FunEffect.com

Here's our link round-ups for articles about the second day of Indie Games Summit talks, happening at the Game Developers Conference in San Franscisco this entire week:

Gamasutra: Exploratory Development
"Game development is one of the highest-pressure, most anxiety-inducing careers there is. An exploratory development process can be a solution, but only if it's managed with confidence and honesty, say ThatGameCompany's Kellee Santiago and Robin Hunicke."

Gamasutra: Ninjabee's Top 10 Development Lessons
"Ninjabee's art director Brent Fox shared a top ten list of development lessons learned from releasing games on Xbox Live Arcade and other platforms, offering useful advice for other indie developers during his lecture at GDC's Independent Games Summit in San Francisco."

Gamasutra: A Brief Postmortem Of Today I Die
"In a short talk during the Indie Games Summit at GDC in San Francisco, Daniel Benmergui (I Wish I Were The Moon) discussed the process of making the game that put him on the map, and is an IGF Nuovo finalist this year, Today I Die."

Gamasutra: Refenes' and Saltsman's Baffling $350 App Store Success
"I absolutely hate the iPhone App Store,' declared indie developer Tommy Refenes during his segment of the Indie Game Makers Rant at Game Developers Conference in San Francisco this week."

GameSpot: Indie developers spew rapid-fire rants
"The Indie Gamemaker Rant session was an orderly procession of five-minute spiels from a dozen people with an interest in the independent development community."

Edge Online: Semi Secret Talk Canabalt, Flixel
"Semi Secret Software's Eric Johnson gave a candid post-mortem of their hit game at GDC's iPhone Game Summit, closing out by revealing that Flixel, the flash game API used to create Canabalt, is being ported to iPhone for native development, including an Actionscript to Objective-C translator to accelerate Flash to iPhone ports."

Boing Boing: How The Indie Fund Could Change Game Dev Destiny
"Opening the 2010 Independent Games Summit, 2D Boy co-founder Ron Carmel took to the stage to explain why the fund was needed, with Braid artist David Hellman illustrating the strange over-complex steamwork behemoth of traditional business models that no longer serve the indies best." Continue reading

Released last week on Xbox Live Indie Games by developer MagicalTimeBean, Soulcaster combines three great ideas, hoping to catch your interest with at least one of them: 8-bit graphics, Gauntlet-style top-down dungeon crawling, and tower defense mechanics.

As you explore dungeons, discover treasure, and encounter a variety of enemies, your wizard deploys a collection of archers, warriors, and alchemists (each with their own strengths and weaknesses) to dispatch enemies. As you progress, you can upgrade those units and purchase equipment.

You can purchase Soulcaster for just 240 MS Points, and there's also free demo available should you need more convincing.

[Via GamerBytes]

Here's our link round-ups for articles about the first day of Indie Games Summit talks, happening at the Game Developers Conference in San Franscisco this entire week:

Gamasutra: Wolfire's Guide To Indie PR
"Wolfire, developer of Overgrowth, managed to create a lot of buzz for its game before it was even released. John Graham, one of four people on the team, says that it doesn't matter. You can and should create buzz as an indie even if your game isn't finished."

Gamasutra: Hello Games' MacGyver Mentality
"Part of being an indie game studio means focusing on the benefits of being small, rather than dwelling on the drawbacks of not being big – to think like a guerrilla. Being an indie also means being resourceful, especially with a small but talented team of just four people."

Gamasutra: Nourishing Your Indie Community
"One benefit of being an indie developer is that there is a community out there made up of people who want to see the scene flourish. But organizing that community can be a challenge. At GDC's Indie Game Summit on Tuesday, Jeff Lindsay offered ten ways to nurture your local indie game community."

