Visual novels work for some people and not for others. Since they originated in Japan, even most western-made visual novels use art influenced by Japanese comics and cartoons, which bothers some. Others dislike the fact that the player's only interactions with a visual novel are reading and making dialogue choices. There are some visual novels that seek to go beyond the norm, though, to give players something closer to a standard gaming experience with a visual novel wrapper. InvertMouse's Bermuda is one such game, interspersing stealth action segments into a visual novel format.

The game starts with the main character and two of his friends getting abducted by humanoid aliens in a high-tech submarine. The aliens decide that the humans are too much trouble and decide to send them back with their memories wiped, but their send-people-home machine breaks down right after sending one person, the only female among the three humans, back to the surface. The aliens, all of whom are female and who are under the command of a child, find themselves faced with keeping two of the humans on board without knowing if the transporter successfully wiped the girls' memory, and although they treat the main character and his remaining friend well, they're still prisoners. And a not-insignificant portion of the submarine's crew is urging the commander to execute the humans because the fate of their own race is at stake.

Since they're not kept under stringent guard, the main character and his friend decide to sneak around and try to eavesdrop on their captors. That's where the stealth missions come in. The player must move from deck to deck, hiding in shadows, turning off lights, and sounding false alarms to distract patrolling guards as seen in the video above.

Bermuda was succesfully Kickstarted for 200% of its goal at the end of June and is already out. It's available for Windows, Mac, and Linux directly from the developer (go to the downloads page and wait for the widget to load at the top) for $7. It's also up for votes on Greenlight.

[Bermuda]

Twitch, frantic gameplay, simple controls, a most addictive nature, colourful cartoony graphics, a touch of endless running and a crocodile flying a weird contraption are all a mobile game needs to offer in order to feel welcome on my tablet and Monster Snack does indeed generously offer it all. It even throws in a light puzzling aspect to the proceedings and a humongous, murderous fish, thus becoming a lovely thing you at least have to try. Just keep in mind that after the first tutorial-esque minutes things gets really, brutally hard.

Monster Snack is free to download on the App Store for the iPhone and iPad and offers in-app purchases.

Submissions are now officially open for the 2015 Independent Games Festival, the signature competition for indie games, to be held for a 17th year during GDC 2015 in San Francisco next March. This directly follows a record-breaking year which saw nearly 900 entries for the 2014 event, including top prizewinners like Papers, Please, Luxuria Superbia and DEVICE 6.

The deadlines for the Main and Student Showcase categories for the 17th IGF are October 22th and October 31st, 2014 respectively, with finalists announced in January 2015. Finalists' games will once again be playable at the packed IGF Pavilion on the Game Developers Conference 2015 Expo Floor, and will compete for over $50,000 in prizes.

These awards include the Excellence in Visual Art, Audio, Design, and Narrative Awards, which will have six finalists each, with the winner getting $3,000 in each category. There will also be six finalists for the $30,000 Seumas McNally Grand Prize.

This year also sees the return of the Best Student Game award, with eight finalists ($3,000 prize), and the special Nuovo Award ($5,000, eight finalists) will be offered again to honor 'abstract, shortform, and unconventional' games. Finally, the IGF Audience Award ($3,000) will be decided by a public vote from all of the Main Competition finalists.

The Independent Games Festival is the longest-running and highest profile independent video game festival, summit and showcase. It has served as a springboard for several games that have gone on to become critical and cultural hits. Previous IGF prize winners from the past 16 years include Spelunky, Fez, Minecraft, Limbo, World of Goo, Braid, Castle Crashers, Everyday Shooter and many more of the game industry's breakthrough independent titles.

Winners will be announced on stage at the high-profile Independent Games Festival Awards on Wednesday, March 4th, 2015, at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, with the IGF Pavilion open from March 4-6th, and the sister Independent Games Summit event taking place on March 2nd and 3rd.

The Independent Games Festival is a part of the 2015 Game Developers Conference, which will be held from March 2nd through March 6th, 2015 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. IGF continues to be the largest annual gathering of independent video game developers, showcasing top talent across the industry and keeping a pulse on the future of independent games.

