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Canabalt composer Danny Baranowsky has posted soundtracks for two recent indie releases he contributed to, including Steambirds, the excellent aerial-dogfighting turn-based-strategy game from Andy Moore and Dan Cook. You can stream the five-track album for free at Bandcamp or download the full release for $0/99 (two of the songs are under 30 seconds in length).

Danny B also uploaded seven songs from Gravity Hook HD, Adam "Atomic" Saltsman's addictive one-button action Flash game (coming to iPhone/iPod Touch soon). The release is also available to stream for free and to download in its entirety for $0.99, and it also includes songs from the original Gravity Hook's soundtrack.

And if you haven't heard it yet, don't forget that Danny B's Canabalt soundtrack is also up at Bandcamp with full and ringtone versions of the game's two themes, as well as a bonus megamix from Fathom.

[Via Nobuooo]

After months of teasing the game (and a slight delay in development due to a computer meltdown), indie developer Anna "Auntie Pixelante" Anthropy has released Redder, her biggest project yet in terms of scale and time. The Mighty Jill Off/When Pigs Fly designer notes, "It's the biggest game world I've ever built."

In the 2D platformer, you control an astronaut who has crash landed on Mars and needs to gather a batch of crystals to get her ship back in working order. To do that, you need to explore the planet's ruins, avoid enemies, and solve a number of increasingly difficult switch puzzles to reach the crystals.

Redder's controls are simple -- walk with the left and right arrow keys, and jump with the up/shift/z/space key -- keeping most of the focus on timing the astronaut's hops. The planet's lower gravity allows you to jump higher and float in their longer than you typically would in most other platformers, but if you've played Anthropy's other games, you should be used to this by now.

You can play the Flash game for free right now on Newgrounds!

Blendo Games (the creator behind the very stylish and classy Gravity Bone) released Flotilla a little over a week ago.

Flotilla is a space exploration game where you go from star to star flirting with danger and talking to bull-slavers and cat-pirates and various other terrestrial animals piloting space ships, killing and getting killed by many of them.

The meat of the game is the turn-based spaceship combat. Turns take place simultaneously, so you have to really think about what your enemies are going to do, especially since each ship has a bunch of invulnerable armor plating that you have to circumvent. You can control the orientation of your ships, and there are a few movement options that let you trade speed for firepower and vice-versa, so it’s really a battle of lining up your ships so that you’re ships are flanking or can otherwise hurt the enemy, while making sure their shots can’t get past your armor.

It’s an incredibly satisfying system with a lot of depth, and the demo will make you cry and wish you had $10 when it ends. Or, y’know, you do and you can buy the game and everybody wins. Continue reading

[This is a guest article by Malec2b. If you’d like to contribute a guest article to TIGSource, go here.]

Babies Dream of Dead Worlds is a game by Gregory Weir (I Fell in Love with the Majesty of Colors). It takes place inside the dreams of babies. These babies are dreaming of a world inhabited by strange tentacle creatures. In each level, there is a center line of gravity, meaning that when you are above the line, gravity pulls down, and when you are below the line, gravity pulls up. The creatures have tentacles both below and above their body, so they can walk properly on either side of the line. There are also rifts which serve as obstacles as they will send you back in the level if you touch them. The game is rather quick to play through, although there is some added replay value in getting faster times on races and more coins in the collection levels.

[SPOILERS: The rest of this review reveals key aspects of the game’s plot and structure and is hidden under a jump. -ed.]

The game follows the lives of three of the creatures. Each story has three stages which can be unlocked by playing the previous stage in that story and you can move between stories after beating each level. These stages take place in a different baby’s dream and depict an episode in one of the three creatures’ lives.

Two of the stories follow rather standard video game tropes. One has you racing through increasingly difficult stages, while another has you collecting coins. However, the third story puts you in the role of a researcher studying the rifts. As the researcher, you can talk to people and see their reactions to the events unfolding in the storyline. It would spoil too much to say what exactly happens in the researcher storyline, but the researcher discovers something that puts the rest of the game into context.

BDODW manages to build a strong sense of mood while also maintaining well-designed and challenging gameplay. It’s built on a strong platforming mechanic created by the gravity system. As things get worse for the world in which these creatures live, the game naturally gets harder. The storyline and the gameplay feed into each other making the simple actions of racing, collecting and talking take on more meaning. The characters in this game, despite being strange tentacle creatures, feel very human in their actions and reactions.

TIGdb: Entry for Babies Dream of Dead Worlds

Nearly a year before they put out 2009's surprise Flash/iPhone hit Canabalt, Adam "Saltsman" Atomic and composer Danny Baranowsky worked together on another one-button game, Gravity Hook. Created in just five days, the simple but addictive Flash game had players ascending a mine by throwing a grappling hook onto floating orbs, then pulling themselves toward the orb and using their momentum to reach the next orb.

Adam and Danny have returned to the project -- their first collaboration -- to add new graphics, sound, controls, and gameplay to the game while still keeping its one-button simplicity, and released it as Gravity Hook HD. They're planning to release a paid version for iPhone and iPod Touch, but as with Canabalt, you can play the full title for free online.

I've already lost an hour to it, and it's just as habit-forming as the original. To make it even worse for fans of the original version, the two promise a special treat if you can reach the 500m mark; so, don't plan to eat dinner any time soon if that's the goal you're shooting for. Even with the changes to make the game more approachable, like cutting back on the exploding orbs, dying is still ridiculously easy in Gravity Hook HD.

The latest issue of IGM features an in depth look at Wolfire Games and their upcoming indie title: Overgrowth. Overgrowth is the sequel to Lugaru, which is reviewed in this issue along with the IGF nominated Eufloria, Aaaa! A Reckless Disregard for Gravity, Critter Crunch and 11 other indie games! There’s also developer interviews, and [...] Continue reading

Brendon Chung (of Gravity Bone fame) sent out a press release today announcing his new turn-based strategy game called Flotilla, set to be released soon for the PC and Xbox Live Indie Games service. In the video that's up on the official site, he demonstrates how a skirmish in space works (complete with full 3D movement) and previews some of the content that we can expect to see in adventure mode.

Flotilla isn't the first game by Brendon that is set in space (see Pilot Light), so expect to find yourself in some really wacky situations and unusual encounters while exploring the far reaches of the universe. There's splitscreen support for cooperative playthrough in adventure mode and versus skirmishes too. Continue reading