Indievision: How to approach Steam
"The Valve guys will see hundreds of games a day all from hopeful developers who are keen to get their game published. There is no easy way to make sure your game is ahead of the queue. There are however, some fundamental things to get right."

Play This Thing: Xong
"Xong is an odd and idiosyncratic munge of a Rogue-like, a level-based puzzle game, and an Arkanoid clone. It's Rogue-like, in that it's an ASCII graphics game with procedurally-generated levels, but the actual gameplay is puzzle solving with Breakout-like aspects."

World of Banov: The Problem with RPGs
"Making an RPG is hard and not to be attempted by the inexperienced. In terms of game making RPGs pose way more obstacles than any other genre of video game. So as a cautionary tale I'm going to talk about what I've learned about making RPGs and some of the pitfalls in designing them."

DIYgamer: IGF Submission Picks - Flywrench and About a Blob
"For this week's column, I played through an incredibly difficult masterpiece in Flywrench and for the second time chose a platformer, About a Blob, which I didn't get to play but was attracted to its style."

Oxeye Game Studio: Secret Gifts – Video Leaked
"A secret source deep within the Oxeye team gave me a MiniDV tape of a heavily damaged video. I was able to retrieve some pictures and share them with you. This is what I was able to recover."

Wolfire Games Blog: Oh no, more Meebo
"Our live chat widget proved its worth again during the preorder pack promotion. At times I seemed like I was giving support to ten people at once. A lot of good can come from maintaining a live chat but since productive conversations are boring, I humbly submit to you, another smattering of silliness."

Wolfire Games Blog: John's development environment
"Last month, we put a call out on the blog asking for community questions to answer. The most popular question was if we could do a video tour of our development studio."

IGF Mobile Category Winners

After announcing finalists and honorable mentions late last month, the 2010 Independent Games Festival Mobile has named the category winners that will show their games at GDC and battle for the Best IGF Mobile Game prize.

After battling it out from a field of 170 top-notch entries, winners thus far include Secret Exit's physics-heavy Stair Dismount for iPhone, Powerhead Games' cunning color-based puzzle game Glow Artisan for DSi, and Tiger Style's acclaimed action game Spider for Apple's handheld.

The category winners for the 2010 IGF Mobile competition -- an event that celebrates excellence in games for the iPhone, other cellphone and smartphone OSes, Nintendo DS, Sony PSP, and other handheld devices -- are:

Well, some very generous indies have stepped up to help sponsor a chunk of their offsite event, but they need just a little bit more help with event funding and other costs, so they've established a Kickstarter appeal to do just that. We'll turn it over to them for the details:

"Kokoromi here. We're an experimental art game collective based in Montreal; perhaps best known for our annual Gamma event. Since 2006 we've showcased all-new short-form video games created on a specific theme, at a one-night-only music and gaming party. Our format of challenges + limitations + showcase has yielded such games as Jason Rohrer's Passage and Paper Moon by Infinite Ammo with Adam Saltsman.

increpare's Starfeld is a simple horizontal-scrolling shooter where the player's job is to just pilot the ship while the lasers onboard are fired automatically in regular intervals. The game features small bits of cutscenes to break up the action, although the conversations can get a little raunchy, disturbing, and possibly offending at times.

Zeno Clash: Ultimate Edition aka the XBLA release now has a confirmed release date, landing in the Xbox Marketplace on March 30th. Between now and then, ACE Team are planning on showing off each of the enhancements and additions, starting with the above demonstration of the new attacks.

Along with the fresh ways to hurt various faces, the Ultimate Edition will include a rebalanced combat system, improved animations and some new modes and content. The Tower Challenge will also be available as a multiplayer game, both online and split screen.

If you've been looking for something to spend those spare 80 MS Points on, look no longer. Your Doodles Are Bugged! is an absolute steal for $1, and deserves a place in your game library. I mean, it's Lemmings with a pen, for crying out loud, what more do you need!

Each level sports lots of little jumping bugs, random drawings all over the place and a finishing point. Your job is to draw bridges connecting a route from the bugs to the finish, so they can bounce their way to victory. Your pen doesn't have unlimited ink, however, so you need to find the shortest route possible - you might need to erase some of your past work to make room for further passage.

