tag-the-power-of-paint posts

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.

Every year at the Penny Arcade Expo, a group of 50 industry experts picks a group of ten indie games to showcase to the world. It's a great way for people to become exposed to innovative and interesting indie games that they may have never heard of. The list of this year's PAX 10, as it is called, has just been released, and funnily enough, six out of the ten games are PC native!

Some notable games in this year's PAX 10 include IGF finalists Osmos and Machinarium, as well as student game Tag: The Power of Paint, which we have featured here on Big Download before. There is also a few console games, such as CarneyVale for the 360, and even an iPhone game! Check out the full list after the jump.

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.