Swords & Sorcery

Today is Sunday, and finally I can rest a little from work. So I decided to spend a little time on IdieGames.com, here are my findings:

• Swords & Sorcery: wow! totally awesome!! what an impressive display of pixelart. It looks so incredibly cool it almost makes me wants to buy an iPad (really!).
  
  
  Walk in the Woods from Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery on Vimeo.
  
  
• An interview with Notch: maybe minecraft will have achievements... yep, why not, I like achievements.
  
• Ittle Dew: when I saw the art at the beginning of the trailer I think something like "nah...", but after that I saw Zelda... I miss Zelda, maybe I should get a SNES out of somewhere and just enjoy Link's adventures in his full glory.

Oh, and BTW my Kindle arrived home and I totally love it!

Waiting for my Kindle

I just bought a Kindle from Amazon. I like to read a lot, from philosophy to contemporary literature. Unfortunately the only time I have left for reading is while I'm travelling on bus (actually Transmilenio, the Bogota's public massive transport) to my work and back to home. I hope the Kindle is comfortable enough, and easy to grab, to read while I'm standing on the bus... can't wait to have the Kindle on my hands.

Anyway, this is my gaming blog, so back to business. To be honest I haven't got much time lately to spend gaming, but today I managed to finally put my hands on the latest demo I downloaded from Steam: Lara Croft and The Guardian of Light. I'm not sure if it qualifies as Indie (probably not), but I enjoyed it a lot: pretty neat graphics, but most importantly a nice gaming experience: tight controls, clever puzzles, well designed enemies and enemy situations, and a high doze of platforming (yes, I'm a Mario guy). Having in mind that so far I've only played the demo, I could gave it a 4 out of 5, maybe a good next purchase. Oh, and I almost forgot to mention that is only $15 USD, and have some DLC additional levels for something around $4 USD.

Now that I mentioned it, I think DLC is a great strategy for monetizing your game project (maybe I should write a post about it).

Back from hell at work ...

Ok, for the last two weeks my work at the office really sucked... but I'm back again.

Today I watch the rest of the video-clips at Indie Game: The Movie that I haven't watched before, and I found really interesting the marketing approach exposed by the guys at Wolfire in this clip.

I found some nice blogs too:

• Wolfire: development and news blog from the guys behind Overgrowth and Lugaru. Pretty impressive technology and art.
• Infinite Ammo: from the developer behind Aquaria, Alec Holowka. A lot of interesting things.
• TIGSource: independent games creators and players community.Lots of cool things.

JAIGB (Just Another Indie Game Blog) ...

So, I begin another blog, like if there are not enough of those this days... but anyway, I give a damn, I need a place for practicing my english (so if by some kind of implausible chance you end losing your time reading this, feel free to correct my miserable english), and at the same time I need a kind of archive for my internet roamings (specifically on indie games and game development).

Ok, let's get to the point:

• Currently I'm reading XNA 4.0 Game Development by Example by Kurt Jaegers (at XNA Resources). So far it's been pretty good, and I will recommend it for anyone wanting to initiate in XNA game development (disclaimer: I'm a programmer myself with some experience in C#, and this is my first "serious" attempt on game dev). I'm best at learning by doing, and I like the cool game projects and the neat graphics for them (something I haven't found in other books). I'll try to write more about my experience with the book in future blogs.
• The other thing I want to post about is this http://www.indiegamethemovie.com/. The overall polish of the published clips is just awesome. So, if you read this, and like indie games, go and watch them right now. (yes, Edmund McMillen talks about Super Meat Boy!!... and there's Spelunky, Canabalt and more!!)

Games I enjoyed this weekend:

• Canabalt (no, I haven't played it before...)
• Desktop dungeon (with all the buzz I have to see it for myself)
• House of dead ninjas (wow!)
• One Button Arthur (short, and definitely a must play)
• Cat Astro Phi (ahhh, those Gameboy days...)

And finally something that I can't just let pass: Indie Games Blog is posting a series on Top 10 independent and freeware games of 2010 by genre. So far: 

• Top Browser Platformers 2010
• Top Freeware Arcade Games 2010
• Top Browser Arcade Games 2010
• Top Freeware Adventure Games 2010
• Top Freeware Puzzle Games 2010
• Top Freeware Role-Playing Games 2010
• Top Freeware Shoot 'em Ups 2010
• Top Freeware Experimental Games 2010

OK, I think that's all. I hope I keep posting, and not just let this blog die a shameful dead...