1UP: Abusing Your Players For Fun
"It's probably a good sign when a presentation opens by informing attendees that it may kill them if they're prone to seizures. Much like his games, Jonatan Söderström's GDC talk was filled with flashing lights, garish colors, clips from David Lynch movies, and the feeling that somebody is having a joke at our expense." Continue reading

Today's collection of independent game links include a couple more IGF 2010 features and interviews, a big list of Gamma IV submissions, and G4's coverage of the recent Indie Game Challenge awards presentation ceremony. (image source)

gamebase: Gamma IV Games
"The Gamma IV competition has seen the creation of 154 new one-switch games. Here's a list that is as complete as I can make it today."

Tap-Repeatedly.com: IGF 2010
"In recent years independent gaming has exploded with each annual Independent Games Festival reporting more and more submissions. While there has been the usual mixed views on the finalists and omissions, there is no denying that the standard of work is improving year upon year."

GameInformer.com: Indie Week - Talking To The Top Contenders
"We take some time to chat with IGF 2010 finalists, discussing the pros and cons of being an indie developer and touching on their opinion of 'mainstream' games."

NeoGAF: The Best and Worst of Xbox Indie Box-Art
"Most Xbox Indie games are so unbelievably off putting, based entirely on their box art. You have to think, if these people can barely utilise Microsoft Paint, how can they be proficient in coding and game design? People say don't judge a book by its cover, but with over 700 indie games on the store it's hard to not avoid games entirely because the font is Comic Sans. With a drop shadow."

Clickteam: SWF File Exporter for Adobe Flash Player
"A MMF2 and TGF2 SWF File Exporter that allows you to create applications compatible with Adobe Flash Player is now available."

G4tv.com: Indie Game Challenge Awards (video)
Part one of the three-part DICE 2010's Indie Game Challenge awards presentation ceremony, hosted by G4's Adam Sessler. All three parts are available to watch at G4tv.com. Continue reading

JoyJoy is a beautiful-looking twin-stick shooter coming to Xbox Live Indie Games in the next couple of months. Apparently this is the first game in a series of releases by Radiangames. There's an interview with Luke Schneider, the one-man band behind it all, over on Gamasutra. Continue reading

[Veteran console developer Luke Schneider talked to our own Chris Remo about his new indie direction with Radiangames, revealing monthly Xbox Live Indie Games titles starting out with Radiangames JoyJoy.]

With his new one-man indie studio Radiangames, development veteran Luke Schneider is taking on an ambitious business model: releasing a downloadable game to Microsoft's Xbox Live Indie Games service roughly once a month.

The first, set to launch some time in May, will be Radiangames JoyJoy, a twin-stick shooter. It's a genre Schneider says has fallen into stagnancy, and he hopes to reinvigorate it with "unique visual style, fluid gameplay, and lots of customization."

Like Q-Games' PixelJunk series and Arkedo's Arkedo Series games, Schneider wants his individual releases to form a cohesive body of work.

"I hope players will come to identify Radiangames as meaning intense and satisfying action games with a unique visual style running at 60 frames per second," he told us in an interview.

Schneider brings with him over a decade of core game development experience. He served for several years at Volition, where he was most recently the lead technical designer and lead multiplayer designer on 2009's Red Faction Guerrilla.

Prior to that, he was a designer at Volition's predecessor Outrage Games for six years, during which time he worked on various titles including Descent 3.

"Microsoft has given developers an unprecedented opportunity with Xbox Live Indie Games that has thus far been underutilized," Schneider said in a statement, "and I intend to make the most of that opportunity and show the true potential of focused, professional developers and an open console platform."

Schneider has been planning his return to the indie scene for some time. He explained to Gamasutra that he briefly tried his hand at indie development with a Game Boy Advance and Xbox puzzle game in 2003, but was unable to secure a traditional publishing deal. The more decentralized nature of digital distribution, however, has created a better environment for small-scale developers.

The Xbox Live Indie Games service "lets me focus on games, rather than worry about logistics of finding publishers or negotiating with platform holders," he said. "I just get to make lots of small, awesome games as quickly as possible."

Of course, the platform has its own demands, and Schneider has put a lot of thought into those idiosyncrasies. "Like the iPhone, Xbox Live Indie Games sales are very chart-dependent," he told Gamasutra. "If you don't get your game onto the 'top downloads' or 'top rated' charts during your time in the new releases [section], your game is basically dead in terms of sales" -- making early attention paramount.

