Articles - Editor's Notes

On October 1 2010, entries will close to the 2010 indie game challenge. With two prizes worth $100,000 each it is well worth your time to have a crack. Just ask last years winners COGS how it worked out for them.

Which of your indie developers are entering? Are you all in a mad dash to make the deadline or trying to keep a low profile and your project under wraps to hopefully surprise the competition? I for one am looking forward to see this years entrants.

A few weeks ago we launched IndieDB, and with the help of our friends over at Unity 3D we ran a simple competition to give away a Unity Pro and a Unity iPhone licence worth over $3500! Since then we have had countless submissions ranging from brand new start-ups to full fledged releases all of which are unique and visually stunning. Before we tell you who the winners are we would like to show you the top entries in the Unity giveaway, remember entries where judged on creativity and dedication to the project and needed to be an original concept while not based on an existing IP.

So here they are and in no particular order:

Bob Came in Pieces

Bob has crashed on a strange planet, lost a bunch of parts for his ship and above all, is late for work! Find the lost parts and rebuild your ship along the way to solve challenging, physics-based puzzles. You can build your ship any way you like in the ship builder – try to find the coolest ship-design for the puzzle at hand!

Bloom

Bloom is a vertical slice pitch demo for a game, produced as part of a course at Futuregames Academy in Stockholm, Sweden.The demo was developed by a group of eight students in about six weeks, using primarily Unity and Maya. At the end of the course, this project was, in competition with several other projects, awarded the first prize by an industry jury.

Pirates of New Horizons

A thirdperson action adventure game about space pirates! ..You know pirates .. but in space! The game has been in development for almost 2 years now, but actual real productive full-time work has only happened for roughly 3 month so far. We are hoping to release a free prototype before the end of the summer! This prototype will include 3-4 levels and be beatable in roughly 20 minutes.

Ayla

Ayla is a decendant of an ancient great empire that once created a device that could manipulate gravity, but their careless use of it shifted the world violently out of balance. The device was sealed away in a great temple for decades but as an alien threat has come to seek the power that once shook the universe Ayla decides to take the device to the planets core and use it to fight off the attackers.

Mirage

Mirage is a demo developed by eight students as an assignment at Futuregames Academy in Stockholm, Sweden. The total development time for the project was six weeks. In Mirage the player is tasked to control a swarm of glass through a hazardous and mysterious world. The goal of this journey is to try and piece together a mirror which has shattered. This in turn will hopefully return the world to its normal state.

Kon

At the dawn of time, man ventured the world, freely and open. Now the Ice Age is coming. Warned by ancient ancestors, Kon man of the wild is tasked with preparing himself and man for the on-coming endless winter. Adventure as Kon to the highest peak and to the deepest darkest bowels of the earth and conquer any colossal beast or creature that crosses your path.

Power of Defense

Power Of Defense provides a new strategy and defense mix game experience. Defend your world from upoming evil and oil-smelling robots. They come from the platform between both parallel universes you have to fight on by producing own robots to send them back to their native world. You as the last hero on earth and the only one your government could find (and pay), only you can save the world.

Seed Pod Shuffle

Welcome to Seed Pod Shuffle, a place of exotic creatures and challenging puzzles. Use your match 3 skills to grow plants, attract animals, and help a lost little creature called Jasmine build a home in time for winter. Seed Pod Shuffle features over 80 challenging puzzle boards that can be played in a whole range of different ways. Create sets of matching symbols, smash through brambles rocks and ice, and find new seeds to plant in your own little slice of the great outdoors.

Ranch Wars

A capture-the-flag game in which the player controls farm animals to pursue the other team's golden cob. The player must capture the cob in the other team's base and bring it back to his, avoiding being hit too many times and dropping the cob. The game is under development as a part time project of a seven people team.

The Hockey Experiment

This Arcade Style Ice-Hockey game features old school inspired 8-bit music and classic gameplay, but is updated with fast-paced action and 3D graphics that are enhanced through the use of on-ice Power-Up Icons. These enable crazy-fast slap-shots, lightning-quick skating, and extra powerful checking.

