GDC '09: CO-OP Indie Games Special

Posted by Brandon "BMcC" McCartin Wed, 12 Aug 2009 14:59:00 GMT

Here’s a bit of GDC news that slipped through the cracks. The Area 5 guys (formerly The 1UP Show) made an excellent video special on IGF, highlighting a number of indie and student games. You can find the original post here. And if you’re not familiar with Area 5 / CO-OP, check out the rest of the site. They’re uploading excellent videos all the time. It’s good stuff, trust me!

Posted in Videos, IGF / GDC, Interviews | Tags Area5 | 8 comments

Super Meat Boy Featurette & More

Posted by Brandon "BMcC" McCartin Sat, 08 Aug 2009 13:49:00 GMT

Just a quick little post—here’s a Super Meat Boy Nintendo Channel Featurette with Tommy and Edmund blabbing about the upcoming WiiWare title, which is promised to be “the most epic game ever, that ever will be.”

UPDATE: Another video I missed, featuring stills of the latest build as well as one of DannyB’s excellent tracks, after the jump!

Read more...

Posted in Platformers, Videos, Wii, Interviews | Tags DannyB, EdmundMcMillen, TommyRefenes | 50 comments

Interview with the Underdogs

Posted by Derek Yu Mon, 03 Aug 2009 18:34:00 GMT

Rob Cummins did a great interview with Sarinee Achavanuntakul, the founder of Home of the Underdogs, one of the earliest and most important abandonware sites (now defunct but in various stages of unofficial resurrection). Aside from abandonware, HOTUD was one of the first big sites that I remember featuring indie games and developers. I think the modern scene owes her a lot – thanks, Sarinee! And thanks, Rob, for the interview.

Posted in Community, Interviews | 35 comments

Interview with Casey Flynn of Faery Tale Online

Posted by Lorne Whiting Mon, 01 Jun 2009 07:10:00 GMT

I don’t do enough around the site, so here’s an interview with Casey Flynn (AKA Lumin) of Faery Tale Online, a unique browser-based MMO that involves a lot more incest, fratricide, and thievery than its name implies. Some of the main hooks of the game are its unique birth system, coupled with a perma-death system, so player deaths have a lot more weigh than in a normal game, and its lack of premade history, so players create the whole world.

It’s got a lot of focus on role-playing, something I’m not too keen on, but the game’s approach to, well, being a game is too cool for me to not like it, even with the sizable wait just to be born.

Posted in Unique / Bizarre, Multiplayer, Browser Games, Sim, Interviews | 26 comments

TIGInterview: Jonathan Blow

Posted by Leigh Christian Ashton Mon, 11 May 2009 14:18:00 GMT

I’d find it hard to believe anyone visiting these pages would need an introduction to Jonathan Blow, the amazingly talented game developer/guru seems to be everywhere at the moment, his game Braid being the darling hit on Xbox Live and having recently stormed onto the PC. I took the opportunity to fire some questions over so that he could pour some honey into my ears in reply (except, being an email interview, i guess it would be my eyes? and metaphorically at that?)

Anyway, without further ado, please read on..

Leigh: Jon, hello, thanks for taking the time to answer some of my questions. Could you please introduce yourself to the crowd?

Jon: Hi, my name is Jonathan Blow. I make games! I started out in games as mainly a technical guy, but recently I have been thinking ever-more about design, and on Braid I cared much more about the game design than the technical parts.

Read more...

Posted in Platformers, Games and Art?, Xbox 360, Windows, Developers, IGF / GDC, Interviews | Tags braid, JonBlow | 143 comments | 1 trackback

TIGInterview: Rudolf Kremers

Posted by Leigh Christian Ashton Sat, 18 Apr 2009 11:48:00 GMT

Following on from our recent interview with Alex May, I contacted his colleague and co-creator of Dyson, Rudolf Kremers to find out his opinions on Indie gaming, the IGF, feature creep and Astro Chickens.

