Storyteller marks a bit of a shift for indie developer Daniel Benmergui. Over the last few years, he has made name for himself with art-focused, emotional titles such as Today I Die and I Wish I Were The Moon.

Benmergui's newest title, however, is much more "gamey," to put it in his own words. Storyteller isn't a game about evoking emotion, but rather about playing with stories, and rearranging narrative devices to solve puzzles and advance through a series of challenges.

The game presents players with a simple story premise, and players must rearrange characters and props within a comic-style framework to make the characters bring those stories to life. It's a unique system that pushes a player's imagination and fully rewards creativity.

The game has recently been nominated for the prestigious Nuovo award at the 2012 Independent Games Festival, and Gamasutra spoke with Benmergui to learn more about the game and how it has affected his approach to indie development.

What background do you have making games?

I made Today I Die, I Wish I Were the Moon and now I am working on Storyteller. I studied Computer Science, worked at the mainstream industry for a few years, and became a full time independent developer almost four years ago.

How long have you been working on the game?

Almost a year, but I also worked on other prototypes in the meantime. In the end, only Storyteller seemed worth pursuing right now.

Can you describe how the game works?

The game presents you with a story description, a few comic panels and several "actors" with a basic behavior. All you have to do is drag them into the panels to build a story that matches the description. The challenge is that the game automatically fills in what's happening based on the behavior of actors, putting constrains on how the story can unfold. The game abstracted time away, so you can experiment with chains of consequence immediately, allowing experimentation without waiting for stuff to happen.

Hailing from the Czech Republic, Amanita Design has made a distinct impression on the indie game scene with its visually striking, imaginative adventure games such as Machinarium and Samorost 1 and 2.

Now, the studio is working on Botanicula, a new point and click adventure game that continues the team's legacy of lovingly-crafted visuals and minimalistic storytelling techniques. The game's unique aesthetic has earned it a nomination for an Excellence in Visual Art award at this year's IGF.

As part of our ongoing series of Road to the IGF interviews, Gamasutra spoke with animator Jara Plachy and Amanita Design co-founder Jakub Dvorsky to learn more about Botanicula, and how the studio's previous titles have informed the team's approach to adventure game design.

How did you get your start making games?

Jara Plachy: I started to work on games when I was hired by friends from Amanita Design to create some animations for Machinarium, and I really enjoyed working on the project. It was Amanita that actually showed me how to create a game. Until this collaboration, I worked mostly on animated movies, and I realized it's possible to create original and unique computer games that have narrative and expression equal to animated movies or graphic novels.

How long have you worked on Botanicula?

JP: Botanicula has been in development for two and a half years already. It has gone from preliminary sketches and visual style experiments to now, when the game is nearly finished.

Anyone who follows the indie gaming scene will no doubt have crossed paths with plenty of Stephen Lavelle's games before, although they may well know him better as "Increpare".

Lavelle has been pushing the boundaries of game mechanics for a good few years now, with short but deep experiences that can potentially cause the player to question what real innovation in video games is.

English Country Tune is Lavelle's first commercial title, all his previous releases having been free to download up to this point. All those years of honing his skills appear to have paid off too, as his first paid release has earned him an IGF nomination for Excellence In Design.

As part of Gamasutra's Road to the IGF series, Lavelle discusses why he decided to charge money for this game, and which elements he was forced to cut out of the final vision.

What is your background in making games?

It depends on the game. There are certain general inspirations and role-models, but most of no general interest. I feel like I haven't had a new thought in about two years, and I've more or less "used up" everything I could think of. So I'm trying to think of new things, and it's proving hard work. I let myself go, both culturally and intellectually, and now I'm paying the price. Grrr.

What development tools did you use to develop English Country Tune?

Unity. Music was a mix of Reason, Garageband and some custom-made tools (that are single-purpose enough to not be worth preparing for general consumption). Photoshop.

How long did you work on the game?

8 months in total, though I took some breaks during development.

Bennett Foddy has been creating wacky games that make players want to scream for a good while now, but it's arguable that ham-fisted runner QWOP was his 'breakout' title, firing him into the limelight.