"There are other critical details that you have to get right," he added, "such as not making a multiplayer-centric game, not over-pricing, and getting the player into the fun right away."

The nature of his accelerated development plan means Schneider can adjust some factors, like pricing and release frequency, depending on early sales metrics. He expects to spend about two months developing each game, with a price point of $1 or $3.

"I know the arguments for pricing a game higher, but my wish is that people try one game in the series, and automatically buy the others from then on out and encourage others to do the same," Schneider said. "If that happens, everyone wins."

[Every week, IndieGames.com: The Weblog co-editor Tim W. will be summing up some of the top free-to-download and commercial indie games from the last seven days on his sister 'state of indie' weblog.]

This week on 'Best Of Indie Games', we take a look at some of the top independent PC Flash/downloadable titles released over this last week.

The goodies in this edition include a keyboard-bashing game, Adam Saltsman's latest effort, a vertical shooter that features only boss battles, a couple of Japanese-flavored platformers with zany characters, and Intuition Games' retro take on Cipher Prime's Auditorium.

Here's the highlights from the last seven days:

Game Pick: 'Gravity Hook HD' (Adam Atomic and Danny Baranowsky, browser)
"Adam Atomic's original Gravity Hook game has now been updated to HD, featuring artwork designed for higher screen resolutions, gameplay rebalancing, new elements, Twitter support, and remixes of the original soundtrack plus new songs by his collaboration partner Danny B."

Game Pick: 'Dinosaurs Didn't Have Keyboards' (Sophie Houlden, browser)
"Dinosaurs Didn't Have Keyboards, But If They Did, They Would Break (Like Yours is About to) is a short arcade game created by Sophie Houlden in under forty-eight hours for a mini-Ludum Dare competition. In it, you have to tap the number keys as fast as you can to help the dinosaur leap over lava pits and reach the finish line in the quickest time possible."

Game Pick: 'Vatn Squid' (Ted Lauterbach, freeware)
"Vatn Squid is a vertical shooter that features only boss battles, created by Ted Lauterbach during Game Jolt's Weekend Jam event. Players take control of a ship that can shield itself at the press of a button, and if you collect enemy bullets during this short period of invincibility your super weapon is charged up as well."

Game Pick: 'Cactus Block' (chuchino, freeware)
"In chucino's Cactus Block you play as an unnamed blue character who has to find his or her way home on a snowy winter day. Some cliffs might seem to high to climb at first, but you can place a random tile on screen as a platform to stand on or jump off. The problem with this ability is that there's an equal chance of getting a cactus instead of a brown block, which hurts the player should they come in contact with the prickly plant."

Game Pick: 'Sennyuu' (Peposoft, freeware)
"Peposoft's Sennyuu is an action platformer that features twenty stages to play, where the objective is to take out all of the enemies on screen without losing too many hearts in the process. You're armed with the same gun that the other grunts have, so it's a matter of shooting first and dodging whatever projectiles that come at you to survive."

Game Pick: 'Sushi Cat' (Joey Betz, browser)
"Sushi Cat is part Peggle, part feeding a cat. With sushi, obviously. Once the cat is dropped from the top of the screen, you have no control over where he ends up, but his bouncing and body-jiggling is almost hypnotic. The visuals and assorted reggae/japanese music give it a great vibe, too."

Game Pick: 'Houkaimura' (Peposoft, freeware)
"Houkaimura (Breaking Town) is an action platformer that plays similarly to the Ghosts 'n Goblins series, where you have to guide an eggplant-headed character through eight levels packed with enemies, traps and boss encounters. There are a large selection of weapons that you can find and collect, although players are limited to the use of just one type of weapon at any time."

Game Pick: 'Eon' (Intuition Games, browser)
"Eon is indeed a take on Cypher Prime's Auditorium, with particle manipulation used to fill containers. It's got a lovely feel to it, with the retro graphics and atmospheric soundtrack really doing it justice."