A 30 MB demo for Amanita Design's Machinarium is now available to download from FilePlanet (or DemoNews.de if you are not a FilePlanet subscriber).

The full version will be available to purchase from the official site, Direct2Drive ($5 discount), Impulse, Steam and GamersGate this coming October 16th. (source)

Related:
Machinarium Soundtrack Preview (Amanita Design)
Machinarium Demo (Big Download)

Awakener is a one room adventure game created by Ben Chandler using the reliable AGS engine, where you play as a boy named Fadi who has to help his Aunt Sylvia with a small chore just outside her tavern.

Your quest can be completed quite easily by talking to other characters around town and acquiring items from them. A nice little diversion for the afternoon which shouldn't take anyone longer than fifteen minutes to finish. (forum thread)

Magnello involves electricity and lots of magnets. The aim is to guide a magnetic ball through a series of challenging courses and into the electric hole at the end.

A word of warning - it starts off quite difficult and doesn't get any easier. The ball can only be controlled while it is contact with electric platforms or magnets, so most of the levels are about setting the speed and timing up correctly then hoping the ball flings itself through the air and lands in the hole perfectly. The way the ball produces a ridiculously low amount of friction makes this all so much more hair-wrenching, yet somewhat appealling.

The production levels feel pretty shabby, but it's still definitely worth giving a go, even if you give up early on. Download it from Nick's site.

A demo for Full Ace Tennis has been released. I like tennis a bit too much, so I ask in advance that you excuse my enthusiasm.

The demo includes exhibition mode (basically a quick play mode) and the tutorial lessons. Initially I thought 'bah, who needs tutorials!' and a minute later got my ass handed to me by a bot who I have a suspicious had taken some kind of performance-enhancing drugs. After giving in and ploughing my way through the tutorial, it becomes obvious that Full Ace leans in the direction of simulation rather than arcade. Shots have to be prepared depending on where they are coming from and timing is essential.

You won't need to be into your tennis to enjoy this, and if you're looking for something to pass a bit of time, you'd do well to check the demo out. There's no word on the release date for the full version, mind. (direct download link)

Two more presentation videos from Sense of Wonder Night 2009. The clip shown above is about a drawing tool called Incompatible Block, created by Jun Fujiki (designer of Echochrome). You can find a demonstration of Marcus Richert's You Only Live Once in the extended.

Nandrew's Onslaught of the Electric Zombies (an awesome Minesweeper variation) was recently updated with a new menu interface, two separate gameplay modes, more zombie types and a useful zombie codex that carries information on all sorts of zombies that you can expect to encounter.

The short mode is eight levels long, while a long game is twice that number. You can read the original review here.

Short Game Leaderboard, Long Game Leaderboard

Related:
Team Fortress 2: Goldrush Puzzler
Left 4 Dead: The Card Game

Paul is putting up Immortal Defense for sale at only $3 (original price $15) until this October 4th, which is probably the only time you can buy the game on the cheap and still receive full technical support from the developer. There is a lengthy demo that you can try out if you are on the fence about purchasing it. The game can't possibly be any cheaper than this, as BMT Micro charges $1.25 as the processing fee for every copy sold.

To get the discount, just enter BMCN000H7 in the discount code field on the purchase page. BMT Micro also accepts PayPal payments.

Baiyon (music director of Pixeljunk Eden) interviewing Dan Paladin about Castle Crashers at the recent Tokyo Game Show 2009 event. Shown below is a boss fight scene from the upcoming Pixeljunk Shooter.

There is also a video walkthrough of a new area in the extended, recorded at the same convention last weekend. The game should be out on the PSN sometime this December. (source)

Boss Battle: Pixeljunk Shooter (TGS 09)

Alex Shen pointed this one out to me and I was quite taken by it. Clockwords is, would you believe it, a word game which involves firing off as many words as possible to stop the oncoming robot spiders and stop then stealing your secrets!

There are certain letters listed at the bottom of the screen which are more powerful than others and using them in a word will make your cannon fire much more powerful missiles at the baddies. If you manage to use all the listed letters in a word, a new cell will open you so there are even more strong letters at your disposal.

It starts off simple but soon gets very hectic as you try to think up long words while the spiders get closer to their goal. The art and music are beautiful throughout and really give the game a great atmosphere. There are also some wonderfully simple ideas thrown in there, such as using Dictionary.com's 'Word of the Day' as a special, almighty powerful word, and also allowing a second player to control the direction the cannon fires in.

Definitely worth a play!

Direct2Drive have been running a bunch of offers recently to celebrate their 5th birthday, with a specific genre of games being sold off at $5 each week. This week is the Indie sale! Hurrah!

The following games are all $5.00/£5.00 (boo at 1-to-1 conversion rate!) for one week only and can be purchased through this link:

Mount and Blade
World of Goo
Defense Grid: The Awakening
Sword of the Stars
Cogs
Light of Altair
The Path
Bridge Construction Set
Gish
Zatikon

We've got reviews of Cogs and The Path if you're wondering whether to grab either of them.

Jamie had posted up a full playthrough video of the Shank demo shown at PAX2009, catering to fans who could not attend the convention and watch a live preview of it on the show floor.

Steve Swink and Scott Anderson demonstrating their upcoming 3D platformer Shadow Physics at the Sense of Wonder Night 2009 event in Tokyo.

[We're delighted to announce that Independent Games Festival sister event IGF Mobile -- which got special attention from Apple last year for its iPhone honorees, plus a lot of buzz -- is back again for 2010. Here's the info for handheld devs who want to enter.]

The Independent Games Festival (IGF) Mobile, the premiere venue that celebrates creativity and innovation on handheld platforms, has opened submissions for its third annual festival.

The overall IGF Mobile winner will be awarded at the IGF Awards Ceremony, which precedes the Game Developers Choice Awards on March 11th, 2010. Both the IGF Awards Ceremony and the Game Developers Choice Awards are part of the 2010 Game Developers Conference, which takes place in San Francisco's Moscone Center in March.

This year's competition -- the sister event to the main Independent Games Festival -- will again feature independently-developed handheld games for all mobile devices including Apple's iPhone, other cellphone and smartphone OSes, Nintendo DS, Sony PSP, and other handheld devices.

IGF Mobile submissions are now being accepted at the competition's official website through December 1, 2009; finalists will be announced in January 2010, and will each receive one pass to attend the 2010 Game Developers Conference.

I've been playing around with Positech Games' Gratuitous Space Battles for a few weeks now. Those in the know will be aware that pre-ordering the space war game will allow you access to the beta which is constantly updated by Cliff Harris (the one-man taskforce behind Positech).

Initially the beta was a tad buggy and I opted to wait until a more stable build was released before sharing my thoughts. I'll keep this brief, as this is just a beta version and could potentially be far from what it is now come release date.

Gratuitous Space Battles runs with a concept rarely utilized. Players are given the plans of a battlefield along with the positions of the enemy fleet. It's your job to place your own ships down at the opposite end of the arena in a formation you believe will be effective in wiping out the opposition. There are three main types of ship - Cruisers (the big beefy guys with huge lazers but slow movement), Fighters (tiny, swift and hard to hit) and Frigates (somewhere in between the prior two).