Anything that Foddy puts out now is passed back and forth all over the web, and with good reason, as his flair for the unique and slightly twisted hasn't deminished one iota.

GIRP continues his trend of silly, ridiculously addictive titles, as players attempt to scale a cliff wall using all the keys on a keyboard -- think Twister for your fingers in video game form.

The game has now been nominated for the Nuovo Award at this year's Independent Games Festival. As part of Gamasutra's Road to the IGF series, Foddy explains where GIRP came from, and where he thinks the indie scene is headed.

What is your background in making games?

I taught myself to make games while I was procrastinating from finishing my dissertation in philosophy. I've been playing games ever since I got my first computer (a 48k Sinclair Spectrum) at age 5, and ever since then I've tinkered around trying to make games. But in 2007 it finally became easy enough for me. And it's got easier since then, too.

What development tools did you use to develop GIRP?

I used Flex, Box2D and Flixel for the code, and I made the art in Photoshop.

How long did you work on the game?

It's always hard to make this judgment, because sometimes I have to leave a game on the back burner while I think about how to move forward with it. It's not my day job so I don't tend to rush things out. In terms of actual work, a few weeks, I guess? I could be kidding myself on that one in either direction... I'm not sure.

[In the latest in our "Road to the IGF" series of interviews with 2012 IGF finalists, Gamasutra speaks with Lucky Frame's Yann Seznec about his team's 2012 IGF Excellence in Audio nominee Pugs Luv Beats.]

In the tradition of music composition games like SimTunes, Lucky Frame's Pugs Luv Beats is an addictive iOS title that has you creating songs as you guide creatures around a map, making increasingly complex melodies as you progress and are introduced to new mechanics.

The creatures in this game naturally are pugs, or colorful capsule-shaped versions of the puppies at least, and you need to help them recover Beats scattered around the universe. Each world you visit offers new opportunities for different kinds of musical patterns you can compose.

As you collect beats, you trade them in for outfits to help your pugs better traverse the varying environments on each world. Each movement from the pugs, depending on the terrain, makes a different sound that adds to the unique symphony you've created for the world.

Gamasutra spoke with the Scottish developer's founder and director Yann Seznec to learn more about Pugs Luv Beats, Lucky Frame's design decisions creating its musical mechanics, and what he believes are the most interesting audio developments for indies lately.

What background do you have making games?

Yann Seznec: Pugs Luv Beats is actually Lucky Frame's first game, in the strictest sense of the word. We'd been wanting to get into making games for a while -- Jon Brodsky (Lucky Frame's programmer) had been doing Ludum Dare and other game jams for a year or two, but most of our previous work had more to do with music, which is part of the core of our identity.

For one thing, I was able to found the company in 2008 based on the success of the Wii Loop Machine, a hack that turned Wii remotes into musical instruments. After that, our main mobile release was Mujik for iPhone, a surrealist music toy. It got a lot of wonderful attention, mostly because it was a music app that did not fall into the cliches of nearly every other music app in the store!

That showed us that there was really some space in the creative world for new approaches to music. It was a logical step from there to start making games, particularly since the "music game" genre was really starting to feel tired. So that's how we started getting into making games!

[In the latest in our "Road to the IGF" series of interviews with 2012 IGF finalists, Gamasutra speaks with Alexander Bruce about his 2012 IGF Technical Excellence Award nominee Antichamber.]

Alexander "Demruth" Bruce's Antichamber is a game about discovery, set inside a vibrant, minimal, Escher-like world, where geometry and space follow unfamiliar rules, and obstacles are a matter of perception.

The game was a finalist for the Nuovo Award at the 2011 Independent Games Festival, back when it was still called Hazard: The Journey of Life and "only a couple of months away from release."

Twelve months later and with some work still to be done, Bruce's game is back in the competition, with a new name and new recognition as a finalist in the Technical Excellence category.

What background do you have making games?

Does this work like a resume, where if over a certain amount of time has passed since some of the work that you did, you don't have to list it anymore? I sure would like to forget about those cancelled titles that I mentioned in my Road To the IGF from last year!

