Indie

TypeRacer - An Excellent Waste of Time

An interesting multiplayer typing-based racing game recently became available on the internet. It seems an odd design choice, but it works really well. You speed your VW Beetle along a drag race by speedily typing quotes from books, movies, and songs. Whoever has the highest words per minute, wins. Not since Typing of the Dead have we seen a videogame that utilizes such a unique and awesome method of control. Playing this game makes me wish my school system had something like this for me to play as opposed to typing “SALAD,” “LAD,” and “FAD” eight million times on one of these.

Via: Kotaku

A light-hearted look at our passion

A week or so ago, the May ‘08 edition of Paste magazine found its way into my mailbox. For those not in the know, Paste is a monthly magazine that covers music, film, and culture while generally hovering over the Indie interests in those areas. It’s all part of the necessities for one to keep their ear to the street and maintain their Indie cred. Now you’re probably asking yourself what does a magazine that is mostly about music have to do with video games. Well, besides an article about independent game developers making their way into the mainstream, there’s a piece entitled The Diary of a Video Game RPG Hero.

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ROM CHECK FAIL - Nostalgic Classic Game Mashup

Have you ever wanted to use Pac-Man to eat a space invader while listening to the music from Spy Hunter? Who could resist the opportunity to slash apart an asteroid with Link? If you find yourself having unusual videogame cravings, ROM CHECK FAIL might be just the game for you. Combining classic games into chaotic bliss, ROM CHECK FAIL will leave you confused and strangely satisfied.

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At the risk of ending this fan’s world… it’s a Metroid II remake!

Regardless of how you feel about them (well, us), fans of Nintendo games are a breed apart. Many won’t let the obvious legal danger of playing around with Nintendo’s IPs deter them from making their own versions of Nintendo’s classic games. Case in point is this surprising remake of the 1992 Game Boy game, Metroid II: Return of Samus, which I reviewed for Aeropause. Go ahead and read that one, I’m proud of it. I’ll wait.

So what this loyal fan, going by the name DoctorM64, has done is ripped the assets out of Metroid Fusion (hey, you can read a review for that, too) and used them as a starting point to rebuild the ol’ monochrome beep-fest in much the same way Nintendo did for the original Metroid with Zero Mission (hey, what do you know…).

It’s Windows-only unfortunately, but judging by the video at the source, it’s some impressive work that clearly took a really long time to do. Let’s keep in mind that the better this man does, the more likely he is to be shut down with a firmly-worded cease and desist letter. He even points out that he’s aware of that on his blog. Brilliant job though, this guy should be cooperating for a Cave Story sequel instead of getting himself in trouble like this.

Source: Fan remake of Metroid II is not only awesome, but also playable at DSFanboy.

Endless Forest Phase Three

Quite some time ago, we wrote about a modest, little, fun and FREE MMO game called Endless Forest by the people at Endless Tales, which allows you to prance around in a forest as a Deer. Sound relaxing? That’s because it is - no guns here. Now the game is in its third phase with a tremendous amount of upgrades and popularity that would make any Fawn stop in its tracks. Here’s what’s new:

“The Forest of Phase Three has doubled in size, so now you can roam even farther and enjoy the new sights and sounds. The new area features a completely new landscape, with birch trees and sycamores, blue berries and little birds that sit on your antlers if you’re very very quiet. Which is impossible when you’re a Fawn, of course! New players will play the game as a young deer before they acquire the full potential of the well known human-faced avatar. To make sure the Fawns remain amused, a little playground has been added, a quarry of sorts, with big boulders to jump on and hide under.

Phase Three also includes a major overhaul of the game engine with better performance and lower memory requirements. Even the file size of version 3.0 is less than that of 2.0, despite of the additional features (under 50 MB!).

130.000 Downloads and 18.000 registrations after the first release 2 short years ago, the artistic MMO project has more momentum than ever. A lively community that actively participates in the design of the game. Ever growing numbers of active players (between 1200 and 1800 unique players every month). With live performances and presentations at museums, community centers, and media art festivals. From its beginnings as an experimental project, The Endless Forest has now gained a place for itself on the daily menu of many online gamers and art lovers.”

Right now they have a whopping 18568 Deers roaming around, doing their thing.

Get your Cervidae game on now

Thanks, Auriea & Michael

Hand-drawn platformer Eternity’s Child bound for DS, Wii.

The indie games are popping up all over the place now for Wii and DS, perhaps due to their low development costs. This particular one makes me think of Line Rider and Fancy Pants, in that everything looks like it came right out of a book of doodles. I was going to say “sketch book” there, but these don’t look like sketches… they looks like doodles. You see what I’ve done to myself now? Book of doodles? What does that sound like, aside from ramen? Wow, I haven’t had ramen for a while.

I hope you’re not getting the impression that I’m getting distracted here, because this kind of thing is really interesting and exciting. For a developer to take it upon themselves to produce something this different and then push it at two very successful platforms, with the belief that it could sell, shows something significant. While games like VibRibbon have appeared on major platforms in the past, they don’t tend to do very well.

Eternity’s Child is migrating from cell phones to become a pair of games, one on the DS and one on Wii, developed by a partnership between Alten8 and Luc Bernard.

Details about Wii version -

* the game will be a 3D platform game
* will not have the same story as the Wii version

GP

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Interview: Chris Stockman, Blazing Lizard.

With the recent announcement of Pirates vs. Ninjas Dodgeball by Blazing Lizard, I spoke with Studio Director Christopher Stockman. He was kind enough to allow an interview on the upcoming game and an assortment of peripheral topics, providing an interesting glimpse into, among other things, the concerns of indie developers. It’s always refreshing to speak to the people who are actually involved in the development, rather than the usual wall of PR people who either ignore you or throw meaningless hyperbole your way.

Enough ranting! On to the interview. And when you’re done reading, vote on our new poll to select the platform you would prefer to play the game on.

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Aeropause Interviews Band of Bugs Developer

Ninja Bee, developers of the Xbox Live Arcade title, Band of Bugs, gave me the opportunity to ask some questions about Band of Bugs as well as the gaming industry in general.

For those of you that haven’t played Band of Bugs, yet, I encourage you to do so,especially if you enjoy games like Final Fantasy Tactics or Fire Emblem. Oh, and did I mention that Band of Bugs includes a level editor? All in all, an excellent game for the money.

Check below the proverbial “jump” for the interview questions.

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Knock Down Building, Pick Up Big Chunk, Throw At Friend.

Slashdot recently mentioned the nominees for the 2007 Independent Games Festival awards, and in comments below that article I saw Toblo mentioned as a nominee. Created at the DigiPen Institute of Technology as a junior year project, Toblo is a multiplayer game with a fun concept, includes support for offline play with bots, offline play in a sandbox mode, and online play with friends. In it you grab hunks of scenery in the form of blocks and throw it at each other and the stacked-up blocks of scenery, with capture the flag gameplay thrown in. The structures will come crumbling down if struck often enough, or if you grab the block holding them up out from under the pile.

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Ask NinjaBee about Indie Development

I have an opportunity to interview NinjaBee, developers of various indie games on the PC, as well as Outpost Kaloki X and Cloning Clyde, available via Xbox Live Arcade.

What I’ve decided to do is get some feedback from Aeropause readers about what kinds of questions they’d like me to ask. I have many of my own questions, and if I get some good suggestions, I will definitely add them to my list.