Every month, as part of the regular monthly meetings of the Austin, TX independent game community JUEGOS RANCHEROS, we do a very casual & chatty rundown of the ten or so games from the previous month for the audience, to give people — especially those curious onlookers from outside the indie community itself — a look at what they may have missed. The featured games are both local and global, and both indie and, on occasion, a bit-bigger-budget — what binds them together is simply that they’re all amazing.

In keeping with the tongue-in-tobacco-packed-cheek tone, we call these run-downs A Fistful of Indies, which are presented here on Venus Patrol for your reference, each fully-annotated, -linked, and off-the-cuff blurbed, in addition to their home on the JUEGOS RANCHEROS site.

(more…)

If there was one game that quietly dominated last week’s stay in Nottingham for GameCity7, it was one that, weirdly, wasn’t present at all, but rather was on everyone’s lips in all the downtime in between: Frog Fractions, the latest web game from Jim “Twinbeard” Crawford.

What was remarkable, though — or, at least, will be until you play the game yourself — was in how little anyone would bring themselves to say about the game, or how little anyone who’d already heard of the game but hadn’t had a chance to play it wanted anyone to tell them.

It was something like a sly wink or a secret handshake — people would only softly utter “have you played Frog Fractions yet?” and wait for the knowing smile back, both too afraid to pry further and spoil something either one might not have seen.

So consider this a sly wink of my own, and a light push to devote your next hour or two to Frog Fractions, if you haven’t already. You’ll be forgiven for that first wave of confusion as you wonder what’s so compelling about what at first glance seems like simple, sort-of precious edutainment parody, as the game then begins to unfurl layer after layer of straight up ideas.