On a more serious note, I started making games when I was 20, went through a university degree and worked in the industry for a year. Throughout that entire time, I felt like I didn't have enough experience at anything that I was doing, because I was always surrounded by people who had been doing this stuff for years. So in 2009 I came to the conclusion that if I was going to stand out at all, I'd have to do things differently.

I think I've succeeded at that, because G4TV tried to describe the game at PAX by saying "it's like an Escher painting meets Bastion, then someone did some heroin and threw paint on a wall." That's both one of the best descriptions and one of the most ridiculous descriptions I've ever heard.

While the mechanics behind Damp Gnat's Wonderputt might be loosely based on real-world mini-golf, the game's aesthetic is anything but.

Using a refined, isometric style, the game combines seemingly random visual elements such as UFOs, submarines, natural disasters, and more to create a surreal golf course in which anything can happen.

With such a unique and charming visual style, the game has earned a nomination for an Excellence in Visual Art award at this year's Independent Games Festival.

Prior to releasing Wonderputt, the man behind Damp Gnat, Reece Millidge, developed games including Odyssey for the Amiga, as well as Flash games such as Icycle and the ad-based golf game Adverputt.

In honor of Wonderputt's recent IGF nomination, Gamasutra spoke with Millidge to learn more about his animation background, his approach to indie development, and much more.

What background do you have making games?

I was inspired by the fact that when I was seven years old my father created & self published an educational game for the BBC Micro. So I was exposed to games since the Chuckie Egg days. Growing up I made all sorts of half finished curiosities with AMOS for the Amiga 500. Thankfully I teamed up with friend Chris Mullender to make Odyssey for the Amiga while at college.

Unfortunately it was released just as the Amiga made way for the rise of the PC. After that, a fan letter to Peter Irvin of Exile led to work experience at Frontier Developments for David Braden of Elite, two godfathers of early games in the same place!

I dedicated the next 15 years to study and work in animated films and commercials where I was privileged to learn skills across most media. I soon realized I was incubating more ideas for games than animation, so it was only a matter of time before something accessible to the individual came along. Flash was the perfect tool, Icycle was the result and before I knew it I'd become a full time indie developer!

How long have you worked on Wonderputt?

Initially I had estimated a two month production period, but it ended up taking almost six months over a year period between contract work. This happened mainly because the game outgrew the initial concept and size.

How did you come up with the overall concept?

After the positive response to Adverputt and requests to host the game, it made sense to re-use the game engine to make a version for a wider audience with a rich and animated environment, free of integrated brands. So it started out as just a re-skinned version of Adverputt but with some customizable functionality.

PSN developers will have a leg-up when porting existing code and assets to the PlayStation Vita, shares Chris Harvey of Drinkbox Studios. He further suggests that current generation devs won't have to sacrifice much to get their game up and running, describing the Vita as a "mini-PS3."

Harvey's team is currently working on Tales from Space: Mutant Blobs Attack!!!, one of 25 titles scheduled for the Vita's North American launch. This is far from the team's first console effort, having been certified to develop across leading gaming platforms and having worked for studios such as Vicarious Visions and Electronic Arts. Drinkbox last year went solo with its PSN release of About A Blob, with the help of Sony's Pub Fund. The team's Mutant Blobs Attack follow up, however, is without Pub Fund assistance.

In the following interview, Harvey shares Drinkbox's experience with porting onto the Vita, its development as compared to other platforms, and the benefits found in using the Vita GPU's Tile Based Deferred Rendering (TBDR). Harvey also shares what he thinks could make more successful North American and European launches.

PS Vita has a lot of user input possibilities. What can you share about integrating these with your game?

Our main objective with the inputs has been to find control updates and additions that enhance core gameplay. Our general process for experimentation has been:

Step 1 - Brainstorm control change ideas, implement draft versions of our favorite ideas.
Step 2 - Watch people try the game once control changes have gone in. Think about the results, go back to Step 1.