Hope you guys have your wallets at the ready, because there's a deluge of great indie games to purchase in the next couple of weeks. Machinarium (new cutscene featured above) should be out sometime in mid-October, which is about the same time that Dyson gets released. You can pre-order Machinarium now from the official site to receive a $3 discount off the full price of $20, or wait until it comes out on Impulse, Steam, Direct2Drive and GamersGate before snagging a copy for yourself.

The Direct2Drive 5th Anniversary Sale for indie games starts in less than ten hours as well, and that is one event you definitely don't want to miss out on.

Related:
5 Questions: Jakub Dvorský (indie.retro.cool.games)
Machinarium Artwork and Sketches (Pixels at an Exhibition)
PAX '09: Machinarium Is Really Good (insert credit)
20% Off Select Indie Games at Impulse (LewieP, SavyGamer)

In our latest employment-tastic round-up, we highlight some of the notable jobs posted in big sister site Gamasutra's industry-leading game jobs section this week, including positions from THQ, Neversoft and more.

Each position posted by employers will appear on the main Gamasutra job board, and appear in the site's daily and weekly newsletters, reaching our readers directly.

It will also be cross-posted for free across its network of submarket sites, which includes content sites focused on online worlds, cellphone games, 'serious games', independent games and more.

Some of the notable jobs posted this week include:

Playdom: QA Automation Lead
"Do you possess exceptional knowledge and passion for games in all genres. Are you frequently recognized for exceptional delivery on short production schedules, creativity, innovation, project management, and brilliant documentation? Are you anything BUT ordinary? If this sounds like we are describing you, we just may be able to make some of your dreams come true. Keep reading and let us know…"

Neversoft: Audio Programmer
"Neversoft Entertainment is looking for an Audio Programmer whose focus will be the research, development and maintenance of cross-platform audio systems and tools for the next generation of games consoles. This is an ideal opportunity for someone with a solid audio software background and a strong desire to apply this knowledge to the games industry."

Dave Gilbert (creator of the Blackwell series) is giving away free digital copies of Wadjet Eye Games' first commercial release, The Shivah, just for this weekend only. The game received plenty of press when it was first released back in 2006, and still remains one of the must-play AGS games in the past decade or so.

This release features full voice acting, original soundtrack compositions, and three different endings to discover. To get the game for free, just head on over to the purchase page, click on the "Buy This Game" button, enter "FreeShivah" for the Coupon Code field and press recalculate (you can't get it for free on CD, digital download only). Fill up some information about yourself and include a working email address so that the download link for the full game can be sent to your inbox. Once you're done with that, select "Secure Online Credit Card" for the Method of payment, click on the Next button, and check your mail for the link to the full version of The Shivah.

If you did not receive any mail from Plimus, you might want to have a look inside your spam folder instead - the email should arrive seconds after you've submitted your order and personal information on the purchase page.

I've just spent the last few hours playing Bad Rats: The Rats' Revenge, a physics-puzzler from INVENT4 Entertainment released in the summer. While initially a little put off by the general look and feel on offer, I was pleasantly surprised to find that Bad Rats turns out to be pretty good fun.

It's like a really silly and needlessly graphic version of The Incredible Machine games. On each level there is a ball, a cat, and some kind of weapon which will inevitably bring about the feline's demise. Placing a combination of objects and rats with different abilities, the task is to bounce the ball against the bringer-of-said-cat's-fate. All objects and rats are placed in 'Pause Mode', and the action pans out in 'Play Mode'.

Graphically it's not exactly a looker, but if you can see past the ugliness there's plenty of sandbox fun to be had. Each level can be completed numerous different ways, from the simple to the ridiculously complex, and the cat will explode in various satisfying ways when you succeed.

The game is available via Steam for $5 and there's also a demo to take for a spin.

The ten finalists for next week's Indiecade in Culver City, California have been revealed. The chosen ones are as follows:

Closure, Tyler Glaiel & Jon Schubbe
The Maw, Twisted Pixel Games
Minor Battle, Andre Clark
Modal Kombat, David Hindman
Ruben & Lullaby, Erik Loyer
Shadow Physics, Steve Swink & Scott Anderson
Sowlar, Odd Man In
The Deep Sleep Initiative, ARx
You Get Me, Blast Theory
Zeno Clash, ACE Team Software

Details on the event have been rather scarce, but Brandon Boyer has been doing a fantastic job of covering everything you need to know about Indiecade over at Offworld. His three-parter is definitely worth checking out.

The full list of all 30 Indiecade finalists is below the cut (as provided by Edmund McMillen).

Gridrunner Revolution is the new one, Gridrunner ++ is an earlier game by Jeff Minter, indie game developer since 1978. Having not played the ++ one, I tried out the demos of both. They're both worth a try.

Perhaps due to all the complaints against Space Giraffe, Minter tried to make this new game easier to just pick up and learn to play, while still maintaining the little important intricacies which make him such a good game designer. I think he succeeded pretty well. But see for yourself; the video explains it better than I could in words.

A couple of us had known about it for some time now, but you can pretty much say it is confirmed that Super Meat Boy will be available for purchase on Steam (Windows only) when it is released sometime in early 2010. Edmund even drew the header image for the Steam preview page in preparation for next week's announcement. (which you can see below)

If Edmund and Tommy's fantastic track record holds any weight, then this is definitely one of those must-buy games to add to your list come next year.

Follow Super Meat Boy on Twitter

A teaser for Jan Willem Nijman's latest project which appears to be called Extreme. I honestly have no idea why. No idea. (Source: Offworld)

Here's some interesting news. Not only has Alex May and Rudolf Kremers' Dyson been given a new release date after being delayed - we can expect it to hit our PC screens on October 20th - but it would appear that the guys have decided to opt for a name change.

A competition is now being held over at Direct2Drive named 'The Game-Formerly-Known-As-Dyson Naming Competition'. The blurb reads as follows:

Come up with a new name for Dyson that best encompasses the mood and themes of the game. All entries will be emailed to the developers, who will pick and announce the best name on or around Tuesday, September 29th. When the game releases on approximately October 20th, it will be titled with the winning name!

The winner will receive a copy of the game plus any two other games of their choice from D2D. Rules for the contest can be found here.

I queried Rudolf on the matter and he explained that the duo were not asked to change the name, but decided it was 'better to avoid confusion' with a certain brand of the same name.

Other than that, it's worth noting that pre-orders are now being taken on the game, with 25% off for anyone who grabs it before release.

Hazard - The Journey of Life is a 3D exploration game that features a host of creative puzzles to solve, but contains no real danger or enemies in sight. You begin in a room called the HoloChamber, which acts as a central home that you can teleport to using the escape key at any time. The map on the wall shows the rooms which you have explored previously, and you can click on it to activate a teleporter that sends you to that location immediately.

The mod requires both Unreal Tournament 3 and the 2.0 patch installed before it can run properly, but it is definitely worth going through all the trouble just to play this one-of-a-kind experience. Alexander's creation was also recently selected as one of the ten finalists for the upcoming Sense of Wonder Night 2009 event.

The much-publicized 2D remake of Valve's Portal is now out, with links to binaries for Windows, Mac and Linux operating systems all available from the Cymon's Games site.

In ASCIIpOrtal you can fire up to two portals with your hand-held portal device, then enter through one before coming out of the other for some mind-bending teleportation effect. Some of the puzzles include manipulating switches using blocks, placing portals on the other side of chain links, dodging boulders before they crush you, and avoiding laser fields that will burn your flesh instantly on contact.

