maw was the Audience Choice at PAX 10 and an IGF finalist.

Valve has already added a number of features to its Steamworks suite of game development tools. Things like Steamworks achievements, community features and more have been added to the list that game developers can put in their titles. This week Valve announced that Steamworks now supports in-game downloads of new content for games.

The first example of this new features is for The Maw, the just released PC port of the Twisted Pixels Games-created action platformer. Two new levels can now be downloaded in the game thanks to the new Steamworks feature. Valve states that the DLC feature can be used for any Steam game, even those that are also available in retail stores and on other download sites.

This playable demo is for the independently developed adventure game, The Maw. The Maw was honored with the Audience Choice Award in the 2008 PAX-10 showcase of independent games, and is a finalist at this year's Independent Games Festival for Technical Excellence. The game is available now and can be purchased via Steam or Greenhouse.

"The pinnacle of alien evolution, Maw is a cowardly fat blob concerned mostly with snacking and lounging. He can, however, absorb the traits of anything he eats, is virtually indestructible, and can grow to unlimited size. If he wasn't a danger to all life in the universe, he'd make the perfect pet. In this action/adventure game, he's the best friend of our hero Frank, and only by working together can Maw eat their way to freedom."

Download The Maw Demo (190 MB)

World in Conflict: Soviet Assault: PC owners will be able to download this stand alone expansion pack to the terrific 2007 RTS game this week. It's set in the 1990s where the Cold War never ended and the Soviet Union stages a full scale invasion of the US. The expansion from developer Massive Entertainment and publisher Ubisoft adds six new single player missions on the Soviet end of things along with two new multilayer maps. If you don't have the original game you can also pick up World in Conflict Complete in retail stores this week. it has both the original game and the expansion pack.

Hothead Games is best known for their work developing the first two chapters of the downloadable RPG-adventure game Penny Arcade Adventures. Today the developer announced that it would be branching out by porting two acclaimed Xbox Live Arcade games to the PC and Mac platforms.

Specifically it will be handling the Macintosh port for the acclaimed puzzle-action game Braid (it's also coming to the PC as well). Hothead will also handle the digital distribution of the Mac version. In addition, Hothead will handle the PC port of The Maw, the Xbox Live Arcade action-adventure title from developer Twisted Pixel Games. Hothead claims these two games are "only the tip of the iceberg" in terms of their plans to bring other indie games to the PC and Mac platforms.