Mutant Blobs Attack still plays like a platformer, with thumbstick-and-button-based core movement controls, but we've been finding that touch controls in particular can be worked into the gameplay in pretty interesting ways. We're also still experimenting.

You've ported onto many different platforms. How do other platforms compare to working on Vita?

Managing shaders and VRAM is similar to the PS3, although simpler. Because the CPU is a symmetric multi-core device, the threading process is similar to the PC or Xbox 360. The basic porting took about 2 weeks. At that point the original game was playable on the device, although it ran too slowly. Since then, we've probably spent another 4-plus weeks on performance. We've had to get a lot more aggressive with how much threading we do, like threading the input-device reading.

Fortunately, these changes have benefited the engine for all the other platforms. The Vita's API hasn't changed too much since we started, and the documentation was been pretty good from the start, so I think the porting process was on the easy side. Keep in mind that our engine had already been ported a couple of times, so we were in a good position to port to Vita. If you haven't ported your engine before, then it might not be quite as easy.

[Continuing our "Road to the IGF" series with IGF 2012 finalists, Gamasutra speaks with Spry Fox and Wild Shadow Studios about Technical Excellence nominee Realm of the Mad God.]

Realm of the Mad God currently sits as the second-highest rated multiplayer game on Kongregate, with almost 2 million plays since it was published mere months ago on October 31, 2011. Where most games revel in heaps of (often forced) customization, players need only click on the mouse once to start playing Realm.

With permadeath game rules, the entry and re-entry to play need to be swift for players. To keep players engaged, the browser game's loading needs to be equally swift. The developers deployed a mix of small sprites and simple vectors to keep the game size small, all the while boasting a 4+ million tile map that has no loading time.

Spry Fox's David Edery joins Alex Carobus here, speaking on the creation of Realm of the Mad God (RotMG). The two discuss how the game's engine has changed since it began as a small project two years ago, how browsers have benefited and constrained their development, and why there is "no substitute for actual players when designing and building a system."

Could you tell me about your teams and their backgrounds?

David: Steambirds, Panda Poet and Triple Town are our other most notable titles.

Alex: Wild Shadow Studios created some prototypes before RotMG but has not formally released any other games. All of us are ex-Google employees with graduate degrees in Computer Science. None of us have worked at a game company, although Amit wrote the BBS door game Solar Realms Elite.

PlayStation Move-controlled Johann Sebastian Joust is the sort of thing that truly needs to be played to be understood. The improvisational, highly-physical experience has captivated indie gaming fans worldwide -- chances are you've heard the flood of enthusiasm from those who have tried it.

It's earned an honorable mention in the Excellence in Design category for this year's Independent Games Festival, and -- as an unconventional, experimental game -- has earned a nod in the Nuovo category. The galvanizing title also has a nomination for the IGF's Seumas McNally Grand Prize.

In this extensive interview, we catch up with Douglas Wilson of Die Gute Fabrik (who's also long been an inspiring figure in the Copenhagen Game Collective) on the genesis of the project, the idea of digital folk games, and the strength of the indie community.

What background do you have making games?

I've always been an avid player of games, but it didn't occur to me until college that I might seriously study or develop them. In 2003, I took a class with Professor Henry Lowood, called the History of Computer Game Design. So, I actually started writing about games before I started making them. But fortunately I complemented my humanities degree with an MS in computer science. For one of our project assignments, some friends and I developed a game called Euclidean Crisis. It was nominated as a Student Finalist at IGF 2007. I suppose that was my first "proper" computer game.

In 2007, I moved to Denmark on a grant to research games at IT University of Copenhagen. Beyond just my studies and research, I started hanging out with a some other students and artists who were also interested in developing games. Together, we started making all sorts of games, both digital and non-digital. In fact, that year worked out so well that I decided to settle in Copenhagen more permanently. I'm still living here today!

My best known projects are probably Dark Room Sex Game, a cheeky Wiimote game which we developed in 2008, and B.U.T.T.O.N., a highly physical party game which we developed in 2010. B.U.T.T.O.N. even ended up getting a nomination for the Nuovo Award at IGF 2011.

But I have no commercial development experience. I'm just an egghead researcher!