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 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, in addition to their home on the JUEGOS RANCHEROS site.

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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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While some of his older titles are finding new life on new platforms — see, specifically, the excellent 3DS conversion of his Night Game, also quietly being prepped for an iPhone port — creator Nicklas ‘Nifflas‘ Nygren has relatively quietly been gearing up for something even greater, Knytt Underground, announced this past summer for a launch on PC & Mac, as well as PlayStation 3 & Vita.

The original freeware version of Knytt has already made its mark as a lo-fi ambient masterwork (and, with Knytt Stories, one that players themselves could extend), but Nifflas has made it clear that Underground represents the magnum-opus-type culmination of everything he’s learned about storytelling through games, claiming that this latest will be “about the big questions; trying to understand life and our place in it – and failing completely.”

Stylistically, it’s another sort of aesthetic mash-up, working with a similar photo-surreal style as his 2010 game Saira, and with some of the same characterization as some of his earliest work like Within a Deep Forest.

Still due for a PlayStation Network launch later this year, consider this your first peek into something that we’ll be exploring here further. Below the fold you’ll find four more PS3 screenshots of the game, with more coming soon via Nifflas’s official Underground site.

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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…)

Chris Schlarb — the man behind the gorgeous lullaby score for Nicalis’s Night Game, the latest from Knytt creator Nifflas — has written in to let us know that he’ll be playing 30 minutes of live music created for and inspired by the game as part of the Slow Sound Festival, this Thursday, September 17th.

The show will be accompanied by, says Schlarb, “projected footage from the game. It’s possible that some of that footage is heretofore unseen.” The Slow Sound Festival will be taking place at 2226 E. 4th St., Long Beach, CA. 90814, and starts at 8pm, with a $5 entry fee.

For more details, check the Festival’s Facebook event page.

A nice late-night surprise found via TIGSource: indie dev Nicalis have revealed a fourth game in development at the studio, following their WiiWare Cave Story remake, the just-announced WiiWare version of La Mulana, and Nicklas ‘Nifflas’ Nygren’s original Night Game (which Nygren has apparently already wrapped development on).

Project Q as it’s currently known, is a new game from Nifflas that’s every bit vector/photo[sur-]real to the blotted pixels of his most famous indie work, Knytt, but which carries over every ounce of ambient exploration that gained Knytt its renown.

In the accompanying IGN interview, Nicalis’s Tyrone Rodrigues and Nygren reveal that the game surely shares some resemblance to Knytt — and may indeed “take part in the same universe.”

But they say that Q, which stars a female protagonist and features new music from Yann ‘Nurykabe‘ van Derr Cruyssen (who helped create music for Knytt Stories [.zip] and the WiiWare Cave Story), sees its main character hopping from planet to planet non-violently finding pieces of a broken transporter, and will feature gameplay involving “a camera to document information and capture the environments.”

Nicalis say the studio “certainly [has] WiiWare in mind” for the game, but that it “could be WiiWare, Wii disc or even PSN, XBLA and PC.”

[Video taken from IGN’s original, because, really, like TIGSource says, your player’s hopelessly awful and needs a rethink, guys.]

Nicalis’s other upcoming WiiWare game — its original Night Game, from Knytt creator Nifflas — continues to shape up with previously unseen new… is vehicles the right word? The video also shows off more of the game’s fantastic ambient score from Asthmatic Kitty’s Chris Schlarb. Nintendo has listed the game as a fall 2009 release.

Part of me wishes the game would procedurally generate new levels for me to roll through every day, no matter how aimless — gaming needs its own version of the bedtime story, and this seems as close as anything’s ever come to fitting the bill.

Finally easing the frustration I’ve had in trying to capture what’s going to make Nicalis’s forthcoming WiiWare platformer Night Game unique, the first trailer has come online that perfectly captures all its serene charm: no enemies apart from physics and friction, just the simple joy of exploration.

As previously noted, the game is up for both the design excellence and grand prize awards at this year’s Independent Games Festival, and shares more than a passing resemblance to freeware hit Knytt Stories, both games having been created by Nicalis’s Nicklas ‘Nifflas’ Nygren.

For a cleaner version of the trailer, head over to GoNintendo, who got the exclusive on this first video footage.

Nicalis home [YouTube via TinyCartridge]

Previously:< The Offworld Guide to the 2009 Independent Games Festival – Offworld
Nintendo's Q2 Wii/DS outlook: Desktop Tower Defense, Punch-Out …
A deeper look at Knytt Stories – Offworld

As with his earlier look into the subtle complexities that made World of Goo so rewarding, David Rosen has turned his attention now to nifflas’s Knytt Stories, a game I chose as one of the top five freeware releases of 2007 in a former life.

As I said there, Stories takes the best parts of Cave Story (the similarly excellent freeware game), particularly the joys of its pure platforming and exploration, and Ico/Shadow of the Colossus‘s “propensity to strip away all of a game’s unnecessary layers until its shining core is revealed,” both of which Rosen expounds upon nicely with his attention on Knytt‘s smart handling of “progression” and control.