Yep, I'm guilty of liking just about everything that Jonatan Söderström makes. (caution: loud music)

Particle is a puzzle game controlled only with the mouse which attempts to 'stimulates your eyes, your ears and your mind at the same time'. It looks and sounds very much like recent ambience puzzler Osmos, but gameplay-wise it's actually nothing like it.

No, what Particle actually is is quite difficult to explain. The key is to work out where your glowing particle needs to be moved on each level, an each solution appears to be quite different. What it does have in common with Osmos is the selected soundtrack with track names such as "Oceanic", "Parallax", "Shanana" and "Solitary".

The flowfase site doesn't give any details on when the full game will be available and this demo is extremely short (about 5 minutes worth of gameplay) but it's worth checking out just for the odd calmness of it all.

Recently a lot of indie game developers have been setting up pages on Kickstarter, previously mentioned in this blog here. Kickstarter is a site where people can fund projects, often in exchange for rewards at different donation levels; you can read about it here. It is currently only available to indie developers in the US (although you can donate from anywhere, as long as you have a credit card -- it doesn't accept PayPal). Unfortunately Kickstarter has no tagging mechanism, and its search feature shows the first 16 results only, so it's pretty hard to search for indie games on it.

So I created this list (in the extended part of the entry). You might recognize some of the games and developers. The amounts are current as of yesterday, current numbers may vary. If you'd like to see any of these games get made or are interested in any of the rewards offered, take a look. The rewards vary from pre-orders to every game I ever make forever to t-shirts to characters named after you to soundtracks to a cigarbox oscillator instrument hand-made by Messhof.

RunMan coming October 1st. What more is there to say besides RUNMANRUNMANRUNMANRUNMANRUNMAN...

The story of Icycle is set in a time when the entire world has been frozen solid, save for a man who was cryogenically preserved together with a bicycle and an unknown companion that flees the scene just before the game starts. The protagonist can only cycle forward and never move back, but he is still able to control his travel speed and time his jumps to avoid some of the dangers he will face during his adventure.

There are eight stages to play in total, each featuring three or four screens of landscape to traverse.

Distorting ink using magnets is what MagnetiZR is all about. Creating magnetic fields will push the ink in a new direction and hopefully guide it towards the goal.

It's a shameless rip of Auditorium (minus the music-based feel) but it's still good fun and extremely well polished. Initially the tutorial levels make it all seem a little cluttered, but keep at it and you'll find lots to render you busy. There are three challenges for each level for added replay value.

Over on Newgrounds.

Neverdaunt: 8Bit is an online sandbox multiplayer game which looks very much in the same vein as recently covered Minecraft. The game has been in Beta since July, however creators Robot<3Kitty have decided it has now had enough functionality added to render it playable to the public.

It will use the 'free to play, costs to buy extra stuff' mechanic. There are apparently no goals except to simply 'be creative'.

A Mazing Monk is a rotating puzzle game created by a team of students at DADIU. A monk is on the path to becoming a Buddha and it's your job to help him collect all the karma he needs while dodging the evil soldiers.

The monk can move around the top of the cube as long as there are no obstacles in the way. Clicking on the edge of the cube will cause that section to rotate around, creating a new path for the monk. However, if a path is forged connecting a band of soldiers to our religious friend, they will destroy him without thinking twice.

It's a nice idea and really good fun, but is a little on the short side with only 3 levels to play. However, once you've completed those 3, there's a 'Hard Mode' down in the bottom left with contains another 3 levels dedicated to making sure you don't succeed.

Give it a try.

Journey to the Center of the Earth is an exploration platform game in which you play the role of a treasure hunter, out to retrieve forty pieces of relics from the ruins of an ancient civilization. You carry an unlimited number of bombs that can be used to hurt enemies or launch yourself higher into the air. A treasure map showing location hints and relics collected is accessible by pressing the A key at any time.

The game runs at a resolution of 1280 by 720 pixels, but you can also play it in full screen mode by pressing the F4 function key. There is no progress save feature, so you will have to spend about half an hour or more to complete the entire adventure in one go. (direct download link)

In our latest employment-tastic round-up, we highlight some of the notable jobs posted in big sister site Gamasutra's industry-leading game jobs section this week, including positions from BlackRock Studio, NetDevil, and more.

Each position posted by employers will appear on the main Gamasutra job board, and appear in the site's daily and weekly newsletters, reaching our readers directly.

It will also be cross-posted for free across its network of submarket sites, which includes content sites focused on online worlds, cellphone games, 'serious games', independent games and more.

Some of the notable jobs posted this week include:

BioWare Austin: Gameplay Programmer
"BioWare is hard at work on the epic fantasy RPG Dragon Age; and Star Wars: The Old Republic, our massively multiplayer online game being developed at BioWare Austin. BioWare Austin is looking for Gameplay Programmers for our Austin team. Both full-time and contract positions are available."

LucasArts: Director of Technology
"LucasArts, a Lucasfilm Ltd. company, is a leading developer and publisher of interactive entertainment software worldwide for video game console systems, computers and the Internet. Based in San Francisco, Calif., as well as on the Internet at www.lucasarts.com, LucasArts was created in 1982 by George Lucas to provide an interactive element to his vision of a state-of-the-art, multifaceted entertainment company."

The Indie Game Arcade lineup for the Eurogamer Expo 2009 was revealed today and is set to feature a plethora of big indie names.

Running from 27th - 31th October in Leeds and London, the following developers will be there showing off their creations:

Edmund McMillen and William Good - Time Kufc
Introversion - DEFCON
Robert Fearon - Squid Yes! Not So Octopus 2: Squid Harder
Rudolf Kremers and Alex May - Dyson
Beatnik Games - Plain Sight
Tunatech - Cletus Clay
Hayden Scott-Baron - Tumbledrop
Michael Boxleiter - Fig. 8
Paolo Pedercini - Ergon Logos
Terry Cavanagh - VVVVVV
Hello Games - TBC
Steven Lavelle - TBC
Anna Anthropy - TBC

I'll be heading to the Leeds leg of the show (27th - 28th) and will of course attempt to report on all the sights and sounds (in between playing games, obviously). Tickets for the Expo are still on sale at £6 a day for anyone considering it.

As GDC Austin 2009 continues, IndieGames' big sister site Gamasutra is writing up all of the highlights.

As well as other subconferences such as the iPhone, Writers and Audio Summit, there's a first-ever Indie Games Summit in Austin this year, and after the first day's round-up, here's another four stand-out lectures from Day 2 of the Indie Games Summit:

GDC Austin: 2D Boy's Carmel On 'Beyond The Finish Line'
"In an intriguing GDC Austin lecture, World Of Goo co-creator Ron Carmel examined the world 'beyond the finish line', discussing what happens after your indie game is released and how to deal with it."

GDC Austin: Twisted Pixel Talks 'Splosion Man Postmortem
"Mike Henry and Sean Riley from Austin-based indie Twisted Pixel used their Independent Games Summit talk to postmortem the six-month XBLA project and 'Summer Of Arcade' title 'Splosion Man.."

GDC Austin: Swink, Wegner On Blurst's Rapid Prototyping Madness
"At the Independent Games Summit on Austin in Wednesday, Flashbang's Matthew Wegner and Steve Swink explained how their rapid prototyping of web games like Off-Road Velociraptor Safari gave them larger life lessons."

