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A friend of mine directed me to this article written by a real life game journalist on getting media coverage for your indie game. Definitely a useful read for anyone who wants to make indie games that actually make splash (and you should be.)

I’m currently working on this myself for the game free online space game Starport. It’s been around for a few years now but we’re trying to get some coverage and help it grow more. Anyway I’ll share more about that game and what I’ve learned from helping market it later but for now get to reading this article.
How To Use And Abuse The Gaming Press And How The Gaming Press Wants To Use and Abuse You.

I had to share this with everyone as it is AWESOME!

It’s a game where you drive a truck around and kill feathered velociraptors. You also have a ball and chain attached to your truck you can swing around and clothesline raptors with. It sounds wierd but once you play it is just pure happiness! Best of all it runs in your browser… oh my.

Check out the video then hit the link to play the game.

Off-Road Velociraptor Safari from Matthew Wegner on Vimeo.

Velociraptor Safari Awesomeness!

So let’s say you had to make a game around Charles Barkley, what kind of game would you make? Maybe a basketball game, maybe a coaching simulator? You’d be wrong.

The correct answer is make an RPG set in futuristic post-apocolyptic New York City where Charles goes around saving the world from basketball head zombies!

Now that you’re enthralled by the awesomeness download the game here.

Just a quick note to say that Indie Games has put together a list of the top 20 best freeware  arcade games of 2007 check it out.

Best Freeware Arcade Games of 2007

This marks the beginning of a new segment for Zen and Games called the Indie Game Spotlight, basically whenever I play an indie game that I feel is exceptional in some way I’ll share it. I’ll discuss the design, art or whatever makes it special.

This Indie Game Spotlight is about the new game called Aquaria by Bit Blot. This game was recently released for purchase on the Bit Blot site along with a download. It also won the 2007 IGF Seamus McNally Grand Prize so you may have already heard of it from that. Here’s the press release from the Bit Blot crew.

AQUARIA - AN EPIC UNDERWATER FANTASY GAME

“A massive ocean world, teeming with life and filled with ancient secrets. Join Naija, a lone underwater dweller in search of her family, as she explores the depths of Aquaria. She’ll travel from hidden caves, shrouded in darkness, to beautiful, sunlit oases - all lovingly handcrafted by its two creators.

Naija’s story, narrated fully with voice overs, will become yours, as you join her on this magnificent adventure.”

Aquaria, winner of the Seumas McNally Grand Prize at the 2007 Independent Games Festival, features over 175 strange and wonderful creatures (including several massive and ancient “bosses”), 8 magical forms with unique abilities, 50 original music tracks, and over 2000 pieces of hand-painted 2d artwork.

This highly-anticipated independent PC game will be released on December 7th for online download. The price will be $30.

ABOUT BIT-BLOT

We are an independent studio consisting of one American and one Canadian. We want to make unique games with compelling stories and gameplay.

The first thing that struck me about this game is how peaceful it is. You control a character named Naija in the beautiful world of Aquaria and swim about these beautiful hand painted levels. The controls are also very nice, they are extremely intuitive and could really hold up as a case study of how to make player friendly intuitive controls. Almost everything is controlled by the mouse and the swimming bits and controls remind me a lot of the original Ecco the Dolphin but really made even better through the use of the mouse control scheme.

Another important thing to note about this game is that the voice acting is extremely well done. Throughout the game Naija narrates much of what she is thinking and of the history of the world and it really adds a lot of depth and feeling of the game. It goes to show how much something as simple as narrated voice overlays can build a sense of attachment to a character for the player. Also the main character is able to cast magic spells using something called the Verse which allows you to play songs using a symbol wheel with your mouse, enabling your abilities. All of this together along with the very soothing background music adds a wonderful soundscape to the game and really brings it together.

Aquaria does a really good job of being very intuitive about what to do next in the game and in helping you intuit to solve whatever puzzle you’re faced with. For one boss battle I faced early in the game the boss would blink the color of a musical note I had to play to damage him, giving me a subtle clue that worked really well.

Ultimately I definitely recommend you head over to the Bit Blot site and download the demo and give this one a try as it’s an extremely well put together game and the demo is quite long and entertaining lasting over an hour. One of the most astounding parts is Bit Blot is a very small company of only 2 guys, something you’d never guess when playing Aquaria.

Today I just got the new copy of Games for Windows and the cover story is about a game called Demigod which as me extremely excited. The first exciting thing is that it’s from Chris Taylor and Gas Powered Games, the guys who brought Supreme Commander which was pretty innovative. The most exciting part however is that it’s a game inspired by the mod for Warcraft 3 called Defense of the Ancients which is fantastic and highly addictive.

