Indie

Terry's VVVVVV has been released, and so far has received some pretty good reviews and praises despite not making the 2010 IGF finalists.

The game is actually quite fun, but the simple graphics might be a big turn-off for some people. The whole gravity-flipping gameplay is fun and challenging, but not really revolutionary. The game is still very fun nonetheless, and you should at least try out the demo.

In other news, it looks like Ciellus really won't be happening unless something miraculous happens, as can be seen both from Terry's post here and this from Annabelle Kennedy.

Indie games are getting more and more recognition in the U.S. and Europe, so what's the scene like in China?

There are quite a few fans of indie games in China. Of course, the scene is not as big as its U.S. or European counterpart, but it's there nonetheless (and hopefully growing). China is known for piracy, and where there's indie games, free downloads of (paid) indie games aren't far behind. We won't talk about these things here.

Anyways, to start things off, some Chinese websites on indie games. There used to be quite a few, but unfortunately some of them disappeared or is quite inactive.

As if every other website hasn't already reported this to death, the finalists for the 2010 IGF main competition have been revealed.

There were some expected winners, as well as a few surprises. Quite a few people seem unhappy with the fact that VVVVVVV didn't make it... maybe it's a sign that Ciellus needs to be finished? Hah!

Another interesting read is the IGF judging process, check it out, it's neat.

Now, for the very few who saw this here first, below are the finalists in no particular order:

Happy new year! Will I be updating this site more often in 2010? Don't know, I can only hope!

Speaking of which, I have once again moved the site back to miscgamer.com. This is it, no more domain-hopping, no more redirects, this will be the site's eternal resting place until the end of time.

I also moved the World of Goo sub-page here. So this is how everything is going to work from now on. Basically, any games (indie, probably) that I play and end up liking (and I mean REALLY LIKING) will get its own fan-shrine at miscgamer.com/[really-cool-game]/, while companies and larger games series or trends will get their own sub-domain, like Innocent Grey (TYPE-MOON is a special case, so it gets its own site).

Anyways, with that out of the way, allow me to introduce our newest member to the "really-good-indie-game-that-you-should-at-least-try club: Eufloria!

During the last few months while this place was collecting dust, quite a bit of stuff happened in the world of indie, not going to bother going over them all, but here are some more interesting (and more recent) news that are pretty interesting.

First of all, version 1.0 of Derek Yu's platformer/roguelike game Spelunky has finally been released. What's more, there's a Xbox Live Arcade version being planned... under Derek's new video game company Mossmouth. Maybe that mean less time/attention for Bit Blot?