[sciborg2]

I have spent a biblical amount of time playing 'Binding of Isaac'.

I keep meaning to look that game up. The indie scene is so vast. Definitely will need a new PC, but so far I've held out.

=-=-=

TIMEframe

http://indiestatik.com/2013/10/02/experience-the-last-10-seconds-of-a-beauteous-world-in-10-minutes-timeframe/

"Upon playing a slow game, it becomes apparent that the vast majority of games go fast. There’s not enough time to take everything in, to admire the work the developer has spent their time crafting. Maybe the game you’re playing isn’t slow at all; perhaps it’s every other game that’s just going too fast. The most epic and jaw-dropping moments of playing SUPERHOT were when you shot a bullet and watched it slowly travel towards your target, hearing all of the sounds drag on, the clinks of metal and the slow boom of the shot.

TIMEframe is similar, in that time is slowed right down, so much so that the ten seconds the game takes place within take ten minutes to transpire. That’s the amount of time you have to explore this golden meadow, where symbolic stones form a magical circle, where a large statue has broken and now seems to be slowly reaching out from the ground that it’s sinking into."

[sciborg2]

Olav and the Lute:

http://www.olavandthelute.com/

http://indiestatik.com/2013/10/10/olav-the-lute/

“Dive into the post-apocalyptic fantasy world, solve puzzles, discover melodies, change the game-world with your mystical lute and .. fix it?

It’s kept simple and mysterious and has a sense of Germanic dark fantasy about it, but is grounded in the harsher realities of a post-apocalyptic reality too. Play Olav & the Lute for free, either in your browser, or you can download the game separately (Windows only) if you wish. ”

[sciborg2]

http://indiestatik.com/2013/10/11/dopaminium-the-heal-journay/

"You’re about to go on a journey, an out-of-body experience, even. It will involve taking drugs, dreams, nightmares, demons, happy bears with pink slippers and a brain bug. I’m no shaman, but I’ve already been on this journey. It’s called Dopaminium: The Heal Journay."

[sciborg2]

Ring Runner: Flight of the Sages is Pay What You Want on Indiegamestand:

https://indiegamestand.com/

Probably worth checking out that site's deals in general.

[sciborg2]

Flying around via a door that's a portal:

http://indiegames.com/2013/10/trailer_to_leave.html

"We use surreal artistic elements with imaginative elements that make you feel like you're in some kind of dream, maybe a nightmare? We leave that answer to the player."

[sciborg2]

IMO this is interesting more for the technique and the future game Gay Passover than Day Trap:

http://indiegames.com/2013/10/freeware_chat_night_trap_is_te.html#more

The possibilities for gameplay variation using these techniques are endless, Nathan believes. "I can use as many buttons as I want. I can get mouse info if I want to do a point-and-click game for some reason. After making Day Trap, I realized that I have the capacity to make any film game that pops into my head, or re-make any film-game that came before me.

"The concept of my next game (which I call Gay Passover) is that it is a dialogue game that is built unlike any other dialogue game. There is no reading. I believe that reading ruins dialogue games. Instead, there is only one button, and that button controls whether the main character is in the 'normal' world or the 'evil' world. In each sequence, the player must use this power in a dialogue context to solve a series of dialougue puzzles."

Nathan says he is obsessed with single-button games and strongly believes in accessibility for non-gamers, which is why he simplifies control schemes down to one button. While Day Trap is very short and requires just the space bar, Nathan says Gay Passover is going to be longer, with more varied gameplay, detailing his experience growing up in an orthodox Jewish family with lesbian parents.

[sciborg2]

1) Here’s Six Ways Indie Games Have Explored Sex And Erotica:

http://indiestatik.com/2013/10/30/sex-games/

2) Why Isn’t The Oculus Rift Being Used To Allow LGBT Empathy Or Desire?:

http://indiestatik.com/2013/08/09/why-isnt-the-oculus-rift/

[sciborg2]

Feminine, LGBT ideas welcome in Games [4Diversity] Jam after GDC 2014:

http://indiegames.com/2013/11/Feminine_LGBT_ideas_welcome.html

Registration for the Games [4Diversity] Jam 2014 is live now, an event which asks developers to explore ways to incorporate feminine and LGBT aspects into games in a constructive and meaningful way. While organizers haven't decided the exact location, they will hold it somewhere in San Francisco, California on March 21-23, the weekend after the Game Developers Conference 2014.

[sciborg2]

http://www.catequesis.eu/

http://kotaku.com/heres-an-unsettling-8-bit-horror-game-sleep-well-1464280102/@andrasneltz

"Here's an Unsettling 8-Bit Horror Game. Sleep Well!"

[sciborg2]

From the developer side, in case any of you (Callan?) are going that route ->

Opinion: What NOT to do when starting as an indie game developer:

http://indiegames.com/2013/11/opinion_what_not_to_do_when_st.html#more

[sciborg2]

Latin American Horror Story - a collection of indie horror from Argentina:

http://indiegames.com/2013/11/latin_american_horror_story_-_.html

"I have hand-picked for you seven horrific titles that were either recently released or are lurking in the horizon, albeit sharing a particular trait: these are all games produced in Argentina. How crazy is that? We seem to have an industry down here! That's right, the indie scene is bursting with renewed activity in our country, and I'm going to give you a quick heads-up on the scariest offerings this side of the pond."

[sciborg2]

Thralled: Finding Empathy For The Victims Of Slavery Through Motherly Loss

http://indiestatik.com/2013/11/24/thralled/

    “This is how, in my opinion, we should study the great calamities of Human History – from the perspective of the human dimension. If we want to learn to not repeat the mistakes of our past as humankind, then we must struggle to understand the full impact of those mistakes and how they affected people, those anonymous victims buried under the numbers and facts of scholarship.”

    “This is all to say that Thralled attempts, in a small manner, to help further understanding and develop empathy for the suffering that these people went through. It attempts to study slavery from the human perspective.”

[sciborg2]

The Novelist Was So Beautiful It Killed Me

http://indiestatik.com/2013/12/10/the-novelist/

The reviewer confused things a bit with how he intertwined his own past, but the game itself does seem intriguing.

    For those looking for a healthy mix of supernatural stealth game and emotionally driven interactive fiction, The Novelist is likely the best (and perhaps only) game on the market able to pull off a convincing portrayal of a nuclear family on the verge of collapse, and neatly ties in a helpful ghost-thing that allows you to experiment with balancing a career and a family. It’s a beautiful, if brief game about what’s really important in life, mixed in with a bit of suspense to keep you hooked. But I’d be lying if it didn’t sock me right in the gut from its opening moments until the bitterly ironic end.

[sciborg2]

Five design pillars of SOMA (a game about AI and consciousness that should appeal to Second Apocalypsers!):

http://frictionalgames.blogspot.se/2013/12/the-five-foundational-design-pillars-of.html

OMA is meant to explore deep subjects such as consciousness and the nature of existence. We could have done this with cutscenes and long conversations, but we chose not to. We want players to become immersed in these thematics, and the discussions to emerge from within themselves.

[Callan S.]

It's me treating my private history like it matters, but at the point they used picking a lock as a narrative moment, is the point I inwardly groaned. Not, like, a moment where you decide to turn off someones life support or not. No, picking a lock. Because that's so much a story moment.

It's worth reading these things, but taken with a pinch of salt.