Leigh: Rudolf, hello. For those who don’t know you, could you please introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about you?

Rudolf: My name is Rudolf Kremers; I was born in Spain, grew up in the Netherlands, and have been a UK resident for nearly ten years. For all that time I have worked in games, at big studios like EA and smaller ones like Curve, and have worked on anything from Harry Potter to Championship manager to Joystick games. Before that I have been making games as an amateur since the 80s, and indulged in most creative disciplines out there. Last year I decided I had enough of traditional development and started my own company ion order to create games independently.

Read more...

Posted in Features, Community, IGF / GDC, Interviews | Tags Dyson, RudolfKremers | 18 comments

TIGInterview: Alex May

Posted by Derek Yu Thu, 09 Apr 2009 05:54:00 GMT

Leigh Ashton, AKA Gravious, recently interviewed his good friend Alex May about Dyson, IGF 2009, and what it’s like to be a part of indiedom.

Leigh: So Alex, for those who don’t know who you are, could you please introduce yourself and tell us a bit about your games?

Alex: I’m Alex May. I am fascinated by interactive systems. I currently work in the games industry full time and write the real stuff in my spare time. That’s actually a bit unfair to my current employers. The project I’m on at work is rather fresh, and our own thing by and large. I wrote Cottage of Doom, which won the TIGSource B-Games competition and wrote Dyson along with Rudolf Kremers.

Read more...

Posted in Features, Community, IGF / GDC, Interviews | Tags AlexMay | 34 comments

1UP - Indie Game Special Podcast

Posted by Xander Wed, 25 Mar 2009 00:11:00 GMT

This is what a podcast looks like.

There’s this one which stars a host of TIGers, including the host of TIGers! It was made by 1UP! Downloading it? Good. Now read the next post already! Go Go Go!

(Thanks to Esquar in tigIRC for the tip!)

Posted in Podcasts / Audio, Interviews | 10 comments

Hey, It's ZUN!

Posted by Derek Yu Fri, 05 Dec 2008 17:06:00 GMT

Earlier this year the shmup god ZUN, creator of the incredibly popular Touhou series of doujin shoot ‘em ups, was interviewed (YouTube, 8:30 in) on NHK’s The Net Star, a Japanese television show about internet culture. (NHK is Japan’s big public broadcasting network.) So if you ever wanted to see the face of the man behind “Team” Shanghai Alice, here you go. Nice hat!

And for those who are unfamiliar with the doujin shoot ‘em up scene, check out our Introduction to Doujin Shmups article, written by Shoot the Core’s Postman in ‘07.

TIGdb: Entry for Team Shanghai Alice

(Source: Zepy, via Canned Dogs)

Posted in Shoot-em-ups, Community, Developers, Interviews, Doujin | Tags TeamShanghaiAlice | 11 comments

Reading Gamebow with LeVar Burton

Posted by Derek Yu Tue, 23 Sep 2008 16:27:00 GMT

Auntie Pixelante interviewed Jesse Venbrux about his work, past, present, and future, including GAME OVER FOREVER, a game in which death is permanent.

Then EEGRA interviewed Auntie.

And Slash has interviewed Jeff Lait, the creator of the graphical roguelike POWDER, on Rogue Temple.

A man ironically named “Jason Love” wrote an article titled “Fuck Metroidvanias” for Insomnia. But by his definition Cave Story is not a Metroidvania, so whew, amirite?

Ohhhhhhyeeeaaahhh, there’s an extensive Bonesaw post-mortem on Ivan “toastie” Safrin’s great new indie game development blog, *Play-Make, as well as an interview with Alec Holowka about Aquaria.

Finally, Lost Garden’s Danc has tagged all of his multitudinous essays, and compiled those tags into a simple directory for easy browsing.

UPDATE: Thanks, Tim, for pointing out that I missed Destructoid’s interview with Jasper “superflat” Byrne, who developed Soundless Mountain II for our Demakes Compo!

Posted in Community, Developers, Interviews | 36 comments