Fun with Physics

The name may make BCS sound dull, but actually, it's quite entertaining--and quite innovative. In a series of levels of increasing difficulty, you're challenged to build increasingly complicated bridges, then drive over them in a train--and if you haven't done a good enough job, watch it collapse. The key is that it's in 3D with a robust physics engine that simulates the stresses on bridge members in detail, and provides a nice view of the occasional disasters. It's no surprise that BCS won the "audience choice" award at the 2003 Independent Games Festival. (Mac and Linux versions, too.)

2006 IGF Winner/Student Showcase

(And it's free...)

Cloud is a conscious attempt to create a that induces feelings of peace and serenity--unlike most games which seek to create edge-of-the-seat tension.

Cheerful Arcade Fun
2006 Adultswim.com Award Winner

A 2006 IGF finalist and winner of the Adultswim award (sponsored by Cartoon Network), Dodge That Anvil! is a game in which you play a bucktoothed bunny trying to harvest carrots and other veggies as anvils drop from the sky. Why? Well, um.... Does it matter? This is cartoon logic here.

Each level, you must harvest a quota of carrots (extra points for more); radishes give you points you can spend on equipment, like hard-hats that save you from one anvil-strike, and veggie magnets that let you collect plucked vegetables by moving near them instead of through them. Just about every level adds some new type of obstacle, powerup, or other feature--in other words, enough variety to retain your interest as the game progresses.

2004 IGF Winner For Innovation in Audio and Innovation in Digital Art
Now Free!

From Digital Eel (oft-time IGF nominees and creators of the excellent Strange Adventures in Infinite Space, among other games) comes this oddball circle-shooter. The basic gameplay here you've seen before: You are shooting from the edge of a circle at something in the middle, and you have to zip around the circle (using left and right arrow keys) and firing madly, trying to keep the thingie at the center from touching the edge.

But in Dr. Blob's organism, the circular thing you're firing around is a petri dish... some kind of nasty and potentially lethal organism is attempting to escape.

Lemmings Meets The Incredible Machine

In Eets, as in Lemmings or Junkbot, your job isn't to control your character or critters directly, but instead to place items on the screen that affect their behavior, and guide them to the exit point of the level. In the case of Eets, the "exit" is a puzzle piece placed somewhere on the screen, and you have a single "eets" -- a cute little animated guy -- whose abilities are determined by his "emotional state," which you can alter. A scared eets will stop and turn around when he comes to a ledge; a happy eets can jump short distances; and an angry eets can jump big distances. Typically, levels consist of several platforms--and you have to figure out how to guide your eets from one to the next in order to get to the puzzle piece, by placing little powerups that he eats, changing his state to make sure the right jumps happen at the right places.

The First True Interactive Drama

For decades, true interactive fiction--an application in which characters' responses to a player's input are determined algorithmically rather than via prescripted sequences, and in which valid stories emerge regardless of player action--has been a holy grail for AI researchers, digital artists, and game developers alike.

Most attempts to solve the problem have been "top down," that is, attempting to handle all sorts of stories, all sorts of personalities, and all sorts of potential actions. The results have generally been never more than mildly interesting.

Andy Stern and Michael Mateas, however, chose to try to solve a specific problem, rather than the general one. They chose a story with one setting (an apartment), two NPCs (a husband and wife), one basic conflict (their marriage is on the rocks), and a limited time frame (you are a friend of the family, visiting them over the course of an evening). By narrowing the focus this way, they were actually to solve the problem. Not, to be sure, in a way that solves the general problem--but in a way that makes of Façade the first really interesting work of true interative fiction.

2007 IGF Finalist
And It's Free (Save Your Quarters)

And quarters, rather than dollars, it would be; Gamma Bros feels very much like a game you'd encounter on an arcade machine in, say, 1985, probably one with two joysticks, like Robotron (actually, you use the arrow keys to move and WASD to shoot in the four cardinal directions). It's a space shoot-'em-up (shmup), but unlike the frenetic madness of most shmups, it has a laid-back, almost relaxing feel.

A fun little game.

2005 IGF Award Winner
Reinventing the Platformer with Physics

At first glance, Gish might appear to be a classic arcade-style game, something like Sonic or Mario Brothers. First glances can be deceiving: yes, this is a sidescrolling platformer, but the actual gameplay is very different, because it's based on a physics engine. Gish, the tar ball who is the title character, needs to get momentum to get up and over objects, controls how high he jumps by compressing and extending himself, can move objects by gaining momentum and running into them, walks on walls and ceilings by making himself "sticky", and so on.

2005 IGF Winner for Excellence in Audio

Global Defense Network is, uh, a rhythm shooter. If that's possible. That is, as fast-paced electronic music plays, you shoot various objects whizzing about the screen--as you might in a shooting gallery, except that there are a wide variety of potential targets that behave quite differently. As you play, you unlock new levels, with new music, new targets, and new weapons for you to use.

Maybe They Should Call it "Risk Plus Plus"

Just about everyone who's a gamer has spent a lot of time hurling dice about and conquering the world in the classic game of Risk--and many of us have spent a lot of time playing it solitaire in one digital implementation or another, because it's a quick, fun way to kill fifteen minutes before your next meeting or the like. But when you come down to it, the problem with Risk in a soloplay environment, particularly, is that it's the same thing all over again. Same board, same AIs--and it does pall after a time.

That's the genius of Lux Delux. The game itself comes with a whole slew of different maps--along with a pretty decent random map generator. It also comes with a bunch of different AI "personalities" who play quite differently. And there's a "plugin manager" that allows you to download literally hundreds of fan-created maps from Sillysoft...as well as a map editor that lets you create your own. Plus, for coders, there's an SDK that allows you to create new AIs or random map generators.