the mediocrity codex

Hey folks. I've left you hanging for a few weeks now, but I promise I'll make it up to you. And to start, here's a little game I found on IndieGames.com! (Click the picture to go there!) It is what it sounds like, I promise. It's also a sweet example of a simple concept made better by fantastic level design . Have a go and have some fun!

I've been wanting to say a little something about this game for awhile now, but haven't yet found the appropriate time, space, or words that may adequately describe it. But the truth is there are no words that can. And there never will be. Not necessarily because the game is impossibly amazing and words can't actually suffice, but for a rather different reason. Honestly, there's a feeling that's been seriously nagging at me for the past few days that sounds like pure madness, but is of course perfectly logical: why do we keep writing about games?

News has been floating around lately since the launch of Indie Royale , a new digital distribution site with a novel, but familiar way of doing business. They sell indie games in bundles for one low, low price! Not unlike the phenomenally successful Humble Bundle (that now grace the internet 1-2 times per year), Indie Royale is a great venue for indie developers to get exposure (and sales). But at the same time, this apparent copy-catting feels a bit strange, doesn't it? What exactly is the difference between this and the venerable humbleable bundelable? Let's examine the differences: The Humble Bundle is a charitable venture that promotes indie games with its primary intent being fundraising. While it's backed and managed by a singular indie developer, it's scope is wide and decidedly not game-oriented. It aims to give consumers and creators alike a way to contribute to the needy via charities like EFF (An advocacy group for electronic media and art) and Chi...

Yes! It’s Indie Cred! It’s Monday! This is the best thing ever! I am totally not assuming things for you! And what’s even better is that I have some bona fide exclusive content for you, my dear readers, of which no other part of the web has or ever will have (OR ELSE). By some great magic of the internet, internal combustion engines, and government-funded municipal services I went and had a meatbag-to-meatbag meetup with an authentic, basement-having, ramen-eating, code-writing indie dev. And what a meetup it was!

Alright. It's monday. I'm working on like 3 articles right now and none of them are ready to publish. But that doesn't matter because I've actually spent the last 2 hours playing this game. Slayin' Play it, and be glad.

It's monday again, and once again we're desperately searching for ways to cling to those lost hours of days gone by. As we lament the loss of our weekends and our free time to soul-sucking immerso-gaming, looking disdainfully and regretfully on those 5 hours spent watching 2 1-hour cutscenes and completing 2% of a game, we wonder to ourselves, "what accursed devil-man would be so cruel as to create something so engrossing that would deign to infringe on my time so surreptitiously? What manner of beast does such a thing, what mind of malevolence and spite would wish such abyssal weights upon common beings such as we? Curse the gods. CURSE WHAT GODS HAVE MADE SUCH MEN." Well, I don't think these titles will do you any better, addict.

The world moves so slowly sometimes. It's during those times when I get all mopey and melancholic about life and its plodding pace, but it's also time for me to be contemplative and reflective about my purpose in life and its meaning. This weekend was an all balls-out no-nonsense time-flies exploding-pants kind of weekend though, so none of that stuff happened.

Lean in close, I have something to tell you:

Swords clang, men cry, and the sounds of battle resonate across the landscape. The cacophony of war and strife saturates the earth as the gods themselves weep at the destruction and death of their people. A lone warrior rises from the devastation to reconcile the destruction, pursuant to a quest and the collection of many mystical sacred items. And a big gun. Hey! It's A Game with a Kitty 3 ! So cute!

I can’t say enough about independent development. This really applies to every kind of small business in any industry, but games developers tend to be much more accessible and amiable due to their tech-savvy. In this case, the separation via computers actually improves the communication and increases the strength of the connection versus other areas. It’s really a great dynamic that I’ve always been dying to take advantage of. Luckily for me, I did that very thing this past week. I braved the perilous caves of indie development to bring you a timely and insightful interview* with one of the eminent members of the indie enclave TIGSource : Paul Hubans !

