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Several years ago, Valve hired the DigiPen student development team behind the indie game Narbacular Drop. That team later created the original Portal title. Now Shacknews has confirmed that yet another DigiPen student dev team has also been hired by Valve. This time the people involved made the title Tag: The Power of Paint which won the 2009 Best Student Game Award at the Independent Games Festival.

The game itself lets players affect the physical attributes of the game's environment by using a paint gun. While Valve confirmed that the game's team has been hired there's no official word on what game they might be making, although there is speculation by Shacknews that the team is working on the just announced Portal 2.

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

It's not often that a game with the sort of clever manipulation of the environment like Portal comes along. For those keen on their history, though, there is Narbacular Drop, which was created by the Portal team while attending Digipen and shares the same sort of gameplay. This article is not about Narbacular Drop (although a future one might be!), but rather Tag: The Power of Paint, a game that brings to mind all the excellent gameplay innovations that Narbacular Drop displayed. It is one-of-a-kind, and here's hoping that a company like Valve takes notice, especially after it was one of the IGF Student Showcase finalists.

Gamers are often outspoken about their favorite hobby. Cries of "I could make a better game!" emanate from Internet forums, and "That's cheese!"is often heard amid the sounds of fists and feet pummeling friends in college dorm rooms worldwide.

Do you really think you could make a better game? Put down the controller, son: it's put-up-or-shut-up time.

DigiPen Institute of Technology, a video game design-centric school located in Redmond, Washington, has announced the addition of a Bachelor of Art and Bachelor of Science in Game Design degrees to its diverse array of program options.

According to DigiPen's website, the Bachelor of Science in Game Design (B.S.G.D.) degree "is designed to educate students to become technical game designers with the skills necessary to design levels, program, script, and work in this dynamic field." On a somewhat parallel track, the Bachelor of Arts in Game Design (B.A.G.D.) degree "prepares students to become artistic level designers with the skills to create worlds, levels, and the art for these."

Both the B.S.G.D and B.A.G.D. Degrees will be offered as of DigiPen's Fall 2008 semester.

DigiPen is known for having their students create games or mods and then release them for free over the internet. Hollow Point is one such game. Playing very similar to Smash TV, the player navigates each level around swarms of enemies, slaughtering them on his way to the exit. The amount of enemies is massive, but you have various power-ups and weapons to help you along, much like you would expect to have.

The graphics are simple, and lend themselves well to having lots of enemies on the screen at any one time. It's a interesting and fun game, and easily worth the download at 30mb. Like most of the freeware games we cover here, it's nothing to sink your life into, but it's a fun game to spend some time in to relax. Smoking some fools in an arena-style shooter is so relaxing.

[Via IndieGames]