View Poll Results: Where do you look online for new indie/casual games?

Voters
8. You may not vote on this poll
  • WoM Only

    1 12.50%
  • Online Stores / Shops

    3 37.50%
  • Review Websites

    1 12.50%
  • Other... (Tell us about it!)

    4 50.00%
  • Twitter

    1 12.50%
  • Facebook

    1 12.50%
Multiple Choice Poll.
Page 1 of 2 12 LastLast
Results 1 to 10 of 12

Thread: Where do you go to find new indie/casual games?

  1. #1
    Co-Founder / PGD Elder WILL's Avatar
    Join Date
    Apr 2003
    Location
    Canada
    Posts
    6,107
    Blog Entries
    25

    Question Where do you go to find new indie/casual games?

    We aren't just a bunch of programmers here. We are also gamers at heart. So where do you guys look to find that next cool indie or casual game title to occupy your other bit of free time?

    Here are just a few gaming communities and stores that I know about myself... (off the top of my head)

    Stores:
    - Steam
    - iTunes / Mac App Stores
    - Big Fish Games
    - Desura
    - Indievania (new)

    Review Sites:
    - Indie Games The Web Blog
    - Bytten
    - IGN

    Anyone looking for a place to promote your games? I've got 2 titles that I want to promote soon myself.
    Jason McMillen
    Pascal Game Development
    Co-Founder





  2. #2
    Well, PjW is now on IndieDB, and as far as I know Desura is their own store. But I must admit that I'm not a casual player, and prefer deep and long-lasting games, so many Indiegames fall out of my target. But I have found several interesting games over at IndieDB and I also think it's a good place to promote your games.

  3. #3
    Steam and their sales is a major source for indie games. gog.com has also started selling indie games.
    Otherwise bundles like humblebundle.com, indiegala.com and indieroyale.com are a good source for indie games.
    Lastly I hear about the latest indie games from my co-students at the university. After all we are studying games, so I'm constantly informed about the next big thing in games.

    Edit:
    And of course kickstarter is a dangerous place to browse, if you don't wanna spend a few bucks. I just ended up backing this project: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/...the-universe-0
    Last edited by pstudio; 23-01-2013 at 06:18 AM.
    Imagine I've written something clever here inspiring you to make something awesome. If that happens give me credits

  4. #4
    Sadly, I feel that an indie game must come with good reviews. Wading through the piles of games at AppStore, GoG, MacGameStore or Steam will only lead you to infinite numbers of tower defense (can be good but usually just more of the same), make-groups-of-jewels (usually not very interesting), find-hidden-objects (worse, extremely boring and there are a lot of them) or match-tiles-with-mahjong-tiles-without-even-telling-it-isnt-mahjong (worst, I absolutely hate them). It just isn't worth trying, the market is flooded with overpolished garbage.

    So I go for indie games if they are recommended by a trusted source, or if they come in Humble Bundles. Reviews can help, except that I don't read many magazines/websites that have them.

    Not much help I am afraid. It isn't really getting easier to get attention in the market.

  5. #5
    Quote Originally Posted by Ingemar View Post
    Sadly, I feel that an indie game must come with good reviews. Wading through the piles of games at AppStore, GoG, MacGameStore or Steam will only lead you to infinite numbers of tower defense (can be good but usually just more of the same), make-groups-of-jewels (usually not very interesting), find-hidden-objects (worse, extremely boring and there are a lot of them) or match-tiles-with-mahjong-tiles-without-even-telling-it-isnt-mahjong (worst, I absolutely hate them). It just isn't worth trying, the market is flooded with overpolished garbage.
    I absolutely agree with this.

    Throughout many attempts that I've made on my iPhone and iPad through Apple Store and Samsung Galaxy through Google Play, I only found countless "casual" games based around the model of harvesting as much cash from you as possible - be it from banners or ingame payments.

    There are really only few indie and non-indie that I found interesting and mostly these come from word of mouth - either from a friend or a colleague.

    In my point of view, there are very few *really interesting* games coming out these days, the rest is a flood of poor remakes/recreations with huge effort of sucking your pocket.

    Recently I'm no longer trusting reviewing sites as I've found a lot of sort-of biased reviews, which look like they were paid to give good feedback about a game that utterly sucks and only wants to gets your cash off. Just recently my wife purchased a game of throwing balls, which kept nagging about purchasing even more expensive version and to get more content you need to pay even more or share this crap on Facebook (which none of us use) to unlock more levels - a money-hungry Shovelware.

  6. #6
    I agree too with this.

    I using review websites and after that I buy them directly on their stores (not gog, steam or other sh*t as them).
    Current (and lifetime) project: FAR Colony
    https://www.farcolony.com/

  7. #7
    My favorite gaming info sites are http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/ and http://www.tigsource.com/ . I gave up on games for ipad/ android, too much crap in both stores to dig through and usually most interesting are ports of old pc games..