As you can see its going to be very tough to pick a winner, you should check out each one as most profiles have videos and even some early demo's you can have a play with. Which of these projects do you think should take away a copy of Unity Pro or iPhone? We would love to hear what you think!

So here is a friendly nudge to all you developers out there, if you didn't already know we are running a launch comp for our new site IndieDB with our good pals over at Unity 3D for a chance to win a Unity iPhone Pro licence (worth $2400) and one Unity Pro licence (worth $1200) to two dedicated and worthy developers.

Entry is a simple process that only requires you to make your Unity project profile and let your work to speak for itself. To enter, follow these steps:

1. Create a developer profile for your team (not required if you are the only developer)
2. Create a games profile for your Unity project
3. Fill it up with your work (videos, images, news etc) and developer insight using our powerful profile mangement system
4. Check out your competition, browse Unity powered games on Indie DB
5. Continue updating your profile and email us it's link before July 10 2010
6. On July 15 2010 we shall announce the two winners, as judged by Indie DB and Unity employees

So if you have questions or want more information (even if you want to chinwag) send me an email dave@indiedb.com and I would be more then happy to help out.

Also incase you missed the news, Unity is coming out for ANDROID!

Happy birthday too you, happy birthday too you, happy birthday Deus Ex the best game of our generation that is a perfect mix of RPG and FPS, happy birthday too you. 10 cheers for our birthday boy!

HIP HIP!!

Birthday Surprise

Ok you get it now, Deus Ex is now 10 years old and its still one of the best PC games ever made. I bet right now someone out there who is reading this is re-installing it. That is what normally happens when you think of good old Deus Ex, the memories come back, wearing sunglass at night time, sneaking around, stealing stuff. Oh boy.

But age is something that can sometimes cripple games, and in the case of Deus Ex it is still going strong save a few nagging errors due to modern day hardware. So to help with the inevitable re-installation of your and my favorite game here is a list of recommend mods in no real particular order.

Custom Launcher

Coding.hanfling.de
This is a much needed fix for the game, if you are like me and have more then one CPU slugging it out in your PC this will fix the game so your not running it 4 times faster then it should be. Simple yet it works.

Modern Day Graphical Updates

In DX9 and DX10 flavors
You may have your great PC yet Deus Ex will still look like giant cubes flying towards you, oh my how you have aged Deus Ex. Not to fear there are some great fixes out there that are not really made for Deus Ex but for Unreal Tournament that will work fine for both.

Multiplayer Bots

Moddb.com
Who needs friends right? Since I have never personally played Deus Ex for the multiplayer I am sure there are a few of you in the same boat as me, bots seem like a good way to play considering finding a live match nowadays might be hard to do.

Mods

Hell if you have played Deus Ex to death like some of us might have already, it could be time to look at Total Conversions and Mods. Here are a few I think are well worth your time.

The Nameless Mod Moddb.com
Do you like fun? You should play this TC at leased once in your life it was good enough to grab the Best Singleplayer Mod of 2009 as chosen by the ModDB staff and 8th place in the MOTY award as chosen by our community. If you need to read more check out my preview.

Hardcore DX Moddb.com
The name implies it all, a user created hardcore modification for the vanilla Deus Ex that should make the game that much harder.

Redsun 2020 Moddb.com
A new singleplayer experience that follows the trend set by the original with multiple ways of completing objectives.

These where just a few of the many mods out there but it should get you started on Deus Ex again. You can also have a look at this thread made over at the Offtopic Production forum which will give you guys a few more user made experiences to help celebrate this day.

Happy gaming!

One of our members (voythas) has created this neato little extension for Google Chrome that will alert you when you have a new update or a new personal message with some extra site customizations to boot.

Its good to see that our community loves ModDB enough to want to do things like this, so if you are doing something of the sort we would love to hear about it! As for (voythas) little tool to use it all you need is a copy of Google Chrome and this extension, you can also chat about it here on our forums and maybe get an idea you want in as well, who knows.

The ironic thing is that ModDB is a website designed for Modders to get their work noticed not matter how big or small the project is, I never thought ModDB would end up being modded itself.