Hello and welcome to the 19th annual Independent Games Festival Letter From The Chairperson!

I wanted to take a moment to thank the IGF staff, developers, judges and jury members who were supportive and active in my first year as IGF Chairman! It was great to work through the process from start to finish and I appreciate all the feedback, conversations and suggestions that came along from everyone throughout the year.

Also, a big congrats again to all the teams who were nominated, received honorable mentions or won awards last year! It was an amazing selection of games that I feel not only echo the voices of our community, but also reflect how far we've all come as an industry. I'm really looking forward to discover what this new year has in store!

Based on the experiences of last year, (and since there's always room for improvement) we've decided on some changes to this upcoming IGF. I'll outline the more notable items below in more detail.

In addition to these changes, we're also making updates and tweaks to the entry system which should better clarify hardware requirements and streamline a few hidden parts of the system. You may not interact directly with these changes as entrants or judges, but they'll be there and working behind the scenes to make the entire process more efficient. We'll also be launching a new, updated/streamlined version of the IGF website in September, its first update in more than 10 years!

alt.ctrl.GDC Award Announcement

Let's start off with one of the biggest changes this year - the introduction of the alt.ctrl.GDC award, a brand new award given out during the IGF ceremony!

The alt.ctrl.GDC showcase has quickly become a staple at Game Developers Conference and is consistently highlighted as one of the most popular and entertaining showcases by attendees each year. Co-created by veteran indie curator John Polson, alt.ctrl.GDC is an on-site showcase of alternative control schemes and accessible interactions in games that shine a spotlight on the creative, wild and unique community of alt hardware games.

Like a growing number of people, I've been enamored with this movement over the years and feel it embodies the spirit of play and creation at the core of the indie community. These games and interactive experiences bring so much joy and curiosity, but are often difficult to share with a larger audience due to limited production.

I'm so very happy to incorporate the existing entry system, curation and expertise of alt.ctrl.GDC into an award recognized during the IGF ceremony! With this addition, IGF aims to introduce new audiences to this growing movement and celebrate the creative spirit of the people who make these experiences possible.

Please note - to apply for the alt.ctrl.GDC award you will need to submit directly to the regular 2017 alt.ctrl.GDC showcase and NOT via the main IGF entry system. Details and information on deadlines, entry qualifications and links will be announced shortly!

Updated Nuovo Award

In a similar vein to the alt.ctrl.GDC award, the existing IGF Nuovo Award aims to bring attention to games that can't be defined in other categories, but make us think about the medium of games in new and boundary-pushing ways.

This has evolved over the years of its introduction to include vignettes, experimental design, peer recognition, and everything in-between. As we have the conversation of where games cross over into art, we'll be re-defining the Nuovo award as the category that defines that line. This moves the award away from being 'abstract' or 'shortform' and allows for selecting a wholly unique creation regardless of length and style.

Updated Definition

Nuovo Award: The 'art prize' category of the Independent Games Festival, the Nuovo award is given to the game title that makes the jurors think differently about games as a medium.

I'd encourage Judge and Jury members to keep in mind that the length of a game shouldn't necessarily define its other concrete qualities such as visual, design, narrative and audio - which are highlighted in the other categories.

By more clearly defining the Nuovo award and integrating the alt.ctrl.GDC award we hope to have a place for the growing variety of games and to guide the selection process in more definitive way. To read more about the Award Categories and Official Rules please click here.

Continued Efforts

As with last year, the Student award will be fully integrated into the Main Competition with the same $25 entry fee and judging process. We saw an amazing crop of Student games last year and hope for more overlap and recognition this upcoming year! Remember that entry open and close dates for Student awards are the same as the Main Competition.

Calls for Judges and Jury selections will be coming soon as well. If you've been interested in helping out IGF, keep an eye out for future announcements and signups.

As always, I hope to continue bringing a positive and welcoming spirit to the IGF through my work this upcoming year. Thanks to all of you for your participation and I'm looking forward to seeing what exciting new games are selected this year!

[Submissions are now open for the 19th Annual IGF, & the official announcement including deadlines and additional details is available here.]

- IGF Chairperson Kelly Wallick (chairperson@igf.com)

Submissions are now officially open for the 2017 Independent Games Festival, the signature competition for indie games, to be held for its 19th year during GDC 2017 in San Francisco next March. This directly follows a record-breaking year which saw over 750 entries for the 2016 event, including top prizewinners like Her Story, Mini Metro and Undertale.

