Record Number of Entries for 2013 Independent Games Festival!

[Thagarr]

The last few years Indie game development has skyrocketed, and next year is no exception as the organizers of the 15th annual Independent Games Festival have announced a record 589 entries for the 2013 festival that will be held in San Francisco in March. I went through a few of the entries and a couple did stand out, such as Air Buccaneers, the game I posted about last week. And Pirate plunder, which I posted about back in May. There are a lot of msall games such as Pirate Race, but there are some really in depth RPG's, MMO's, adventure and FPS's as well. The wild west, space based strategy and RPG's, castle busting, zombies, platformers and plagues are everywhere.

There are some games that sound very revolutionary, such as Drawn Story, a game that uses image recognition technologies in an attempt to recognize what the player has drawn and add it to the game. Gimbal, a multiplayer physics based shooter with buildable vehicles. I did scan the complete list, but there are far to many games for me to post about here, but I will give you the original press release with some links to brows through at your leisure. The complete list of games is well worth checking out!

2013 Independent Games Festival - record amount of Main Competition entries!

The organizers of the 15th annual Independent Games Festival - the longest-running and largest showcase for independent developers - are proud to announce that the event has once again seen record entry numbers (http://www.igf.com/php-bin/entries2013.php) for its latest Main Competition.

In total, the GDC 2013 co-located festival attracted 589 Main Competition entries from both already renowned indie developers and first-time entrants, just topping the record-breaking 567 games that the show saw in 2012.

Some of the hundred of intriguing-looking titles entered in the IGF Main Competition this year include EightyEightGames' RPG matching game 10000000, Christine Love's visual novel Analogue: A Hate Story, and Blue Manchu's CCG/RPG hybrid Card Hunter.

The entrants also feature titles such as Hitbox Team's action platformer Dustforce, SantaRagione and BloodyMonkey's unusual first person puzzler MirrorMoon, and much more - and everyone is welcome to check out the full list of entries now at http://www.igf.com/php-bin/entries2013.php.

With the event growing ever larger, IGF 2013 has expanded each of its Main Competition award categories to six finalists (except Nuovo, which has 8 finalists). The Main Competition finalists will be announced in January 2013, and all will be available in playable form at a larger, expanded IGF pavilion on the GDC show floor.

In addition, all IGF 2013 Main Competition entrants are once again eligible for Microsoft Studios' second annual sponsored prize - a guaranteed first-party publishing deal (including funding if desired) to release the selected title on LIVE-enabled platforms, including the Xbox LIVE Arcade service, Windows Phone, and Windows. (Last year's winner was Capy's frantic retro platform shooter Super TIME Force.)

The festival's organizers have also provided an official JSON feed - http://submit.igf.com/json - which is updated every 30 minutes from live back end data - teams can update info on their games and have the official entry page change, and third parties are welcome to use this feed to make their own custom IGF entry lists and pages.

Once again, winners will be honored on stage during the IGF Awards ceremony during the 2013 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco in March, showcased in the IGF Pavilion on the GDC Expo Floor from March 27-29. (GDC 2013 itself - http://www.gdconf.com - will take place from March 25-29 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, and the IGF-related Independent Games Summit, which has a special pass devoted to it once more this year, will take place on March 25-26.)

The big gaming companies have been trying to force us PC gamers onto consoles for years with the same mantra, "PC gaming is dying!'. Don't believe the hype, PC gaming is alive and well! It is simply their way of trying to control every aspect of gaming so they can milk every penny out your wallet that they can. I have nothing against console gaming, I have played many console games that I have very much enjoyed. I do have a problem with someone trying forcing to force a choice on me that, if they have their way, in the end will leave no choice at all!