The Cat and the Coup: free, fun and beautiful documentary game about a CIA-funded coup
The Cat and the Coup is a free documentary game in which you play the cat of Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh, the first democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran. It plays like a simple physics puzzle game, it looks like a storybook with artwork inspired by Persian miniatures, it features music by Nine Inch Nails, and if you give it just 15-minutes of your time, it’ll teach you the story of a really fascinating period of American and British history involving communist paranoia and a CIA-funded coup d’état.
A video, screenshots and some thoughts below.
Fight, build and mine in King Arthur’s Gold
Mining is basically my favourite thing to do in games, and in the last year I’ve been served well by Minecraft, Wurm Online, Terraria and, now, King Arthur’s Gold. The multiplayer, team-based sidescroller is about two teams of Knights, Archers and Builders battling for control of a level’s gold supply.
It’s still in early beta, but already worth playing. Builders can mine through rock to find gold and build structures like ladders, doors and catapults, while Knights and Archers defend and lead attacks on the enemy’s gold reserves. It’s heavily inspired by King Arthur’s World, a sidescrolling RTS on the SNES from 1993, but it plays more like a competitive Terraria.
You can download the game and find news of the extremely frequent updates at the King Arthur’s Gold website, and watch a trailer over at IndieGames.com.
The future of indie
Just look at Hawken. If ever there was a game that undermined the notion of what an independently developed project can achieve, it’s Adhesive Games’ mech shooter. Every bone in my body tells me a small studio should not be able to pull off such a gorgeous, robot-stomping shooter, but there it is, megabots hanging in the air, spitting rockets at each other across maps that look like they’ve come out of Epic or Valve.
But I’m getting used to indie games surprising me: freedom to create without interference from the men in suits is the reason their developers go into this murky, unfunded realm, trading security for the chance to follow their own path. Every developer in this list has taken the opportunity to make exactly what they want to make, using that freedom to create some startlingly original games that simply wouldn’t be made if they had a deadline to hit and had to justify every decision.
These games only exist because someone passionately wanted to bring them into the world, and it really, really shows.
GameTrekking interview: “I released a new notgame from Cambodia today”
Back in September 2010, TIGSource‘s founder Jordan Magnuson set off on an audacious project – travelling around South-East Asia, making indie games about his experiences along the way.
He called the project GameTrekking, and funded it with more than £3,000 of donations solicited from the web. Contributors to the fund get email updates from Magnuson and beta access to games in development, and those who contribute more get postcards from the road, links on his website, and even a credit in the games themselves, which are free, open-source and cross-platform.
PC Gamer spoke to Magnuson about doodling, genocide, and his experiences on the road.
Blendimals lets you blend animals then explode them
Most animals can do at least one thing well. Cows are good at eating grass and mooing. Rhinos can move people out of the way by jabbing them with their horn. Rabbits jump around instead of running.
Blendimals lets you create the ultimate animal by blending them in a virtual blender (it’s nowhere near as bloody as it sounds). Then you can use your creations to progress through obstacle-ridden levels that would cause a standard God-created animal all kinds of issues.
You can download Blendimals for free from the official site. Don’t forget to share your tastiest blends in the comments.
Proun trailer shows amazing abstract race courses
Proun is an abstract indie racing game in which your craft is attached to a long, looping cable. In order to gain speed you have to rotate around the pole, avoiding the abstract objects hurtling towards you. The new video above gives us a quick look at some of the beautiful environments you can race through. The full version is due out this spring, but there’s a beta available now to download and play for free. For more info, check out the Proun development blog. To see the game at full speed, check out an older trailer for the game, embedded below.
Portal trailer re-created using Minecraft mod
Back near the start of the internet, in August of last year, we pointed you towards a Portal in Minecraft mod. At the time that post was written, the block-placing indie game was selling thousands of copies a day. Astonishing! Although Minecraft has been almost entirely forgotten since – having proven to be little more than a brief flash in the pan – a second enterprising fellow has created a new, better looking Portal mod and used it to create a parody of the original Portal trailer.
More details and mod download links below.
Monaco: an indie game born from depression, roguelikes, and 14-hour workdays
Fair play to Andy Schatz of Pocketwatch games, he’s damn good at marketing for an indie developer. Monaco’s website reads: “CO-OP ACTION STEALTH – PACMAN MEETS HITMAN.” It’s only right to be intrigued by this IGF award winner.
Speaking at GDC, Andy spoke about the development process for Monaco and the stresses that face indie developers. Click more for a Monaco trailer, screens, and the details.
I Should Play That: Dong Dong Never Die
Imagine if Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat were addicted to drugs, then had a child together while under the influence of narcotics—wait, that’s a bit too obscene—imagine if all the Asian WTF videos you’ve ever watched on the internet got together and starred in an arcade game. That game would be Dong Dong Never Die.
The top five RPG Maker games
On the great map of PC gaming, the RPG Maker Network lies somewhere south of indie and west of modding. An often-overlooked community with strong ties to the fractious independent nations of fandom, the network is known for its abundant remakes and demakes of classic console JRPGs. More recently, though, a series of avant-garde releases – the harrowing (and very adult) Beautiful Escape: Dungeoneer, the legitimate surrealism of Space Funeral – have drawn attention to RPG Maker as something more, perhaps, than just a repository for pet projects and Deep Internet stickiness. Here are games that make a strong case for RPG Maker as a vibrant – if not commercially viable – platform for indie development, that treat the oft-lamented JRPG formula as a springboard for some pretty exciting and involved thinking about games.
Notch takes Edge award for best indie of 2010. Provides amusing video evidence
Minecraft creator Notch has taken an Edge award for the best indie game of 2010. And he loves looking at it from different angles. Click more for video evidence set to a familiar youTube anthem, and an interview with the hatted genius.
10 incredible Minecraft creations
Minecraft is a genuine sensation. With four million users and over a million and a half sales to date, it’s made its creator, Markus ‘Notch’ Persson, a very wealthy man indeed. But most impressive of all are the creations themselves: stupefying feats of digital engineering created from simple low-res cubes. Below are ten creations that I think define Minecraft’s magic. Its creators’ motivations vary, but each one is impressive in its own special way. Behold their works, ye mighty, and despair.
Free indie game recreates Halo as an 8-bit shooter
Indie game maker Eric Ruth has recreated Halo as an 8 bit game, complete with bloopy sound effects and pixellated recreations of Master Chief. It’s out now, and is completely free to download and play.
Detonate update adds extra kersplode
We love explosions here at PC Gamer, which is why we couldn’t help but be impressed by the recent update to the indie demolition game Detonate. It’s a game about building structures and then annihilating them using carefully placed bombs. Read on for a video of some of the spectacular demolitions.
Ludum Dare 19 results announced
Ludum Dare is a challenge in which competition entrants must create a game in two days. The games are all based on a theme voted for by the competition’s participants from a selection of ideas. Once the games have been completed, they’re released into the wild so the general public can play them and rate them. The results are now in, read on for a look at some of the best entries.