The deadline for all submissions to the IGF this year will be October 24th, with finalists announced in early January 2017. Finalists' games will once again be playable at the packed IGF Pavilion on the Game Developers Conference 2017 Expo Floor, and will compete for over $50,000 in prizes.

As per normal, 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 ($3,000 prize), and the special Nuovo Award ($5,000, eight finalists) will be offered again to honor the game title that 'makes the jurors think differently about games as a medium'. Finally, the IGF Audience Award ($3,000 prize) will be decided by a public vote from all of the competition finalists.

Organizers are also welcoming the alt.ctrl.GDC Award, an affiliated award to be given out during the IGF ceremony, honoring intriguing and inventive games using unique one-of-a-kind controllers. Finalists and the winner for this award will be picked from entries into the popular on-site GDC exhibit, which will open a little later in 2016.

More information on this year's Independent Games Festival's changes and awards is available via IGF Chairperson Kelly Wallick's blog post.

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 18 years include Her Story, Papers, Please, Spelunky, 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 1st, 2017, at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, with the IGF Pavilion open from March 1st-3rd, and the sister Independent Games Summit event taking place on February 27th and 28th.

The Independent Games Festival is a part of the 2017 Game Developers Conference, which will be held from March 1st through March 3rd, 2017 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 2017:

• August 1, 2016 - Submissions are Open
• October 24, 2016 - Submission Deadline
• Early January, 2017 - IGF Finalists Announced
• February 27 - March 3, 2017 - Game Developers Conference 2017
• February 27 - February 28, 2017 - Independent Games Summit @ GDC 2017
• March 1 - March 3, 2017 - IGF Pavilion @ GDC 2017
• March 1, 2017 - IGF Awards Ceremony (Winners announced!)

For a complete list of information on the 2017 Independent Games Festival, including submission specifics and frequently asked questions, please visit the official Independent Games Festival website.

[Gamasutra, IndieGames.com, GDC, and IGF are sibling organizations under parent UBM Tech]

David Wehle, creator of Home Is Where One Starts..., is currently working on a third-person exploration game called The First Tree. Centered around two parallel stories of a fox trying to find her missing cubs and a young couple dealing with a tragedy in their family, the game should appeal to fans of Journey, Gone Home, or Firewatch. Taking control of the fox, players will discover artifacts from the young couple's life on her journey to the mystical First Tree. There isn't any more information currently available, but Wehle recently released a short trailer and it looks absolutely wonderful.

The First Tree is slated for an early 2017 release on PC and Mac

You can visit www.thefirsttree.com and follow creator David Wehle on Twitter for more information.

Featuring a lovely, semi-realistic, hand-painted European comic-book look and offering a story-driven campaign on the medieval shores of the North Sea coast, The Great Whale Road is one impressive strategy/RPG hybrid. You select a culture - only the Danes are currently available, as the game just entered Early Access - and then set off into the stormy seas. Each year is split in two. Summer is the sailing season, allowing you to seek adventures along the whale road. Winter, on the other hand, is spent at home, managing your settlement and planning for the year ahead.

You'll be confronted with decisions at every turn, no matter if you're sailing the high seas, visiting other settlements, or huddling around your hearth fire in the cold season. This makes the game feel very narrative-driven, as opposed to a pure management game. When a situation escalates into armed conflict you trade blows and nasty axe strikes in turn-based battles on a grid.

Many of the game's mechanics will be further fleshed out along the way, and the Danish culture will be joined by playable Northumbrians, Franks, and Picts. In its current state, The Great Whale Road is already fully playable and lots of fun - and not just for history buffs. Being an early access title, there are certain bugs and only a limited amount of content for now, but the development road map indicates that these flaws will be tackled soon. The full release is expected sometime this winter.

Joachim Sammer, CEO of Sunburned Games, was kind enough to answer a few questions.

Tell us about yourselves! Who exactly are Sunburned Games?

Sunburned Games was founded by my wife, Birgit, and me, after many rainy winters and summers in London. We decided to take a break from 'working for the man'. But I am not very good at taking breaks, thus Sunburned Games was born. I love historical games and I am a huge Paradox fan. And in April last year we got started on making a historical game of our own. So we began setting up the studio here in Valencia. The initial team consisted of two artists and one developer, which has grown to a team of ten - including Victor (our composer) and Birgit who looks after the finances and doubles as copy editor.

The game has been in early access for a week now. How has it been doing in terms of reception and feedback?

