Adam Creighton, Computer and Video Gaming: AGDC: The New Indie Hotness

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Adam Creighton, Computer and Video Gaming (Subscribe)

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

AGDC: The New Indie Hotness

Next up was "The New Indie Hotness", from Offworld's Brandon Boyer:

"Want to know what?s sparklingly new and fantastic in the world of independent games? Using his sekrit underground contacts, Indie Games Summit Austin board member Brandon Boyer (Offworld) will look at the top technical and gameplay trends out there, with plenty of audiovisual reference to games and experiments that enchant or confound."

The session revolved around Boyer playing various indie games (Spelunky, Glum Buster,Alpinist, Time Donkey, Captain Forever, Tuning), and taking about why they are significant.

I'm a big fan of indie titles, but this session was tedious. It would have been better served with pre-packaged video and narrative explanation ("Spelunky is significant because of it's procedurally generated levels").

I am glad Boyer showed titles like Time Donkey, to show the diversity and ambition in indie game development. Also, the indie community needs to get the attention of publishers, and the diversity, adoption, and demonstrative community excitement is key to that.

It was very cool to see Cactus's not-yet-released new platformer, Tuning.

As a very cool surprise, Polytron's new title, Fez, was demoed for the first time. It's a 2D/3D platformer, with a game story concept similar to the classic book, "Flatland". Very slick, innovative game mechanics.

Labels: AGDC, AGDC09