Pretend you are an IGF judge 2011: Part 2
Here’s out second compilation of links for publicly playable games from the Independent Games Festival 2011. Here you’ll find, conveniently all in one place, links to IGF games that are available either commercially, freeware, web, beta, or just as a demo. If I’ve missed any, or got any details incorrect, please let me know. You can see part 1 here, and keep your computer tuned into SavyGamer for part 3 & 4 in the next week or so.
Fantasy University
Fantasy University is a social RPG in which players and their friends explore a universe filled with colorful and eccentric characters and places, while engaging in combat against monsters and villains, solving puzzles and collaborating with their friends on Facebook. Utilizing a unique imaginative artwork style, Fantasy University combines engaging gameplay with intelligence, wit, and grown-up humor laden with clever pop-culture references.
Facebook
Flick Kick Football
Set in the Golden Age of Football greatness, see if you have what it takes to score the winning goal with the flick of your finger! Curve, lob, drive and shoot the ball from all over the pitch! Kick It Old School!
ios App Store (59p/99c)
Flipball
Flipball is an action/arcade game for Facebook. It’s sort of casual, sort of Pinball, definitely the opposite of Mafia Wars.
Facebook.
Flotilla
Flotilla is a game of space battleship combat and exploration. Face a variety of colorful characters, ranging from grizzled pirates to vengeance-seeking karaoke washouts. Take to battle in tactical 3D combat, and flank your enemy from all angles. Welcome to Flotilla!
Available commercially with free demo here, and XBLIG with free trial here.
Flutter
The future of the rainforest is in your hands as you nurture a thriving ecosystem of flora and fauna. Work with your friends to discover the forest’s story, and challenge them to create the best grove. Nurse a fledgling caterpillar through its amazing transformation then take to the skies as a beautiful, true to life Amazon butterfly. Soar through the trees hunting for resources, treasures, and secrets. Craft your very own corner of the rainforest using leaves, plants and flowers, then see what amazing rainforest creatures come to call it home. Progress through dozens of quests and work with your friends to solve mysterious puzzles as you uncover the mystical side of the forest
Facebook.
Flying Hamster
Flying Hamster is a 2D side-scrolling shooting game introducing Newton as the main playable character. The player has to control this flying hamster through 6 different cartoonish and colorful environments full of various enemies (from animals to robots). Every level will be completed after defeating unique gigantic bosses. As Newton can store various kinds of stuff in his cheeks, the player will have to search within the levels every useful item that can be spit out to the enemies. Every seed, plant or item will have a different behavior and power so the player has to choose the right weapon according to the situation.
PSP Mini
Flywrench
Each maneuver your ship can perform changes its color. Match an obstacle’s color to pass through it.
Freeware (although I gather the version submitted to IGF is much much expanded than the 2007 version).
Forgotten Times
Forgotten Times is a side scrolling adventure game with a political theme and a heavy emphasis on dialog.
Freeware
Fox Vs Duck
Fox Vs Duck is a beautiful and original micro-game for iPhone and iPod Touch. Use the tilt sensor to lead your Ducks to safety whilst avoiding the hungry Fox – you’ll need all your skill and cunning to survive! Experience addictive, hypnotic gameplay in a stunningly elegant zen environment. Then join the rest of the world in saving the Ducks as your collaborative scores are recorded online – and become a part of the freshest game on the App Store! How many can you save?
ios App Store (59p/99c)
Freekscape – Escape from Hell
Freek is a young demon who always felt partially empty by doing his daily chores in Hell. His biggest dream was to make his life more exciting and fun, but this only become a possibility after finding the Holy Trident, an ancient and lost relic from Heaven. After finding this trident, Freek decides to start a journey that will take him to Heaven. Freekscape presents a mix of platform gameplay with puzzles, where the player has to use his enemies as tools sticking them on his trident and taking advantage of their properties.
