Competition

As if every other website hasn't already reported this to death, the finalists for the 2010 IGF main competition have been revealed.

There were some expected winners, as well as a few surprises. Quite a few people seem unhappy with the fact that VVVVVVV didn't make it... maybe it's a sign that Ciellus needs to be finished? Hah!

Another interesting read is the IGF judging process, check it out, it's neat.

Now, for the very few who saw this here first, below are the finalists in no particular order:

Sometimes I think I need to change the slogan (speaking of which, do we even have one?) of this site to "Bringing you news from yesteryear" or "Making old news new again!" Whatever, entrants to the 2010 IGF has been announced, seems like this year we have a record number of 300+ entries...

More entries is always a good thing, but that also means there are more games to comb through to find the real gems. One thing I seem to notice though, is that it's becoming harder to tell the "favorites" that will likely make it into the final round, either the overall quality has risen, or there are no blockbuster titles like World of Goo or Everyday Shooter, which at the time were expected to at least make the finalists.

Nonetheless, here are some of the titles that caught my attention as I went through the list of entries...

Indeed, mG is still alive! It's just that real life is getting busier and busier =(

So many things to talk about, where to start? First of all, finalists for this year's IGF is out for a while. As (somewhat) expected, games like Blueberry Garden, Dyson and Night Game made it in, while some other unexpected entries, like You Have To Burn The Rope, also somehow ended up in there, lol. Congratulations to Cortex Command for finally making it in, and Machinarium is looking mightily good.

In other IGF news, the 2009 IGF Student Showcase winners are out, and voting for the Audience Award is currently underway.

The TIGSource Commonplace Book Competition didn't really receive as much attention, mostly due to IGF and the fact that everyone's super busy around this time of the year (seriously, other than IndieGames and TIGSource, every other indie gaming blog/site stopped updating, this one included, lolz). All that is about to change, for below is a look at some of the games from the competition!

Before we begin, let's talk a little bit about the competition first. The goal of the competition is to design a game based on one of the ideas from H.P. Lovecraft's Commonplace Book. From TIGSource:

Renowned horror novelist H.P. Lovecraft kept a notebook, called "The Commonplace Book, in which he jotted "ideas, images, & quotations hastily jotted down for possible future use in weird fiction. ...Their sources are various—dreams, things read, casual incidents, idle conceptions, & so on." As you might expect, these notes are fragmented, cryptic, and extremely creepy.

Anyway, there were 35 entries, and below is the winner and the first 9 losers (j/k but true):

TIGSource's latest competition, the Bootleg Demakes Compo, has finally come to an end.

There's a record number of submission this time around, whether it's because this kind of event is getting more popular or because it takes less effort to make a low-res crappy game is beyond me.

With that said, this time the theme is to take a game or series or whatever, turn it into an "old-school" style game. The concept is great, but don't expect anything with out-of-this-world graphics or gameplay this time around.