Roguelike is a style of role-playing game traditionally characterized by a dungeon crawl through procedurally generated levels, turn-based gameplay, grid-based movement, and permanent death of the player character. Most roguelikes are based on a high fantasy narrative, reflecting their influence from tabletop role-playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons.
The Independent Games Festival (IGF) is an annual festival at the Game Developers Conference (GDC), the largest annual gathering of the independent video game industry. Originally founded in 1998 to promote independent video game developers, and innovation in video game development by CMP Media, later known as UBM Technology Group, IGF is now owned by Informa after UBM's acquisition.
Adventure Game Studio (AGS) is an open source development tool primarily used to create graphic adventure games. It is aimed at intermediate-level game designers, and combines an integrated development environment (IDE) with a scripting language based on the C programming language to process game logic.
Tactical role-playing games, also known as strategy role-playing games and in Japan as simulation RPGs, are a video game genre that combines core elements of role-playing video games with those of tactical strategy video games. The formats of tactical RPGs are much like traditional tabletop role-playing games and strategy games in appearance, pacing, and rule structure. Likewise, early tabletop role-playing games are descended from skirmish wargames such as Chainmail, which were primarily concerned with combat.
Strange Adventures In Infinite Space is a roguelike video game created by the indie developer Digital Eel and released for Windows and Mac on March 15, 2002, by boardgame developer-publisher, Cheapass Games. Releases for Pocket PC and Palm by British developer-publisher Astraware followed. In 2020, the game was updated to run on current computer operating systems of the day. It remains free to download and share.
Brandon Boyer is a contributing editor to collaborative weblog Boing Boing. Boyer resides in Austin, Texas.
ACE Team is a Chilean video game developer based in Santiago. Founded in the late 1990s by brothers Andres, Carlos and Edmundo Bordeu, the company started out by developing total conversions before turning to commercial game development. All operations were halted between 2003 and 2007 while Andres and Carlos were employed by Wanako Games.
Dys4ia is an abstract, autobiographical Adobe Flash video game that Anna Anthropy, also known as Auntie Pixelante, developed to recount her experiences of gender dysphoria and hormone replacement therapy. The game was originally published in Newgrounds but was later removed by Anthropy.
GROW HTML5-based puzzle games created by On Nakayama, a Japanese indie game developer, and posted to his website, eyezmaze.com. The series, which was launched on February 7, 2002, comprises 12 full games, 7 minigames, and 1 canceled game. The most recently released title was published in June 2018. The games all feature a simple click-button interface requiring the player to determine the correct combination of buttons to click to maximize visual reward and ultimately to achieve the good ending. Graphically spare and minimalist, GROW games employ a cute aesthetic and often include creatures and characters taken from On's other games like those in the Tontie Series.
Stellaris is a 4X grand strategy video game developed by Paradox Development Studio and published by Paradox Interactive. In Stellaris, players take control of an interstellar civilization on the galactic stage and are tasked with exploring, colonizing, and managing their region of the galaxy, encountering other civilizations that they can then engage in diplomacy, trade, or warfare with. A large part of the game involves dealing with both scripted and emergent events, through which new empires alter the balance of power, powerful crises threaten the galaxy, or event chains tell the story of forgotten empires. It was released worldwide for Windows, macOS, and Linux on May 9, 2016 and for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One as Stellaris: Console Edition on February 26, 2019.
Undertale is a 2015 2D role-playing video game created by American indie developer Toby Fox. The player controls a child named Frisk who has fallen into the Underground: a large, secluded region under the surface of the Earth, separated by a magical barrier. The player meets various monsters during the journey back to the surface, although some monsters might engage the player in a fight. The combat system involves the player navigating through mini-bullet hell attacks by the opponent. They can opt to pacify or subdue monsters in order to spare them instead of killing them. These choices affect the game, with the dialogue, characters, and story changing based on outcomes.
Kitty Horrorshow is the pseudonym of an independent video game developer. Releasing her games on the distribution platform itch.io, she specializes in the psychological horror genre, with her games focusing on surreal and atmospheric horror in the aesthetic style of early 3D videogames.
Ironcast is a turn-based strategy video game with individual missions played through a match-three system. The game features procedurally generated missions and permadeath, staples of the roguelike genre. The game was developed by Dreadbit and released for PC platforms in March 2015, PS4 and Xbox One in March 2016, and Nintendo Switch version in August 2017.
Beglitched is a 2016 match three video game. It won Best Student Game at the 2016 Independent Games Festival Awards.
Zineth is a 3D skating freeware video game by independent developer Arcane Kids released for Microsoft Windows and Mac in 2012.
Ape Out is a 2019 beat 'em up game developed by Gabe Cuzzillo and published by Devolver Digital. Financed by the Indie Fund, it was produced when Cuzzillo attended game development classes at New York University. The game was released for Microsoft Windows and Nintendo Switch on February 28, 2019, and has garnered a positive reception.