  8. #8
    I usually only folow the forums of various Indie games I like becouse almost all of them have and Off-Topic section with atleast one thread pointing to other interesting games. The best thing bout this is that usually games suggested there also fit my interests as pepole who have interest in certain game also do have similar interests in other games than I do.
    The other source are game reviewing sites. But I don't mind much about their reviews but I only read short description of the game and check screenshots to see if this game might interest me.
    I also use Youtube quite often to watch various gamplays as it might show you much information about the game. I stoped wathcing trailers long ago as they rarely provide much ifo about the game (great trailer for crappy game).

  9. #9
    Co-Founder / PGD Elder WILL's Avatar
    Join Date
    Apr 2003
    Location
    Canada
    Posts
    6,107
    Blog Entries
    25
    Yeah the indie gaming scene does offer a lot of repetition and redundancy in many areas. And of course people out for a quick buck, which I'm not all that in favor of myself.

    I think all of us should be looking out for trances of these things in our own commercial attempts too. I don't think that there are too many here that would try to "milk it", but if your game looks like it's trying to be much more honest (opposite of what these other games are putting off as a message to their players) then I think that will speak volumes for your games and your group/company/own self as a game developer and people may be more receptive to trying your games and looking to see what else you have done.

    I've found myself to become a fan of Double Fine Productions (as an example) for this reason. I may not be a hardcore fan of everything they put out, but I at least enjoy most of what I've tried of theirs because of their honest approach to making their games. It's an example of a nice way to be in the game dev world.
    Jason McMillen
    Pascal Game Development
    Co-Founder





  10. #10
    Quote Originally Posted by WILL View Post
    Yeah the indie gaming scene does offer a lot of repetition and redundancy in many areas.
    So does the big AAA gaming scene. Just take a look at the latest biggest games:
    - FPS: First person shooters are most comon theese days. But the problem is that they all feels the same (once you played one you got the feeling you played them all). Why is that? That is becouse they only differe from each other in graphics, special effects, sounds and a storryline (this one usualy being rather poor).
    The overal gameplay is usualy the same. The only differences in gameplay are usually just some rather anoying action scenes during which you should press specific keys at right time to pas theese action scenes. They are usually pretty linear (have poor replayability). Yes some of them do offer sidequests and alows you to chose when you want to start main quest which gives more sandbox feeling. But when you look a bit closer you will notice that theese sidequest are there for you to just take a short break from main storry line. But since none of theese sidequests doesn't affect the main storryline it means that they don't increase the games replayability this much. And many times theese sidequests actually feels verry repetiv which deffinitly don't increase games replayability.
    So basically almost nothing new in the FPS gameplay lately.
    - RTS and Strategies: There haven't been many big name Real Time Strategies lately. And for those who were and I played them I dare to say that they have actually become even worse than some old RTS games. Sure the grephics have gone through major improvment but the overal gameplay has become much worse. Lots of sucssesful RTS series got screwed up becouse of this. Developers would have to realize that it is not the fancy graphics which makes game great, but the games gameplay.
    - RPG: When talking about Role Playing Games I should mention two branches of this genre.
    In first branch there are RPG games which stay loyal to clasic RPG genre and slowly expands it with new features making use of new computers capabilities like 3D graphics, making use of physics and making use of all the processing power that todays computer has to offer which alows creating of huge procedural generated worlds.
    In second branch are not actual RPG games but games from other genres which make use of some of the RPG features to spice up theese other genres a bit.
    - Puzle games: I'm not verry fond of this genre but from what I can tell the only improvments in this genre are from making use of new computer capabilities (3D graphics, Physics).
    - Racing games: Theese have just slowly moved from being arcade racing games toward becoming more of a racing simulations (still far from being actual simulations) this all being posible of todays computung powers. But other than this and some fancy graphics nothing new in this area.
    - Simulation games: This genre probably has most new things to offer du the fact that nowadays computers are capable of processing simulations of varios things that weren't posible in the past. But I must say that there are lots of games which claims to be simulations but infact are verry far from being that. I consider theese kinda games to be insult to the whole genre.

    Anywhay the main reason why Indie game sceene is being floded with bunch of Tower Defense like games, Matching games, Find the object games and various arcade styled games is the fact that theese are usually easier to be developed.
    And since most Indie developers are usually beginers in game development, or developers who actually develop their games in their free time, most of them decide to go and develop something simple which can be done in quite short time rather than do something complex and big which would require long development time during which the person developing this might actually lose further interest in doing so.
    Probably the reason why I haven't finished any of my games yet is the fact that I'm thinking rather oposite and aim big and complex, probably to big and to complex. But hey as a gamer I'm slowly getting tired of seing bunch of mediokre or bad games out there so I decided to go and make something great. If I'll sucseed only time will tell.

Page 1 of 2 12 LastLast

Tags for this Thread

Bookmarks

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •