Indie Links Round-Up: Deckplan
Today’s Indie Links deal with piracy, Playstation Plus, a puzzle platformer, a plush prototype, and paddles moved with pitches. Try saying that ten times fast (then make sure to wipe off your monitor).
We Should Be Calling The Designer Of These Games Some Kind Of Genius (Kotaku)
“Schneider’s turned out more than a dozen games in two years, a feat that’s impressive no matter what you think of his output. And that output from his RadianGames studio has been very, very good. From the hypnotic Joy Joy to the clever hybrid Inferno, Schneider’s games have taken familiar design templates and branches them out in challenging ways tweaks them to feel modern, re-invented and fresh.”
Interview: Subset Games Talk FTL (Rock, Paper, Shotgun)
“Last week Adam posted some impressions of the spaceship managing FTL, and you’re allowed to read them. And now, Craig’s spoken with its creators, Justin Ma and Matthew Davis. They talk about how the project came to be, how they’re still in shock over their massive Kickstarter success, and how it was that the game was inspired by text adventures.”
Experimental Gameplay: Audio Input Games (IndieGames.com)
“Developers created six games for the experimental gameplay project‘s July theme of audio input. The above-pictured Tone Death by Malcolm Brown uses a microphone for input; players must shatter glass by hitting the note next to it. A mismatched note equals a fiery death.”
Thomas Was Alone And A New Breed Of Reviews (Gnomes Lair)
“Thomas Was Alone is a game by Mike Bithell and Mike Bithell is one of the first indie game designers I started writing about sometime six years ago. He was still a student back then, but had already come up with more than a few intriguing ideas and was more than capable of creating beautiful games. Games like Reunion if you remember, which I deeply enjoyed and (hint, hint) would love to see evolved.”
Piracy Is A Fact Of Life, So Why Not Just Have Fun With It? (Gamasutra)
“Tackling PC game piracy is always an on-and-off talking point for indie developers. Every now and again a studio throws out awful piracy rate figures for its latest release, and the internet goes ballistic over how terrible it is and what can be done to prevent it. These discussions usually culminate in DRM being called the worst thing to happen to video games ever. One indie studio recently took a different approach to piracy, and ended up being called out by a number of other devs for actuallyadvocating piracy.”
Jim Rossignol On Sir, You Are Being Hunted (Hookshot, Inc.)
“As to why we’re making Sir specifically, well, it was too much fun as an idea. It exploded out of a conversation about what we should be doing, and grew from there. I want to play it. That seems like reason enough.”
Wooly Spaceships, New Frontiers: Launching An Indie Career With Voyager (Gamasutra)
“New-minted indie developer Ken Amarit is something of a jack of all trades, about to make his formal game dev debut on iOS withVoyager. Aiming to do the whole works on his own, he was drawn to emphasize perhaps the most unique of his many skills. It’s his approach to game creation that holds interesting takeaways for all beginning indies, and those about to fly solo for the first time.”
Knytt, Big Sky Sequels Coming Free To PlayStation Plus (Eurogamer.net)
“Indie publisher Ripstone has announced a trio of releases for Sony’s PlayStation Plus Presents label: retro platformer Knytt Underground, hypnotic ‘shmup Big Sky Infinity and a third, as-yet-unannounced game.”
