Students Rewarded for Destroying Productivity

February 24, 2008 2:08 PM

The Winners of the 10th Annual Independent Games Festival were announced Wednesday night at this year's GDC. Finalists in the Student Showcase included Crayon Physics Deluxe (previously), Flip Side and Empyreal Nocturne, as well as a 2-D platformer named Polarity, developed by the same team behind Bandology and Skyrates.
posted by Navelgazer (13 comments total)

Watching the trailer for Polarity I noticed that the scrolling is very rigid somehow, reminds me of the original Duke Nukem games. Funny how PC platform games just don't quite feel right even today.
posted by Space Coyote at 2:16 PM on February 24

When (now award-winning) Battleships Forever is finished, it's going to be incredible. As it stands, it's awesome.
posted by lumensimus at 2:55 PM on February 24

Fez looks amazing. It's like you got your paper mario in my cave story no you got your cave story in my paper mario.

That misadventures of p. b. winterbottom looks like some good stuff too.
posted by juv3nal at 3:16 PM on February 24

When I was in school, some friends of mine were working on a game that I think they were going to enter in a contest like this. It was an RTS based on the concept of kids fighting with water balloons and stuff, called "Treefort wars" I saw them working on the visuals and they were amazing.

When they finished, and I tried playing the game, I found it was basically impossible. The UI didn't work at all. It was very pretty, though.
posted by delmoi at 3:20 PM on February 24

I've played polarity, it's quite fun.
posted by tomplus2 at 3:23 PM on February 24

Polarity was great, but someone needs to make about 100 more levels for it.
posted by agentofselection at 3:33 PM on February 24

Don't ignore the nominees that didn't win - Iron Dukes is a decent little lark of a game, and there's a neat little community growing around Battleships Forever. (I'm still playing through them. ALL OF THEM. I doubt I'll leave my chair for the next week.)
posted by suckerpunch at 4:13 PM on February 24

Audiosurf is really really cool. Well worth the $10 for download.
posted by gnutron at 4:15 PM on February 24

These look really great. I have already scored cool dad points with my son for suggesting a couple of these.
posted by mecran01 at 10:18 PM on February 24

I really, really want to try Polarity, but it won't let me. It plays the little intro song and shows me the logo, and just when I'm ready to try playing it, it disappears, as if to say "Ha, ha! I've got this awesome game in here and you don't get to have *any* of it. *tbbbbspt*."
posted by JDHarper at 10:29 PM on February 24

Looking forward to trying out more of these, and YES, Audiosurf is goddamned amazing. Bugs and all.
posted by Stunt at 1:33 AM on February 25

I like grabbing the top scores in Audiosurf on songs that like five people have played. The secret is to hold onto the red paint and fill the whole board with crap, then drop the paint. Next I need to start holding onto the red paint and then the multiplier to get the over 17000 points at once achievement.
posted by TheOnlyCoolTim at 7:24 AM on February 25

I don't think they should give prizes to games that aren't out yet.
posted by Malor at 8:32 AM on February 25