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

[laggyluk]

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..

[SilverWarior]

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).

[WILL]

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.

[SilverWarior]

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.

[chronozphere]

First of all, what is WoM?

Secondly, I have subscribed to a number of youtube channels that discuss (often indie) games. I like to learn about as much different and fun game concepts as possible. Recently, I learned about FTL and after seeing a couple of youtube video's I was completely hooked. I will buy that game very soon (after finishing some important work for my studies, as some sort of reward).

After seeing FTL, I was actually very much inspired by the idea (Just as I (and a lot of others) were inspired by minecraft). When it comes to gamedev, I feel that I should start a new project someday. If I were to make an indie game, I would probably make something that is beyond the beginners level of game development (no simple puzzle, sidescroller or RPG). Next, I would look for some kind of element that sets my game apart from the rest. I don't want to remake something, but rather try out something new. That's why I keep looking around for good sources of games and concepts. Anyone got some good youtube channels?

[WILL]

WoM is Word of Mouth.

I was fortunate enough to be able to back FTL when it was on Kickstarter. Great game made by two talented developers who came from the gaming industry to start doing their own thing. In my opinion what they did was very much what indie game development is all about.