Indie Links Round-Up: Birds’-Eye View
Where can you see SimCity mixed with steampunk, rabbits with revenge quests, match games with endless runners? In indie games, of course, like those discussed in today’s Indie Links.
Clockwork Empires: A Preview Of Gaslamp Games’ Lovecraft-Laden Steampunk City-Builder (PC Gamer)
“Take SimCity and stuff it with steampunk. Take Dwarf Fortress and make it modern. Take Anno and dump H.P. Lovecraft into its oceans. Consider yourself mildly acquainted with Clockwork Empires, the next project of Gaslamp Games. The indies behind of Dungeons of Dredmor are creating a 3D, sandboxy city-builder teeming with 19th century imperialism. It’ll be populated by street urchins, aristocrats, volcanoes, sea serpents, war zeppelins, mad scientists, and at least one foodstuff that doubles as a building material. It’ll be irreverent, and PC-exclusive. It’ll have multiplayer. It’ll be moddable. Most of all, I think it has a chance to set a new standard for player-driven story generation in the genre.”
How A Bedroom Developer’s ‘Ugly Little Game’ Became An App Store Hit (Wired.co.uk)
“Dungeon-based puzzle app 10000000 (said “ten million”) is an unlikely autobiographical game. So unlikely, in fact, the developer doesn’t even realise how autobiographical it is.”
Mark of the Ninja: The Kotaku Review (Kotaku)
“So before starting Mark of the Ninja up, I assumed my brash nature would be at odds with what the 2D game required of me. I was right—at first. The game starts with the assumption that you are already a smooth killing machine, and the pith lies in the tension between a player’s clumsiness and the eventual embodiment of the refined ninja. The ultimate revelation comes in the transformation, in the metaphorical gain of the black belt. The game teaches you to feel at home in the shadows, to become quick on your feet, to bear the mark of the ninja proudly, with honor. And honor is one of the most important things in the game, but more on that in a second.”
Interview With ‘Dusty Revenge’ Developers, PD Design Studio (Epic Brew)
“‘Hey, thanks for having us. PD Design Studio started out 6 years ago doing various jobs, web, print, video, anything we can lay our hands on. But our very first project was actually a Flash game project. Over the years we started to focus on Flash educational-games. We must have done more than 20 of those. We found it thoroughly enjoyable to work on games but working on client-based games means we’ll never get to fulfill our inner fantasies. The studio actually has done a couple of game prototypes, but we left it at that. We had this game idea of a 2D platformer with supporting character mechanics. After talking through between ourselves, we thought let’s just do it.’”
Super Hexagon: The Joys Of Waiting (Hookshot, Inc.)
“Long story short, Super Hexagon, a game I knew about for ages, but which took its own sweet time to appear on iTunes – and then got yanked away again and is now finally back. I’m not going to tell you about it, because it’s well worth 69p, and if you’re an Androider, here’s Hexagon on Flash.”
The Killing Floor Of PAX: Welcome To Eighteen-Player Johann Sebastian Joust, Complete With Traitors (The Penny Arcade Report)
“Johann Sebastian Joust, played at the higher levels, can turn everyone into a dancer. Every man who picks up a Move controller and understands the mechanic of appropriate speed, while trying to knock out his opponents, begins to move with more grace. Every woman who learns to evade while keeping the door open for attacks becomes a ballerina. The game is not available for sale to the public, but creator Douglas Wilson is hoping to change at some point in the near future. “I really need to release this,” he told me while packing up the controllers and laptops at the end of the night. You’ll hear no argument from anyone who has been lucky enough to play the game.”
A Streamlined Experience: Dungeon Dashers (TruePCGaming)
“Andrew Sum, developer of the online multiplayer dungeon crawler, Dungeon Dashers, spoke to TPG about all things PC gaming. You will read how Dungeon Dashers was created, his early failures and achievements, thoughts about DRM, piracy and more.”
Thirty Flights Of Loving Isn’t A Game, It’s A Manifesto (Scripted Sequence)
“Well, obviously it is a game, but that’s not what I’m talking about. Brendon Chung’sThirty Flights of Loving, for those who don’t know, is a ten minute long, Quake 2-powered, short story. It’s about a heist gone wrong. That’s probably all you need to know.”