GDC Austin: Lost Garden's Cook On Why Premium Flash Games Rock
"Talking at the Indie Games Summit at GDC Austin on Wednesday, Bunni co-creator and Lost Garden blogger Daniel Cook explained why he believes charging users for more complex Flash games is the wave of the future."

Here's a teaser trailer for Infinite Ammo's upcoming exploration adventure game called Marian, named after the main character who is a puppet-girl trying to escape from her master's grasps.

What do you guys think of it?

Time Fcuk is a platformer that warns about the dangers of time travel, featuring puzzles centered around your character's ability to switch between layers in a level. Your future selves tend to contact you constantly and provide hints, chide you, or even babble incohesively while you attempt to figure out how to get to the portal that teleports you to the next area.

Some stages contain blocks for you to move around and use as platforms to reach higher ground, while other rooms may have moving arrows that reverses gravity when touched. The game comes with a comprehensive level editor that allows users to design and share their own obstacle courses with other players.

We didn't get a trailer for their announcement of the release on XBLA, but now there's a video up on GameSpot previewing some of the gameplay elements that can be found in The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom. Similar to Super Meat Boy, The Odd Gentlemen's upcoming puzzle platformer will be released sometime in early 2010. (source)

The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom Official Trailer (GameSpot)

A bloody awesome trailer for Super Meat Boy (with some gameplay footage) was recently posted on IGN. Team Meat's upcoming WiiWare release should be out sometime in early 2010.

Note also that Edmund McMillen and William Good's Time Fcuk will be released on Newgrounds sometime later today. You can find a brand new trailer for the game in the extended.

[UPDATE: Time Fcuk is playable on Newgrounds now.]

WiiWare: WiiWare Summit - First Super Meat Boy Footage (GamerBytes)

Sony Europe have confirmed that Frozenbyte's Trine will be available later this week on the Playstation Network.

Delayed back at the start of August, the fantasy side-scroller was only released on the PC. It's now getting a PSN outing sometime this week. Note that it has only been confirmed for the European store and news is yet to be heard on whether it will be hitting the US store this week or not.

Until then, feel free to read our review and decide whether it's worth grabbing a copy.

As GDC Austin 2009, IndieGames' big sister site Gamasutra is writing up all of the highlights.

As well as other subconferences such as the iPhone, Writers and Audio Summit, there's a first-ever Indie Games Summit in Austin this year.

It's co-organized by Matthew and Steve from Flashbang/Blurst along with Adam Saltsman of Canabalt fame and BoingBoing Offworld's indie-friendly Brandon Boyer and myself (IGF Chairman Simon Carless.)

We're doing our best to write up the (well-attended!) conference sessions for posterity, and here's the Indie Games Summit-specific sessions from the first day of two:

GDC Austin: How Fantastic Contraption Became A Fantastic Hit
"Talking at the Independent Games Summit at GDC Austin, Fantastic Contraption creator Colin Northway explained how he created his Flash-based physics game with no pro game experience, and "made a boatload of money" along the way."

GDC Austin: NinjaBee's Fox Gets Practically Indie
"NinjaBee's Brent Fox discussed practical indie tips at GDC Austin, looking at the massive advantages of being in XBLA's Top 20, and why DLC for XBLA games isn't generally a moneymaker in itself."

GDC Austin: Wolfire On Making Indie Marketing Buzz
"In the final talk at GDC Austin's Indie Games Summit on Tuesday, Wolfire's John Graham discussed how to get the word out about your independent game, based around successful tactics for upcoming PC action game Overgrowth."

GDC Austin: Gaijin's Roush on Bit.Trip's Indie Construction
"Kicking off the Independent Games Summit at GDC Austin, Gaijin Games' Mike Roush talked about 'holistic indie console game design' in making the retro WiiWare series, explaining how project scope morphed its game design."

GDC Austin: Certain Affinity's Bullard On Bootstrapping Your Indie Business
"In an intensely practical Indie Games Summit talk at GDC Austin, Certain Affinity (Age Of Booty) production manager Jennifer Bullard talked about the realities of game business for a mid-sized independent developer, spanning business to relationships and beyond."

[EPILOGUE: Over at Offworld, Brandon Boyer has made a special post featuring the games from his 'New Indie Hotness' IGS talk, and don't forget, Austin-ites, that video game docs screening on Tuesday and Thursday night at the 6th Street downtown outpost of the Alamo Drafthouse.]

Sister site GameBytes is reporting that sales on Xbox Live Indie Games have had a considerable boost since the switch from Community Games. Prices have dropped and a new rating system has been implemented, which are both huge factors in the rise in sales.

Ryan Langley talked to a number of XBLIG developers who each told him the same thing - their sales have been greatly increased due to the new system. Barkers Crest Studios' Easy Golf is now selling 3 times as many copies as before the update, while Johnny Platform’s Biscuit Romp, created by Craig Forrester, has seen a spectacular rise of over 1000% in sales (from 113 purchases in July to 1,469 in August).

James Silva from Ska Studios, developer of the #1 highest rated game on XBLIG I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MB1ES!!!1, also revealed that the rating system has helped his sales immensely, with the trial and full game versions having been downloaded a total of 122,063 times. At $1 a pop, and with an estimated trial vs full purchase conversion rate of 15%, that means he has earnt himself at least a tidy $15,000 sum from the month of August.

All this bodes very well for Xbox Live Indie Games! Read all the details at GamerBytes.

Platogo, a new browser-based games site, has just opened its doors. The social gaming site has been in beta for the last few months, and is now available for developers to upload their ActionScript 3 and haXe-based games.

It comes with its own Platogo API so that devs can add achievements and high score boards to their games. Like most of the browser-gaming sites out there, it has an ad sharing revenue system, allowing users to earn cash from advertising in and around their games.

Of course, there are already plenty of sites like this churning out new releases all the time, so why bother with Platogo? The Platogo team hope to stand out from the crowd with games which have level-creation tools, allowing users to create levels for others to try out. Right now there are only 8 games on the site to play, but nearly 400 user-created levels already!

The wonderful Gregory Weir has already got in on the action with his game Exploit, and Platogo users have been creating tons of levels for it. Any flash devs out there might want to check it out!

Inner Space ate up many hours (days, weeks) of my time back in 1994 and it's still great fun to play 15 years on. A virus has infected your computer, so it's time to dive right in, drag your programs to safety and destroy all trace of the deadly infection.

It's a shooter that uses your computer's hard drives as worlds. Flying around each directory, it's your job to find each of the icons for your files and grab them before the virus can infect. You have team-mates who are ready to help out, and there are also other teams who may or may not be friendly towards you. You can sway their feelings by either helping them out or giving them a good battering.

Each level has an ambulance for fixing yourself up and upgrading your ship (called by pressing H) and police ships which roam around upholding the law. There are also races and arena matches to be beaten.

Strangely enough, after all these years the game is still $24.95 from the Software Dynamics site. However, there is a 14-day trial available to download which includes every feature except the very last level, so it's worth grabbing that.

Wikirunner is an a chase game inspired by Jeremy Bushnell's Wikipedian Tag. Created for Mini Ludum Dare #12 (the theme was 'Wikipedia'), two players are given a random Wikipedia page each, and then 'the chaser' must try to navigate his or her way to the same page as their opponent, while 'the runner' must try to stay off the same page as the chaser for as long as possible.

