TIGSOURCE DEVLOG: THE VISUAL SHOWCASE OF AWESOME NEW GAMES, ISSUE #21


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4.11.2014

Andrea Portale

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[Fridays on Venus Patrol are developer Andrea ‘Bandreus‘ Portale’s day to present TIGSource DevLog Magazine, a visual guide to the newest & most interesting in-development games making the rounds on the invaluable TIGSource forums. Looking for inspiration, or just the very first look at the amazing games we’ll be talking about in the future? Click any image to learn more, and come back on Fridays for the latest picks!]

With PAX East having kicked off today, the latest issue of the TIGSource DevLog looks at a number of indie projects from the forums which are being showcased in Boston through Sunday.

The Indie Megabooth alone is home to a staggering number of games featured below, including: Chasm, Delver’s Drop, Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime and Phantom P.I. Mission Apparition. At the accompanying Minibooth, you’ll be able to find Burrito Galaxy, Relativity and Rex Rocket.

Elsewhere, following news that both Rain World and Oblitus have struck a deal with Adult Swim Games, you’ll be able to find both at that publisher’s booth.

As usual, check back next Friday for a new issue!


TIGSOURCE DEVLOG: THE VISUAL SHOWCASE OF AWESOME NEW GAMES, ISSUE #20


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4.4.2014

Andrea Portale

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[Fridays on Venus Patrol are developer Andrea ‘Bandreus‘ Portale’s day to present TIGSource DevLog Magazine, a visual guide to the newest & most interesting in-development games making the rounds on the invaluable TIGSource forums. Looking for inspiration, or just the very first look at the amazing games we’ll be talking about in the future? Click any image to learn more, and come back on Fridays for the latest picks!]

With the amount of projects being discussed weekly on TIGSource and only limited space at my disposal, it often happens that a number of genuinely interesting devlogs don’t get a spot in this magazine, including games which have been previously been featured well over a year ago but are still in active development! To help at least partially remedy that, this week we’re bringing back a few of those: Somewhere, Elliot Quest, Master Spy and Son of Nor.

But also especially noteworthy is NAVE. The folks at Video Gamo have been touring every corner of Argentina with their awesome custom-built cabinet for the past year, and are now looking into crossing the border with the cabinet. The plan is to possibly bring it to next year’s GDC, though they can’t make it without other people’s help. Here’s wishing them the best!

Be sure to check back next Friday for more: with PAX East just around the corner, we’ll be using the opportunity to showcase some of the games that’ll be showing up in Boston next weekend!


TIGSOURCE DEVLOG: THE VISUAL SHOWCASE OF AWESOME NEW GAMES, ISSUE #19


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3.28.2014

Andrea Portale

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[Fridays on Venus Patrol are developer Andrea ‘Bandreus‘ Portale’s day to present TIGSource DevLog Magazine, a visual guide to the newest & most interesting in-development games making the rounds on the invaluable TIGSource forums. Looking for inspiration, or just the very first look at the amazing games we’ll be talking about in the future? Click any image to learn more, and come back on Fridays for the latest picks!]

With GDC and the IGF Awards at our backs, you’d think the indies could take it easy for at least a few days, but you’d be wrong!

This week’s issue of the Devlog is a round up of some very interesting projects — a few of which have been in development for quite some time already.

And given that EGX Rezzed is in full swing in Birmingham right now, and will be through Sunday the 30th, this issue features some of the indie games being displayed there, including TinyKeep, Kaiju Panic and Light — all of which are playable there, along with Narcissus (which was previously featured in Issue #16).


TIGSOURCE DEVLOG: THE VISUAL SHOWCASE OF AWESOME NEW GAMES, ISSUE #18


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3.21.2014

Andrea Portale

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[Fridays on Venus Patrol are developer Andrea ‘Bandreus‘ Portale’s day to present TIGSource DevLog Magazine, a visual guide to the newest & most interesting in-development games making the rounds on the invaluable TIGSource forums. Looking for inspiration, or just the very first look at the amazing games we’ll be talking about in the future? Click any image to learn more, and come back on Fridays for the latest picks!]

This is it! GDC’s final day, marking the end of one of the craziest weeks ever. What an amazing year for indie games this has been: today we’re proud to celebrate the 16th Annual IGF awards, showcasing this edition’s victors in a special issue, of course along the usual goodness straight from the TIGSource forums.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last couple of days, you’re most likely already aware Lucas Pope’s dystopian document thriller Papers, Please swept the IGF, winning the prestigious Seumas McNally Grand Prize as Best Independent Game, on top of being awarded for Excellence in Narrative and Excellence in Design.

Papers, Please has a special place in TIGSource members’ hearts, as the game’s development process was recorded in a terrific devlog on our very own forums. GLORY TO ARSTOTZKA!