PSP Mini
Frozen Synapse
Frozen Synapse is a thrilling PC and Mac strategy game. It brings the simultaneous turn-based strategy genre bang up-to-date and lets you give detailed, accurate orders to your squad. Plan your moves, test them out, then hit the “Execute” button: both you and your enemy’s turns are executed simultaneously. Each match immediately places you in an intense tactical situation: there’s no waiting around for the fun part. Blast a hole in a wall with a rocket and then send in your close-range units, or take a stealthy approach and set up cover with a sniper: your approach is entirely down to your own creativity. If you can predict your opponent’s moves, you can win the match: this game has been crafted so that superior tactics will triumph! Once you’ve outwitted your opponent with a series of perfect turns, watch your Global Ranking climb and export the resuts to YouTube instantly.
Beta when you preorder.
GravBot
Get ready to defy the law of gravity in GravBot, the latest iOS game from Team Phobic! GravBot is a physics-based puzzle platformer, where you decide which way is “up” as a little robot falls and pivots through each level. Collect all the batteries to win, but watch out. A wrong move could be deadly! Each level presents a unique challenge. Find the right path, avoid enemies, spike traps and laser beams. Use levers, buttons and elevators to solve the puzzles. GravBot is fun for all ages, but with the game’s physics, the simplest solution isn’t always what it seems! Challenge yourself to earn a bronze, silver or gold metal for the smallest number of pivots needed to complete the level, then compete with your friends on Plus+ Leaderboards.
ios App Store (Free)
Guitar Fretter
Defeat the attacking music-note-wearing Minions by matching their note to the guitar fretboard! Guitar Fretter is an action-puzzle game where you learn notes on an electric guitar or bass. The action gets intense as you solve each level, unlock all the strings, and earn bonus points for full-matched frets and strings! New in version 1.2: 4 types of guitar: 6 string electric, 7 string electric, 4 string bass, and 5 string bass! New scales bonus mode! Earn big bonus points by matching the whole scale!
ios App store/Android Marketplace (£1.19/$1.99)
Guppy
a game about swimming
Get latest WIP build here.
Happy Wheels
An annual racing event where finishing the race is more important than life itself. Choose your inadequately prepared racer, and ignore severe consequences in your desperate search for victory.
Web.
Hazard: The Journey Of Life
Hazard: The Journey Of Life is a surreal exploration puzzle game, set within a non-Euclidean labyrinth of manipulable geometry. Explore a vibrant and deceptive world, where space can change and nothing is as it seems. With a philosophical narrative, Hazard is about appreciating the simple things in life: experiencing the wonder of discovery, learning through curiosity, and the unexpected nature of a world that we do not fully understand.
Demo.
Hegemony Gold: Wars of Ancient Greece
“Hegemony Gold: Wars of Ancient Greece” is an expansion and major update to the critically acclaimed strategy wargame Hegemony: Philip of Macedon. Travelling back nearly a century to the legendary Peloponnesian War, fight as both Athens and Sparta in the epic conflict that redefined ancient warfare. Deeper tactics, a brand new diplomacy system and over 40 new historical objectives play out over a sprawling satellite-accurate map utilizing Hegemony’s trademark strategic zoom.
Alpha.
Helena The 3rd
Helena the 3rd is an 3D action platformer/FPS hybrid inspired by the NES game Blaster Master. In it, players battle through 4 underground worlds crawling with robotic enemies and find powerful upgrades. Each new upgrade unlocks new abilities that let you progress further into the earth.
Demo.
Helsing’s Fire
Lead Dr. Helsing and his assistant Raffton on their quest to rid the world of Dracula’s evil horde and cleanse the unholy blight that contains them!
ios App Store (59p/99c)
Hero Mages
Designed and developed by a single individual driven to share his passion for gaming with the world, Hero Mages is a turn-based strategy game that blends the best elements of miniature, card, and social board gaming. Equipped with a set of dice and a hand of cards representing magical spells, up to eight players take turns commanding their party of heroes. With the power to unleash the wrath of the elements, summon heinous creatures, and manipulate the world itself, the player’s Mage is their ultimate hero as they leverage skill, politics, and luck to eliminate their enemies and emerge victorious! Highly detailed characters and spells, beautifully rendered landscapes, and epic music and sound bring the world of Papillion to life. Detailed game statistics, leaderboards, and a custom map editor allow players to track their progress and express their creativity. Fast playtimes allow players to get their gaming fix in minutes, not hours, while diverse characters, abilities, and game types offer limitless opportunities for creative strategies and intense, climatic struggles.
Web.
Hexius
Hexius is a unique, psychedelic, action-puzzler for iPhone/iPad, with 3 fun game modes, online friends & global leaderboards, achievements, and weekly challenges.
ios App Store (59p/99c).
Highborn
In Highborn (for the iPhone and iPod Touch) and Highborn HD (for the iPad), players are treated to two strategy games that combine to offer an intelligent, tactical experience without the frenetic play of a traditional RTS. Players move forces around an overhead map to secure spells and combat support, then dive into 3D combat to deploy those advantages against an unsuspecting enemy. All the fun and fighting is set against an irreverent tale, filled with wacky heroes, witty dialogue and wild assumptions.
ios App Store. iPhone version, £1.19/$1.99. iPad version, £2.99/$4.99. Free demo.
History of Biology
History of Biology is an innovative educational game which uses a combination of teaching tools such as story, interactive puzzles, minigames and an online scavenger hunt to introduce the player to key figures and discoveries impacting modern science, technology, politics and ethics.The game story revolves around the mysterious Dr. Walden Shyre who has gone into hiding to protect his latest discovery. The player is Dr. Shyre’s lab assistant and must complete a series of missions or tests in order to gain access to Shyre’s controversial research. Missions are designed to expand the players’ knowledge of science and to develop critical thinking, communication and problem solving skills. The player must scour both real and fictional websites to uncover the hidden clues needed to solve the missions and break the master code. The game randomizes missions and questions to make it a cheat-resistant educational tool.
Free 7 day trial, and various licensing options.
Hue Shift
Step into the shoes of Huey, who climbs the tower of colors with a menacing foe on his heels: White noise. Hue Shift is an endless action platformer. You are controlling Huey, a pixel that can shift its color to red, green and blue. Climb as high as you can by matching your hue to the color of the platforms. Beware, only platforms with your color are solid! Be quick, because white noise is right behind you.
Web
Hungry Helga
Hungry Helga is a fast-paced action game developed for iOS devices by new indie game developer, Grid Monsters. It features beautiful graphics and original music. Players take on the role of a beleaguered Viking captain who needs to feed fish to his ornery and ever-hungry wife, Helga. As Helga gets skinnier, she also gets angrier and if she loses her temper, she destroys the player’s boat. The faster players feed the insatiable Helga and dodge pesky seagulls, sharks, and icebergs, the more points they get. It’s simple, but fun.
ios App Store (£2.39/$3.99)
Infinite Blank
Infinite Blank is a massively multiplayer online canvas. Players download a free client, draw themselves a character, enter the game’s world, and explore it as a sidescrolling platformer. When they encounter a blank space, they can create more. Players communicate with other players through drawn speech and can explore the world together. It’s a non-commercial project with the goals of fostering creativity in people who don’t otherwise exercise it, offering a noncompetitive environment to those who do, creating an unbounded explorative experience, and encouraging a playful approach to online interaction. Updates are released on a regular basis; the project is, at the time of submission, about three and a half months old. It has been public for three weeks, during which over a thousand screens have been added to the world.
Freeware.
Insecta
Our very first game, designed for use with Touch-enabled mobile devices, such as the Android, “Insecta” revolves around simple mechanics, intuitive interface, our interest in Entomology (study of insects) and a somewhat morbid fascination with squishing things.
Web demo.
Instance
Time is God’s way of keeping everything from happening all at once.
Beta.
Jolly Rover
Jolly Rover is a comedic 2D point and click adventure game where players follow the short and stubby tail of canine protagonist Gaius James Rover across three wild and untamed tropical islands, as he attempts to fulfil his dream of starting a circus, hampered only by pirates, villains, voodoo, love and considerable lack of loot.
Commercially available here, demo here.