Both players can only move to another Wiki page if it has some relevance to the page they are currently on - so for example, you could move from 'London Olympics' to '2012', but not from 'Russia' to 'kangaroo'. The chaser also gets two goes for every one of the runner's goes, to give him a fair chance. The game can be played in a 2-player hotseat style, or 1 vs AI, or AI vs AI (if you want to watch how the program thinks).

By far the most fun mode is an AI chaser vs a player runner. It's interesting to see the choices the AI makes - at one point I changed to 'Canada', so the AI jumped over to a page on 'Dumbledore's Army'. Escaping to the Wiki page for 'Iraq', the program then tried to follow me by bringing up the page for 'The Manchester Evening News', which just so happens to be my local newspaper strangely enough.

Give it a go and see how far you can run. (For Windows and Linux)

A new demo for Bob's Game, the homebrew Nintendo DS game by Robert 'I cannot leave this viridian room' Pelloni, has been released and is now available over on the Bob's Game site.

The story of the release's unfolding has gone on for a few days now. Originally Bob had penned in a 9/9/09 release of something, but no details were given on exactly what this release would be. Then a couple of days before said date, his website became rather colourful at the expense of one Mr. Reggie Fils-Aime (no points for guessing why). With many Bob's Game fans understandably excited, the 9/9/09 came... and went - with no release.

However, with fans revolting on the Bob's Game forums, a cryptic message appeared on the main page, simply reading 'ETA: 2 HOURS'. Confused fans spent the next 24 hours trying to work out exactly what was going on. Eventually, an admin on the forums explained that Bob had been working 'for about 70 hours without sleep' and had been advised to go to bed.

Which brings us to today, and the ETA 2 HOURS message has been replaced with the words 'test version available in forum'. And lo and behold, a new demo has appeared on the forums! The great news for all you PC gamers is that, while the original required a flash cartridge to play, this second demo is for desktop consumption. Grab it from here. Just try not to let Tetrid and Ping make you cry.

Don't be fooled by the lo-fi graphics - Terry Cavanagh's upcoming action/puzzle platformer VVVVVV will be spectacularly awesome. But what's up with the recent trend of naming indie games using only one alphabet? (high quality video)

Knight of the Living Dead tells the tale of brave Sir Galahad, who has been called upon to defend Camelot from the vilest of evil - zombie knights. Armed with only his trusty sword and a handful of regenerating spells, Galahad must survive ten waves of zombies and defeat the final boss in order to restore peace to the land.

Every time you advance a level, you are given a point to spend on one of your skills. The upgrades range from improving your strength in combat, increasing your ability to withstand injury, learn more powerful spells, and even accelerate the frequency of zombies that appear on the map.

The online high score table tracks just about everything you need to know in regards to your performance and the battle strategies of top players around the world.

Download it here.

In our latest employment-tastic round-up, we highlight some of the notable jobs posted in big sister site Gamasutra's industry-leading game jobs section this week, including positions from Rockstar North, Turbine and more.

Each position posted by employers will appear on the main Gamasutra job board, and appear in the site's daily and weekly newsletters, reaching our readers directly.

It will also be cross-posted for free across its network of submarket sites, which includes content sites focused on online worlds, cellphone games, 'serious games', independent games and more.

Some of the notable jobs posted this week include:

Here's an interesting application made with the Unity3D game engine: an interactive projection of a dog on a storefront window, complete with proper behavioral responses. (video has no sound)

If your gestures and body language are interpreted as friendly, the dog will respond to you the same way as well. Same goes with a show of aggresion towards the dog. The sidewalk is illuminated with infrared lights, and tracking is done with an infrared-sensitive camera.

You can see Sniff in action when it is hosted at The Change You Want to See gallery, during the Conflux Festival in New York this coming September 18th - 20th.

The proper launch trailer for Dejobaan Games' Aaaaa! - A Reckless Disregard for Gravity. Spelt adrenaline wrongly, though...

As Mike says, Aaaaa!'s a great game, and I wouldn't be surprised at all if it won a couple of awards later this year or the next.

Probably the last good sale of this game you might find in a while, you can now purchase Braid on Steam for only $5. The offer expires at the end of this weekend, so if you haven't played it yet then this is a good time as any to find out why Number None Inc.'s debut release is the darling of critics everywhere.

Hope you're saving up for Direct2Drive's 5th anniversary sale for indie games as well, which starts this September 28th. (source)

[Since we're having GDC Austin next week and a bunch of interesting indies and other folks will be in town, the guys at AMODA have helped us cook up some special screenings at the seminal Alamo Drafthouse - and anyone can come, not just GDC Austin attendees.]

The organizers of GDC Austin 2009 have announced a partnership with the Austin Museum of Digital Art to show two notable video game-related documentaries at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema during next week's Game Developers Conference in Austin -- one of them a U.S. cinema premiere.

To coincide with the first day of the Independent Games Summit at GDC Austin, the famous Alamo Drafthouse independent theater in downtown Austin will be showing 'Into The Night with Chris Crawford & Jason Rohrer' on Tuesday, September 15th, 2009 at 10.15pm.

This documentary, originally shot for a European TV series featuring meetings between notable creators, and being shown in cinemas in the U.S. for the first time, "follows an extended conversation between the indie game designer Jason Rohrer and legendary game designer Chris Crawford. Filmed over the course of a day during GDC 2009, Crawford and Rohrer play and discuss various indie titles at the conference, show their games to one another, and talk about the past and future of game design." Selected indie game-related short films will also be shown before the main feature presentation.

Also playing during GDC Austin at a special AMODA and Alamo Drafthouse one-off showing at is the pinball-related doc, 'TILT: the Battle to Save Pinball', on Thursday, September 17th at 10.20pm. This Greg Maletic-directed documentary "tells the story behind one of entertainment's most mysterious failures" - the Pinball 2000 series of Williams pinball machines which twinned video game and pinball technology.

Plenty of behind-the-scenes interviews and footage illustrate the battle over Pinball 2000 at Williams, as "soon after its successful and highly-profitable launch, Williams pulled the plug, leaving behind unanswered questions and abandoning one of the world's great design organizations." The documentary tries to answer some of these questions by speaking to many of the principals involved. Selected short films will also play before this special GDC Austin screening.

More information on the screenings, which are open to the public and GDC Austin attendees alike at a standard admission fee, are available on the Alamo Drafthouse cinema homepage. (AMODA, an Austin-based organization that "engages the public and artists in the creation, understanding, and appreciation of digital art", is the facilitator of both showings.)

The Flashbang Studios guys recently released four of their popular Unity games at $10 each a pop, but now you can grab all four for a marvellous $20. That's half price, don't you know!

Of course, you'd be forgiven for simply answering 'Erm, aren't they all free already?'. And yes, the browser versions are still free to play on the Blurst site. Grabbing the downloadable builds, however, means fullscreen Blurst gaming and, most importantly, getting rid of those damn time limits!

You'll obviously be supporting Flashbang too, so that they can make even more lovely, highly comical masterpieces. To the Blurst Store!

[UPDATE: A coupon code was just released to get 50% off the Bundle Pack, making it a ridiculous $10 - the code is limited to 50 uses though, so you'd better hurry! The code is FACEBOOK]

Greg Wohlwend and Mike Boxleiter are independent game authors at Intuition Games. Authors of Dinowaurs and such laudable titles as Gray and the upcoming Liferaft. Recently they launched Fig. 8 over at YoArcade. Colin Northway speaks to them about how they design games and found out that sometimes fighting like cats and dogs is the best way to keep a studio together.