Overall the reception has been very good. It's an early access title, so there are some rough edges and we are starting with a content base to build upon. Many of the players have followed our progress for a while already, or have discovered the game in one of the preview let's play series on YouTube. This means they knew the game before they were buying it. But we also had some people who stumbled across the game and really liked the concept. We have already received a good number of suggestions and feedback to review and discuss. We are already working on some of the smaller suggestions like discarding items from storage, whereas any bigger or more complex items are being added to a related road map item.

Are you happy with the amount of coverage you got so far? How hard is it to get noticed these days?

I would say that it is more important to get noticed by the right audience than to just getting noticed by as many people as possible. There aren't many games like The Great Whale Road out there, and also not millions of players who play games like it. We had good coverage on YouTube, and we have seen that specialised channels have the biggest impact. In Germany we were covered by Writing Bull and Steinwallen, two YouTubers who focus on games with historical settings. For two days Germany was our biggest market, but by now the United States have taken the top spot. So our key challenge is to find the most efficient way of letting our target audience know that The Great Whale Road exists. I hope a few of them will be reading this.

Viking-themed games are pretty in demand these days. There is your game, Logic Artists' upcoming Expeditions: Viking, the just-announced Wolves of Midgard... is this a recent trend? And why did you choose this particular setting?

I think they have always been popular, Total War Medieval: Viking Invasion came out thirteen years ago. But of course TV series like Vikings and The Last Kingdom have given the whole theme an even stronger appeal. On the other hand, most Viking games have a fantasy setting - Wolves of Midgard, The Banner Saga, Viking: Battle for Asgard, and the lovely Jotun. Games like Expeditions: Viking and The Great Whale Road are few and far between. My starting point actually wasn't the Danes. The other side of the North Sea is actually the more exciting one during the seventh century. But it doesn't make sense to fight the rip current of popular culture, so we decided to start with the Danes.

How much research went into The Great Whale Road? From what I can tell, you strive for historical accuracy. Are there any actual scholars on your team?

A lot. I have been researching on and off for a year, and I am continuously looking into new areas when I am working on events and stories, for example early medieval epizootics. We also offered a history internship in cooperation with the University of Valencia last summer, during which our intern amassed a large amount of material and data. We have a decent library at the studio as well. I studied history at the University of Vienna in the early nineties, and was just short of my final thesis when I threw the towel and switched direction to go into IT. I always found the medieval period fascinating and my focus areas were medieval social history, the early medieval economy, and the Hundred Years' War.

Which other games influenced you the most?

At the beginning the inspiration was Total War, Crusader Kings II, and Mount & Blade on one side, and classics like Port Royale and The Patrician on the other. Then games like Sunless Sea and Darkest Dungeon came out, and that together with The Banner Saga helped me to convince myself that a game like this could work. The Great Whale Road was actually just a working title at the start, but after a brainstorming session that produced names like 'Action Saxons' I decided to stick with it.

You can purchase The Great Whale Road from Steam for $14.99. For more information, visit the game's website or follow Sunburned Games on Twitter.

Snow Horse has slipped onto Steam (and iOS a few days ago), finally giving horse snowboarding enthusiasts and hat aficionados the extreme sports game they have been waiting for.

Horses are surprisingly good at snowboarding in Snow Horse, put perhaps extra legs just give them more stability on the board. I'm no scientist, though. Anyway, you can do flips and tricks with them, but do try to make them land on their feet so you can get all the points and unlock new hats so you can look even sillier when you crash the next time.

Now, I just need to wait for my Xtreme Sports Horse game, and life will be pretty darn good.

Snow Horse is available for $5.99 on Steam and $1.99 on iOS. For more information on the game and Kinifi Games, you can follow them on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter.

The world of Why It Happened To Me? looks like a fun, lighthearted place. Yes, your head might not be screwed on too tight while you're there, but that just makes it easier for you to detach it and put on a pal's noggin. Plus, with a friend's head on, it's much easier to understand their problems and figure out how to solve them in this surreal point & clicker.

You want to improve your karma with good deeds throughout your time in Why It Happened To Me?, so helping out townsfolk and making new friends is a must. This means wandering around a wonderfully silly world filled with unique people and unique problems. No one seems all that upset about the head detaching thing, though. OTHER problems are what need to be dealt with.

If all goes well with the Kickstarter, you should be able to interact with dog people, plants, fish, ghosts, and then help them by wearing their heads sometime this December.

For more information on Why It Happened To Me? and Max Troy O'Donovan, you can head to the developer's site or follow them on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. The developer is also raising funding for the game on Kickstarter.

