Indie

Introversion Software, maker of Darwinia and Defcon, recently made a post on their blog titled "Coming Clean." The post chronicles how Introversion came close to closing down its doors early this year, and how it's came back to life, and its current status.

From the sound of the blog post, it seems they expanded too fast, and tried to use their indie strategy to turn Introversion into a big company, which clearly did not work. Looks they did learned a lot from this ordeal, and has gone back to being real "bedroom developers" (although mainly due to necessity).

After some messing around, it has now become extremely easy for me to insert images into posts and create thumbnails! Of course, this feature isn't something that's apparent from the outside, but I thought I'd celebrate by making the first image-automation-powered post! I also could have used Lightbox 2 for the images, but I like being simple and basic, so for now I won't, let's see how it goes.

So, on to some real news! Star Ruler, an indie (you can't really tell it's indie by just looking at the screenshots) 4X (explore, expand, exploit, exterminate) space strategy game has just been released. The game features procedurally generated galaxies and some really intricate (and complicated) ship building, diplomacy, and research features.

Amanita Design recently announced a Machinarium Pirate Amnesty sale. Due to the fact that 85-95% of the players pirated the game, it's time to support the developers by paying only $5 for the game, and get some bonus soundtracks while at it.

Not sure where they got the 85-95% rate, seeing as the game has no internet component aside from the number of people downloading new patches (and even that can be misleading). However, consider the game came with no DRM whatsoever, it is extremely easy to copy the installation file, so it's pretty likely that the game has been pirated quite a bit (though 95% still seems a bit over the top).

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.