Hey Greg, hey Mike. Thanks for taking the time to answer a few questions. How did you guys end up making games?

G: Our story is kind of similar. We went to college together.

M: We almost worked on a project together in college but then Greg flaked out and I thought he was a douche bag.

G: We had this game class together and I was like "Mike has this game in progress, so maybe I'll see what I can do". So I went over there for a meeting and made some horrible alien drawings and then I quit.

M: (laughs) It was a bad project. Every project we worked on up until we graduated was bad.

Have you always worked together on the design?

G: Yeah. Whoever has the initial spark, they have to get things going and communicate the idea. But then eventually it becomes this thing that we share. And that's certainly how it happened with Fig. 8.

Gears of War - The Minesweeper plays quite similarly to its namesake, but instead of avoiding mines you would have to actively engage locusts in battle and taking damage for points. You recover a little health for every turn you take, and the strength of a locust determines how much injury you are to receive in each random encounter.

Occasionally you will also come across special items that can restore your health or turn the tide of battle, but a soldier is only allowed to carry one of these at any time. Clearing out an entire area of locusts can be rather difficult, though players can choose to retire with their current score at any time with no penalty for quitting early. The only thing you will be missing out on is the chance to score more points by taking out other locusts.

Rock Warrior is a short arcade game created by Jetro Lauha (of Dismount series fame) for the Ludum Dare 15 competition, in which you have to pilot a ship inside a cave and mine for every piece of gold that you can find embedded between the rocks.

Your ship automatically destroy rocks when it is moving around slowly. The game ends when you've collected all the gold there is to be found, or if you run out of cash to power the ship's mining equipment.

There is only one single level to play in this prototype build. Windows only.

Station 38 is a mouse-based action game where you are in control of a robot that can only jump in short bursts. Players have to be very careful while navigating around tight corridors, as our robotic friend tends to lose hull integrity very quickly after falling from a great height or colliding with a wall at high speed.

To guide the robot, all you have to do is draw a line using the cursor and the little guy will thrust itself in that direction for a short while, before being pulled back to the ground by the ship's artificial gravity field. Plasma barriers that damages the robot on contact are introduced in subsequent levels, making the challenge of getting to the transporter location in each area slightly more difficult than it already is. (source)

Another look at the upcoming multiplayer strategy game, shown here running on a multi-touch table, the Xbox 360 platform (multiplayer splitscreen mode), a Windows mobile device, a tablet, and a Windows-based PC. The ambitious project seems to be shaping up nicely, even though development work on the game had only started barely three months ago. (previous mention)

[Something we have been working on for a bit and can now announce - the awesome Gamma themed indie game showcase is coming to Game Developers Conference next year, with show floor space and free GDC passes for the top submissions, and a Kokoromi-organized mega-indie party to show the games.]

Montreal experimental game collective Kokoromi announced that it is partnering with Think Services' Game Developers Conference to bring the fourth edition of their renowned Gamma game showcase to GDC 2010 next March.

The Gamma showcases, which are free for anyone to enter, present independent designers with constraint-based challenges and a public play environment that push the boundaries of game-making.

Comparable to a longer-form, targeted version of the 'indie game jam' concept, previous years’ themes have included Gamma 01: Audio Feed (games driven by live audio), gamma 256 (games with extremely small pixel dimensions), and GAMMA 3D (games using red-blue stereoscopic 3D).

From these unique events, ground-breaking experimental video games have emerged such as Passage, Paper Moon and Super HYPERCUBE (pictured). In past years, Gamma has played host to some of game making’s most talented individual creators, including Jason Rohrer, Petri Purho, Adam Saltsman, Shawn McGrath and Alec Holowka.

Kokoromi will open this year’s Gamma submissions -– and reveal its latest theme -- in November 2009, allowing game makers 6-8 weeks to build their games.

Chosen games will be showcased at a public party following the Independent Games Summit at the 2010 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. In keeping with Gamma’s distinctive “new arcade” format, these games will be featured on large screen projections, and accompanied by the music of local and international DJs.

Following the debut event, the selected games will be playable in a special GDC-donated booth on the Game Developers Conference Expo floor from March 11th to 13th, 2010. Game developers, media, and industry luminaries from around the world will be able view and play the games and speak with their creators.

Gamma 4 offers unprecedented exposure for the selected game makers, who will be given two GDC 2010 All-Access passes for their outstanding creative effort. It also adds a notable new attraction to the GDC Expo, which also hosts the renowned Independent Games Festival Pavilion and a variety of exhibits from the game industry's leading companies.

Gamma is part of Kokoromi’s mandate to inspire and present diverse, experimental game content to a wide public audience. In doing so, they are part of a larger international movement that recognizes games as a unique artistic form.

More information on Gamma 4 theme and submission dates will be available in November 2009 at the official Kokoromi website.

Back in June, I went out on a limb and recommended, nay, urged every Indie Games reader to give Dejobaan Games' base-jumper Aaaaa! a pre-order based on an incomplete, pre-release version.

A couple of weeks with the finished product and many broken limbs (see what I did there!) later, I am happy to reiterate my original thoughts. What Dejobaan have created is a fantastic title which is perfect for jumping (quite literally, you could say) straight into for a quick game or, as the case may frequently be, staying up until a ridiculous time in the morning playing 'just one last level' over and over. Simply put, this is nothing but pure, unadulterated fun and never tries to be anything else.

Inspired by Linley's Dungeon Crawl, Telchar's Trapdoor Below is a roguelike game that features a much simplified ruleset, uncomplicated controls, and the usual random dungeon generator that ensures every new adventure plays differently from the last. There are still plenty of classes to choose from as your starting profession, and while items are in abundance throughout the dungeon you will still occasionally struggle to find food for consumption and self-preservation.

Note that the game doesn't include a progress save function, so you will have to beat all twenty levels in one sitting if you harbor any intentions of defeating the demigod and completing the quest.

noonat's Refuge is sort of a physics-based Missile Command game created for the recent Ludum Dare competition, where players have to defend their city from an alien invasion with the help of a turret that fires only one bullet at a time. Luckily for you, any alien that is incapacitated by your shots will also knock out all other invaders that it touches on the way down.

The game ends when there are no buildings left standing in the city, although you do get a chance to submit your score online as a consolation for the humiliating defeat.

Sourced this tasty piece of info from Danny B., and I asked Adam about it just to be sure - iPhone owners can soon play Adam Atomic's excellent Canabalt while on the go, as the prolific developer is currently in the process of porting his latest work to Apple's popular mobile device. If you take a closer look at the official website for Canabalt, you'll notice that the port is being handled by Semi-Secret Software, who lists just two names on the about page for the company.

Adam mentions that the first version of the iPhone game will be a straight port with some art touch up work and local high scores, although he doesn't rule out other crazy new features in future updates. He is also planning to give away free promo codes (as many as he can get) to anyone who donates 10 dollars or more on the current Canabalt page. The iPhone port should be out sometime before the end of the month.

