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You're on a first date. It's going pretty well. You've had a good time talking, you're both laughing a lot. You're feeling the vibe. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5877960&view=rss&microfeed=true The Independent Games Festival (IGF) has announced the finalists for this year's IGF Awards, which will be held at the Game Developers' Conference in San Francisco in March. Some truly great games on this list. We'll have more coverage of the IGF in the coming weeks. More »
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The Independent Games Festival has announced a multi-year partnership with Microsoft Games Studios. The partnership will involve a jury of indie game developers awarding an "XBLA Prize" (XBLA being Microsoft's Xbox Live Arcade service), which will be given out at the IGF, a festival and awards ceremony that happens each March at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. More »
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More than 100 independent developers gather together more than 300 games they deemed not "big" or "polished" or "real" enough to be worth the entry fee for the 2012 Independent Games Festival awards into one massive bundle, and you can download and play it for free. Everybody wins! More »
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It's always wonderful to see a worthy indie game slowly bud and blossom over time. More »
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Each year the Independent Games Festival awards recognize what are often the most interesting, most innovative games of the year. This year was no different. More »
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The Independent Games Festival has released its list of finalists for its 2011 awards, with Mojang's world-building Minecraft and Frictional's Amnesia: The Dark Descent duking it out with three other competitors for the $20,000 Seumas McNally Grand Prize. More »
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One is a zen-like game about creating a tree. One is a beautiful, abstract fencing game. Another sees its players fighting physically to win. In another of 2011's Independent Game Festival Nuovo Award nominees, you play as a dictator's cat. More »
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Loving husband. Caring father. Secret octopus. This is the tagline for Octodad, an adventure game in which players struggle to raise a family, maintain a secret octopus identity and somehow walk upright on tentacles. More »
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The 13th annual Independent Games Festival has named the nearly 400 entrants vying for awards in this year's competition, an impressive list that includes surprise hit Minecraft, Cave Story, Explosionade and hundreds more. And you can preview every single one. More »
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Yes! The IGF Awards are happening right now at this year's Game Developers Conference, a chance for indie developers to be handed awards under bright lights and for those indie developers to give short, awkward speeches. Let's do this!!! More »
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Nominated for awards in Art and Technical Excellence for obvious reasons in the 12th Annual Independent Games Festival, Playdead's stunning black and white puzzle platformer Limbo is heading to Xbox Live Arcade this summer. More »
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We've spent the past month or so talking about the Independent Games Festival finalists, but we haven't really touched on the mobile category. More »
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Tired of stodgy corporate games made by The Man and his minions? We're playing the 31 best indie games for a change of pace —- and so we can judge them. Today, Cogs. More »
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With submissions having been open since July, the twenty finalists for the 12th annual Independent Games Festival have been announced. More »
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There comes a time in the week to reflect on what got into my reporter's notebook but didn't turn into Kotaku blog posts. Shall we? More »
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The annual Independent Games Festival is now taking submissions for the 12th annual festival which takes place duing the 2010 Game Developers Conference. More »
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The Independent Games Festival is underway, giving the indie game developers of the world a chance to accept awards in t-shirts, possibly recently washed. Let's list the winners! More »
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Kyle Gabler, likely riding high on all of the gamer and developer kudos that have been rolling in for World of Goo, is giving away the soundtrack to his game. More »
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This game's callied Mightier. It's an entrant in this year's Independent Games Festival. You design stuff and solve puzzles in the real world, then scan them into the game world. More »
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Crayon Physics Deluxe, the 2008 Independent Games Festival Grand Prize Winner, is getting dangerously close to release, and to prepare for the waxy buildup that is sure to ensue, creator Petri Purho has launched a brand new website for the game and is now actively accepting pre-orders. What does a pre-order of Crayon Physics get you? How about $5 off the already ridiculously low price of $20, plus a guaranteed spot in the Crayon Physics Deluxe beta? I declare it not too shabby indeed. More »
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The Independent Games Festival has proven itself a breeding ground for innovative new ideas, some of which end up changing the paradigm for the larger commercial industry. Now it looks like the Tokyo Game Show is getting its own version of the IGF, called the Sense of Wonder Night 2008, to be held on October 10th. More »
