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.