peng ink

Yes, it’s that time again. Planning on entering the IGF Student Showcase myself next year (production has already begun), I typically use these finalists to gauge the chances of a GCS game making the list. The prospects? Not too bad.

Typical IGF final picks seem to hinge mostly on innovative and deviant gameplay (quite opposite of the rest of the industry), and the Student Showcase is no different. Of course, being around the indie game block a couple times myself, somehow the same “innovative concepts” seem to pop up again and again, great ideas rehashed if you will. But as I always stress, it’s all about implementation.

Requisite favorites list:

And Yet It Moves: mixing the classic world orientation changing gameplay with interesting 2D paper cutout visuals gives this game a real good atmosphere. Also note the ambiance created by beatbox sound-effects. Who knew mouth noises could sound so right?

Invalid Tangram: So close to being a shooter by ABA Games, but still not quite there (it lacks ABA’s magical touch). In any case, puzzle shooter game mechanics are quite clever, and I just can’t say no to these genre pieces.

Gelatin Joe: Namesake’s about where the similarities end, Digipen’s Gelatin Joe takes a gameplay concept and molds a world around it. Though a somewhat impersonal approach to game design for my tastes (can’t really relate to a circle), the puzzles seem quite solid, and the interface is clean and well thought out.

Euclidean Crisis: Requisite math-joke. Focusing more on tech than the other entries, the tablet pen based multiplayer action looks pretty good from the videos. I just hope there’s unit micromanagement involved…

I’ll be interested in seeing how these games turn out before the final presentation in March (feature creep? polish? anything can happen really). Well, back to working on my own future IGF entries (both of ‘em).

To tell the truth, I had not planned on getting an Xbox 360 until I heard the news.

Suddenly life as a game developer just got a whole lot easier. With everyone running on the same machine, XNA has nearly eliminated any time spent on cross-hardware issues. Also, with more game-specific libraries, more game centered tools, and not to mention the unseen benefits of joining a dev community, it’s without a doubt that the number of indie game developers will grow tremendously.

Of course, the news that C# is to replace C++ as the indie dev’s weapon of choice brings a bit of a tear to my eye (what will I do without my army of pointers?), but I’m sure the adjustment to managed code won’t be too brutal.

But there’s one thing that really catches my eye…

“The game project, including all source and content assets, must be shared with the receiving user. The receiving user then compiles and deploys the game to their Xbox 360.”

Microsoft not only promoting open source, but forcing it? Sure, if everything’s open source, not only does it foster a community of cooperation but it also auto-solves malignant software issues (any that might pop up despite the closed environment anyway), but I still can’t stop help but feel that we’ve entered into some sort of ironic dimensional warp…