Space Troy is Lazrael's latest game. It's a stylish retro shoot 'em up with a short but challenging level divided into three parts.

"You are Troy the space squid, an agent of the Space Taxing Department (STD). You have received info that there is a populus that is comepletely taxfree at the moment and you must fix dat. With guns."

Use X to fire, arrow keys to move and Enter to start a new game and skip forward in the intro sequence.

Name: Space Troy
Developer: Lazrael
Category: Shooter
Type: Freeware
Size: 4MB
Download link: Savefile

Joshua Smyth's Attack of the Meeplings is a vertical shooter consisting of three levels, playable using Java-enabled browser. Hold the Z key to shoot, and press the space key to use a missile. Autofire can be activated with the A key.

Gather blue orbs to increase your multiplier, which is added to your score whenever an enemy ship is destroyed. The game loops infinitely, with a minor speed increase after every three stages. High scores are only recorded when playing at the normal difficulty setting.

Name: Attack of the Meeplings
Developer: Joshua Smyth
Category: Shooter
Type: Browser

Hampa's turn-based fighting game Toribash was recently ported to Flash by the original author himself. Most of the features have been stripped down to its basics, but full source code for Toriflash can be downloaded from the same thread for modding and hacking purposes. (source: Toribash, Fun-Motion)

Name: Toriflash
Developer: Hampa
Category: Strategy
Type: Browser

The Sewer Goblet is a new roguelike game created by Tale of Game's Studios, the same group which produced the recent b-ball hit Barkley Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden. Your objective is to storm a dungeon, reach the bottom level, retrieve the baby, and finally returning to the top floor. Treasure and equipment can be acquired to improve your chances of survival. Once you've reached the bottom floor to retrieve the baby, you will have to travel all the way up again in order to fully complete the mission.

Your progress is saved automatically when exiting the game using the escape key. Press the R key to rest, or tap space to access your inventory. Cast spells or discard inventory items using the Q key. Press W to collect treasure from the ground when standing over it, and eat snacks to reveal their magical properties. There are roughly twenty levels in total.

Name: The Sewer Goblet
Developer: Tale of Game's Studios
Category: Roguelike
Type: Freeware
Size: 30MB
Direct download link: Click here

Hello Panda is a stylish vertical shooter made by GPTouch using Game Maker, featuring three playable characters and five levels interspersed with the occasional boss encounters. Enemies drop blood when defeated, which can then be acquired and used to fuel special attacks or to upgrade your default weapon.

Press the Z key to shoot, and hold the left shift key to display your character's hit point. Use the X key to execute your secondary attack. Press the C key when you're firing to upgrade your weapon, or increase the blood pack count by one if the red gauge shows a hundred percent. Use the space key to activate a temporary invincibility mode when you have at least one blood pack.

Name: Hello Panda
Developer: GPTouch, Inc.
Category: Shooter
Type: Freeware
Size: 30MB
Download link: Mediafire

Hey, folks - so if IndieGames.com readers could help us out for a second, we're conducting a v.brief anonymous survey (6 questions only, should take about 30 seconds to fill out!) to work out exactly who reads the Indie Games Blog.

Why? This site is operated by us folks at Think Services, which also runs things like Game Developers Conference and the Independent Games Festival, we're trying to work out more about the demographics and wants of the site readership.

Anyhow, the survey is completely optional, and as mentioned previously, the results will not be tied to any personal information or details you give us.

But if you do want some incentive to do it, we're giving away a set of 4 GameSetApparel T-shirts - including a neat Dan 'Alien Hominid/Castle Crashers' Paladin tee, among others - to one randomly picked survey filler-out.

[Please note that when you complete the survey, it'll just go back to the IndieGames.com homepage.]

Thanks!
Simon
(Chairman, IGF.)

In The Last Stand 2, your objective is to protect a barricade against oncoming hordes of zombies. Manage your time during the daylight to search for weapons, survivors and repair.

Move with the W, A, S and D keys. Aim with the mouse, and reload with the R key. Press space to switch weapons.

Name: The Last Stand 2
Developer: Con Artists Productions
Category: Action
Type: Browser

The Power is a freeware 2D platformer in the style of Lyle in Cube Sector, Alex Adventure and Plasma Warrior. Your character begins with limited health and no special abilities, but will quickly gain suit and weapon upgrades over the course of his adventure. Use the cursor keys to move, and tap the C key to shoot.

The game includes five different areas to explore, multiple boss encounters and two endings to discover.

Name: The Power
Developer: Alexitron
Category: Platformer
Type: Freeware
Size: 5MB

Noitu Love 2: Devolution reviewed by the 1UP crew. Also mentioned in length on Destructoid's Indie Nation.