Submissions to the competition are now open to all independent game developers; here are the important dates you should mark on your calendar as you prepare for IGF 2015:

o August 6, 2014 - Submissions are Open
o October 22, 2014 - Submission Deadline, Main Competition
o October 31, 2014 - Submission Deadline, Student Competition
o March 2 - March 6, 2015 - Game Developers Conference 2015
o March 2 - March 3, 2015 - Independent Games Summit @ GDC 2015
o March 4 - March 6, 2015 - IGF Pavilion @ GDC 2015
o March 6, 2015 - IGF Awards Ceremony (Winners announced!)

For a complete list of information on the 2015 Independent Games Festival, including submission specifics and frequently asked questions, please visit the official Independent Games Festival website.

[As the Independent Games Festival opens for the 17th year, longstanding Chairman Brandon Boyer explains the rules and expectations for this year's much-awaited indie game showcase.]

Hi everyone, and welcome again to the 2015 Independent Games Festival, our 17th annual ceremony celebrating the best in independent games. As you read this post, we will have just begun accepting submissions for this year's festival, which will remain open until Wednesday, October 22nd for our Main Competition, and October 31st for our Student Competition.

As usual, the festival will culminate with our awards show on Wednesday, March 4th, 2015, during Game Developers Conference 2015, located at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.

Typically, this is the bit of this blog post where I outline our changes to the festival, but after a few years of larger outward-facing policy shifts, this year we're holding steady with the same rules as 2014, and continuing to focus our enhancements on the backend that our entrants, judges and juries use, to make it easier than ever to submit, discover and rate the games we receive.

Interested in being a judge in IGF 2015?

With that said, we would like to extend the same invitation as we did late last year and open a call for new judges via this application form. We're always looking for more diverse voices to make up our judging body for both the Main and Student competition, and this form is your way of expressing your interest.

If you are involved in the games industry in any capacity and are not submitting a game to this year's festival, feel free to express your interest in becoming a judge by filling out this form. Please note that we can't guarantee all applications will be accepted -- if you've been selected, you'll receive an email from us when our judging process has begun.

Now that submissions are officially open for IGF 2015, you can refer to our official rules for both the Main and Student Competitions in much greater detail.

If you have any questions about any of the detailed changes above, please don't hesitate to drop us an email at chairman@igf.com to discuss this further. Hope you're all having a great year, and we're all looking forward to seeing what you're all preparing for this year's Festival!

Coming from Quadro Delta and Re-Logic of Terraria fame, Pixel Piracy is a truly unique and complex game sporting pirates and tropical islands, and I do love both pirates and tropical islands. Well, in games I do. In real life they are either too lethal or too humid, but I digress.

What you should actually know about Pixel Piracy is that it's an ambitious strategy, RPG, open world, simulation thing with an excellent soundtrack and some rather lovely pixel-art. It's a game that lets you gather and manage a crew, upgrade your ship, sail and plunder the seas, tend to your pets, modify your weapons, grab all the loot and die a very permanent, very significant death.

Obviously, just jumping into something like this isn't the best of ideas, as it essentially lacks a tutorial, but taking the 15 minutes needed to get to grips with the basics is time worth spending.

Though Pixel Piracy is a great game that is really enjoyable and particularly deep (I do especially love the banter between crew-members) it's still a bit rough around the edges. Then again, the almost daily patches are rapidly fixing things and adding content, which is always nice to see. As are all those amazing little moments hidden within it.

Pixel Piracy is out now on Steam for Windows, Mac and Linux.

Here's something a little bit different: Cloud Chamber is a video series that you watch in segments, before jumping into forum areas to discuss what's going on and what your theories are. If people like your ideas, they'll upvote you, and the more upvotes you get, the more score you receive.

It's the closest I've seen to turning a TV series into a video game. The show is presented as a series of nodes on a landscape, and you click through them to advance the story and receive more information. It's pretty hard to talk about the actual story itself without spoiling it massively, so you might want to watch the above video before taking a punt on it, to make sure it's the sort of thing you'll be into. You can find Cloud Chamber on Steam.

Somehow turning rock, paper, scissors into an interesting game or even a mildly enjoyable basis for a game mechanic always sounded kind of impossible to me. A wildly innovative, brilliant puzzler was obviously right out, but then Amidos went on and released the excellent RPSWipe and deeply, thoroughly shocked me. This, you see, is a game featuring an admittedly wildly twisted version of rock, paper, scissors that is simply ingenious and incredibly addictive. A game that can either be played as a solo puzzler, against an AI or, frantically, against another player.