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It's the Sundance of gaming. Or is it? That was bandied about (and overheard) a lot at this year's Independent Games Festival. Sure, the festival has been around for ten years, but this year, things were different. What, with the PlayStation Network, Xbox LIVE Arcade and WiiWare providing very real outlets for indie games, these games suddenly have a market with publishers are looking for the next Everyday Shooter. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=374064&view=rss&microfeed=true During the course of the handing out of awards at last week's Independent Games Festival, audiences were treated to exclusive Mega64 produced videos between acceptance speeches. They weren't the typical game parodies played out in real life, but clips that spoke to the audience on hand. The production above, shown after the intro after the jump, was my personal favorite. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=360629&view=rss&microfeed=true I ended up doing a nearly all-nighter earlier this week so I could play through the finalists for the Independent Games Festival. There are, as always, a number of fantastic games in the mix. Most of them, unfortunately, can't be played by the public. What can be played are the finalists for best Web game. My personal choice for the best of the lot? Tri-Achnid. More »
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Giancarlos Alvarado is an elementary school teacher in Trenton, NJ and he let us know that he's written a piece on the unique approach he's been taking in his fifth grade classroom - designing a video game called Earthquake Terror: After Shock with his students. There's been a lot of attention given to the use of games in an educational setting, and it's great to read about the success of one teacher-designed plan of action - kids love it and parents and other teachers are equally as enthusiastic. But Alvarado is also honest with the problems and limitations of implementing such a program: More »
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Trying to keep up with all the Independent Games Festival nominees is quite a chore, much less trying to actually play them. But, every once in a while, one really sticks out and really makes you want to play it. Such is the case with Kyle Gabler and Ron Carmel's gorgeous and quirky World of Goo. Under the name 2D Boy, gabler and Carmel have created a captivating game experience that has netted them three award nominations in this year's IGF: the Design Innovation Award, Technical Excellence Award and the highly coveted Seumas McNally Grand Prize. More »
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The Independent Games Festival today announced the dozen finalists for the Student Showcase. The 12 finalists will all receive a $500 travel stipend to help them get to GDC 2008 in San Francisco and the winner of the IGF Best Student Game Award will receive a $2,500 cash prize. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=336867&view=rss&microfeed=true I first got a glimpse of Bit Blot's PC game Aquaria at last year's Independent Games Festival Awards at GDC, where creator Derek Yu hopped on stage to accept the $20,000 Seumas McNally Grand Prize. From just the tiny clips they showed during the reading of the nominees I was completely charmed by the concept and the art style of the game. Now 9 months later their baby is coming out. For the past six days they've been teasing us at the Bit Blot blog with concept art, selections from the game's soundtrack, and stories about the development of Aquaria. Yesterday they released the final teaser, seen above, and soon the game will be available for purchase and demo. This game is truly a testament to what independent developers can accomplish - a true work of art. You owe it to yourself to check it out. More »
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In case you've had a hard time keeping up with all the hubbub of the Independent Games Festival '08, the 125 entries for the student category of the competition are up. Just like the big IGF competition, there look to be a wide variety of games: good games, bad games, weird games, standard games (no red fish or blue fish, sadly). It's a truly international competition, with entries from all over the place - and some of the games appear to be quite polished and relatively sophisticated, which makes me wonder why they aren't in the 'big boy' competition instead. You can check out all the entries over at the IGF Student Competition website. More »
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In another bit of Independent Games Festival, a reminder that entries for the IGF Student Showcase close this Monday (15 October). If you're 13 or older and were a full or part-time high school or college student as of the Spring '07 semester, you're eligible to enter - and they're even accepting entries of game mods. There's more information at the IGF site, but the basic rules and regs are after the jump: More »
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More than 173 games are competing in next year's Independent Games Festival, the 10th annual, and the full list just hit the web. GDC 08 will see $50,000 in prizes handed out to indie game developers, many of whom will end up landing publishing deals. It's all very exciting. More »
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The 10th annual Independent Games Festival, to be judged at the 2008 Game Development Conference (February 20-23), is open for submissions in both the 'main' and 'student' categories. The mod contest will not be taking place at the 2008 GDC , though they've included in the student category. More »
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GameZebo has news that web game, and personal flash heart-throb, Samorost 2 was just named the best webby online game of the year. More »
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I've been frontal lobe deep in the wonderful assortment of indie games that make up this year's list of Independent Games Festival finalists these past weeks as I help pick the winners for the awards and it has been mostly a joy. More »
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Over the weekend we posted the full list for the 2007 Independent Games Festival finalists. More »
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