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Ridiculously Cheap Indie Gaming: The Impulse Weekend Sale

Forget about Steam for a minute. Right now, you need to pay attention to Stardock’s competing online store, Impulse.

Impulse has been, to be brutally honest, not particularly effective competition against Steam. The prices are either at parity or higher, the selection smaller. The one thing the service did have going for it was that most everything being sold there was 100% DRM-free: following purchase, you would only ever have to log on to Impulse to download updates.

Yeah, that’s a big selling point, but it’s always about price, isn’t it? Steam’s weekend sales have been, let’s say, aggressive—just last week they were offering every single X-Com game for five dollars. So it’s great to see Impulse baring teeth here at last. This weekend marks its first weekend sale, and one of the gems available is indie charmer Gish—normally $20, now just $4. And it’s not even the only good deal.

Posted Jan 16 2009, 04:00 PM by Joe Keiser with | with no comments

Filed under: stardock, sales, steam, joe keiser, indie, kudos 2, impulse, gish

Aquaria Is Cheap. Buy It, You Bums.

I'll admit that I used to have a few gaming prejudices that now fill me with a deep shame. For instance, until I bit the bullet and plunked down fifteen bucks for Jonathan Blow's Braid, paying more than ten bones for any game available exclusively as a digital download felt wrong somehow. This is exactly why I missed out on Bit Blot's underwater adventure, Aquaria, back when it was released late last year; I'd played and loved the demo, but the full game's price of thirty dollars was just a little too rich for my blood. The sad thing is, I probably would have forgotten about Aquaria forever if the game hadn't just come out on Steam for the low, low price of sixteen dollars. Now I can make amends for my former transgressions by purchasing my own copy, and getting all of you loyal 61FPS readers to grab one as well. Here's the game's trailer, if you need some convincing:

Unfortunately, the sale on Aquaria only lasts until the end of 2008, so you'd better scrape together some spare change while you can. Protip: you know those dudes in the Santa suits, ringing bells on street corners? They're literally rolling in quarters.

Related Links:

Now At Your Local Dollar Store: Half-Life
Google to Buy Valve?
GOG is Great

Posted Dec 18 2008, 06:00 PM by Bob Mackey with | with 3 comment(s)

Filed under: indie dev moment, bob mackey, pc games, sales, steam, indie, aquaria

For Indie Games, These are the Salad Days

Good news, everyone! MSNBC.com is reporting that somehow, the beautiful, excellent labor of love World of Goo actually made a good amount of money for its innovative creators.

This is probably the most heartening story of the long list of heartening stories that have come out about indie games this year. World of Goo managed to make money with a slim marketing budget of approximately $0.00. Other things, like Braid and Castle Crashers, had a minimal marketing push—yet the most accurate predictors we have for this kind of thing (VGChartz might usually be wildly inaccurate, but their XBLA chart is based on information pulled from a massive collection of real GamerTags and is generally considered to be as close as we can get to true XBLA sales numbers) believe these games generated millions of dollars in revenue, each.

We are talking games that were made by no more than two men, games that were built on laptops in coffee shops. Could it be possible this era of HD gloss and budgets approaching nine figures could also be indie gaming’s greatest days?

Posted Nov 25 2008, 01:00 PM by Joe Keiser with | with 2 comment(s)

Filed under: world of goo, braid, castle crashers, joe keiser, indie

Please, Please Don’t Forget Xbox Community Games

I know you’re excited about that New-fangled Xbox Experience that came out today. You can’t wait to get lost in this strange new maze of bright icons and non-demarcated advertising. But after you’ve given your avatar your dream porn ‘stache and reveled in Netflix on the Teevee (now free of that Sony Pictures stink, apparently), try to cut through the clutter and find the real prize of the Experience: Community Games.

Surely you remember Community Games. That’s what Microsoft is calling the indie games service that got a big reveal at GDC 2008 before disappearing completely from view. It’s out now, but it’s still hard to find; on my 360 it’s five deep into the Game Marketplace menu, peeking out from behind some Gamerpics of Lebron James (and even that’s not the whole list—to get to that you have to go to Games Marketplace, then Explore Game Content, then All Games, Browse, Collections, Community Games).

We’re talking real, true indie stuff here, not that polished, “I have a big three publishing deal and an interview on newsstands now” product that people have been calling indie. This is gritty, garage band gaming, warts and all. It’s pretty exciting to see this sort of thing on console, so I’m going through as many of the free trials as I can. Below I’ve picked out a few of the gems you should try, if only so you can say you liked them before they sold out:

Posted Nov 19 2008, 04:30 PM by Joe Keiser with | with 3 comment(s)

Filed under: xbox 360, joe keiser, new xbox experience, indie

about the blogger

John Constantine, our superhero, was raised by birds and then attended Penn State University. He is currently working on a novel about a fictional city that exists only in his mind. John has an astonishingly extensive knowledge of Scientology. Ultimately he would like to learn how to effectively use his brain. He continues to keep Wu-Tang's secret to himself.

Derrick Sanskrit is a self-professed geek in a variety of fields including typography, graphic design, comic books, music and cartoons. As a professional hipster graphic designer, his recent clients have included Nerve, Pitchfork and MoCCA, among others.

Amber Ahlborn - artist, writer, gamer and DigiPen survivor, she maintains a day job as a graphic artist. By night Amber moonlights as a professional Metroid Fanatic and keeps a metal suit in the closet just in case. Has lived in the state of Washington and insists that it really doesn't rain as much as everyone says it does.

Nadia Oxford is a housekeeping robot who was refurbished into a warrior when the world's need for justice was great. Now that the galaxy is at peace (give or take a conflict here or there), she works as a freelance writer for various sites and magazines. Based in Toronto, Nadia prizes the certificate from the Ministry of Health declaring her tick and rabies-free.

Bob Mackey is a grad student, writer, and cyborg, who uses the powerful girl-repelling nanomachines mad science grafted onto his body to allocate time towards interests of the nerd persuasion. He believes that complaining about things on the Internet is akin to the fine art of wine tasting, but with more spitting into buckets.

Joe Keiser has a programming degree from Johns Hopkins University, a tiny apartment in Brooklyn, and a fake toy guitar built in the hollowed-out shell of a real guitar. He writes about games and technology for a variety of outlets. One day he will stop doing this. The day after that, police will find his body under a collapsed pile of (formerly neatly alphabetized) collector's edition tchotchkes.

Cole Stryker is an American freelance writer living in York, England, where he resides with his archeologist wife. He writes for a travel company by day and argues about pop culture on the internet by night. Find him writing regularly here and here.

Peter Smith is like the lead character of Irwin Shaw's The 80-Yard Run, except less athletic. He considers himself very lucky to have this job. But it's a little premature to take "jack-off of all trades" off his resume. Besides writing, travelling, and painting houses, Pete plays guitar in a rock trio called The Aye-Ayes. He calls them a 'power pop' band, but they generally sound more like Motorhead on a drinking binge.