The price of Bullet Candy has been reduced to $3.95. Hopefully Charlie will consider finishing Space Dong soon... (source: the2bears)

10 Gnomes 04 is the latest chapter in a series of short hidden object games created by Mateusz Skutnik. Players are once again given ten minutes to search out the locations of each gnome. Watch out for the birds.

Name: 10 Gnomes part 4: foggy flat
Developer: Mateusz Skutnik
Category: Puzzle
Type: Browser

Adam Sessler speaking to Kyle and Ron of 2D Games about World of Goo, due out June 2008.

You might remember the screenshots that were posted of this project ("2D side-scrolling WIP platformer, which is heavily influenced by Metroid Prime 1 and other games in the Metroid series") sometime back.

Well now there's a gameplay video and aside from YouTube screwing up the quality, it looks pretty sweet. I'm unsure about this getting to finishing point (it's only around 8% done) but there's always hope.

Read the development blog on 64 digits.

A friendly chat with Mark Johns, developer of Space Barnacle and Standard Bits.

Hi Mark, let's begin with a little introduction of yourself.

My name is Mark Johns. I'm 24 years old, recently graduated with a bachelor's degree in Math and Computer Science from a state university in Illinois.

My background is from the Macintosh, where I've released small shareware games off and on for around ten years, and only recently ventured into doing indie games for the PC, when I discovered the wealth of stuff going on in the last year through sites like TIGSource.

There used to be a decent community site called iDevGames, which would host Mac-based game development competitions, but the scene is not as active as it once was. If you're familiar with David Rosen (the Wolfire guy, who did Black Shades and Lugaru), he came out of that community as well. He's a really talented guy, but yeah the Mac scene is not as thriving as what you see on the Windows side now.

Once I discovered TIGSource and finally got a machine running XP, I went through and downloaded all the stuff on the recommended list. And it was really inspiring, and led directly into the stuff I've been doing recently.

Is there a central repository for all of your games?

Everything I've done in the last year for Windows is available on my blog, Doomlaser. A lot of my older Mac stuff is on sloppydisk.com. Those are more earlier works, and are all really clones.

Killawatt is an advergame hosted at the Samsung web site, in which players are given a total of three minutes to stack as many speakers as they could onto the back of the truck decked with Rastafarian colors. A speaker will break if it touches the ground, and you're only allowed to lose five of them in each game. The author's music is available as a free download as well.

Name: Killawatt
Category: Action
Type: Browser

After Doomsday is a new browser-based multiplayer RPG which was created by a team of two developers using a combination of PHP and MySQL. The game bears many resemblances to the popular Kingdom of Loathing and Twilight Heroes, is free to play, and requires only a simple registration process for account activation.

Stats can be increased temporarily by using item modifiers, or permanently by training and increasing your character's level. Weapons and armor can be purchased from a shop, though the game does emphasize on player versus player encounters to earn experience points. Other methods of gaining experience includes committing crime and heading downtown to defend the city. Many of these tasks can only be done a certain number of times every day, but the counter does reset once the clock strikes midnight.

The search tab can be used to find another player to attack. Most street games are relatively safe to play for additional money without being sent to the hospital, although you still run the risk of losing cash. Other cities are unlocked once you've successfully increased your character level to five or upwards. Players are advised to use the game guide as necessary for further instructions, explanation and tips on making the most out of limited resources.

Name: After Doomsday
Developer: Kenshiro and Tectec
Category: RPG
Type: Browser

The Fog Fall is a new point and click adventure from the author of the Submachine and Covert Front series, taking place in a deserted bomb shelter with only shreds of clues hinting at the chain of events which has taken place. The game consists of roughly twenty or so rooms to explore, and one can pretty much expect the same sort of inventory and code puzzles commonly found in most of Mateusz's works.

Name: The Fog Fall
Developer: Mateusz Skutnik
Category: Adventure
Type: Browser
Walkthrough: Click here

Teshla and Jurgis' new Flash game Pragaras has been in development for over two months now. It is unclear whether their latest project is a direct sequel to Menulis and Miestas, or a new story with a different main character. Reversing the recorded voice does reveal the release date though.

Pragaras trailer

[Our sister programming mag/website Dr Dobb's Journal has been running the Dr. Dobb's Challenge game competition in association with Microsoft Visual Studio, with $10,000 in prizes. There was an initial $1,000 'First Month Challenge' prize for modding the downloadable Windows game.

UPDATE: Please note that the games are much closer to 'hobbyist' mods created by Dobbs-reading programmers in their spare time than fully-fledged indie classics, so ameliorate your expectations accordingly.]

