Jamie Woodhouse has followed in the trend set by World of Goo and Crayon Physics and decided to run a “Pay What You Want” special sale offer for Qwak. Whatever you decide to pay you’re going to get a lot of fun for your money! Don’t hang about, though… the deal ends on January the 22nd.

Normally you’d be paying £12.99 – still an excellent bargain – but for now you can purchase the PC or Mac version of Qwak for whatever you think it’s worth through  this ordering page. Marvellous!

Many people who submitted their game for the competition this year have posted the feedback they received from the judges on the TIGForums, and some of it is pretty gasp-inducing. For an event that’s become so prestigous in recent years, to see that games might be accepted or cast aside based on a one-sentence critique is really quite an eye-opener. The gory details are right here – you might have to dig in a few pages, but it’s all a stimulating read.

Of course, there’s always another side to the coin – if you are curious to know a little more about how judging for the IGF really works then I’ve got just the article for you. Entitled “Demystifying the IGF Judging Process”, Jens Bergensten (of Harvest: Massive Encounter fame) offers a considerably detailed insight into the proceedings and includes a couple of alternative opinions from Alex May (Eufloria / Dyson) and Michael Rose (editor of IndieGames.com), all of whom are judges in this year’s contest.

I hope your holiday season went well. It’s been a pretty good year for indie games and I’m expecting another great list of titles in 2010. Stay tuned and I’ll try to give my usual sporadic coverage of yesterday’s boring news… today! There’s a ton to look forward to – Fez and a deluxe version of Spelunky for XBLA, Night Sky and the much-hyped-and-might-arrive-soon Cave Story for Wii, and who knows what else there might be for PC gamers!

In any case, we can kick the year off the way we want it to continue with Terry Cavanagh’s VVVVVV very soon – he’s announced that it’ll be released in just over a week on the 10th of January. It will be available from thelettervsixtim.es and will cost a mere $15 / £9.30ish. Or you can still preorder the game for just $10 (by donating with the Paypal link on the Distractionware blog) until January the 3rd. Great stuff!

After my recent verbal wranglings regarding Cave Story for the Wii, a few people seemed to have the impression that I was beating Mr. Nygren up – this most certainly wasn’t what I intended to convey. In any case, as a big fan of his, I’d like to offer my congratulations. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed all of the game I’ve played through so far; it has all the trademark features you’ve come to expect but with several marked differences and additions when compared to its most obvious cousins, the Knytt games. It’s absolutely worth playing – expect to be completely absorbed! Try the demo and tell me it isn’t so…

To celebrate the occasion and spread some early holiday cheer, I’m giving you the chance to win a free copy of Saira! For details of how you could start exploring the full world of Nifflas’ newest creation, keep reading after the break…

[A winner has been picked and the contest is over. Thanks for your comments!]

All you have to do is simply add a comment in reply to this post, making sure you use a valid email address. One lucky winner will be randomly picked from a virtual hat some time on the evening of Friday the 18th (some time around 7pm GMT). The prize – a registration code to unlock the full game – will wing its way to them through email shortly after.

I wish you good luck and happy adventuring!

Oh, just one thing to keep in mind – don’t be alarmed into double-posting if your comment doesn’t appear immediately. All comments are moderated and I’ll approve them as regularly as I can, but I’ll be going to sleep in a couple of hours so there could be delays.

Which, in a round about way, brought me to thinking: “Hey, I wonder how many of today’s Modern Warfare 2 players would know about the real online games of the past decade that sparked everything off?” Probably not a whole lot. So I reckon it’d be nice to go back and cover some of the best oldschool 2D multiplayer games – some that time caught up with, and others that are still going strong.

As a series of posts I won’t say they’ll be done overnight – I want to at least try and be concise with the content for each game, and knowing how lazy / easily distracted / generally slow I am, it could take a while. Still, I’ll try to keep prodding myself in the direction of getting them done.

If you think you have some interesting information, historical or otherwise, about any of these games, I’d love to hear it, so feel free to post a comment here or contact me with your thoughts. Watch this space!

Positech Games have masterfully concentrated the most entertaining bits of space games over the years: massive capital ships flinging gigantic lazor beams at each other with swarms of fighters dodging between them, and the ability to design and arrange those ships so that they might inflict the maximum amount of superheated plasma death upon the enemy before they bite the dust. In a glorious lightshow of kersplosions, of course.

They’ve tried to make something simple and engaging – something that doesn’t need frantic RTS-style clicking activity to get you anywhere. I’d say they’ve succeeded. You provide the brain and GSB will happily provide the brawn; in a vaguely Progress Quest way, the actual battle sequences don’t require any input from you at all – they’re just a display of how things turned out, as your ships act autonomously using whatever orders you set before the battle begins. But don’t be fooled into thinking this game has nothing for you to do. The challenge is setting up your fleet to achieve victory in an efficient way to earn yourself more “honour”, and so unlock armaments for the next confrontation that are even more devastating.

Folks who want to control every last detail may not find Gratuitous Space Battles to be their cup of tea, but it’s an excellent title for anyone who wants to cut to the chase and get right to the explody bit. What are you waiting for? The chaos is just a few mouse clicks away!

