Best Indie Game Music of 2019

A good musical score can make a game so much more, elevating an experience from ephemeral to unforgettable. As we considered all the incredible video game music we heard this year, we tried to pick scores that stood on their own as listening experiences while also sonically embodying the games for which they were produced.

Encompassing a multitude of genres, from…

Best Mobile Indie Games of 2019

It was something of a renaissance year for indie mobile games as Google Play grew up a little more and Apple decided out of the blue to launch Apple Arcade, making dozens of indie games – some exclusives – available for one low monthly price.

The tabletop board game explosion also led to interesting digitalization, hybrids and genre-benders. Meanwhile Augmented…

This is always hard blah blah. Every year there are more games, more outlets, more tools, more ideas, more grammar. This is a good thing. We are here to try to sort through it all. This is not a comprehensive list of the best indie games. It is ones we chose after playing hundreds of games and substantial deliberation. By a process of debate and consensus, we have arrived at this list of ten…

IT’S “GAME ON” FOR SEAN ASTIN IN NEW VIDEOGAME SERIES

Actor Sean Astin (Lord of Rings, Stranger Things, Goonies) presents “What You Don’t Know” about gaming in new 10 episode online series that will explore the history of game development and the videogame industry. Episodes will run the gamut from the origins of the Xbox, how Mario got his name, where the Pokémon phenomenon started and many…

Steam Launches Remote Play

The newest feature to hit Steam, Remote Play, is a major game-changer (pun intended). Without going into too much technical detail, Steam Remote Play allows you to play local-only multiplayer games online with your friends, refresh a huge part of your games catalog, and not have to actually get in a car and visit your friend in person as you retrofit your couch…

LOST EMBER by Mooneye Studios

I have been down a rabbit hole reading works by Graham Harman, Ian Bogost and Timothy Morton concerned with the idea that all things factor in existence, not merely consciousness. This is called post-anthropocentrism, or object-oriented ontology (OOO for short).

It posits that the Cartesian notion found in quantum physics and philosophy that consciousness…

IndieCade 2019 was more subdued in terms of its pageantry, its pared-down award show, and less general corporate presence, but the offerings were stronger than ever. This, after all, is why we attend.

Besides the winners, we wanted to shine a light on our own standouts from this year’s premiere indie game showcase.

by Elizabeth LaPensée & The Indian Land Tenure Foundation

The IndieCade 2019 Official Award Winners

For the the first time, the IndieCade awards were held at Santa Monica College, right where the show itself was taking place, which was a nice change. Under a practically full moon and warm, but beautiful night sky of October 11th, the crowd of attendees was almost completely made up of developers and nominees. The smell of buttery popcorn wafted through…

IndieCade has announced the official festival nominees and lineup for its 2019 North American independent games celebration, hosted October 10-12 in Santa Monica. This year’s festival will return to the Center for Media and Design at Santa Monica College and will feature a diverse and curated selection of the industry’s most innovative, creative and thought-provoking independent titles.

IndieCade…

Dicey Dungeons by Terry Cavanaugh

Terry Cavanagh releasing a new indie game into the pond always causes big ripples. He may be a brilliant game designer, but he plays a manic maniac on indie game release TV. From Super Hexagon to VVVVV, his tongue-in-cheek, hyper-game offerings are often pure uncut ludology video gaming.

Dicey Dungeons, finally out of a lengthy Early Access phase, sees the…

Deck Box Dungeons from Ariah Studios

Deck Box Dungeons from Ariah Studios is a successfully-Kickstarted, app-supported (but not reliant) tabletop game for 1-4 players that comes with a card-deck-sized package containing custom dice and meeples, 5 standard 6-sided dice and of course, a deck of cards.

While you can go to their website and download print and play campaigns for free, the app version…

Green Hell – A Jungle Survival Game from Creepy Jar

I first entered the lush, humid and mysterious outpost in Green Hell from Polish developers Creepy Jar, within a week of its Early Access release in 2018. Already, I was amazed by the rich and detailed canopy of banana trees, vines and insects populating the small area where we found our camp. At the time, there was not much more to do than…

Mythgard from Rhino Games

Still very much in development, Mythgard – developed and self-published by Rhino Games – is a free-to-play, additional-deck-purchase CCG that borrows heavily pays tribute to Richard Garfield’s Magic: the Gathering card game while attempting its own streamlined or embellished mechanics.

In the current version of Mythgard, you are building a deck to defeat…