The TIGSource Commonplace Book Competition didn't really receive as much attention, mostly due to IGF and the fact that everyone's super busy around this time of the year (seriously, other than IndieGames and TIGSource, every other indie gaming blog/site stopped updating, this one included, lolz). All that is about to change, for below is a look at some of the games from the competition!

Before we begin, let's talk a little bit about the competition first. The goal of the competition is to design a game based on one of the ideas from H.P. Lovecraft's Commonplace Book. From TIGSource:

Renowned horror novelist H.P. Lovecraft kept a notebook, called "The Commonplace Book, in which he jotted "ideas, images, & quotations hastily jotted down for possible future use in weird fiction. ...Their sources are various—dreams, things read, casual incidents, idle conceptions, & so on." As you might expect, these notes are fragmented, cryptic, and extremely creepy.

Anyway, there were 35 entries, and below is the winner and the first 9 losers (j/k but true):

[ Read more ]

TIGSource's latest competition, the Bootleg Demakes Compo, has finally come to an end.

There's a record number of submission this time around, whether it's because this kind of event is getting more popular or because it takes less effort to make a low-res crappy game is beyond me.

With that said, this time the theme is to take a game or series or whatever, turn it into an "old-school" style game. The concept is great, but don't expect anything with out-of-this-world graphics or gameplay this time around.

[ Read more ]

Well, well, well, the PGC, also known as the Procedural Generation Competition. is finally in its final stage. With a whopping 60 submissions, boy are there some gems among the submissions. TIGSource should really do these kind of contests more often. The only downside is the deadline--seems like many projects could have done a lot better with more time.

For me, one of the themes of this competition seems to be the unplayability of games, whether due to some stupid .NET compatibility or others...and judging by reader feedbacks in the competition forum, I'm not the only one.

I've listed some games below that I've been keeping my eyes on throughout the competition. Note I've played/tried all of the submissions (other than the ones I can't get to run, of course, thanks to crappy computers in China), and the ones below have made a pretty big impression on me.

[ Read more ]

Indie game super site TIGSource recently held a competition called the Video Game Name Generator Competition, or simply "The VGNG Competition." To enter the competition, you'll have to create a game based on a name generated by Video Game Name Generator, which, unsurprisingly, tend to spew out ridiculous names that makes as much sense as a penguin going to a hot spring in Japan.

Of course, being late as always, the winner of the competition has already been announced before we could post something meaningful about the competition...nonetheless, below are some interesting entries that caught my attention, so I'm going to write about them whether they won the competition or not.

[ Read more ]