A lot of people have mailed us about this, mainly after GSW posted about it, thinking that it’s our sort of thing. I could be hurt, if I still had any human emotions left. Anyway, it’s a serial killer rogue game. As in, you play a serial killer and cut people up. It’s the logical philosophical extension of Dwarf Fortress’ devotion to individually modelling body parts, I suppose. I’ve been holding off on posting about it, as I assumed I’d ..read the full article

If you’re of a certain age, you’ll probably be aware of the Lone Wolf books. Basically, the best of the wave of D&D-derived choose-your-own-adventure books which emerged in the wake of Jackson/Livingstone’s Fighting Fantasy. In fact, for my money, the best of the genre. Dever and his collaborators gave Project Aon a licence for the books to be downloaded, so have been able to be played online for a while, in a manual text form. A Project-Aon-er has gone one ..read the full article

How do I like to start the day? With a spectacular orgy with a lustful Martian pantheon. However, I’m prepared to settle with a quick flashgame. Today’s is Up Down Ready from the charmingly named Sword Lady & The Viking which just won Best Design In A Game at the recent Freeplay indie festival in Melbourne. Well done them. Basically, it’s a string of mini-games all which you control with the up and down arrows. I’m not too fond with ..read the full article

We were sent a copy of Academagia pre-release, and it was rapidly filed in RPS’ “Kieron’s Sort Of Thing” dumper. I had a look at it, bounced off the surface and made a note to return to it, ideally when a demo was out. Since then, we’ve had a steady string of people asking what we made of it, so I manned up, read the tutorials and headed back to Mage College. Because that’s what it is. Academagia is, basically, ..read the full article

Kieron and I got a bit worked up over indie robot-battler Plain Sight, and I’ve put a few of our choice quotes (as well as a video of the game) after the jump. What you need to know is that not only has the recent 1.2 patch added both persistent perks and hats (their words: “It worked for TF2, right?”), Plain Sight has just begun a three day Steam sale. It’s now available for $2.

$2. Two dollars. Or £1.60 for ..read the full article

This is much earlier than I’d normally cover an indie game, especially one without even some flashy bells and whistles for you to coo at, but Damzel caught my attention, so I thought I should bring it to yours. (Checking around, Indiegames said close to the same thing, which says much). The work of ex-Team 17 Veteran Phil Carlisle, Damzel is basically a bodyguard game played from (primarily) the first person. You’re basically escorting a famous bod through simulated crowds ..read the full article

Joe Martin was playing this short visual novel earlier, so I decided to join him. Hummingbird Mind is a game about working from home and distractions. It leans more surreal than the hard-realism – there’s a distinct lack of quick-one-off-the-wrist breaks – but certainly catches the mood of doing work. Or not doing work, as is more often the case. Play here.

This Chinese Indie-RPG has released released final version of its English translation, which prompted me to play its trial. And I happily burned through its free half-hour and was disappointed I couldn’t play any more. Which is what a trial version is supposed to do. While made with RPG maker, it’s a quite beautiful, atmospheric short-form RPG which managed to conjure a somber mood quickly and has a mean line in mean, red lines slashed across your opponents (Which then ..read the full article

The torrent of excellent browser games never stops! Not even for GamesCom. Indie Games posted about Liferaft: Zero last week, and it’s tricky bit of platforming with an excellent, Portal-like atmosphere. You play an endless series of cloned, acrobatic girls, and do your best to steer them towards candy and away from certain death. Your best won’t be good enough, but it’s more messed up enough to justify a play. Video after the jump. (more…)

Dedication Games’ Swarm Arena was released on Steam yesterday for seven quid fifty (though ten percent off in the first week). I’ve only had a half-hour with it, but I think it’s actually worth bringing to your attention. It’s a shame that there’s no demo (at least, not yet), for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I think quite a few of you will find it really intriguing. Secondly, it’s a tricky game to describe and the above screenshot is kind ..read the full article

You know Increpare? Aka Stephen Lavelle? He’s one of the hyper-prolific game creators on the British indie scene. We’ve blogged about a couple of his games before (The historian game Opera Omnia and the Mass Effect 2 parody Starfeld), but he does a whole lot more. His presentation at World of Love basically involved him just talking to everyone in the audience about what they were up to. He also basically worked in the industry as a coder in the ..read the full article

Delirium Wartner pointed the Beta of the Tripwire-signed indie game Dwarfs at me, and I’ve had a quick crack at breaking open the soil and quite like it. While the title will bring Dwarf Fortress to mind, it’s much more like Diggers (and, of course, the recent Delve Deeper). While there’s multiple modes, the key one is the arcade one which generates a random underground and charges you to explore it without being over-ran with goblins, released water or unleashed ..read the full article

I learned through Quarter to Three that yesterday was Size Doesn’t Matter day, where organised by Jamie Cheng of Klei (Shank, Sugar Rush) a series of developers apologises to their partners for their ineffectual genitalia share their thoughts on the issue of what is “too small”, in terms of games. It’s been a theme in games discussion for a few years now, and seems to have been brought to a head by the few shadows cast on Limbo‘s generally ..read the full article

Okay. It’s lunch-hour in the UK. I want to play The Balls, and need you chap’s help. Basically, it’s a scrum-game by Cryptic Sea – which is the genre title I’ve plucked out of my head for things like Transformice. Played on a server with up to 100 other balls (or 4 people on one machine), you play a tiny eponymous ball racing across real-world environments at a micro-scale. You either race, or smash stuff up or eliminate one another. ..read the full article

I’ve been meaning to look at this for a while, and am glad I’ve finally had a chance. Goblin Camp is – perhaps somewhat obviously – inspired by Dwarf Fortress, but is off doing its own thing, and adds a little Open Source malarkies in the side. In short: running a Goblin camp. While it’s early days yet, it seems to be concentrating brilliantly on UI aspects. Frankly, between space-to-pause, h to read help and guess-work I got my little ..read the full article

Indie dev Cactus has released two new games, both deeply different and both deeply Cactus (read: disturbing).

Gamma4 is a beautiful, disappointingly brief headtrip set to a club beat where you guide four independant lasers through various squres. I say it’s disappointing, but I’m sure if it were any longer it’d just start to hurt. Norrland is a little stranger, being a kind of 8-bit simulator of a Swedish hillbilly on a hunting trip. In between shooting and punching various animals ..read the full article

RPS reader Ben Esposito writes to say “I’m a stupid intern at Dejobaan Games (AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!!) and after seeing what it’s like to make games with no money and no air conditioning, I decided to start doing it myself.”

Mr. Esposito’s new game, Nudo, has just been released (for free!) and provides about an hour of addictive, rewarding puzzling. Ben describes it as “a platformer on top of a rubik’s cube”, but as a professional games journalist I must categorise it as ..read the full article

Something for the weekend, sir? May I recommend Part-time Angle Grinder Hero? You can download it from here, then load it by dragging the 14mb .swf file into your browser. It is an epic tale of love, drinking, and angle grinding. But mainly drinking. And angle grinding. (more…)