independent-games-festival posts

If we were to judge a competition by simple the number of entries received, then the 2010 edition of the Independent Games Festival is already a huge hit. The 12th annual indie games competition had 306 entries for its Main Competition, which is its highest number in its history.

You can check out all of the entries at the IGF's official web site.All the games submitted will be reviewed by over 150 judges. The finalists will be named in several categories in January and the winners will be named in a ceremony to be held at the Game Developers Conference in March 2010 in San Fransisco.

This demo is for the unique rhythm-based action game (played in reverse) Retro/Grade, a game that was a finalist at the 11th annual Independent Games Festival (IGF). The demo can be played on the PC using a keyboard, gamepad controller or USB guitar controller if you have one. A full game is expected to release for the PC and PlayStation Network. The game trailer and system requirements can all be seen after the jump.

"Rick Rocket has just saved the universe! Unfortunately, the massive destruction he left in his wake has caused a temporal anomaly that has reversed the flow of time. The player must assume control of Rick's spacecraft and fight through the epic space battle... in reverse! Retro/Grade is an innovative game that fuses the white knuckle thrills and over the top visuals of a shooter with the broad appeal of a rhythm game. Players are forced to dodge enemy projectiles while positioning the ship to be in the correct place to fire their lasers when their shots come back to them."

Download Retro/Grade IGF Demo (31 MB)
Download HD Retro/Grade Trailer (52 MB)

It's the biggest outlet for independent game developers to get their titles notice and today applications opened up for the 2010 version of the annual Independent Games Festival. Developers have until November 1 to submit their games to the festival for the main contest. November 15 is the deadline for entry for the student portion of the festival. Finalists for the main competition will be revealed on January 4 with the student competition finalists revealed on Jan. 11. As usual the winners in both divisions will be announced at a ceremony during the Game Developers Conference in San Fransisco on March 11.

Winning one or more categories in previous IGFs has been a stepping stone for the games and their development teams to get noticed including titles like Audiosurf, World of Goo and Darwinia; This year the games and their dev teams will be competing for nearly $50,000 in prizes in several categories including the $20,000 Seumas McNally Grand Prize.

Wednesday night was also the night that the Game Developers Conference hosted the awards ceremony for the 11th annual Independent Games Festival, The largest festival/competition devoted to indie game development. The big winner of the night was the unusual 2D title Blueberry Garden which won the Seumas McNally Grand Prize of $30,000 .

Other winners included Cortex Command which won both for Technical Excellence and the Audience Award. The Excellence in Visual Art category went to Machinarium which the Excellent In Design award was given to Musaic Box. BrainPipe scored the Excellence in Audio award and the Innovation Award went to Between. Tag: the Power of Paint was the winner of the Best Student Game Award and the Direct2Drive Vision Award went to Osmos. Make sure to check out our recent multi-part feature on all the nominees for the 2008 IGF awards.

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.

With the IGF finalists announced, game makers only have a short while longer to find out the best of the best in indie games from last year. From the best overall game to the one with the most impressive art, there's several different categories for indie game designers to aspire to be the top of. This week we're going to take a look at a few of the games that have made it to the finals.

Well, we've seen all the other categories that the IGF has to offer, so it's time for the biggest and baddest category of them all: the Seamus McNally Grand Prize finalists. All of these games of the best that the IGF has to offer, so we've decided to replace the Indie Showcase this week with the final edition of the IGF Finalist Showcase. Now take a look at some of the games that you will probably be drolling over buying in the next year!

With the IGF finalists announced, game makers only have a short while longer to find out the best of the best in indie games from last year. From the best overall game to the one with the most impressive art, there's several different categories for indie game designers to aspire to be the top of. This week we're going to take a look at a few of the games that have made it to the finals.

While there are many important categories in any competition, most revolve around the visual and gameplay aspects of a game. When a competition includes an audio category, some dismiss it as merely a category for the audiophiles. But audio has more to do with a game than most people realize. Audio is part of what binds a game together into a coherent whole and helps define it. Great audio can turn a decent game into a phenomenal one, and bad audio can take that same game and make it terrible. It is often overlooked, but not by the IGF judges! Here's five of the best entries for those that know that audio plays a pretty big role.

With the IGF finalists announced, game makers only have a short while longer to find out the best of the best in indie games from last year. From the best overall game to the one with the most impressive art, there's several different categories for indie game designers to aspire to be the top of. This week we're going to take a look at a few of the games that have made it to the finals.

While a lot of players say they want new gameplay, innovative design, or awesome technical prowess, this isn't the majority. No the majority of players want clean, crisp, and altogether nice graphics in their game. If the graphics don't fit, then players assume the rest of the game doesn't fit either. From audio to gameplay to narrative is included in this. Players are a fickle lot, and they want eye candy. So here's the five best entries in the visual arts (AKA graphics) category of the IGF competition.

With the IGF finalists announced, game makers only have a short while longer to find out the best of the best in indie games from last year. From the best overall game to the one with the most impressive art, there's several different categories for indie game designers to aspire to be the top of. This week we're going to take a look at a few of the games that have made it to the finals.

While games have to be innovative and technically competent, they should also be fun. Everyone loves a game that challenges the preconceived notions of gameplay in a way that is incredibly fun and engaging. Whether this means combining existing gameplay elements into something new or pulling new designs from the void in an effort of pure creativity doesn't matter. All that matters in the end product, and in the case of these five IGF finalists, their designers knew what they were doing. These end products are great!

With the IGF finalists announced, game makers only have a short while longer to find out the best of the best in indie games from last year. From the best overall game to the one with the most impressive art, there's several different categories for indie game designers to aspire to be the top of. This week we're going to take a look at a few of the games that have made it to the finals.

The most sought after quality of a game in the here and now is not how pretty it looks, how realistic the sound is, or even how fun it is. What matters most in a sea of look-a-likes is the all-important trait of innovation. An innovative game can get much more mileage than your average fun-but-simple experience, as people will talk about it even if it does not offer anything new in the realm of game4play or entertainment. Sometimes being made to think is a refreshing change of pace, after all. So here's five of the most innovative entries in the IGF competition.