The environment is your greatest tool in Torreng Labs' Fabric, a first-person puzzler releasing next week. With two clicks, the level can be compressed and expanded, distorting the layout of the world to your advantage. Through this space-bending mechanic, Fabric drops you into a diverse array of tricky spatial challenges, where the world around you is meant to be broken.

Using your special gun, Fabric's voxel levels can be squeezed and compressed, eliminating impassable gaps, turning solid floors into impromptu elevators, and dynamically altering the design of the environment. Careful spatial manipulation is crucial when linking electric cables or trying to bypass energy field, among other obstacles.

However, altering the level is only part of your puzzle-solving arsenal. As you progress through Fabric's 60 stages, new abilities allow for more complex possibilities, none perhaps more so than the means to flip gravity and turns walls and ceilings into floor.

Fabric is coming to Steam on August 12th. For more details on the game and developer Torreng Labs, you can visit the game's site and pages on Twitter and Facebook.

A friendship like that between the hero of The Adventure Pals (formerly Super Adventure Pals 2) cannot be crushed by the humdrum problems of our dull, colorless world. The bright home of Sparkles the Giraffe, a place where a giraffe can fly by spinning his tongue and a boy can fight a huge monster made of vegetables, is far too vibrant to fade away, something that has brought its developers from the precipice of giving up and back into the swing of creating this delightful-looking adventure.

The Adventure Pals came dangerously close to cancellation when the developers ran out of cash to keep it all going. However, when two of the developers got together and had a little fun as just friends, they found they couldn't give up on the game. Having turned to Kickstarter to keep their dream going, they've brought an even sharper-looking, funny world than before.

Mr B has kidnapped your Papa, meaning to turn him into a hotdog. You set out to face them with your giraffe friend and pet rock. That was enough for me, but seeing all of the various platforming uses for a giraffe (that long neck is pretty handy) as well as the combat abilities of a rock with eyes, I'm sold. Created by a few friends based on childhood memories of finding adventure through imagination, The Adventure Pals lets you explore a lighthearted world, finding new tools and items while chatting with the local goofball NPCs whenever you're not facing the game's absurd bosses and monsters.

The developers are striving to contain the joy of childlike adventure in this goofy package. Also, where else will you find a giraffe that's willing to let you use it as a grappling hook? Certainly not the zoo, which I am no longer allowed to visit for unrelated reasons.

For more information on The Adventure Pals and Massive Monster, you can head to the developer's site or follow them on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. The game is also seeking development funding through Kickstarter.

Screenshot Saturday comes back with an longer collection of games in development after last week's break, from colorful puzzle platforming to intense sci-f action.

Hue
Fiddlesticks | PC, PS4, PS Vita, Xbox One | August 23rd
Color is yours to manipulate in this vibrant puzzle platformer. Shifting between different-hued dimensions let you vanish like-colored objects or activate other items, making each switch a matter of timing and planning.

Dujanah
Jack King-Spooner | PC, Mac, Linux | 2016
Set in an Islamic country of surreal sci-fi and magical realism, Dujanah follows a young woman on a narrative-driven adventure brought to life with clay and other hand-made materials.

End State
Iron Sight Ltd | PC, Mac
Described as a hybrid of Jagged Alliance and XCOM, End State pits your special ops team against global threats, with destructible environments and elite gear giving you an edge in turn-based encounters.

Airheart
Blindflug Studios | PC | 2016
Airheart combines roguelike structure with high-flying dogfighting action. Each layer of sky islands brings new enemies to fight, parts to unlock, and bosses to defeat.

Political Animals
Squeaky Wheel | PC, Mac | Late 2016
A more animalistic take on a political simulator, Political Animals offers a more colorful cute take on the fight for office. Both friendly methods like fund-raising and rallies or more illicit means like bribery and hiring agents are available to bring success to your campaign.

Objects In Space
Flat Earth Games | PC, Mac, Linux
In this small-scale space trading sim, you're free to build your own career and fortunes amid the dangers of space. With submarine-style combat and myriad events to react to, it's a hard life of tough challenges and tactical decisions.

SYNTHETIK
FlowFire Games | PC, Mac | Late 2016
Synthetik combines isometric dual stick action with sci-fi RPG elements, as both aggressive shooting and use of powerful upgrades and abilities let you take on a waves of robotic home

Gojigaboga
Hypeatized Studios | PC, Consoles
Armed with a lighter and your wits, you must escape a lurking terror in Gojigaboga. A reactive environment driven by logical reactions add a puzzle element to the sneaking and horror.