We'd like to thank everyone for entering the Dobbs First Month Challenge. We thought that even with $1,000 on the line to the best entrant with a month to develop a serviceable work-in progress, it was just going to be too much work for our regular readers who don't necessarily have a lot of time to develop indie games.

We were, happily, proven wrong and there's a fun crop of games now available up on the Dobbs Challenge Critic's Choice download section for you to check out -- including a one button fighting game from Alexkr; Badly Drawn Robots, which can be best described as "Robotron Meets Castle Wolfenstein Meets Dr. Dobbs" and Dobbs Derby, possibly the most ambitious total conversion so far, which turns Dr Dobbs Challenge into a racing game.

We've selected five mods from a rich selection to spotlight here -- four runners-up and the $1,000 winner. If your entry wasn't selected, please don't  think that we've lost, missed or ignored it!

Yes that screenshot is horrid. But it is seriously the best I could do, as Stormbaancoureur is so touchy and so insanely constructed, that even the amount of time it takes for my hand to go from the accelerator to the Print Screen button is enough to throw the car completely off its rails. There is only a single level in this game (plus a tutorial and a free roam area), but it should take the average player at least an hour to successfully navigate.

Name: Stormbaancoureur
Developer: nop
Category: Action
Type: Freeware
Size: 5MB
Direct download link: Click here

Michaël Samyn had unveiled the Endless Forest community site to the public earlier today, though the place has been readily accessible to all players for some time now. This 3D MMO exploration game is only 54 MB in size, and costs nothing to register and play. Windows only.

Endless Forest community site
Tale of Tales

An interview with Tommy Refenes, founder of the company PillowFort which is based in Hendersonville, North Carolina. One might also recognize his name credited as the developer of Goo!, a finalist for IGF's Technical Excellence award. (download the demo)

Hi Tommy, can you introduce yourself for the benefit of our readers? And do you prefer to be addressed as Tom or Tommy?

I'm Tommy Refenes. Programmer, designer... uhh, everything-er of PillowFort, creator of Goo!. Tommy works (Tom's my dad). I'll stick with Tommy forever until I eventually change my name to a symbol.

I literally spend all my time either programming, or reading up on programming or just thinking about programming. I think I've built an immunity to sitting and staring at the computer. I've been doing it professionally since I was 18, and for fun since I was 11. I worked out of my house for this company and had like 4 servers in the house, 4 monitors looking at different computers, and terminal services all over the place. I sold that house to do games.

I had a great house in Charlotte NC. Had a bad ass sports car, living it up... and one day was like "I wanna do games", then this company offered me a job and I sold it all, put it in storage and moved out to that company. I'd say what company it was, but they were total dicks and I don't want to be associated with them in any way. So they can just be "a game company".

Since we're on the subject of interviews today, thought I'd point out two more for your listening pleasure. Dave Gilbert was recently interviewed by Yesterday's Salad, while the Orange Lounge Radio crew talks to Farbs about his game, Rom Check Fail. (chat starts at around 15:00, direct download link - right click to save)

Interview with Dave Gilbert (Yesterday's Salad)
Interview with Farbs (Orange Lounge Radio)
Interview with Russell Carroll (GameTunnel)

Zak McKracken: Between Time & Space is an unofficial sequel to Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders, and has been in development for more than seven years. The game boasts over fifty locations, 3D models, high-quality backgrounds and professional voice work - but the drawbacks are that it's in German, and the download size is close to 2 GB in total. (source: ScummVM forums)

download mirrors
Zak McKracken retrospective
Zak Fan Game Team storm LucasArts

Tiny Hawk is a surprisingly fun Ludum Dare competition entry created by Pekuja in under forty-eight hours. Kickflips, grinds and walljumps are executed using only one button. Collect all gems to complete a level. Only six stages are included, but more can be created simply by adding a new text file inside the data folder.

Hold the any key to jump off a wall or grind on a rail. Additional instructions are included in the zip file.

Name: Tiny Hawk
Developer: Pekuja
Category: Action
Type: Freeware
Size: 2MB
Direct download link: Click here

A couple of new sites about indie games to recommend.

Lithium Leaf is perhaps the pick of the three: hardly a single mention of anything else but indie games. The blog is also ordered very neatly, well-written, and updated daily.

Hardcasual is a little less indie-centric, but still has several lengthy articles on the subject of indie games. Helmed by Sam Ryan and Chris Plante (who also writes for a new GameSetWatch column named Why We Play).