Journey of Fortune: Dragon’s Fire
The most innovative mixture of digital board and role-playing game coming to your iPad! GOAL: Kill The Dragon and Save The Princess! The mage is an ingenious class. It’s not the hardest to play, by any sense, but playing one well requires a measure of panache. When playing a mage, it’s not necessarily about dealing damage, but doing it gracefully.
ios App Store (59p/99p)
Jules: Unboxing the World
“Jules: Unboxing the World” is an adventure puzzle game for the Apple iPad, in which you play the role of the eponymous hero of the story, a joyful red-green-blue character that rolls around the screen as you tilt the iPad. Jules wakes up to find the whole population of the world put into wooden boxes by an army of strange and not-so-evil minions. As he rolls around the world, breaking the boxes and freeing the people, the story unfolds over 30 different levels, including the Great Pyramids of Giza, the Great Wall of China and the beaches of Rio de Janeiro. Aside from the story mode, 4 extra game modes are available to further increase the gameplay experience.
ios App Store (£2.99/$4.99)
Jump’n Bounce
Jump’n Bounce uses a unique combination of old-school gameplay and modern-day level design: You play as a constantly bouncing ball, never standing still. Add to that the option of doing mid-air highjumps and downward bricksmash attacks, and you get a very interesting combination of typical arcade games from the 80’s and the modern platform games, opening some unique challenges to overcome.
XBLIG with free trial.
Jupiter’s Moons
An addicting space shooter, complete with fragments of exploded suns, moon pieces and occasionally red asteroids, whose matter is so dense that they are used to build smartbombs.
Oh yes, there are smartbombs, because we all need an ‘Easy’ button once in a while….
Web.
Kameleon
Kameleon is a small Flash game that demonstrates a few of the possibilities of adaptive music. By no means does it completely cover everything that the power of adaptive music has to offer, but for those who don’t know much about the concept, I hope it at least gives you an idea of what it can do.
Beta.
Kitchen KrashersKitchen Krashers puts a new spin on the traditional sport of curling. Play along or against your friends as one of 4 ants in an abandoned kitchen. Crash, bounce, slide, sweep, and score your way to victory on 3 unique and challenging levels. Be immortalized with high scores for each game type. Kitchen Krashers is competition you’ll want to get swept up in again and again!
Freeware.
Kometen
A comet has been born, please take good care of it! Explore the universe and learn how to fly in a graceful way. A beautiful and memorable experience for everyone.
ios App Store (£1.79/$2.99).
Kory2: Omega’s Revenge
Kory 2: Omega’s Revenge is the sequel to Kory The Thief. This time, Kory the cat has been kidnapped by Omega, out for revenge against her once-friend, Shizuka. It’s up to Kory to escape through the dangerous floors and guard patrolled halls of Omega’s base of operations!
Web (work in progress)
Krautscape
Krautscape is a multiplayer racing game with procedurally generated tracks. The leader is able to control the direction of the track to his own benefit, but his chasers can take shortcuts by spreading their wings and fly from one track element to another. You can play Krautscape with up to 4 players. Simply start a server and wait for some friends to connect. Collect five Checkpoints before your opponents do to win the race and beware of the obstacles.
Alpha.
La-Mulana
Fellow archeologists and students, La-Mulana is an action-adventure platformer inspired by the PC games of the 1980s! The all-new remake of La-Mulana features stunning new graphics, new sound, re-tuned gameplay and new secrets for the budding archeologist inside all of us. The fantastically re-imagined La-Mulana features hand-drawn pixel art by game director, Takumi Naramura. Specifically created for the Wii and built on a fresh, new game engine, La-Mulana takes full advantage of the Wii and WiiWare service. If you dare, venture into the mysterious ruins of La-Mulana with me, Lemeza Kosugi. By the way I’m a third-generation Japanese, university professor and also a famous archaeologist. A descendant of ninjas, I’ve honed my abilities and can use a myriad of weapons and gear. Please assist me in solving the mysteries of the ruins of La-Muluna and beating my father, Shorn Kosugi, along the way. He, too, is a famous archaeologist and my eternal rival. So, let’s grab my trusty whip, Mobile Super X PC and get ready for some archaeological ruins explorations!
