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.

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[VP Rewind is a quick look back at the important events of the past week or two that should have been on Venus Patrol had it actually been alive.]

I’ve been semi-deliberately been keeping myself in the dark (no pun?) on developments with Giant Sparrow’s The Unfinished Swan, originally unveiled nearly four years back as an intriguing IGF Student Showcase proof-of-concept based around revealing world geometry by judiciously applying splatters of black paint to the world.

Now a full Sony Santa Monica production coming soon as a downloadable PlayStation Network game, this latest peek behind the curtain reveals a fantastically tender storybook backstory that gives the entire experience an unexpected emotional charge that I’m definitely not sorry I spoiled for myself. [via Giant Sparrow]