Game: Gratuitous Space Battles
Genre: Strategy
Author: Positech Games
Platform: Windows
License: Shareware
Homepage: http://www.positech.co.uk/gratuitousspacebattles/

Osmos [link], released a few months ago by Hemisphere Games, is something I failed miserably to mention at the time. Continuing the trend of ambient chillout games with which you can switch your brain off for a while, this one features a nifty absorb ‘em up gameplay mechanic with plenty of interesting twists to keep your attention. Drift around a fluid playfield filled with various sizes of cellular blobs and complete set objectives, such as absorbing a specific cell or simply becoming the biggest in the pool. Though it starts out easy, you’ll soon find yourself needing quite a bit of dexterity and fast thinking, especially if you want to unlock the endgame achievements. A snip at $10, I’d say, and there’s a demo for you to try first if you like.

Now, a confession – I’ve not sat down and given AI War: Fleet Command [link] an awful lot of my time, but I still want to give you the heads-up on it because Arcen Games seem to have a sleeper hit on their hands. The main thing to say is that despite being an RTS, AI War includes bits of 4X and even turn-based strategy, with the main draw being an extremely competent AI opponent (which you fight either solo or in co-op multiplayer). Attempting to control every single bit of the map will end in tears quickly, because the enemy’s “Threat” rating will increase as you destroy its ships and perform certain other actions, eventually reaching a stage where its onslaught becomes too great for you to counter; considered, surgical strikes are what you’ll need to win. If campaigns spanning many hours sound like your type of fun, give the demo a spin.

First, from Amanita Design, comes Machinarium [link]. The winner of this year’s IGF Excellence in Visual Art award has been a long time in the works but looks, as you may imagine, absolutely splendid. Help a robot who’s been exiled from his city to rescue his girlfriend, kick out the bad guys and generally make the world right again. Essentially it’s a point-and-click adventure, but with fantastic hand-drawn environments and characters. There’s a lot to praise about this game, not least the sublime atmospheric music and perfectly-weighted humour. Check out the demo in your browser, or wander along here for their other games.

After running a competition to decide its new name, the game formerly known as Dyson has become Eufloria [link] – a far more fitting title! Rudolf Kremers and Alex May have finished up the game and it’s a perfect chillout RTS without any of the frills that often confuse rather than help. Control your flock (cloud?… swarm?…) of sentient seedlings to explore an asteroid belt and discover the cause of a hostile infection. Nice and relaxing, yet with a definite challenge toward the end. Get a taste of Eufloria with the demo.

More indie stuff to come over the weekend!

Take a wander through some of yesteryear’s best games at www.hotud.org. And don’t forget to tell your friends!

The amazing storyline goes like this: a virus has invaded and let loose all of your installed programs. Being the noble hero that you are, it’s your job to enter the mysterious electronic realm known as “inner space” to capture or destroy all the errant program icons before returning home for a nice cup of tea. Careful, though. The terrifying Inner Demon that controls this digital dimension might not let you out so easily…

Inner Space’s neat trick is that it uses the files on your hard drive – specifically, icons, be they in EXEs, DLLs or otherwise – to create the content you play with and fight for. Before each wave you select a folder on your hard disk to journey into. You can only pick folders that have icons in them; a summary of the currently selected folder is shown on the bottom of the screen to help you decide. After this, you enter a “wave” – the game proper – where a maximum of 8 of the folder’s icons will be waiting. Large folders will need you to play them several times to deal with all of their icons.

The game itself plays like pretty much any top-down space shooter, so you can rotate, brake and thrust your way around with the aim of collecting icons to use them as currency for ship upgrades. Of course, you’re also free to shoot the icons of programs you hate – yeah, I’m looking at you, Powerpoint! Oh, yes, and at this point I should give an Uplink-style disclaimer – nothing you do in Inner Space damages your actual files. It’s not real, folks.

Of course, icons aren’t the only thing you’ll come across. That’d be boring. Making your life more interesting – often in quite humourous ways – are some fairly competent AI ships to play the part of both friend and foe. Upon starting the game, your choice of ship will not only determine your initial equipment but also your teammates and enemies. There are eight teams ranging from the noble Knights to the opportunistic Pirates, and while each start with a general opinion of each other, diplomacy is extremely fluid and can be influenced greatly by your actions.

After playing a few waves your surroundings will get more dangerous as team feuds develop and gun turrets, hazard blocks and viruses appear to put the cat amongst the pigeons. Then there’s the Inner Demon who will occasionally summon you to fight him via a black hole. I won’t say how, but he holds the key to some of the most powerful equipment you can get… and is also the gatemaster for escaping this crazy universe a little bit earlier than usual.

I have fond memories of Inner Space from when I was a little ‘un, but gamers today probably won’t be able to see through the rather dated visuals, let alone the price tag that’s undeniably steep for such a vintage title. It’s a pity; beneath the jaded looks there’s stuff here that I’ve yet to see other games improve on. Go on – try the demo and discover a gem from the past!