For those who haven’t played Defense of the Ancients, it is basically a mashup of RTS and RPG elements. You are one hero on a squad of up to 5 heros each played by a human player. You are also on a team fighting against another team, each team is sending legions of minion units out to battle on the field of war. You both assist your team and fight the other teams heroes and prevent them from assisting their team on to victory. It’s kinda hard to describe but is fantastically addictive and I’d really recommend trying it out if you have Warcraft 3.

Another interesting part is that Gas Powered Games is funding it all themselves and plan to self publish. They’re also very much into white boxing the gameplay to make sure it’s extremely fun before tacking on art resources and such. The article in Games for Windows gives a great read on it so I’d really recommend picking it up if you can.

Sorry for the delay everyone I’ve been totally slacking off but I’m going to try and get all of these summaries of the sessions from the Austin Indie Game Conference written up quickly for you. Also if there are any errors in here I apologize and blame my memory giving out over the holidays

On Thursday morning the Gamecock heads were supposed to give a keynote but they couldn’t make it and VP Steve Escalante gave the presentation instead. Gamasutra already has a great write up on this keynote so I’ll just direct you there and give you my thoughts that may complement theirs.

Gamecocks Thursday Keynote

Steve says you must make sure that you are ready to do game development. Also you have to think about the other teams that you’re competing against to win those publisher dollars. Right now the opportunity to create original intellectual property and be successful with it is greater than ever as consumers are getting tired of the crappily done movie licenses and rehashed sequels, lots of players want fresh new games. Furthermore the digital space removes a lot of the barriers to entry that used to exist, with digital distribution a game can become successful even without breaking into the major retail channels. They feel that digital distribution portals like steam can sell 25% as much as retail which could turn a nice profit when you consider the portion of the game price that the retailer takes and the manufacturing cost of packaging materials.

The Gamecock group doesn’t believe that the giant budgets that exist now for major games are needed. By working smarter a game of equal quality can be created for a fraction of the cost. Included in this is outsourcing of some of the development work which lowers the budget and makes it more presentable. On the upper end Gears of War launched for $10 million so any more that that is certainly not necessary.

Steve also gave an example of the sorts of projects Gamecock is working with. He mentions that Dementium Ward for the Nintendo DS was made by 3 guys in only a few months and it went on to get very good reviews. They are also publishing Pirates Vs Ninjas for the Xbox Live Arcade which is being made by 3 guys and costs less than million to make.

The keynote also gave some great tips for people trying to get in with a publisher (or at least if you want to be published by Gamecock as they’re a bit different than most publishers). First you want to consider does your game appeal to a majority of gamers and can thus compete in the market. Also do you think your game will sell well enough to be in the top 20% of games that generate 80% of revenues. Another important thing is a good vertical slice (a playable demo) that you can show the publisher when you talk to them to help them get excited, this isn’t necessary always but can help tremendously. He also mentioned, however, that you should be looking to make the game you want to make and not the one you think will make the most money. Furthermore you should consider monetization methods during predevelopment if you plan on doing something fancy like ad supported gameplay or micropayments since revenue models can be extremely hard to switch near or after game launch if it turns out they won’t work.

Last week the Independent Game Conference was held in Austin, Texas. Last year I attended the same event and was able to get a lot out of some of the sessions so since I’m in Austin I made sure to attend the event this year as well. Once again several of the sessions were very informative and over the next week or so I’ll be transcribing my notes about them.

Sessions were held in two tracks, business and technology. I attended sessions of both tracks and will write my impressions on them soon. There was also a very interesting keynote by Richard Garriott on game design and research. The coolest part of the conference, however, was the game festival night where attendees can show off the games they’ve worked on and everyone can check it out. I was helping show Starport but I also checked out lots of cool games which I’ll probably be talking about here as well.

I attended the event last year as well, before I started this site, and I believe somewhere I have my notes from then so I’ll try to find them and write about some of those sessions as well because there were also some very good sessions last year. So stay tuned in the coming week or two I’ll post about the talks that were given and some of the games shown, I’ll update this post with links to them as I write them as well.

Matt Sakey has written a great article for the IGDA on the use of Lean methodologies for game development.

“Waste” in development could be rework, unused assets, reversed design decisions, creative clashes, you name it. Largely it would be the product of poor planning, which, I’m sorry to say, does lead right back to the “business needs more proven process models” argument.

Lean methodologies are used in production industries to reduce waste in the process and ultimately make better products for cheaper. I think this is a vitally important concept for indie game developers operating on small budgets and this article is certainly worth a read.

The IGF has revealed the entries for 2008 and there’s some sweet games on the list. I recommend checking it out.

I’m happy to see that Sector 13 is on the list, I briefly did some work with these guys on this game a while back but had to stop when I switched jobs. I know it’s come a long way since then and they’ve done a great job with it, I’d recommend checking them out.