Ludum Dare, a contest to create a game within 48 hours. This is a great event for people who want to make their first game because it sets a specific 48 hour goal that people can focus on very hard without a worry for bugs. In the end, a game can win on coolness, fun, graphics, audio, humor, mood, theme, and innovation.

The Ludum Dare is great for many reasons, it can get some people to work together on a game. It can provide the base work for a great game. Notch, the creator of Minecraft, participates in Ludum Dare often. He has made the games Breaking The Tower, Bunny Press, Metagun, The Europa Arcology, Incident, Prelude Of The Chambered, and Minicraft. Notch says that Ludum Dare is a great thing because you get that feeling that many people are struggling along with you at the same time. Everyone starts when the theme is announced, and then they are all judged when the 48 hours are finished. If you want to participate in the next Ludum Dare, it’s in December!

Katawa Shoujo, this game is very interesting on a couple different levels. It was a game that was first brought to life of on 4chan and brought together a group of people that made a game together, at no cost to the players. I think this is what the power of the internet is; it brings together a bunch of people who have never met in real life and causes them to create games or otherwise bond over it. This is what individuals need to see on the internet, other than the hordes of anonymous groups that flood chat boards and news reports of crimes happening over the internet.

Now, on to the game. Katawa Shoujo is a visual novel with choices. The ending of the game will vary on what your choices are. In the beginning of the game, you play Hisao where he is with the girl of his dreams. He has a heart attack once his heart rate gets too high and he passes out in the snow. He is revealed to have Arrhythmia. He reluctantly attends a school for disabled people. This school has an unusually high girl to boy ratio. As he attends this school, he learns of the many girls at the school and quickly makes friends with them as he says he “prolongs” his life. In this school, he learns what it means to keep on living. He learns to love and enjoy life.

Now, I could elaborate on all of the other endings that come up, but what is important are the good ones. This is because those are the ones that teach the themes of love the most. The other ends are what happens if you make a big enough mistake to lose. The good ends are a means to overcome those mistakes. I hope you can play and enjoy Katawa Shoujo! It’s free after all! (though, not safe for work).

Freeeeeee Indie time!

I don’t think I can give you many more free games that I’ve played, so the descriptions will probably be shorter this week…

Bitejacker by Secret Base.

This game was based off of the podcast Bitejacker. Bitejacker was a pretty cool show that had a focus on indie games, this is kinda where I learned of indie games. This game isn’t really like the show though (sorta). This game is set in the future of the show after a zombie apocalypse happens. You take the role of either the host Anthony Carboni, or Jonathan Rivera the cameraman. You try to level up, get new guns and save citizens in this zombie shoot ’em up.

Press Any Key by Adam Atomic.

A game that defies what gameplay is. Adam Atomic made this game to present work into games. This game tries to do it at the same time while you are presented with a goal. When you reach the goal, you are meant to actually grasp the largeness of a number. People understand that 100,000 is a large number, but they don’t actually know. It’s much much larger than what you perceive it as. When you play the game, you will walk away and through the work that you went through to beat it, you will understand how big 100,000 is.

Panic! by Astrid Bin.

A simple game of choices. This game presents choices to you with a time limit. If you make too many wrong choices, you lose. It’s an interesting spin considering that you normally go through a game like that taking at least a little bit of precaution. When you jump into this game, you see the timer ticking down and you are hurrying to beat it.