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The Independent Games Festival has proven to be a great showcase of all things indie. Winners and runners up of last year's awards for the event include Moncao, Limbo, Super Meat Boy!, Joe Danger, Cogs, Heroes of Newerth, and AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! -- A Reckless Disregard For Gravity. The whopping list of games up for the awards this year can be viewed on the Independent Games Festival website. I find this collected list of indie endeavors a great way to find a taste of what's out there.
A brief flick through the titles reveal a number projects of varying exposure, development, release, and intrigue. Of the ones I'm familiar with we have those already released: Amnesia The Dark Descent, Dangerous High School Girls in Trouble!, Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale, DogFighter, Explosionade (XBLIG), Flotilla, and Neptune's Pride. Then we have Alpha released titles funding their development through pre-release sales: Time bending RTS Achron, turn-based-top-town-tactical-shooter Frozen Synapse, squared-eyed-spelunker Minecraft, space-based-laser-prospector Miner Wars, and the bunny-fu-tastic Overgrowth.
On Apple devices and in the Flash realm we have: Crush The Castle 2, Flick Kick Football, Doodle God, EpicWin, Zen Bound 2, Shibuya, Helsing's Fire, Highborn, Continuity 2, Alt Switch, and My First Quantum Translocator. Among that list are titles that have received much praise already. Also of note are the two indie darlings making their way to WiiWare: Cave Story and La-Mulana. Experimental works such as SpyParty and Dinner Date have also been entered, keeping alive the innovation often seen at the IGF. Lastly are the titles escaping my general pigeon-holing: Super-lightweight vehicle-combat in A New Zero, PAX darling Bastion, condensed-roguelike Desktop Dungeons, eternal-slice'n'dice-athon Nidhogg, 8-bit-GTA with Retro City Rampage, and tomorrow's release Super Crate Box.
I haven't even started to look at bulk of the list, choc full of stuff I've never heard of. I'll be dipping in for a taste of the stuff that looks interesting every so often. The number of entrants seems to grow each year, I can see no way to give each one a fair shake without devoting a few days. I don't envy the judges. Have a look yourself and give us your highlights in the comments section below.
I've just spotted that Twitter user @rubbermuck is creating YouTube playlists of the entrants with videos. Here is the first one, and the second one.