Two other trivial stuff that you guys have been asking about - to get the MP3 version of Danny B.'s Canabalt soundtrack (5 minutes long), all you have to do is donate something, and you'll get both the song and two Canabalt-themed desktop wallpapers. Canabalt also does not have an ending, so you can practically run in the same direction forever and not get to your destination at all (although Adam had initially planned to include a proper intro and ending in the early stages of development).

More information to be revealed on the iPhone Canabalt page soon.

Alchemia is the beautifully strange tale of a man on a quest to replace the robotic body of a rather odd being. It plays out as a point-and-click style affair in a gorgeously detailed world.

I was initially put off by the very first puzzle, but I'm glad I stuck at it, as there are some lovely sights on show here, and the rest of the puzzles aren't too shabby either. Lasting around half an hour, the fantasy locations are bound to be compared to Amanita Design's Samorost (as they were back in April). There will apparently be a second part, but this will not be free and Springtail hope those who liked this part will want to come back for more.

Definitely worth a playthrough - if you get stuck, there's a handy walkthrough too. Play it over at Alchemiagame.com.

Solar Plexus is a puzzle platformer created by the developer of the Noitu Love series, where you are in control of a female protagonist sent to investigate the sudden communication silence from a certain space colony. Most of the challenges in the game require the player to manipulate blocks using the mouse and navigate around obstacles placed deliberately to hinder their progress forward.

Weapon ammo is limited to just fifty shells as well, but you can replenish this stock by left-clicking on ammunition blocks resting somewhere in most levels. Some doors will only open after you've placed purple blocks in specially marked areas, while other locations are only accessible by creating your own platforms with the blocks.

This is an unfinished version of the full game, containing nine levels to play in total. Joakim has no plans to continue developing it, and is considering the project an abandoned one.

Nandrew's Onslaught of the Electric Zombies shares a number of similarities with the classic Windows game, but also introduces a couple of new rules and items that encourages more strategic planning than a usual Minesweeper session. You start each game with a hundred energy points, which will be depleted very quickly by the zombies that you encounter while searching for an exit point. Once the exit has been found, you can use the next level button to progress or attempt to uncover all tiles in the area for a special level bonus. Any remaining energy points will carry over to the next round, and you will also gain at least ten bonus energy points for advancing a level.

Occasionally you will discover items that can be stored in your item slots. There are eight stages to beat, and you can choose to defeat the zombie king in the final level or just retire with a lower score after you've discovered the exit point. Note that the king will inflict a hundred points of damage just by clicking on him, and the only way to beat him is to survive his attack head-on first.

Windows only. (download link)

Paul Moose In Space World is an adventure game featuring a world made (and hand drawn) entirely out of paper and pens. It's an absolutely fantastic concept and well worthy of the second prize it received in the Game Jolt Axiom Contest.

The whole experience has a very 'Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy' feel to it, from the situations Paul finds himself in to the dialogue. It's pretty short - there are literally around 6 or 7 actions needed to complete the game - but it's all about the mix of style and laughs over anything taxing. It's those little details too - for example, when Paul finally meets the aliens, they are made out of what appears to be Plasticine (or something along those lines), which in Paul's world is of course very alien to him indeed.

It's a little buggy in places (the inventory screen in particular - you'll want to aim slightly up and to the left to select items) but it's still highly enjoyable while it lasts. Grab it from Game Jolt.

Game Jolt today took their ad revenue sharing plan out of closed beta and into public beta. Originally launched back in May, Gamejolt's ad revenue scheme allowed developers to earn 50% of all money earned from ads on their games.

Now the scheme has been opened up for any developer to join and start earning. All new signups will receive 30% of the money earned from ad clicks on their games, with the chance to increase that percentage dependent on how well your games are received. All original signups from the closed beta will continue to earn at the 50% rate.

If you're a developer who is yet to try out Gamejolt, now would be as good a time as any - remember, they accept not only Flash games, but also a range of other platforms, including freeware, Unity and Silverlight. Point your browser at GameJolt.com for a piece of the action.

The story of Extend Studio's Trashman is set in the distant future, where a space station has been built to clean up the heavy pollution contaminating Earth, using funds contributed by governments around the world. Everything worked according to plan and the planet was finally on the right track to recovery when an unexpected incident causes all robots on the station to go haywire. Playing as the super-robot Ares, you are sent on a mission to rescue task force members who were trapped while conducting an investigation to find out the extent of damage sustained by the ship.

This 2D platformer can be played using the keyboard, mouse or the Xbox controller, although you can only shoot in eight directions as full analog controls are not supported. Members of Extend Studio currently have plans to release Trashman for both Windows and Xbox 360 platforms.

There is only one level to play in this demo version, which you can grab from the official site for the game.

The Walls are Not Cheese is a prototype created by Sparky for the recent Ludum Dare competition, where you are in control of a debris-shooting square that has to destroy the bluish shape located at the end of each level.

The small gauge located the the lower right corner of the screen indicates the amount of debris you have left in your arsenal, and you can replenish your stock by holding down the left shift button to suck in nearby debris. Watch out for enemy projectiles though, as their bullets can also be drawn towards you when the vacuum power is used.

A nice little trailer for the upcoming platform game by TimeTrap, a development studio based in Sweden. Created using their own proprietary 'Odin' engine, Emberwind is pretty much a completed project and will have a release date announced for it once the game has been picked up by a publisher.

Watch it here in HD.

Sister site GamerBytes have reported that this year's Dream.Build.Play winners have been announced. Dean Dodrill, developer of the winning game Dust: An Elysian Tail, took home the grand prize of $40,000 and most likely a huge grin on his face.

As for the rest of the prizes, CoinApp's Max Blastronaut grabbed $20,000 in winnings, third prize of $10,000 went to Rotor’scope, and the 4th place prize of $5,000 was awarded to China’s Hu Ling with his martial arts action game HurricaneX2 Evolution (he does like his 4th place, doesn't he!).

Check out all the trailers after the cut.

Farbs has just released Captain Forever, his latest project, in a sort of 'prelaunch' style way. Those who pay $15 will get instant access to the game, plus access to all future versions of the game. Those who don't pay will gain access to the game once it becomes free.

Farbs himself gives you the two different options better than I could:

Support Captain Forever Later

- Your computer may be too puny to run the game, but if you wait for the free release you can use it to learn this crushing truth without having to pay anything.
- You might not like the game. Again, waiting to play the free version will help you figure this out.
- I may get hit by a falling satellite, and thus never release any premium content.

Support Captain Forever Now

- You’ll get to play Captain Forever now while it’s still obscure and cool.
- I am fuelled by your love.
- It’s $5 cheaper.

Either way, check it out at CaptainForever.com.

I stumbled across a great little adventure game today that I first played nearly a decade ago. That Night Before is a series of four acts created with 'The Games Factory' and depicts the story of Roy Haliway and his disappearing girlfriend.

Roy has no recollection of what happened 'That Night Before', but what is clear is that his girlfriend has gone missing and he's in a lot of trouble. Cue a quest heavy with randomly picking up items and talking to strangers.

Each act is quite short (a playthrough of act one today took me around 20 minutes) but it's an interesting enough story. The puzzles are quite simple too, but if you're looking for a relaxing game to play over your weekend, That Night Before could serve you well. I'd suggest downloading Act One and giving that a try to see whether it's worth downloading the rest.

Grab it off ScurvyLiver.

The last trailer of the day, I swear! Twisted Pixel announced their next game at PAX today, called Comic Jumper: The Adventures of Captain Smiley. Yey!