Welcome to Special Round is rather similar to Hardcasual - a mix of commercial and indie games, plus everything in-between. Browsing through the archives, one can find reviews of Rom Check Fail, Mighty Jill Off, Flail and even a special feature called "Indie Ethics".

Also not forgetting auntie pixelante and the fantastic Indie Nation.

A 1UP review of Blast Works (based on Kenta Cho's Tumiki Fighters), out now on the Wii.

Voxelstein 3D is a remake based loosely on ID's FPS classic, created by Hans Krieg using Ken Silverman's Voxlap engine. The game consists of only one short level, in which players must find a way out of the mansion they are trapped in using any means necessary. This may involve the conventional way of opening doors, or chipping away at walls or obstacles blocking your path to reveal an exit.

A text configuration file found inside the game folder can be edited for a number of amusing results. (source: MisterX)

Name: Voxelstein 3D
Developer: Hans Krieg
Category: Action
Type: Freeware
Size: 30MB

Joakim Sandberg's much-awaited 2D action game is now available for purchase from the official site. The updated demo contains stage one in it's entirety, and two-thirds of the second level. (forums)

Name: Noitu Love 2
Developer: Joakim Sandberg
Category: Action
Type: Demo
Size: 10MB
Demo download link: Click here

Made in Wired is a WarioWare-type game created by Isshiki, in which players are given only a few seconds to achieve the objective shown before the start of each stage. Mosts of the tasks are derived from basic and classic shooters, though there are some odd challenges included as well.

Mode 1 has the additional feature of a boss encounter in every tenth stage. Use the cursor keys to move your ship, and press the Z key to shoot. The type of weapon your ship is equipped with for a particular challenge is indicated at the bottom right of the screen. (more screenshots in the extended)

Name: Made in Wired
Developer: Isshiki
Category: Shooter
Type: Freeware
Size: 1MB
Direct download link: Click here

An experimental version of Tetris created by Joseph Larson, Alleytris is perhaps the best out of the four variations posted in the same Retro Remakes forum thread. Players are expected to build horizontal lines in a well that is only four squares wide, and though the game lacks polished graphics or adequate sound effects this build is actually fun enough to warrant more than a few tries.

Name: Alleytris
Developer: Joseph Larson
Category: Puzzle
Type: Freeware
Size: 1MB
Direct download link: Click here

Shown above, a video demonstration of World of Goo played using the Wiimote controller. Also on GT: an interview with Kyle Gabler and Ron Carmel, co-foungers of 2D Boy.

Billed as a new form of video game art, The Naked Game is basically an interactive piece where two artificial intelligences play out a game of Pong. Visitors to the site can turn off various lines of codes underneath it for a variety of unexpected results, and the author of this work has kindly supplemented his creation with a statement of sorts to explain his odd experiment. (source: Retro Remakes)

Name: The Naked Game
Developer: Stewart Hogarth
Category: Art
Type: Browser

Crumble is a small action game created by Gary Penn for a recent Dundee Jam event. The objective is to collect twenty pieces of gold represented by large yellow squares to complete each level, using only the left and right cursor keys for movement. Small pieces of gold only add up to your points total, while rocks depicted as brown squares should be avoided. Press the left alternate and F4 function key to quit at any time.

Name: Crumble
Developer: Gary Penn
Category: Action
Type: Freeware
Size: 1MB
Direct download link: Click here

According to Jetro, the sequel to Secret Exit's popular ragdoll physics game will be released very soon.

Stair Dismount 2 announcement
Secret Exit

GameTap has a new interview with Edmund McMillen on Tri-Achnid, in which he reveals that the game is part of a series with episode two coming out later this year. Also posted on Cryptic Sea's development journal, a video demonstrating updated physics for the Gish 2 model. (shown above)

Indie Games: Tri-Achnid Interview
Cryptic Sea

Ad Nauseam 2 is a new intense shooter from the prolific Swedish developer cactus, and fans of Seizuredome or Burn the Trash will find something to like in this release. Press the Z key to shoot, and tap the X key to activate the shockwave effect. Hold both buttons to activate the alternate fire. Using either of these two specials will deplete your circular power gauge, shown discreetly in the background.

Collect four green pluses to upgrade your weapon by one level, but be sure to avoid red minuses which downgrade your ship's firepower. Use the F1 function key to switch between uncensored and safe modes. Press F2 to turn off motion blur, or F3 to disable screen shakes.

The game has three phases in total, and your fastest completion time is submitted online once you've beaten the final boss. Playing on the easiest difficulty setting doubles your time on the high score list. (forum thread)

Name: Ad Nauseam 2
Developer: cactus
Category: Shooter
Type: Freeware
Size: 2MB
Direct download link: Click here

Online high score table