the-graveyard posts

It's always an event when a developer puts one of its games under a "pay as you want" event. It's both a good deal for consumers as well as a big news generator about the game itself. Developer Tale of Tales hopes that's the case for its "Day of the Dead" event.

From now until November 2 you can get all three of the developer's published titles (The Graveyard, Fatale and the truly terrific The Path) for a minimal price of $3 (just to cover the games' online transaction fees) but you can also go higher and pay more. If you pay more that $50 Tale of Tales will even get you a "special surprise". The proceeds will go towards funding the developers' next game The Book of 8.

[Via Rock Paper Shotgun]

"The Graveyard is a very short computer game. You play an old lady who visits a graveyard. You walk around, sit on a bench and listen to a song. It's more like an explorable painting than an actual game. An experiment with poetry and storytelling but without words. Buying the full version of The Graveyard adds only one feature, the possibility of death. The full version of the game is exactly the same as the trial, except, every time you play she may die."

Download The Graveyard Trial Demo (19 MB)
Download The Graveyard Trial Demo [Mac] (28 MB)

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.