Heliophobia
Glass Knuckle Games | PC, Mac, Linux | 2017
A narrative-drive horror mystery, Heliophobia promises an endless city filled with horrific monsters, as you solve puzzles and piece together the game's dark story.

Heroic crocodiles and loveable/hostile oddballs await in thecatamites' new game, Magic Wand. As Radiget, a crocodile in a robe and floppy hat, it's up to you to make small talk with a bunch of people you don't know who are still perfectly willing to talk about their lives to a complete stranger. Then, that information may or may not form a story, or you may just end up getting roughed up by creatures who don't appreciate you prodding in their lives.

You have the ability to freely roam the world of Magic Wand, exploring its crumbling towns and ruins. Hopefully you'll make some friends along the way, as roaming the countryside gets lonely without the minor quibbles of strangers in your ears. At least you can break some pots with your sword while you're out there, though. Or enemies, if you really want to be the kind of guy who hits someone with a sword just because they bit him.

Will Radiget achieve world peace? The world already seems pretty peaceful to begin with, since the enemies only really seem to dislike him and no one else. Even then, they don't seem capable of killing him, so maybe world peace has already been achieved. As such, your job is already complete, and you can just go back to breaking things and talking to weirdos. Which is pretty fun on its own, anyway,

Magic Wand is available for $5.50 on Itch.io. for more information on the game and developer thecatamites, you can head to the developer's site or follow them on Twitter.

Taking the concept of "roguelike" maybe a little too far, Brut@l plays like an action-filled dungeon crawler which borrows its aesthetics from the original 1980 release. It exchanges the original's ASCII-filled dungeons for a contemporary playing field, but they are still all around you, like reminders of an era long past. Your character, your enemies, weapons, and items are all made out of ASCII characters. This is more than an aesthetic choice; it also has a direct effect on the gameplay. Crafting a weapon requires you to collect the correct letters first. Then you can watch as all those Ls and Ts form the spikes on a club, for example. It's pretty neat and makes you wonder why nobody thought of this before.

The game itself is suprisingly fast-paced and action-oriented while still proudly upholding certain roguelike traditions. What's in the purple potion? You won't find out until you drink it! If you're below a certain age, you might be appeased by the addition of skill trees and the like. Turns out that Brut@l is not completely old-school, after all.

On your way to floor 26 and the final confrontation with the dungeon's evil guardian, it's best to take a friend with you. Two-player couch co-op might be the best way to enjoy the game. If you're more creatively inclined, you might want to try the dungeon builder, which allows you to create and share new dastardly dungeons. If there's one issue, it's that the game's limited aesthetic range starts to wear on you. These dungeons might be randomly generated, but they all look the same after a while. But until then, Brut@l is a blast!

Brut@l is available on the PSN Store for $14.99 (with an extra launch discount for PSN Plus members). If you want to know more about the game, visit the game's website or follow developer Stormcloud Games on Twitter.

It is time to rejoice, Your Highness, for your kingdom has grown and is now encompassing even more lands. Will you conquer them all, or succumb to the darkness? It is time to find out! Last year's Kingdom was a bit of a smash hit, catapulting "unpublisher" Raw Fury and developers Noio and Licorice into the limelight. The aptly titled Kingdom: New Lands is a free upgrade for owners of the game and also marks its console debut as an Xbox One exclusive. It adds new content including different mounts, mysterious new characters, a revamped endgame, and the introduction of seasons.

Once again, you play as a monarch whose only means of interacting with the environments is by spending money. Want to recruit some workers? Toss them a coin. Want a structure to be built? Pay up and your subjects will get to it. Better be quick with fortifying your settlement though, as monsters will attack your village every night. There is now a ship to be built in each land, which transports you into the next, bigger area. Compared to the original approach of "just try to survive somehow" this sets a new direction for your efforts and adds more purpose to the early game.

Even if you've already played Kingdom for hours upon hours, there's lots of new stuff to discover here. If this is your first foray into royalty, you're in for a treat of lovely pixel graphics and an amazing electronic soundtrack. It's not an easy game, but it's easy to fall in love with Kingdom: New Lands.

The game is available to purchase on the Xbox Store as well as on Steam and GOG for $14.99. For more information, visit the game's website or follow developer Noio and publisher Raw Fury on Twitter.

It's been a while since I put together a trailer roundup feature. Sorry for the delay! I hope you're ready to learn about some good-looking games, though, because here are ten neat game trailers to check out.

