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.
The Game Developers Conference (GDC) is an annual conference for video game developers. The event includes an expo, networking events, and awards shows like the Game Developers Choice Awards and Independent Games Festival, and a variety of tutorials, lectures, and roundtables by industry professionals on game-related topics covering programming, design, audio, production, business and management, and visual arts.
Arrow keys or cursor movement keys are keys on a computer keyboard that are either programmed or designated to move the cursor in a specified direction.
Panic Inc. is an American software and video game company based in Portland, Oregon. The company specializes in macOS and iOS applications and began publishing video games in 2016.
VVVVVV is a 2010 puzzle-platform game created by Terry Cavanagh. In the game, the player controls Captain Viridian, who must rescue their spacecrew after a teleporter malfunction caused them to be separated in Dimension VVVVVV. The gameplay is characterized by the inability of the player to jump, instead opting on controlling the direction of gravity, causing the player to fall upwards or downwards. The game consists of more than 400 individual rooms, and also supports the creation of user-created levels.
QWOP is a 2008 ragdoll-based browser video game created by Bennett Foddy, formerly the bassist of Cut Copy. Players control an athlete named "Qwop" using only the Q, W, O, and P keys. The game became an internet meme in December 2010. The game helped Foddy's site (Foddy.net) reach 30 million hits.
Octodad is a freeware independent video game developed by a group of students at DePaul University, many of whom would go on to form Young Horses, Inc., the developers of its sequel Octodad: Dadliest Catch. The game was developed for the Student Showcase of the 2011 Independent Games Festival, and would go on to be one of 8 winners in the Student Showcase award of that year. The game features a humorous plot revolving around the central character, an octopus who is undercover as an average human with a family. The plot revolves around the player, controlling Octodad, attempting to complete various household chores and tasks while maintaining his secret. The gameplay consists of primarily ragdoll physics, turning mundane tasks into significant challenges. Dadliest Catch was released on January 30, 2014, and was one of the first titles to be given the Steam Greenlight.
Sportsfriends is a party video game created by the Danish independent developer collective Die Gute Fabrik. It consists of four games: Johann Sebastian Joust, Super Pole Riders, BaraBariBall, and Hokra. Planned for release on the PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Windows, Mac, and Linux, the game was funded through Kickstarter and received over US$150,000 from backers.
Quadrilateral Cowboy is a first-person puzzle-adventure video game by independent developer Blendo Games. The game was released on July 25, 2016, for Microsoft Windows, and on October 1, 2016, for macOS and Linux.
Gasketball is a basketball-themed puzzle video game for the iPad by Mikengreg, an independent development team of Michael Boxleiter and Greg Wohlwend. Players flick basketballs through 2D physics puzzles into the hoop in single-player, local multiplayer, and asynchronous HORSE-style online multiplayer modes. The game is free-to-play with in-app purchases. Development began in mid 2011 following Mikengreg's successful Solipskier. They were able to live from the earnings for Gasketball's two year development at their previous salary, which afforded them the stability to try new avenues and reject prototypes, though they worked 100-hour weeks. Towards the end of their development, they ran out of money and lived on the couches of friends. It was released on August 9, 2012, and the game did not reach their desired conversion rate at the time of launch.
Zach Gage is an independent video game programmer and designer based in New York City. He is known for his iOS games, including SpellTower.
Stephen's Sausage Roll is a 2016 puzzle video game developed and published by Increpare Games, the studio of designer Stephen Lavelle. The player controls a character who pushes sausage links onto hot grill tiles to cook them. It was received well by critics and was praised by other prolific indie puzzle video game creators.
Multibowl is a competitive minigame compilation of scenes from 1980s and 90s video games. Its creators, Bennett Foddy and AP Thomson, intend to show the work at events and have no plans for a public release due to copyright issues.
Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy is a platform game developed by the titular Bennett Foddy. The game was released as part of the October 2017 Humble Monthly, on October 6, 2017, where it went on to be played by over 2.7 million players. A Steam version of the game was later released by Foddy on December 6, 2017, with a release on iOS that same day. The Android version was later released on April 25, 2018. The Linux version was available for beta testing in August 2018 and received a stable release in the same year.
Bennett Foddy is an Australian video game designer based in New York. Raised in Australia and trained as a moral philosopher on topics of drug addiction, Foddy was a bassist in the electronic music group Cut Copy and a hobbyist game designer while he finished his dissertation. During his postdoctoral research at Princeton University and time on staff at Oxford University, Foddy developed games of very high difficulty, including QWOP (2008), which became an Internet sensation at the end of 2010 with the rise of new online social sharing tools. He later became an instructor at the NYU Game Center. His most famous game aside from QWOP is Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy, a philosophical, physics-based platform game released in 2017.
Playdate is a handheld video game console developed by Panic. The device features a mechanical crank and a black-and-white screen.
TIGSource, short for The Independent Games Source, is a news blog and Internet community centered around the creation of independent video games, founded in 2005 by Jordan Magnuson but soon taken over by Derek Yu, both independent game developers. The site has been described as having been an important "cultural nexus" for the creation of indie games development in the 2000s and early 2010s, and a key player in changing the perception of independent video games as merely casual games to that of an art form. Its forums were the launchpad for several award-winning games, including the best-selling video game of all time, Minecraft, BAFTA-winning dystopian immigration officer simulation Papers, Please, viral phenomenon QWOP, puzzle-platform game Fez, and Yu's own Spelunky. The site was in 2009 referred to as "one of the primary sources of information about the indie scene on the web and host to one of indie's best forums, bringing creators and fans together to share novel new ideas and the greatest new games." In 2008, it was chosen as one of "100 top sites for the year ahead" by The Guardian.
CLOP is a 2012 Flash game made by Australian game designer Bennett Foddy. It is considered a spiritual successor Foddy's previous game, QWOP, released four years prior which had gone on to become a viral sensation. Similarly to QWOP, the player is tasked with controlling a unicorn, rather than an athletic runner, and escort it to a destination.
A walking simulator, shortened walking sim, is an adventure game that consists primarily of movement and environmental interaction. They generally do not have combat mechanics, traditional win/lose scenarios, and sometimes include puzzle elements. While these video game elements originated in the 1980s, people online began pejoratively referring to new games as walking simulators in the late 2000s, notably with Dear Esther. The term was eventually used less pejoratively and adopted by gamers, while still negatively perceived by some game developers and negative gameplay connotation remains. Other descriptors have been commonly used for games of such style, including empathy, narrative and exploration game. Such games are often a hallmark of art games, but some mainstream games have been described as having walking simulator elements.
A Difficult Game About Climbing is a 2024 indie climbing video game and rage game produced by solo developer Pontypants in the Unity engine and inspired by the gameplay of Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy.
