Indie games mania!

[ThunderPeel2001]

Erm. Apart from Braid and Dave Gilbert's adventures, I'm pretty much in the dark... Except when I listen to the podcast I hear intriguing games, like something called "Marriage"? Made by some dude at EA or something?

I have a feeling that there's a ton of genius indie games that I'm totally not aware of. I'm not so interested in the indie games that attempt to ape more expensive titles, but instead those that do something a big company would never attempt.

This weird Marriage game, whatever it is, sounds very promising... Where can I find it and what else is there around this sphere of genius/experimental games?

[ThunderPeel2001]

I found The Marriage... I like it!

[Noyb]

The Marriage is a complete piece of abstract horse manure. It vexed me so much that I had to make a Video game rebuttal in the form of an abstract art game generator.

A developer called Increpare has been doing some interesting experiments in games. Opera Omnia is a game about rewriting history through academic research. Mirror Stage tells a fractured love story through fractals.

[Ben X]

This might be a good place to start:

http://db.tigsource.com/

[Ben X]

Oh, and this is a cool little XBox360 Community Games review site:

http://www.xnplay.co.uk/

(also, some good free/cheap games here and here!)

[ThunderPeel2001]

The Marriage is a complete piece of abstract horse manure. It vexed me so much that I had to make a Video game rebuttal in the form of an abstract art game generator.

Uhh. Considering that this was one of the first ever attempts at creating art using the rules of a game... why did you feel the need to rebut it?

It's like the you're the neighbour of the first caveman to ever put ink to cave-wall. Instead of offering objective criticism or, hell, even praise for attempting something so bold, you went back to your cave, smeared faeces all over the walls and said, "There! That's what I think of your attempts at creating art!".

Edit: Actually, the idea of your game is a pretty neat experiment in itself.

[Ben X]

MY PLEASURE.

[Noyb]

My main problem with The Marriage was that his metaphor was so simplistic that with a different title it would have a completely different meaning. I would argue that the title is outside of the rules of the game. Since growth/decay can model so many different interactions between individuals, creatures, entities, and concepts, the same ruleset could inform a great number of different metaphors depending on external information like the title, an artist's statement, and the graphical style.

If The Marriage were called The War:

The squares represent two warring civilizations. Their size represents their economic strength, and their opacity represents their willingness to fight. The circles are resources. Over time, a nation's economy collapses without an influx of new resources, and their will to fight also decreases. Your mouse is the hand of Fate, removing resources and compelling the nations to attack each other. Pink is a stronger military nation than Blue, so each fight ends up strengthening Pink and hurting Blue. After each fight, both nations see their will to fight reinvigorated. Once a nation either runs out of resources or loses the will to fight, the remainders of the two groups are assimilated, as in the final scene with tiny blues and pinks (individual people from each group) living in harmony.

I also want to argue with this attitude that he is one of the first artists to use video games to convey a meaning through the rules, but I'm having trouble thinking of any earlier games off hand that are quite as abstracted as The Marriage. I am almost positive he isn't, although without a specific counter-example and with the barrier to programming games so low in recent years, I can't actually make that claim.

[Ben X]

Another great indie site is www.tunastix.com !

[ThunderPeel2001]

Thank you BBX, I do appreciate it

[ThunderPeel2001]

My main problem with The Marriage was that his metaphor was so simplistic that with a different title it would have a completely different meaning. I would argue that the title is outside of the rules of the game. Since growth/decay can model so many different interactions between individuals, creatures, entities, and concepts, the same ruleset could inform a great number of different metaphors depending on external information like the title, an artist's statement, and the graphical style.

You're still not making much sense, and your "War" analogy doesn't hold up as well as the actual Marriage one. I have no idea about your marital status, but for me it actually sums up the feeling pretty well.

I think an attempt at representing a complex human relationship using RULES is quite audacious and worthy of respect. How successful it was is almost moot.

[Ben X]

Thank you BBX, I do appreciate it