More impressively it's a game inspired by Threes and 2048 that I absolutely loved. You can also love it for $0.99 (that's a 50% off launch sale) on your Android or iOS device too.

We previously checked out The Few, a strategy game centred around the air combat of World War II. Now we've got Victory at Sea, a similar style title that launches on Steam today, which follows the naval combat exploits during the war.

There are torpedoes, depth charges, cannons, destroyers, cargo ships, and all the other essential ship-faring jazz that you might expect from a sea-based game. As you build up your fleet, you'll take control of a single ship while you guide the rest in the general direction you want them to go. Or completely micromanage them if you prefer - there's plenty of depth that allows you to do so. You can find Victory at Sea on Steam.

As a fan of the turn-based strategy RPG genre, I walked into Rime Berta with a lot of experience under my belt. That turned out to be a good thing, because the game doesn't bother with things like tutorials. It sticks to genre conventions, making it easy to pick up if you already know how these games work, but it offers a couple of surprises. The first of those was that I lost the second battle and the second was that when I retreated from that battle, I got to keep all the experience my units had gained in the fight. Japanese developer NEXT-SOFT+ made Rime Berta to be a challenge for fans of the genre and they have succeeded.

At the beginning of the game, the player is told of a tower. A long time ago, the people dwelling within created a "hallows" which had wish-granting powers. Once word of that got out, people started coming around trying to obtain it, so some of the people left the tower and settled at its base to protect it. Recently, the people of the town have been hit by a terrible sickness, and now one girl, Livia, is venturing into the tower to try and get her hands on the "hallows" of legend and save the people she grew up with.

Once Livia gets into the tower, she runs into an autonomous puppet who agrees to fight for her in exchange for getting to go past the tower guardians and see what's farther along. Affi, the puppet, thus becomes one of the player's first units in the game. Others offer to join the party after a battle ends.

There are actually three levels of difficulty in the game, with the normal difficulty being the one that handed me a defeat almost immediately. The easy difficulty is much easier, but the lack of a tutorial still makes Rime Berta a sub-optimal game for those seeking to get into the genre. One nice feature is that the difficulty setting can be changed in between battles once a game has been started, so there is some flexibility. The fact that you can lose a battle or quit it early and still retain all experience gains, though, makes it fun to level rather than frustrating. You can try different tactics, see how they play out, and still come out with something for the time put in.

Aside from changing difficulty on the fly, there are a couple of other nice options in the game. The full Japanese version of the game is available from the title options menu, and both the English and Japanese versions of the game have Japanese voice acting which can be enabled and disabled. Some options must be set from the game launcher, though, including resolution (which is capped at 1280 x 800), enabling gamepad controls, and connecting one's Twitter account to the game for 1-button quick sharing of screenshots.

If you already enjoy this kind of game, Rime Berta is likely to be right up your alley. If you don't like this kind of game or haven't tried any of this kind of game before, you might not want to get it. Its regular price (which includes the 22-track soundtrack) is 14.99, but it's currently on sale for $11.99 as a lunch discount. Right now it's only available via Playism, with no announcements made about later releases on other platforms.

IndieGames and FreekeyFridays bring you another set of free indie games: King Arthur's Gold, Megabyte Punch, and Famaze. Freekeyfridays was created as a way to garner exposure for indies through giving away a mix of well-known indie games and up-and-coming titles.

There are two ways to win this week.

Five sets of codes will be given for the raffle.Enter here:

Three sets of codes will be given for this Twitter contest : Create a new Ninja Turtle name with color and weapon of choice. Like @Freekeyfridays and #FKF52 with response for a chance to win.

King Arthur's Gold (Desura, Windows)




Megabyte Punch (Desura, Windows)




Famaze (Steam, Windows)

Devs can submit their game for promotion here.

In the board game colamone the objective is to score eight points or more by getting your pieces safely to the opponent's starting row. Each piece has a different number on them, and their dots also determine how the pieces can be moved across the board. A piece with a high number will have fewer possible moves, while low-numbered pieces are able to move back and forth in multiple directions.

Both players can only move one piece per turn, and you can move your piece over a rival's to take it out of the game. Any piece that is placed on the opposition's starting row will become invincible, but these pieces cannot be moved any further until a winner or a draw is declared.

colamone is available to play now at Mogera.

