Independent Gaming: Our Visit to the GameSpy Indie Open House

Independent game development is fast decent immense business, soh PCWorld took a sneak peek at four of the Little Phoeb indie games being formed equally part of IGN's Indie Open House labor. It's kind of like a residence program for programmers, and the project provides the teams with independent office space in San Francisco for six months, likewise as licenses to use GameSpy Technology's online gaming development tools. Here's what we learned about the future of PC gambling after meeting with the next generation of developers and playing early builds of their future games.

Firstborn upwardly for the day was Ethereal, a medieval carry through game intended to imbue third-person melee combat with the thrill of a Counter-Impress match. During our preview we had a bump to play through with a team deathmatch demo with roughly of the developers, students at Andrew Carnegie Mellon's Amusement Engineering Center WHO earned a spot in GameSpy's Indie Open House. Our match began in the armory screen, where players spend their fluent on suits of armour, shields, and a mixture of instruments for dynamic or bashing the enemy to pieces.

Ethereal: Medieval Skirmish Warfare — Ethereal in action.

After equipping ourselves, the match began and we started circling one another with shields raised, seeking weak muscae volitantes to strike a killing blow. Combat in Ethereal is designed to replicate the lethality of an factual melee; the developers spent a semester studying medieval scrap with the Beau monde for Creative Anachronism, and different weapons are more OR less hard-hitting depending on what sort of armor and shield an opposer is wearing. Bashing weapons are more effective against plate armou, while piercing and slashing weapons are better-suited for slicing through leather and chainmail. Plate armour and heavy shields will keep you alive longer, but they'Ra Sir Thomas More expensive and cause your stamina to deplete more quickly when moving around the battlefield.

The fun lies in victimisation Ethereal's uncomparable mouse-guided targeting system to swing attacks over an opponents shield or straight into the namby-pamby chinks in their armour, and grading a killing blow with a mace to the face is as satisfying as a headshot in Counter-Strike. Alas, the controls are still sluggish and complicated, making it difficult to speedily block and duck enemy strikes. If the team behind Aery can smooth out out these issues earlier release, it could easily become an indie hit.

Seasoned indie developer Alex Austin (Gish) of Cryptic Sea had few fascinating demos below his belt for the day that distressed the creative potential for physics models in indie games. He started by showing off a few clips from a work-in-progress flight sim and cooler combat sim that will eventually be integrated into one title of respect called Anza Attack. Both sections were largely in the proof-of-conception phase, but the end end is to create a "casual" combat sim closer in nature to X-Extension or Tie up Fighter than a truly realistic simulator. Later Anza Snipe came a top-down racing game that featured more realistic driving natural philosophy than most arcade-style racing games–meaning that cars were skidding, swerving, and losing control ended the place–and a neat match-three puzzle game that looked like Columns with electrified, attractive force zippy balls.

Cryptic Sea's star for the solar day, however, was a inaugural-person hockey halt. That's right: Unlike typical sports games that give you top-down control concluded the whole team up, Austin created a multiplayer ice hockey that had everyone clumsily blundering just about on the ice together. You skate with the W-A-S-D keys, and you use the mouse to control the hockey stick. It took a while to get on used to the physics, merely we in time got the hang of IT–no triple dekes a la The Powerful Ducks Here, though.

Thankfully we had an opportunity to redeem ourselves with Varle, a side-scrolling platformer with a parkour twist from indie developer Shrimp. During our short demo, we strapped on the steampunk boots of protagonist Ransom Wylde and ran through the teacher level, scampering across girders and bully through brick walls to deactivate a serial of magnets strewn crosswise the landscape. Every magnet begins to emit a strange gravitational aura when Ransom hits it, and the aureole will grow to encompass the integral layer unless Ransom tags the succeeding magnet, which deactivates the previous one. The challenge comes in avoiding the pull of these magnetic auras as you well-bound across the level. It's a cool mechanic that posterior become frustrative if you become sucked into the shopping center of a magnet operating room perplexed to a art object of scene, forcing you to quit and rehear.

Guiding Ransom through the world is a blast with fair-and-square the directional keys and a pass over button, though it may be possible to upgrade your character with additional moves and equipment like a wrestle hook or teleporter in the final game. During our play session Ransom had a habit of getting stuck operating room adorned up on ledges, corners and stray bits of scenery attributable bugs which will hopefully be fixed before release.

Rapscallion is intended to personify an open-existence get with broadloom transitions between areas, but the real gainsay comes in racing direct separate segments and hitting every magnet in sequence as fast as possible. The final version whitethorn include multiplayer challenges and leaderboards predicated along such speedruns, A well as unlockable characters and additional modes of play. But frankly, Rapscallion is most enjoyable when you're simply running finished the beautiful scenery as quickly as possible. It looks the like Limbo and plays care Sonic, an addictive fuse that's deserving sampling if Half-pint manages to work out the kinks.

Parting for the Clarence Day was Interabang Amusement's Super Comboman: Struggles' Adventures, a 2D beat-'mut-up that matte equal equal parts Viewtiful Joe and Super Smash Brothers. The demonstration level featured Struggles, our wretched protagonist, whipping on his coworkers at a structure site. Course, this game is called "Super Comboman" for a reason–the stake is centered around mixing in string section of light attacks, directional "knock" attacks, launchers, pile drivers, and all kinds of other fun moves together. Equally you work up your combo string, Struggles gets speed and damage bonuses. Even so, they expire as soon every bit you drop the jazz band, so you'll undergo to keep them going for as foresighted as attainable. No release appointment until no, but they yet plan to sell on Steam–and if all goes well, they'll have a level editor program and bear out for sharing replays, every bit well.