And Maw! This

Its that time of year again – IGF Impressions

October 22nd, 2007

It’s that time of year again. Half assed and a little too late, here are my IGF predictions and comments. Unfortunately it seems like there are less playable games than ever before, so many of my impressions will be based on hype, concept and screenshots .

Yes

1) Fret Nice – Cool looking . Innovation, audio nominations. I really want to play this to see how the controls work out.

2) Noitu Love 2 – Noitu Love was a pretty well done platformer\beat ‘em up with great pixel art. Chalk was an innovative mouse driven “draw ‘em up” with much better gameplay. Hopefully Noitu Love 2, with mouse driven controls, will be the best of both worlds, “meatier” and more polished than chalk, but with the same level of innovation and quality gameplay. Gameplay, perhaps art.

3) Pixeljunk racers – Q-Games PSN game. It looks pretty nice, and I’m sure it will play nice also. There is a lot of controversy about how “indie” this game is, considering the status of Q-Games and the fact that its a PSN game. The thing is, many of the top IGF games are on or are coming to XBLA and PSN, so I don’t see it being a big idea. The game is self-funded, developed by a small team, and relatively “indie” (whatever that is), probably more so than many of the past winners.

4) Fez – Phil Fish’s interesting looking platformer with cool pixel art. The crush\paper mario 2D to 3D mechanic could make for some great gameplay. art and innovation nominations.

Maybe

1) Gish 2 – The sequel to the 2004 IGF finalist and 2005 IGF winner, the question is what does Gish 2 bring to the table that’s new and does IGF need more Gish?

2) Crayon physics deluxe – Crayon physics was an interesting prototype made by Kloonigames. Its a game about drawing rigid bodies to solve a puzzle. Like Armadillo run, there is a potential for crazy free-form solutions. Hopefully the deluxe version can take a good mechanic and cool art style and make it into a good game.

3) Schizoid - The first “professional” XNA game. Schizoid looks interesting, but I’m still not so clear on how it actually plays. It will be on live arcade soon enough so we’ll see.

4) Undertow – XBLA action game about an underwater war. It looks good, but not nearly as good as Corpus.

Personal favorites

These are games that I have actually played, personally like a lot, but am not quite sure are IGF finalist material.

1) Masq – Masq is a cool open ended adventure game. The choose your own adventure style interface makes it easier to play than Facade, but at its core its basically just an interactive comic book.

2) Dangerous Highschool girls in Trouble - I really enjoyed this game when I played the beta last year. It didn’t make it in the 2007 IGF, I wonder if the level of polish and gameplay has improved enough to catch the judge’s eyes?

Honorable mention

1) Corpus – This is “my”game in a very early prototype stage. Entered because I’m working with an overconfident artist that insisted on entering the game. If you check the IGF site you’ll realize that rctorres.net, not mawsoft.com is linked. The developer is also “Team Corpus” and not Maw!Soft, because RC Torres does not like the name. Wait, it will win for art because the artwork is amazing. It would have won for innovation also if it had a chainsaw gun in it. Nuff’ said.

2) Cortex Command – While I’m personally not a huge fan of this game, it has a big following. Entered in the IGF in the past, I hope Dan makes it this year.

3) Clean Asia – Unfortunately this is a game maker game, so I haven’t had a chance to play it as much as I’d like. I played it briefly on my old machine, but I’m running Vista now. Its a well done stylistic shmup.

4) Samurai Soul Hunters – Dan MacDonald and Chris Hildenbrand’s cool looking XNA game. It didn’t make finalist for Dream build play, but can it make it in IGF?
The winner of the WTF award is Zoo Race. This game looks awesomely retarded. I’d like to see it as a finalist just because its ridiculous.

Is it just me or is there an over abundance of “blob” games this year? Gish 2, World of Goo, Goo, Gumboy Tournament, etc.

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