Other prizes where awarded to Jason Robert’s Gorogoa (Excellence in Visual Arts), Tale of Tales’ Luxuria Superbia (Nuovo award), Simogo’s DEVICE 6 (Excellence in Audio), Hoppo Games’ Risk of Rain (Best Student Game) and Galactic Cafe’s The Stanley Parable (Audience award). Congratulations to this year’s winners, and thanks for bringing honour to independent games as a whole by striving for perfection and pushing the limit ever forward!

Huzzah! So much goodness. But don’t let GDC and the IGF Awards grab all of your attention, as amazing indie games are constantly being worked on, even during this frantic week. Among the latest arrivals on the TIGS boards, we find Midora (a modern take on the 2D ARPG genre, inspired by classics like The Legend of Zelda and the Mana series), Party Animals (a political strategy game about winning the mayoral elections and also about the kind of sacrifices you’re ready to make in order to do so, featuring visuals by Prison Architect‘s artist Ryan Sumo), accompanied by Hex Brothers and Upside-Down Dimensions, two brand new projects of which only little is known about yet, but I’m very confident will soon be making the news.

I’d also like to give a special mention to Evan Todd’s Lemma and Steamburger Studio’s Let’s Go Camping!. The former is an innovative parkour game, in which every player’s move has the potential to alter the dynamic environments, while the latter is, in its creators’ words, “an FPS roguelike(lite) dungeon crawler” in which the player needs to hike, camp, and survive in a vast overworld wilderness in order to find procedurally generated dungeons and the treasures hidden within.

That’s all for now folks! Remember to check each and every devlog in the release, as all of these projects are well worth your attention. Happy final GDC hours and see you next Friday!


TIGSOURCE DEVLOG: THE VISUAL SHOWCASE OF AWESOME NEW GAMES, ISSUE #16


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3.7.2014

Andrea Portale

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[Fridays on Venus Patrol are developer Andrea ‘Bandreus‘ Portale’s day to present TIGSource DevLog Magazine, a visual guide to the newest & most interesting in-development games making the rounds on the invaluable TIGSource forums. Looking for inspiration, or just the very first look at the amazing games we’ll be talking about in the future? Click any image to learn more, and come back on Fridays for the latest picks!]

This week issue features 19 games together with a special guest! The obvious superstar among them is Rain World, having recently concluded a successful Kickstarter campaign bringing in over $63,000. Thanks to the funds raised, the duo behind the super cute Slug-Cats will be able to further pack the game with additional content and possibly bring it to additional platforms (PC, Mac and Linux are confirmed, but my spider-senses tell me console manufacturers might want to seal a deal ASAP, if they aren’t already).

Painters Guild is a artsy charming business sim of sorts in which you’ll have the pleasure of managing a guild of painters, all while witnessing the stroke-by-stroke creation of their pixelated masterpieces. I don’t want to spoil anything about Fragments of Him but, after playing the prototype, I can assure you it won’t leave you emotionless. Molecule Match is an interesting attempt at explaining the psychological tricks used by many developers in order to create addiction in the player.

I could keep going on and on, but you really should check each and every one of these amazing games’ devlogs for yourself!

Oh! And I mentioned a special guest: this one’s not a gamedev project, though it’s correlated and definitely more tangible. Jay Margalus, developer at Lunar Giant and teacher at DePaul University, is experimenting with very hack-y, custom-built PC input interfaces mashing together multiple controllers and an Arduino board. The project was inspired by Twitch Plays Pokemon and aims at changing the how we experience games in exciting new ways. I found the project fascinating and am amazed by the possibilities — I can’t wait to see where this ends up going.


TIGSOURCE DEVLOG: THE VISUAL SHOWCASE OF AWESOME NEW GAMES, ISSUE #15


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2.28.2014

Andrea Portale

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[Fridays on Venus Patrol are developer Andrea ‘Bandreus‘ Portale’s day to present TIGSource DevLog Magazine, a visual guide to the newest & most interesting in-development games making the rounds on the invaluable TIGSource forums. Looking for inspiration, or just the very first look at the amazing games we’ll be talking about in the future? Click any image to learn more, and come back on Fridays for the latest picks!]

As you may know, Dom2D has been super busy for the last few months, and hasn’t had enough time on his hands for new issues of this magazine (though he has launched a new indie games centric blog, GameSquares. Check it out, it rocks!). But fear not, we’ve got your collective backs covered: after a brief hiatus, the TIGSource DevLog Magazine is back.

In a continued effort to give more exposure to deserving indie games in the making, we dive into the TIGSource forum’s devlogs section to bring you a round up of the most brilliant, charming and at times craziest indie game projects from this community of amazing developers.

Putting this small selection together was both awe inspiring and nerve-wrecking. For each game that ended up being picked for this first issue of the rebooted Devlog Magazine, I found at least ten more which equally deserved the spot. I hope you enjoy this week’s selection as much as I did putting it together. Tune back in on Fridays for more!