I don't know what you've come to expect from me in this feature anymore, but I do know what I've come to expect of myself: quality games from quality people, at a quality price (most often free). Time and again I've said that Independent development is some kind of anomaly in the gaming world. I'm now convinced it's not. It's the future of gaming. Just like fast food restaurants used to be anomalies and we never believed we'd ever outsource our homestyle cooking to various individuals on a large scale, so too will this industry, the interactive gaming industry, be redefined not by enormous companies and unwieldy multi-armed corporations, but by the tenacity and innovation of many small teams all fighting for a piece of the pie. But while this fierce competition often produces fear, hate, and exploitation, I think that the gaming version will play out far differently. If you spend a bit of time on any of the following sites where Indie Devs like to ...

If you haven't played this game yet, you are actually dead. I'll be honest, this feature is quickly becoming my favorite. Everytime I wade out to the deep waters of the webternet, I come back with more and more awesomely ridiculous things that I want people to know about and experience. Things like this . And this . And this . And this !

Good news everyone! Paul Veer (Vlambeer) and Infinite Ammo teamed up to pump out a promotional game for rock band Incubus' next album. I'm not privy to the details of the album, nor do I care much for their music (the last song I listened to intently from them was "Pardon Me" because I was enthralled by a particular music video ), but the game itself is pretty sweet.

Title: Momodora 2 Developer: Rdein Release: get it here  Brown-haired maiden, slice  and leaves do cradle your jump  maple leaf, so sharp  

The rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air…it must be time for another Indie Cred! Woo! Is this too much? NO. It's missing burgers.  Okay so, before that I gotta say that this past weekend has been ridiculously hectic. I haven’t even looked at my blog (much less posted anything) and apparently everyone who reads it is aware of that (hits are down 70%! Which is like 50. 50 is 70% of what exactly? I don’t know. Well, I mean I could know but I don’t care to know. It’s too early in the week for maths.) I was busy playing music and listening to people preach about God and the Devil and Post-Modernism vs. Classicalism and the existence of supernatural phenomena or the speculation about the visible universe being some sort of a surface dimension resting upon a deeper 4 th dimension of ultradepth and the universal gravitational constants causing bending in light. And speaking in tongues. These are all super interesting things. Almost as interesting as video games (at times even ...

Title: PROUN Developer:  Joost van Dongen Release : June 2011 Price: $0-∞ (pay what you want, here )

Hello everybody! I’m interrupting your regularly scheduled Indie Cred with a few quick special announcements. Along with my recent foray into “books about games”, I’ve become privy to the idea of “games about life”, an area of game development that has naturally occurred to fill the obvious philosophical and metaphysical need of many gamers. This area was once spearheaded by a small band of developers who formed the serious games initiative . Although their time has apparently come and gone (the original website is rather dead), their awareness and goals spawned a number of like-minded projects such as Social Impact Games and Games for Change . These sites continue the vision and idea that games can be more than just entertainment devices; they can be used to transmit and teach ethics, encourage prosocial behavior, and raise awareness for special causes. Even Al Gore seems to think so. Personally, I think it’s true that games can be used for things other than entertainment, and I t...

Title: Questling Developer: Flyboy Platform: PC Release: you can find it here ! This is like that game where you start off extremely confident, but then realize you’re in way over your head as hundreds of thousands of people begin to die because of your choices. What was the name of that game? Oh right, “World of Warcraft”

Hey guys. It being E3 week and all, strange things are bound to bound around. This is one of them. Also, this game is available to play online during the entirety of E3, and can be found here ! MENU TIME Our favorite bite-sized roguelike, Desktop Dungeons, has gone mainstream! If you can't see the picture or just want a text description of what's going on here: It uses the Unity Engine now. This is a browser-based platform that allows for some pretty fancy-pants effects not available in other platforms like flash and html5. It seems to have a full-blown menu and start screen. While cluttered, it looks like there are a lot more options to the game besides characters and game modes. Is there now more "game" to the game? Keep reading to find out.

Title: Super Crate Box Developer: Vlambeer Platform: PC Release: 2010 (you can find it here ) The game all the kids would crowd around until they ran out of money, at which point they would start fiddling with the sticks during the demo just to feel like they were playing the game. And crates.