It's a little buggy (yeah, I went there) in places and the critters will try to venture everywhere but where you want them to actually go... but honestly, you'd be foolish like a huge fool not to check this out. Well worth the price, download it from the Xbox Marketplace.

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:

Black Rock Studio: Lead Vehicle Artist
"When a company the size of Disney steps into European development, it's pretty big news. Disney employs over 100,000 staff. It’s one of the biggest Entertainment companies in the world and it's getting serious about original games. We're a strong studio of just over a hundred people, based at the heart of beautiful and cosmopolitan Brighton, UK. Just a quick train ride away from London in an office where pretty much everyone gets a sea view. The atmosphere is relaxed and friendly but focussed and our role is to create original racing game franchises."

CCP China: Senior Programmer
"CCP, makers of the largest game universe in existence, is looking for a Senior Engineer to be a part of the creative team that brought the world the groundbreaking MMO title, EVE Online. Successful applicants will join a seasoned team based in Shanghai, China where they will work on original games for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3."

1UP: 101 Free Games 2010
"Maybe not all of them will perfectly suit your taste, but with 101 to pick from you're sure to find something that'll keep you busily avoiding anything resembling work."

GameDev.net: IGF 2010 - Pocketwatch Games
"I actually tried to get Monaco made as a big 3-D AAA title when I was at a game company about 6 years ago. We prototyped the thing but we couldn't find enough publisher interest to get the game made."

Phil Hassey: Galcon Fusion announced
"Galcon Fusion is a port of iPhone Galcon plus Galcon Labs to the desktop, this time with hi-def graphics and a full interactive soundtrack. It's going to be coming to Steam and direct on my website on February 11th."

Kotaku: 2010 Life Love Game Design Challenge Offers $2.5K Prize
"It's the kick off for the third annual Life. Love. Game Design Challenge. This flash design contest challenges budding developers to create a game that deals with teen dating violence without using any violence in the game."

MochiLand: "The Reality Bytes Flash Game Contest" announcement
"In the Reality Bytes Flash game contest, you have three months to create a game in the simulation or resource management genre. The contest will be running from February 2nd to April 30th, and there's $15,000 to be split among the winners."

GameSetWatch: Tale of Tales Releases First iPhone Game
"Indie game developer Tale of Tales launched its first iPhone/iPod Touch title, Vanitas, a meditative piece designed without rules or rewards. It's now available through the handset's App Store for $0.99."

Puppyblog: Revenge of the Titans - latest screenshots
"Revenge of the Titans is a game that has all of the great bits of Titan Attacks, like shooting things and buying stuff in a shop, but completely playable with a mouse."

Aztez Development Blog: Impact Effects
"I have created a piece of Unity content that showcases the different effects Aztez will use."

Finally your dreams have come true - it's Canabalt... with robot unicorns!

OK, so technically Robot Unicorn Attack is a 2-button game, but the whole experience is just as beautifully polished as the Balt. The unicorn can double jump, and also rush then jump to allow for making big gaps. Score goes up as you run, and extra points are obtained for collecting fairies and smashing stars.

It looks lovely, it has an awesome name, and that music... Fantastic stuff. Give it a play over at Adult Swim.

What do Lazy 8 Studios of San Francisco, CA and Dejobaan Games of Watertown, MA have in common? Both studios are Independent Game Festival (IGF) Finalists in the "Excellence in Design" category. In this, the latest in Dejobaan's interview series titled "Half a Million Seconds with and Indie Developer," Leo finds out why Rob went Indie and gives you some insights into what it takes to be an IGF Finalist.

They say your name is Rob....tell us more...

RJ: Hey, folks. I'm Rob, Founder and CEO of Lazy 8 Studios in San Francisco. In a way, I feel like I stumbled into game development. I interned at Pixar for a couple summers while I was getting my Ph.D. and I fully expected that when I finished school, I'd travel around the world for a year and go back to Pixar. But when graduation finally came, I found myself in an accidental relationship -- one of those, "when you're least expecting it" relationships. So I went ahead with my plans to travel the world for a year and then ended up back in Boston to be with my boyfriend. The job hunt led me to Demiurge, a small game studio in Cambridge, and I fell in love with game development. When my boyfriend graduated, his job hunt led him to Google, so we moved together to San Francisco and I decided to try my hand at starting a company of my own. And thus, Lazy 8 Studios was born.

