A little “showreel” of indiegames in development.

“Indev” is the name of an interesting project. It is some sort of blog or archive for promising indiegames, that are currently in development. It should be a place for interested people, that can pick up projects, where the like to follow the development process. I think that being on this list would eventually increase the chance of finding sponsors and / or publishers. Or audience in general.

The project emerged out of a thread at in the TIGSource-Forum (read more here), that grew bigger and bigger and finally into a own project now. Lingering is fun, because most of the games there feature at least screenshots and very great graphics.

Over at the Flixel-board good thing are happening ultra-fast and in a reliable quality. Flixel is only some weeks out (read interview with Adam who did Flixel), but the community flourishing.

One of the highlights is FLAN, a tile map editor especially made for Flixel. This tool is still in alpha-version, but also proceeding ultra fast. It is free for personal use, but if you use it professionally, it is available for a really nice price below 10 dollars (read about software-pricing here).

Nitram-Cero, who wrote Flan, made a neat micro-game to promote his effort and show off some features. It is a mini-narrative and feature some very lovely wacky motion of the player-character. Play it here.

AppStore, AppStore, AppStore… It seems to be one of the hottest topics at the moment. There is no day, where I do not read something about the AppStore. Is the iPhone / iPod the new CD-Player of the present: an almost must have to consume media?

Anyway, at coding horror I read something about the sensible area of “software pricing“. The layout of the AppStore has some special flaws, that set cheaper applications in advantage over “high priced” applications for, i.e. 9.99 dollar. They sell in masses and therefore dominate the “most downloaded” lists – an subtle effect. A bad thing? Not for Jeff Atwood, at Codinghorror. He writes: “the idea that software should be priced low enough to pass the average user’s “why not” threshold is a powerful one”. He argues, that lowering the price can have an tremendous effect, not only in the number of sales, but also in the total amount of money coming in. He gives an example and figures about Left 4 Dead. So better don’t leave now, without reading this article about software pricing.

Late summer vibes. This means good weather and fresh ideas popping out of the heat. Like this one. Rumors go, that Hudson will release a Wii-game called “Shadow Tower”, that turns an stone old gaming-paradigm just the other way around. Objects throw shadows, and your aim is to use the shadow to cast the gaming character at home. With the help of a little butterfly, you can change the direction of light-source for managing special sections. So far, so good, now what?

At the Experimental Gameplay Sessions at the GDC 2009, Flashbang Studios presented a similar concept: turning the gameplay around, by using a gfx-by-product as a main source of play. Look at it here:

Anyway… Let’s turn around more gfx-by-products into main source of gameplay inspiration!

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The sounddesign idea of the day comes from a “physics lecturer from the University of New South Wales in Sydney”. He shows us on this impressive video, how you can make really, really awesome Star-Wars-like sounds, well, with low-budget equipment. He uses a “Slinky” (one of the best toys ever invented), a mic and a plastic cup to kick to best out of it. (via)

Just show me just one single person, who does not love the Samorost-series, made by Amanita design? Now he came up with new work, that is as charming as Samorost. Machinarium takes you into a magical, magical place, where you have to click on the right objects in the right order to make things happen. The music alone grabs your hand and takes you to an epic journey. Combined with the extremely-solid graphic… jackpot!

Machinarium will be released in October 2009 and will cost about 20 dollars. Pre-orders get a 3 dollar discount bonus. Let’s hope that the ratio between free / paid content is much more balanced than on Samorost 2. Uhm, will there be actually a free version after all?

Phlow is a webzine for free creative commons music. It started several years ago in German only, but made the move to a broader audience almost two years ago with the English Phlow-Magazine.com. Almost every day a new review of a free mp3-release from the netlabel-scene is presented. But that’s not the news. Behind the curtain the project evolved. And the “Phlow Magazine” is now available in Spanish, too. At Phlow.es a highly motivated team keeps on digging and compiling the best netaudio-releases, that are released under a creative commons licence on the web. Therefore the music, that is reviewed at Phlow, is free to download and share with your friends. As you can see, the archive of great music for free is growing and growing. Or like Applejux, the main-editor of Phlow.es said:

Netaudio makes me think. Netaudio is “Hello, good morning, nice to meet you!” Netaudio makes me happy, so… why not?