Sorry for the trailer overload, but here's another one! We've not known much about Shank since the Klei guys first announced it back in March, but little by little details are trickling through and it's looking ace.

In our latest employment-tastic round-up, we highlight some of the notable jobs posted in big sister site Gamasutra's industry-leading game jobs section this week, including positions from WB Games, Treyarch and more.

Each position posted by employers will appear on the main Gamasutra job board, and appear in the site's daily and weekly newsletters, reaching our readers directly.

It will also be cross-posted for free across its network of submarket sites, which includes content sites focused on online worlds, cellphone games, 'serious games', independent games and more.

Some of the notable jobs posted this week include:

Mole Control is a fresh new take on the classic Minesweeper coming out later this year. There are moles digging up the garden, and it's your job to find them and suck them up using the old mechanic we all know well.

If you're not a Minesweeper fan, this isn't going to do anything for you, but for anyone else it may just tickle your fancy. Until then, you could always check out Mine Tower.

It's being described as Monkey Island meets Diablo and has been created by Ron Gilbert, famous for his past work with Lucasarts Games. So the above trailer is a bit exciting, don't you think?

Ron is now the Creative Director at Hothead Games, and their next release DeathSpank promises 'a massive seamless world with no load screens', 'mind numbing - yet completely fair - adventure game puzzles' and 'a real story...not a crappy video game story'. All rather big claims which will hopefully be lived up to.

Check out the DeathSpank site for all the info.

I've been meaning to check out the latest TOJam for a while now (a few months even!) but I'm glad I finally got round to it. Category 5 was created for said jam by Team AnyKey and it's wonderful, destructive fun.

It plays out a little like a tornado version of Katamari Damacy. Using the WASD keys, players guide their tiny gust around, picking up rocks to begin with. Spinning the mouse in an anti-clockwise direction speeds the gust up, allowing for bushes to be picked up. Then your gust gets larger, and men get swept up in your windy presence. For anyone who has played Katamari before, you'll know exactly what to expect next.

It's available to download over on the TOJam site. You'll need XNA Game Studio 3.0 to run it, which can be grabbed here.

Ozmoze is a short arcade game where you have to guide a hollow circle to the exit in each stage without hitting any obstacles or getting stuck in walls. The circle can teleport a short distance at the press of a key, an ability which can be rather useful when trying to reach the other side of a wall or avoid traps in the blink of an eye.

There are fifteen levels to play in total. Windows only. (download page)

A 2D RPG based on The Three Musketeers by Alexander Dumas. Expect lots of looting, leveling up, banter and sword-fighting.

There's actually a free beta to download right now, but apparently Dingo Games are about to release the full version for $19.95, so if you want to give it a try, you'd better get in there quick! Download it from here.

Just a quick note that the Gamasutra Network of sites, which includes a number of weblogs on specific game industry areas -- including this very one -- has added Twitter feeds and formalized RSS feeds to make for easier reading.

The Gamasutra feeds page has a complete list of RSS feeds, but both Twitter and RSS information for our suite of sites are now available.

The full set of syndication info is as follows:

- Gamasutra (the art and business of games) - News RSS, Features RSS, Jobs RSS; Main Twitter, Jobs Twitter.
- GameCareerGuide (for student game developers) - News RSS, Features RSS; Twitter.
- WorldsInMotion (the business of online worlds) - RSS; Twitter.
- FingerGaming (gaming on the iPhone and iPod Touch) - RSS; Twitter.
- GameSetWatch (an alt.video game weblog) - RSS; Twitter.
- IndieGames (for independent game players and developers) - RSS; Twitter.
- GamerBytes (the latest console digital download game news) - RSS; Twitter.
- Serious Games Source (games for health, training, military and other users) - RSS, Twitter.
- GamesOnDeck (all about the mobile game industry) - RSS, Twitter.

Atomic Blast is an action platformer that features twelve short levels, created by qrleon using an unregistered version of Game Maker. Similar to Chris Roper's Destructivator, you play a hero who can jump, climb, and shoot his way past just about every obstacle thrown at him. Our protagonist isn't exactly invincible though, as getting hit by a single bullet from any enemy's gun will kill him instantly.

Be prepared to face a boss at the end of the twelfth stage as well, although there isn't any special strategy required to beat him (other than shooting at him repeatedly and avoiding all of his attacks). You can grab the game directly from here, then use the free 7-Zip software to unzip files with 7z extensions. (source: dessgeega)

Since the month of August is now over, the Experimental Gameplay Project team had compiled twenty-nine of the best entries from previous month's theme ('Bare Minimum') for your perusal and enjoyment, so be sure to check them out (we've even written about two of them, Canabalt and Broken Brothers).

Other highlights include T. Time by Kyle Gray (designer of Henry Hatsworth), The Thing With 40 Eyes Girl by Ron Carmel (World of Goo), Ergon/Logos by Paolo Pedercini of molleindustria, and Alex Austin's No Quarter V-Sides.

'Failure' was also unveiled as the game theme for September, so if you've not participated in the last few then don't miss out on this chance to submit something. Failure is not an option!

A hot new trailer for Hideous' physics-based platformer, In Another Brothel (a collaboration with Miroslav Malesevic and Sereneworx). If you've played the original build Mike reviewed way back in March, then you won't need us to tell you that the game is about a man who carries a crate-firing gun, able to build his own platforms to stand on while trying desperately to rescue his girl.

If not, then you can look forward to the Flash version with glee when it is released in about two weeks' time. (Thanks to Hideous himself)

Some major news if you've been following the development of Derek Yu's Spelunky for a while now. The official site for Spelunky was revealed to the public today, and with it comes the release of version 1.0 of Spelunky for Windows.

Derek also announces that Spelunky will be coming out on the Xbox Live Arcade download service sometime in 2010. The XBLA version isn't just a straight port - fans can expect new graphics, audio, and even bonus features (additional items, monsters, special modes and achievements) not found in the Windows version.

Not to worry, long-time fans of the free PC version. The Windows build will still be available as a free download and continues to be supported by the author even after the release of Spelunky on the XBLA.

Get all the info you need from Spelunky World, and check out the forums while you are there.

Flashbang's ninth game has now been released! Time Donkey is available to play over at Blurst.com.

In a very peculiar nutshell, the hero donkey has a bit of a problem - he is stuck re-living the same 30 seconds over and over again. Cue a barrage of donkeys and much puzzle solving by use of donkeys from your past! Or should that be donkeys from your own time? Surely this makes no sense whatsoever, but when it features donkeys who destroys things in search of tacos, sense is few and far between.

Is this Flashbang's most mental game yet? Give it a go and decide for yourself.

Vox Populi, Vox Dei sees a troubled hero on his quest to save the girl who had previously hurt him. The werewolves have taken her prisoners, so now it's time to rip them apart limb from limb and get her back.

It's a real oddity, this one. Lack of music is a start, but it's the sheer brutality behind your attacks that are the real eye-opener. While the werewolves are the evil-looking characters, the damage they deal out is nothing compared to what your little guy can muster up. The pixelated blood and savage pouncing make this slightly NSFW, but by God do they make you feel powerful. Hammering the space bar to completely destroy enemies has never felt so good.

Give it a thrashing over at Kongregate.

Shaping up to be full of lovely platforming goodness. Coming 'soon', according to Andrew's blog.