office-smash 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!

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.

There was no big features this week, unfortunately. Most of our staff was gone at E3, after all! Just Freeware Friday was this week. However, the TOJam 2008 competition recently wrapped up, so there's a ton of games that were released this week! Dwarf Fortress also finally got the first update in the Army Arc, adding battles and wars to the historical records of the game.

Features

Freeware Friday: Off-Road Velociraptor Safari James Murff takes Freeware Friday to a new place: browser games.

We've yet to run across a game with such a strange, yet oddly compelling art style as Office Smash. Featuring a strange, vivisected sort of art along with an interface reminiscent of an office workplace located somewhere in Salvador Dali's mind, this TOJam 2008 competitor easily wins over the part of us that loves the macabre and bizarre. Plus, there's no goal! We do love a good sandbox game.

Office Smash is a browser game that utilizes the Unity player to great effect. Taking your character, the diligent office worker, you must destroy as much of the cubicle as possible before your skinless alien overlord boss fires you. Everything is destructible, from the books down to the desk itself. It's a great little physics sandbox, and highly recommended to anyone with some time to waste. At least, anyone who isn't creeped out by the surreal.