Freeware PC version.
Labyrinthica: The Quest of Lima
It was just another ordinary day for Lima. Though unexpectedly, the routine chore of picking apples, will send Lima into a dangerous journey. Labyrinthica: The Quest of Lima is a single-player, melee focused action game. Labyrinthica has similarities to rogue games, but is based on real-time action. You move Lima with the keyboard and aim with the mouse. Unlike similar games, you will need to fight monsters face to face rather than shoot them from a safe distance. You use both your weapon and shield in battle, though using a sword is not always the only way to harm enemies! Potions should be used wisely. Drinking that green potion might prove fatal. It might be poison! And throwing that bronze potion on the boar creature might make it go berserk. Potion colors are randomly assigned to each type. You will have to discover on your own what each potion color does. Labyrinthica awaits to test your wits and reflexes.
Available commercially with free demo here.
Laichenberg
Laichenberg is a firstperson shooter with a defect. Frags are corpses; and they do not disappear in this game. The corpses of the enemies you kill, remain where they died and fell to the ground. If you kill more enemies, their remains start blocking your way and the narrow tunnels of the bunker system become insurmountable. Laicnenberg refers to Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s narrative fragment “Winter war in Tibet”. Soldier 23 has to substitute his legs with rolls and his arms with weapons. In the end, all that remains for him is scribble on the wall, meter for meter, back and forth. Laichenberg means mountain of spawning (german: “laichen”) and piles of corpses (german: “Leichen”). In an apocalypse it shows how a simple defect alters a game. Laichenberg does not make the dead disappear such as firstperson shooters usually do. The effect is that soon enough there is no space left to play in the labyrinth.
Freeware.
Leelh
Leelh is a 3D MMORPG fully playable a web browser which belongs to the survival genre. The player walks through an open world to survive and discover what unleashed the cataclysm which destroyed the world. An organic story and loads of Game Master Animations : Leelh takes roleplay as an essential part of its gameplay. Welcome in the France of the 2080s. Let’s survive !
Web.
Light of Altair
Light of Altair is a sci-fi colony building game with a deep plot. Grow colonies from landing pod to metropolis, while sending off new spaceships to expand your territory to other worlds. You are not alone in space, 8 factions from different parts of the world are all following their own agendas in the solar system; diplomacy and orbital-combat are essential to learn. Light of Altair is based on a custom built 3D engine that enables easy zooming from galaxies all the way down to individual moons and asteroids covered in the colonies with their glass domes, mines and launch pads. Advanced shader technology is used to add rich details and lighting to surfaces.
Commercially available here, demo here.
lilt line
Lilt line is a rhythm/music racing game with a dubstep soundtrack and visual aesthetic that will confound your senses and rock your soul. Control the silky-smooth rhythm line and do your best to stay on the track as you race to the finish, tapping the button to the beat of the genuinely filthy soundtrack pumped out by genre superstars, 16bit. It’s a dubstep race to the finish line that has to be experienced to be believed.
ios App Store (£1.79/$2.99)
Loop Raccord
Manipulate a series of video clips in order to create a continuous movement.
Freeware
Lost In The Deep
Lost In The Deep is an action adventure game. A girl gets acquainted with the family of mermaids. One day the new friends disappear, and the child finds out that they were taken away by a huge cracken (octopus). The hero must release his friends from the cracken and his accomplices. The atmosphere of the underwater world of different seas, action elements (interaction games with various inhabitants of the underwater, pursuits, shooting the enemies, gathering prizes with time restrictions etc.), exploring the world (finding stashes, bonuses and hidden levels). Player’s view – Side view.
Demo.
Lumaki
Lumaki is a pacific race that was forced to run away from their home planet Lumanji through a dimensional portal, which transported them to Iphones and Ipods Touch around the world. Now, every human that owns one can adopt a Lumaki and train him, in preparation for the imminent battle against the dangerous Kamaki. The training courses are located inside a house and appear as mini games that must be beaten to improve your Lumaki. When he is fully improved you can print and assemble your new friend and make him your guardian, displaying him in your desk.
ios App Store (59p/99c)
