FunEffect.com

The IGF saw a great group of games, but only one could win the $20,000 Grand Prize and that game was none other than Andy Schatz’s Monaco. Monaco also grabbed the excellence in design award. Monaco is a 4 player stealth co-op game from Pocketwatch Games.

Other winners included:

Nuovo Award: Tuning by Cactus

Excellence in Visual Art and Technical Excellence: Limbo by PlayDead

Best Mobile Game:  Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor by Tiger Style

Excellence in Audio: Closure by Closure Team

Student Showcase Winner: Continuity

Audience Award: Heroes of Nerwerth by S2 Games

D2D Vision Award: Max and the Magic Marker by Press Play

Hi guys,

My name’s Radek, and I’m part of Incubator Games, a small development studio from Toronto, Canada. We were all previously leads at Capybara Games working on such projects as the original Critter Crunch and HoMM: Clash of Heroes, but decided to strike out on our own. We are currently in the process of giving one of our games — Tribes of Mexica — a bit of a visual makeover, and we were wondering if you could help us with getting some public feedback?

The URL to the post about the art-style change can be found here: http://www.incubatorgames.com/index.php/20100222/tribes-mexica-makeover/

Of course it’s a bit of an unusual request, so we’d understand if the material wasn’t quite in line with what indiegamemag.com usually publishes. Regardless, we’d appreciate your own opinions, and we look forward to (hopefully) bugging you guys about our projects in the future.

Thanks in advance.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Guild Software announces upcoming multi-platform MMO middleware solution: The NAOS Engine.

MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN, March 6th 2010. Award-winning independent game developer Guild Software, Inc has announced the upcoming launch of a new MMO middleware product: the NAOS Engine. Developed to power their long-running, continuously-upgraded retail MMORPG, Vendetta Online, this engine provides a complete and multi-platform solution, with native client build targets for Windows, Mac and Linux. The highly scalable distributed game server uses lightweight Erlang threading to provide persistent handling of hundreds of thousands of individual NPCs and other game elements, with seamless management as they transition across running/non-running boundaries in the game universe. A well-proven update/patch server and client are also included, the server allowing optimized binary patching and user queues for rate limiting and overflow. The update client supports redundant failover to multiple patch server clusters, and includes automated client crash reporting, with fetching and submission of auto-generated tracebacks via HTTP to a proprietary bug tracking system. Finally, a completely custom Lua/FastCGI-based web content management system, with proven billing, messageboard, mailing list and administrative features, rounds out the server solution, creating a nearly-complete package for the prospective MMO developer. All server software can be run on either FreeBSD or Linux, and works well with existing RDBMS solutions such as MySQL or Oracle, as well as DBMS such as Mnesia. Beyond the use of a database for persistency, an integrated RDF triple-store is in development to more elegantly enable applications such as advanced AI,
simulated-economics, and monitoring tasks.

The NAOS Engine will be available either as a complete licensed source package, or individual components may be licensed separately at a reduced cost. The product is expected to launch in the year, and will be followed by the NAOS Platform, a cloud-based MMO development solution which also includes scalable hosting, with sliding pricing based on usage and revenue, to help startup MMO developers focus purely on their games. For more information, or to contact Guild Software, please see: http://www.guildsoftware.com/naos

About Guild Software, Inc
Guild Software is an award-winning independent game developer based in Milwaukee, WI. Founded in 1998, the company has continually pursed the cutting edge in large-scale multiplayer environments. Developing a completely proprietary MMO engine from scratch, these efforts culminated in the 2002 public alpha debut and 2004 multi-platform retail launch of Vendetta Online(tm). A relatively early entry into the Space MMO genre, the title remains one of the few with a completely realtime, “twitch” combat model. Vendetta Online later broke ground with the launch of the Player Contribution Corps, a mechanic by which the player community may directly contribute content for use in the production game, via web-based mission development and other tools. Guild Software continues to expand upon Vendetta Online, using the title to further both the game and the NAOS Engine on which it is based, striving towards the next generation in unbounded, evolving worlds.

This is the old Blitz Cletus Clay trailer, the game created completely from clay using stop motion animation. This is the version that Anthony Flack was originally working on before the HD version went into production.

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Vessel is a 2d action and puzzle game played in a physically simulated world, built on a physics and fluid engine featuring the unique ability to simulate characters composed entirely of fluid. Intended platforms are PC and console, and release date is not yet set (still in production).

Visit http://www.strangeloopgames.com for blog and more info

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Take a peek into the world of BattleBlock Theater from the behem0th makers of Castle Crashers and Alien Hominid. Having shipwrecked on a mysterious island you find yourself both betrayed by your best friend Hatty and captured by the locals. All of this is happening while being forced into deadly performances. This however, is just the start of your problems.

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Learn about the Games the Big Publishers don’t want you to know about— check out the Indie Game Magazine, the only magazine dedicated to independent games. Tap between game reviews, previews, and more right on your iPhone. With advanced search functions, back issues, bookmarking, and interactive content, there’s a whole new world of games to discover.

Click the Picture to Check it Out

Finally an application to view your favorite issues of the Indie Game Mag, Purchasing the app automatically includes the latest issue of the magazine for free then, you will be notified of any new issues, which can be purchased from within the App, as well as your favorite back issues. With interactive page flipping where pages follow your fingers and a zoom feature, which overcomes the inherent problem of reading magazines on mobile devices. A unique fun sharing feature allows you to share magazines with your friends just like you would in the real world! You will have access to bookmarks, a contents page, and a great search tool, which allows you to not only search the magazine you are reading but all of your back issues too. A Pixelmag can be read anywhere regardless of a data connection, essential for reading on the move on planes, trains etc

It’s less than a buck, so grab the indie game magazine on the app store now!