audiosurf posts

So you are looking for a new experience in gaming. But the mainstream market is getting you down with its high price tags and extensive DRM. But there's a lot of great games out there that you can get cheap. The indie market is strong, and some of the best games around can be found for half the price of the price of more mainstream games like Dead Rising or Fallout 3. They've also got far less rigorous specs than their mainstream counterparts, which is also a welcome change of pace. We've got a list of some of the best indie games money can buy, ranging from the puzzle extravaganza World of Goo to the clever and addicting Armageddon Empires. So indulge in the little guy this holiday season. You won't be disappointed with the results you get.

Click on the image above to continue reading Big Download's 2008 PC Game Holiday Gift Guide

Spike TV will once again hold their own awards ceremony devoted to video games this year. Today the nominees were announced for the annual Spike TV Video Game Awards and they have all the usual suspects. The awards themselves will be show on the cable TV network on Dec. 14.

You can head on over to the Spike TV web site to check out all the nominees. The catagory of best PC game has just four games; Left 4 Dead (not yet officially released) Warhammer Online, Crysis Warhead and Spore. We are sure a lot of folks are wondering why games like Sins of a Solar Empire, Far Cry 2, Fallout 3 and others didn't get nominated in this catagory. One interesting new development is the addition of the Best Independent Game where two PC titles got nods, World of Goo and Audiosurf.

It's been the definition of a sleeper hit in 2008 as the acclaimed indie puzzle-music-racing game Audiosurf became a major hit when it debuted on Valve's Steam download service back in February. However there are those folks who haven't learned about this whole "Intertubes" or "Intraweb" or whatever the kids are calling it so they most likely haven't even heard of the title.

Now comes word that Ascaron Entertainment will be releasing Audiosurf to European retail stores beginning in October for the cheap, cheap price of 9.99 EUR. The game, which takes a person's songs and converts them into a digital looking race track, has no US retail release date. However if you are brave you could try this "World Wide Sports" thingie...

Independent Minds aims to take various aspects of indie gaming and present them to you each week. From game round-ups to design elements to interviews with prominent members of the scene, it's an exploration of what makes indie gaming great as well as what makes someone an indie.

It's a phenomenon normally only seen in amateur communities, among people that do not have the drudgery of a nine-to-five job in their field. The freelancers and visionaries, the next great creators of the future. From writing, to art, to movie-making, competitions are not so much the realm of professional-level creation but rather for those that can crank out a prototype, an early draft, or a short movie in a single weekend. For these competitions, none seems to be as interesting as those created by the independent game development company.

It's Friday which means it's time to kick back, go see a movie, hang with a significant other or maybe try out some new games. Valve's Steam service has two games in their line-up priced well below their regular price for this weekend only. One is Beyond Good and Evil, the acclaimed Ubisoft fantasy action-adventure title. It's priced at only $4.99 this weekend. Buy it and check out its goodness before Ubisoft releases its announced sequel to the game.

The other game on sale at Steam this weekend is the indie music rhythm-racing title Audiosurf. For just a few days you can buy and download the acclaimed title for just $4.99, which is a near-perfect price to see what all the fuss is about.

Talk about making a game better on a regular basis. Audiosurf has already received one free, massive update, and now comes another one. This one, though, is interesting. This new update allows the players to make their own game modes by changing the names of the song they are playing. They can do so by adding one or multiple tags after the title of the song. We have to say that this sort of improvements to an already great game just impress us all that much more. An explanation of the system can be found on the Audiosurf forums, and the full list of tags can be found after the break or in the Steam update.

At a recent Valve press event, Audiosurf creator Dylan Fitterer spoke on a number of topics related to his Independent Games Festival award-winning title, including why he chose to release his title on PC rather than join the stampede of developers flocking to consoles. Gamasutra was in attendance at the event and offers a synopsis of Fitterer's insightful talk.

As noted by Gamasutra, Audiosurf's success on Valve's Steam digital distribution service "spoke to Valve's unique position in the industry. Still an independent studio, the company is blurring the lines between developer and publisher within the context of digital distribution." Audiosurf quickly became Steam's most successful title in Feburary of this year when it was released, both in terms of revenue and units sold. Priced at a thrifty $9.95, Audiosurf's generated revenue is especially impressive.

Audiosurf's success has pleased Fitterer, who eloquently summarized the process which propelled him from an unknown to veritable indie developer: "I made it basically by myself, I released it on Steam, and it's changed my life. It's been a really big success, way beyond my expectations."

Fitterer's decision to release Audiosurf on the PC had to do with the relative ease of releasing the title when compared to consoles. "I just kept working on it, and eventually I had Audiosurf. I didn't have to ask anyone to release it ... Nobody could turn it down."

Foregoing expenses such as development kits enabled Fitterer to save money, an important factor for any independent developer. The PC's design as an open-ended platform allowed Fitterer to easily and cheaply create content for his customers, something he considers paramount to Audiosurf's success. One such feature: automatic leaderboard generation for any track a user plays.

"On the PC, I have an open dialogue with the customers, a real direct line On the internet, it's emails, it's chats, forums, and social networks. Consoles, to me, are kind of across the wall from all that. There are over 10,000 YouTube videos of Audiosurf. I love that stuff."

Visit Gamasutra for the full Audiosurf postmortem.

The music-puzzle-racing game Audiosurf had already received a bunch of critical acclaim before Valve released it on its Steam download service earlier this year. Now the Invisible Handlebar developed game has become both a critical and sales success and it looks like others want to jump on its considerable bandwagon.

Today the UK based music publisher Aardvark Records announced a deal that will give Audiosurf access to the music publisher's lineup of songs. The inital deal includes 160 songs from bands like Yahel, Zetan Spore, Jeff Alford, Eric M, Little Spitfire and others and the game will allow links to the bands' websites as well as other info on their songs. It seems that Rock Band and Guitar Hero might have to start getting worried that Audiosurf might take away some of their thunder.

For those of you who own Audiosurf, (and if you don't then go buy the game, it's cheap!) Dylan Fitterer -- the creator of the indie smash hit -- has released a pretty large update to the game that's completely free. The updated -- titled the FM update -- addes in last.fm audioscrobbling, comments tab on every song's scoreboard, customized player news for the song loading screen and tons more changes. Apparently many of these alterations were made in response to community suggestions and requests.

It's always nice to get big, free updates for games you've already played for hours. Giving players a reason to go back to a game will only remind them of how much they loved it to begin with, especially when things have been improved. We hope this is a continued effort from Dylan with both Audiosurf and his other projects.