choon posts

Since indie competitions are such a large part of the independent community, ignoring them would be very foolish. There's lots of undiscovered talent out there as well as established masters, and indie competitions are the best way to bring them out of the woodwork. They are held everywhere from TIGSource to poppenkast, and always bring together lots of great talent. Indiedaze takes the best entries from a recently finished indie competition and showcases what we think are the best of the best. Sometimes they coincide with what the original competition's top three were, sometimes they are completely different. In any case, they are always the games we liked most, and worth all the attention you can give them.

TOJam, otherwise known as The Toronto Independent Game Development Jam, is a three day annual marathon of game-making, intended to make developers create a reasonably polished and executed game. They must create the concept, graphics, and code entirely during the three day period. Needless to say, it's like an endurance trial for game developers. The third annual TOJam occurred two months ago, and the games were released for general consumption just last month. After savoring all of the delights of the competition (and trust us, there is a lot of great content), we have decided on our favorites!

There's not a lot of games quite like Choon. The only other game to have the player digging for treasure (as far as we know) is the excellent browser-based Motherload. In Motherload, however, you don't fight off enemies trying to destroy you. A TOJam 2008 competitor, Choon has you digging through a mountain of cheese with your laser to find the right cheese. Fighting off (or squishing) rats, finding a path, and various other nuances await you. On top of this, the graphics and sound are superb. It's not persistant, but it's great if you just feel like digging and not stopping. And sometimes that's all one feels like.