Chokotto DiaRunba (thanks to Tacashi and anonymous for the name translation) is a small puzzle game in which you have no direct control over the main character, but you can select which tiles to slide vertically to create a path for her to move forward. Pressing the Z key speeds up the action, and it is game over if you let her touch an enemy or get crushed by a tile on the left side of the screen.

Enemies can be turned into crystals to collect by leading them towards each other. When two of the bearded red enemies are positioned side by side, they will disappear in a puff of smoke and a pair of gems will appear in their place. The green ones break out of their eggs after appearing on screen for a couple of seconds, and continue to proceed left until a block prevents them from going further. You can download the game here, but it won't work on PCs that cannot read Japanese file names. (Windows, 9.68MB)

Desktop Dungeon is a puzzle-based roguelike with an emphasis on resource management, where the health of your adventurer is restored by walking into unexplored rooms or corridors. You can choose to engage an enemy immediately upon finding them, or save the tougher encounters for later after you've gained some battle experience with weaker inhabitants of the dungeon first. That is basically the gist of the game, yet once you've spent about an hour or two with it you'd realize that Desktop Dungeon has plenty of complexity to offer anyone who is willing to learn the advanced strategies, bonuses and random elements that Nandrew has implemented in this gem of a time sink.

There is only one floor to play and a boss character is hiding somewhere in the area, although you can retire from your quest at any time and have the final score tabulated based on your actions and achievements. Players can switch between windowed and full screen mode using the F4 function key. (Windows, 2.33MB)

One Button Bob is a single-button action game in which you have to help Bob survive an obstacle course to reach the treasure he desires. The control scheme is switched around in every room, meaning that you could be running away from a boulder, climbing a set of ladders or jumping from one platform to another as you venture further into the cave.

It takes about ten or fifteen minutes to finish the entire adventure, and there isn't really any incentive to replay it after you've completed your quest.

The Moscone Center, San Francisco-based event has just announced a raft of new lectures, including highlighted talks from Pixar notables, Lionhead's Peter Molyneux, Double Fine's Tim Schafer, and Final Fantasy XIII's director Motomu Toriyama, and a surprise lecture from Metroid co-creator Yoshio Sakamoto.

However, Thursday, February 4th is the final day that GDC is accepting registrations at the early rate, which includes up to 35% discount from final pass prices. The early reg rate will be open until 11.50pm ET this evening.

In addition, today is the final day to register for free Nexus One and Verizon Droid by Motorola phones with GDC 2010 attendance, as part of a promotion between Google and Game Developers Conference. Select All-Access Pass and Summits & Tutorials Pass attendees will receive the phone, and more information is available on a GDC website page.

As well as the nine major Summits, from iPhone to indie and social games -- and notable tutorials on the first two days of the show, there are six main Tracks - programming, art, production, business, audio, and design - for GDC 2010. These include lectures from the creators of Assassin's Creed II, Splinter Cell: Conviction, Uncharted 2, Braid, God Of War III, Dante's Inferno, APB, and a host of other acclaimed games.

Game Developers Conference 2010 -- part of Think Services, as is this website -- will also play host to the GDC Expo Floor, including a host of notable tool companies, the recruitment-specific GDC Career Pavilion, the 12th Annual Independent Games Festival plus Awards and the 10th Annual Game Developers Choice Awards, open to all pass holders.

More information on many of the highlighted areas of GDC 2010 is available on the official Game Developers Conference weblog, and the GDC 2010 website has a full list of lectures, passes, and opportunities at this year's event, as well as specific on registration pricing and options.

Attendees are also reminded that they can email GDC 2010's registration staff -- or call them at 866-535-8997 or +1 (415) 947-6926 from 9am to 4pm PT each weekday -- if they have any issues registering. (All GDC 2010 registrations commenced before the 11.50pm ET deadline will be honored, even if any technical issues occur.)

A Gamma 4 showcase submission, glorg is an action RPG in which all the actions of the main character can be executed by just using one button. According to Martin Jonasson, this procedural generation Flash game currently has more than sixty unique items to find, with one already previewed in the video shown above.