Excellent action puzzler Wyv and Keep, one of the criminally few games to let you go treasure hunting with a friend, has finally popped up on Steam, meaning that you now have another chance at grabbing it. It's right there, it is.

Wyv and Keep: The Temple of the Lost Idol, to give it its full game, is an offering with beautiful pixel art that will have you ransacking a most mysterious and appropriately dangerous Amazonian temple in search of ones of those lost idols. You know, the ones everyone keeps getting murdered over.

It's a game of reflexes, wit and co-operation. A game meant to be enjoyed by two players, but also one to allow for single-player action too.

Wyv and Keep and all its six game worlds are currently available on Steam for Windows. Linux and Mac versions will soon be released.

RobotLovesKitty showed off an extremely early build of Upsilon Circuit at PAX East earlier this year which I took for a spin. It was clearly in the way-before-alpha stages of development, but hearing their plans for the game was really exciting. There wasn't anything like it. Now the game is going to be playable on the PAX Prime show floor, and those robotic kitty lovers have confirmed quite a few details about the project.

RobotLovesKitty is merging Twitch-style live streaming with interactive television programming in Upsilon Circuit. Think The Running Man meets Twitch Plays Pokemon and you'll have an idea of what's going on here. The game's world is hosted on one server, where only eight people are playing at once. When one of them dies, they die forever. That's it. They're gone. Then, a new player is selected from the audience watching, and placed into the game as a new contestant.

The players in the audience can make decisions about what happens in the game. They can choose to send items to aid players, place hazards in the way or even change the layout of the world. The audience is also in charge of spending experience points to level players up.

Other confirmed details are that PVP is always on, so if players should cross paths they would be able to fight each other. The objective is to collect Dream Tech crystals which are hidden throughout the world. Enemies have dynamic AI personalities. And of course, Ronny Raygon will be the game's lovable digital host.

It's being said that the build at PAX Prime will put the game into the hands of more people than will ever get the chance to play the game when it's actually released. But taking a chance on this has an added bonus. The person with the highest score at the end of each day all weekend will win one of the eight starting spots when the game launches, so four slots total are up for grabs. Better start working on ways to win over the live audience on the showfloor now...

It's been a while since the last trailer roundup, and today we return with a full stack of ten games. Featured today are a minimalist reaction game for touchscreens, a Guitar Hero-inspired game that wants to take advantage of Steamworks, a physics-based RTS with a ridiculous setting, a god game where your people can misinterpret your wishes, an RPG in which digital and real blend together, an environmental puzzle game about a broken man, an adventure game involving a thought-broadcasting social network, a classic style point and click adventure game, a puzzle game based on classic toys, and a local multiplayer mech dueling game with a few surprises in the shadow of its moon.

Angularis
iOS, Android | Free (Ad-supported w/ IAP) | Available now

If you're tired of minimalist tap games that designed to end quickly and be played over and over again, Angularis isn't for you. For everyone else, it's free and a very quick download. Hexagonal and octagonal modes can be unlocked through play. The ads come up between games and the only IAP is for their removal.

Chiptune Champion
Windows | $ TBA | Release TBA | Greenlight

When I first looked at this trailer, I asked myself what made it different from Frets on Fire. Developer Prodigenius lists the following features: a track editor for custom songs, Steam Workshop support to allow public sharing of custom tracks, online leaderboards, player profiles, an experience and leveling system, and achievements. The track editor and Steam Workshop support alone gives this the potential to grow an excellent community. There is no information yet about when it might be available or for how much, but it's looking for Greenlight votes.

Conflicks: Revolutionary Space Battles
Windows, Mac, Linux | $ TBA | Fall 2014

This trailer, which developer Artifice Studio calls, "an amazing looking story trailer released that sets up all the factions and lore in the game," is worth watching for sheer entertainment value alone. Beyond that, the game is to be a physics-based RTS. I think this is one to watch.

Crest
Windows, Mac, Linux | $ TBA | Release TBA | Indiegogo | Greenlight | Demo

Eat Create Sleep is creating a god game in which the only way to communicate with your people is to write commandments for them. Hopefully they'll interpret them the way you mean them... but they might not. They have an Indiegogo campaign running with a funding target of $20,000 and the game available as a backer reward for as little as $15. There's also a playable prototype.

