mmorpg-tycoon posts

Welcome to a new regular feature here on Big Download. 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. A recently finished competition is the TIGSource Procedural Generation Competition, having finished up around a month ago. Since such a long time has passed, the games have had a chance to be played and decisions have had a chance to be weighed. So here is our top three and honorable mentions that were just so good that they couldn't be passed up.

We here at Big Download love indie games. From telling you about them, playing them, or offering downloads for them, we are all about helping lesser-known developers get their name out into the world. Each week on Saturday, we'll give you the Indie Wrap-up, a collection of all the indie news stories and features during the previous week.

It was a busy week in the realm of indie gaming, with the coverage of the major entries of TIGSource's Procedural Generation Competition dominating most of the indie news. We also got an interview with Vic Davis of Armageddon Empires, among other things. A great week to play indie games, that's for sure.

Features and Downloads

	Freeware Friday: Dwarf Fortress Our resident indie player James Murff takes a look at a free ASCII RTS with all the makings of greatness.
	Interview: Vic Davis of Armageddon Empires Vic Davis sat down with Big Download recently to talk about his games, his business, and his life.
	MODvelous Monday: 6/9/08 David Craddock takes his weekly gaze at mods to the ever-popular Starcraft custom maps scene, and shares two gems with us.

One of the best entries in the TIGSource Procedural Generation Competition (along with Dyson and Rescue: The Beagles), MMORPG Tycoon is a game that sets you up as the director of a failing MMORPG company. And it's better than most commercial tycoon games to boot!

The game starts you off with the base of a failing MMORPG made by the previous director. It generates this randomly, and it has balance and other issues. Your goal is to balance the game and provide the players with enough of a fun gameplay to generate hype for the game. You can change levels in zones, place towns and respawn points, and change most aspects of how the game is run. The best part, though, is that you can look at the little players scurrying around if you zoom in close enough. It even lets you see what their stats are and what they are doing! You can download the game through the TIGSource forums.