Monday, March 16th, 2009...11:22 pm - Catherine Gleeson
“Sundance” for indie game developers
Described as the “Sundance for independent game developers” the Independent Games Festival kicks off next week in San Francisco and runs from 23 – 27 March at the same time and in the same town as the Game Developers Conference. The festival was established in 1998 by Think Services producer of Game Developer magazine, Gamasutra.com, and the GDC – hence the GDC and the IGF run concurrently and share events and spaces throughout the week.
The IGF has been responsible for the success of a number of (nearly ) household names including 2005 Student Showcase finalist Narbacular Drop reworked into Portal and Jonathan Blow’s Braid which has had considerable success on Microsoft’s Xbox Live Arcade. What is more exciting is that this competition appears to be open to new forms and true experimentation including flat-out spoofs of the whole game culture which mainstream game culture does not appear to allow. You have to Burn the Rope is a silly but enjoyable parody of the notion of “choice” in classic video games, while Machinarium (created by the makers of equally gorgeous indie web-games Samorost and Samorost2) is gloriously illustrated feast for the eyes. Tehre are also a number of semi-abstract flow-like games including: Dyson a real-time strategy game about self-replicating mining machines in an asteroid belt; Osmos where your objective is to grow by absorbing other motes; and PixelJunk Eden where you move around organic physically simulated “alien” plantlife.
There are many entry categories – thus many and varied responses to the form including considerable variations in quality. Most entrants however really seem to relish the opportunity to have a go, and it’s great to see a place for Student Entries. Take a look, at the very least it will put a smile on your face.
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