Data Hacker: Reboot
Windows | $ TBA | Spring 2015 | Kickstarter (funded) | Greenlight

Data Hacker: Reboot is the third game in a series of 2D RPGs set in a world where the wall between physical and digital realms has fallen. Developer New Reality Games fell short of their funding goal the first time they tried to Kickstart Reboot, but the game reached 100% funding almost immediately during this second campaign. The first two of games are available for about $5 and $10 US, and both have demos available.

MIND: Path to Thalmus
Windows (eventually Mac) | $12.99 | Available now

From the developer: "MIND features more than 30 puzzles and 6 interactive environmental tools to solve them, such as turning day into night, covering the world in fog, summoning storms and traveling to the past. In the end, you will face down enemies by using everything you have learnt along the way. Interwoven into the gameplay itself, the story tells you about a father broken down by his mistakes...." It's currently only available on Steam but will soon be available on DRM-free platforms such as GOG and the Humble Store. Oculus Rift support is also in the works.

The Neural Network
Windows | $4.99 | September 18, 2014 | Greenlight

Developer South Orchard Studios is calling The Neural Network an adventure role-playing story, putting emphasis on a fast-paced story with no battles or grinding to slow things down. The setting features a social media system that broadcasts people's thoughts to everyone else. The main character delivers a package which is part of an attack on that social networking system and finds himself accused of deliberately facilitating the crime.

Panchito Chepas
Windows, Mac, Linux | $ TBA | Release TBA | Indiegogo | Demo (Windows)

A traditional style point and click adventure game, intended to satisfy old-school fans of the genre rather than to try to revolutionize it. Panchito Chepas is currently in the crowdfunding stage, having raised 18% of its €6,000 (approx. $8,000 US) goal with 17 days to go. A copy of the game is available as a backer reward for as little as €5 (approx. $7 US). The demo link above is for the English-language demo, but there is a Spanish-language demo, as well.

Shapist
iPad now; iPhone, Android, Windows phone August 28th | $2.99 | Epocu

We've covered Shapist before, but on August 28th it will be available not just for iPad but for Android and Windows Phone as well. It will be free to try, with the first 17 levels available at no cost and all versions will include the extra puzzles added since our initial review.

Stardust Vanguards
Windows, Linux | $ TBA | Fall 2014 | Greenlight

Yet another local multiplayer game, but this one is designed to let you live out your dreams of being an anime mech pilot facing off against other elite pilots in epic space duels. Features of Stardust Vanguards include the ability to call in friendly ships to aid you, random events such as space pirate attacks (with the space pirates able to win the battle), and multiple gameplay modes. Right now it's slated for Windows and Linux only, but developer Zanrai Interactive plans to make it available on Mac soon after.

In the Game Boy Jam entry Roguelight, you take on the role of a hero who is trapped inside a very dark dungeon. Armed with only a bow and a handful of arrows, players must venture forth and collect coins so that new skills can be purchased at a shop after the end of every expedition.

Each time you fire an arrow it will illuminate the part of the level that it lands on. Players can also hold the shoot button to keep their arrow nocked, and its glow will light up the immediate area surrounding our hero.

Roguelight is available to download from Game Jolt and itch.io.

It may be tough being an android in a human-run world, but change is always an option and things around you really do look beautiful. Then again, everything in The Maker's Eden is beautiful and its (brilliant) neo-noir, science fiction setting seems to be on the brink of change. Also, something one would most definitely be wise to experience, if only for the masterful fusion of animated comic book style graphics with rich, text-based gameplay.

The Maker's Eden, you see, an expertly written choose-your-own-adventure with some quality adventure gaming puzzles thrown in, is a fantastic, thoughtful and hugely entertaining game. It's set in a grim but lively world filled with flying cars, vintage LPs and all sorts of robots, where you, a suspiciously unmarked android, have to initially escape the police and move on into discovering the purpose of your existence.

Intriguing characters, expertly realized locales, well-written dialogue and a highly atmospheric soundtrack, all help turn this virtual journey into a really unique, quality experience. An experience I frankly can't recommend strongly enough.

But, don't trust me. Trust the The Maker's Eden demo and then do the right thing and promptly buy the full game. It's available DRM-free over at Screwy Lightbulb's site and on Steam for Windows, Mac and Linux.

Keep in mind that this is an episodic game and only Act I (and a vignette) has been released. Grabbing it though will also give you access to the following two acts upon their release and all the upcoming vignettes.

PAX Aus is back for a second year, and they've just announced the six winners for their Indie Showcase. The games, selected from a pool of over 100 submissions, cover a variety of genres and platforms.

PAX Aus 2014 will be taking place in Melbourne from October 31st to November 2nd, where all six of these games will be playable.

Airscape: The Fall of Gravity
Developed by Cross-Product | Windows

Captured from its undersea home by a mechanical alien race, the player - a 'Grimpoteuthis abyssicola' (Dumbo Octopus) must journey through a strange and disorienting environment where gravity follows the contours of the land and blobs of water float suspended in the air. There's no fighting in Airscape - you'll have to run, jump, and dodge your way past torpedoes, rockets, lasers, seekers, and more.

Assault Android Cactus
Developed by Witch Beam | Windows, PS4, PSVita, Wii U

Assault Android Cactus is a manic twin stick shooter with one to four player local co-op, combining arcade style gameplay with masses of enemies, transforming environments and a colourful cast of synthetic heroines. Using a battery timer mechanic in place of lives, Assault Android Cactus is built around high speed gameplay and skillful chaining of enemy kills. Set across five decks of a massive spaceship, robot opponents slash, shoot, launch missiles from their backs, fire screen sweeping lasers and create smaller enemies to attack, while the giant enemy bosses fight with everything they've got across multiple phases.

Expand
Developed by Chris Johnson and Chris Larkin | Windows, Mac and Linux

Expand is a single player video game in which players explore a circular labyrinth constructed as an abstract black and white geometric landscape. Players must avoid getting squashed as the labyrinth twists, stretches and reveals itself, always responding to the players actions and movements.

Gunscape
Developed by Blowfish Studios | Windows, Xbox One

Gunscape provides a toolbox of iconic weapons, monsters and level elements as the foundation for players to build co-op and single-player levels or multiplayer arenas in the most intuitive way possible. It does this by offering a series of easy-to-use tools based on a block-placement interface most gamers are accustomed to. And unlike similar tools currently available on the market, Gunscape aims to empower its authors to enjoy the process of abstract level design by imposing the same kind of refreshing constraints that the still-enduring user map communities of the earliest FPS games such as Doom™ enjoyed; rather than building a game, players build a level within a game that features robust action gameplay and a vast array of weapons, enemies and level components specifically designed to complement one another.

Screencheat
Developed by Samurai Punk | Windows, Mac, Linux

Screencheat is the split-screen party shooter where everyone is invisible and you have to "screencheat" to win!

Wave Wave
Developed by Thomas Janson | iOS

Wave Wave is a savage arcade game that challenges players to shift up and down precisely as a sharp wave, desperately dodging a never-ending onslaught of geometric doom. Players are hooked into a blitzing world of constant deaths and instant restarts.

[PAX Aus 2014]

In the GBJam entry Free Fall, players are tasked with saving a space station by retrieving the three missing data disks. You'll have to avoid deadly spikes while searching for the missing key items, and the errand is made much more difficult by the zero-gravity environment.

Players can fall horizontally or vertically, but they will only stop moving when their feet touch solid ground. Colliding with an alien creature also kills you instantly, though you won't be penalized much for dying since there are ample checkpoint areas scattered all around the station.

Free Fall is available to download now from Game Jolt.

IndieGames and FreekeyFridays bring you another set of free indie games. Freekeyfridays was created as a way to garner exposure for indies through giving away a mix of well-known indie games and up-and-coming titles.

This week's games are I Shall Remain from Scorpius Games (Steam, Windows), Traffic Craze from ZenLogic (APPSTORE, iOS) and The Bridge from The Quantum Astrophysicists Guild (Steam, Windows, Mac, Linux).

There are two ways to win this week:

Five sets of codes will be given for the raffle. Enter here:

Three sets of codes will be given for this Twitter contest :Create a sequel game title based on your favorite movie. Like @Freekeyfridays and #FKF53 with response for a chance to win.

I Shall Remain




The Bridge




Traffic Craze

Devs can s