Agricola
Windows 10, iOS, Android | $5 (IAP) | Available now

The award-winning board game, now on mobile devices.

Aliens Go Home Run
Windows | $TBA | Q4 2016 | Greenlight | Demo

This is a clever take on block breaker games, removing the penalty for letting the ball fall and adding a dash of bullet hell.

Bear With Me
Windows, OSX, Linux | reg. $5 | Available now

Part one of an episodic noir point and click adventure about a girl finding her missing brother with the help of her detective of a teddy bear. Currently 10% off.

Laser Disco Defenders
Vita | $10 | Available now

From the developer: "A self inflicted bullet hell where each shot fired stays in the level and can damage both enemies and yourself."

Neon Ultra
Windows, OSX, Linux | $TBA | Q3 2016 | Greenlight

(Epilepsy warning: glitch effects, lots of screen shake)
This one is a neon-tastic twin stick shooter with some bullet hell dodging going on.

Of Love And Sorrow
Windows | reg. $5 | Available now

This text adventure is historical fiction that takes place during the lead up to the U.S. Civil War. Currently 40% off.

The Rabbit and the Owl
Windows, OSX | $TBA | Early 2017 | Demo

A co-op platformer in which one player's platforms are the other player's movable areas. The game has already passed Greenlight; the developers are planning to show the game at PAX West and launch a Kickstarter in September.

Roll Spike
iOS, Android | Free (IAP) | Available now

This Malaysian-made game is a few months old, but I only just found out about both it and the sport called Sepak Takraw. Sepak Takraw seems to be what you get when you apply soccer rules about how the ball can be handled to volleyball.

Sandigma: Rise of the Exiles
Windows, OSX | $TBA | Q3 2016 | Greenlight

This isn't the first action RPG about building up defenses for other players to test themselves against, but usually players are expected to build up a dungeon or castle rather than populating a planet with dangerous creatures. This game is being developed in Hong Kong and was successfully Kickstarted some time ago for almost $57,000.

ShapeRockets
Windows | $TBA | Fall 2016

From the developer: "ShapeRockets invites players to choose a primitive rock, paper, or scissors shape as their character. The simple objective is to destroy your shape's prey with the singular rocket weapon or run from the predator shape and its rockets! (Rock beats scissors. Scissors beats paper. Paper beats rock.) Players can float in all directions in dark, minimalist arenas. After a recharge, players can change shape on the fly."

A pair of members of a private police force find themselves under siege from a bizarre criminal gang known as The Human, and the only way to clean up the streets is to mow down every one of the gang's machines, creatures, and oddball members in run & gun game Halt.

Halt, which is currently raising votes on Steam Greenlight, has you choosing from one of two members of the police force, then heading out into the game's brightly colored stages to blast away at some strange enemies. You also get to choose your ammo from types you've collected, from incendiary to viral to freezing, using them to take down The Human's forces. You can also upgrade your ammo with other collectible items to create even more arcade-style mayhem.

If you feel you need even more collectibles in your life, you can also grab various power-ups, food, weapons, and knick-knacks to get even stronger. You're basically taking anything that isn't nailed down, which seems a bit strange since you're supposed to be the cop here. Shouldn't you be bagging this as evidence or something?

For more information on Halt and developer Vaaasm, you can follow them on Tumblr, YouTube, Twitter, and IndieDB. The game is also looking for votes on Steam Greenlight.

Sometimes, developers take a single idea, build a whole game around it, and it works exceptionally well. In the case of Laser Disco Defenders, this idea is your own shots ricocheting off walls and bouncing back, essentially building a self-inflicted bullet hell. It's actually pretty simple, and it's genius. This one idea saves the game from being "just another arena shooter" and, with some funky 70s styling added on top, turns it into something quite special.

Shooting your way through randomly generated levels as one of four groovy characters, your job is to defeat the evil Lord Monotone. Dodging robotic enemies and your own shots, you have to kill every last enemy in order to get to the next level. Depending on your character and which unlockable items you wear, the game plays slightly differently. Give up some health for a higher score, or change the weapon handling - the game can be customized to your play style and skill level, which is nice. New items are unlocked by completing different quests, such as "kill 10 mines" or "reach a score of 100000."

Laser Disco Defenders lacks replayability and certainly won't keep you glued to your tiny screen forever, but it's a lot of fun for short, intense play sessions now and then. The Playstation Vita might actually be the perfect system for it, supporting its "pick up and play" style. You can purchase the game on the Playstation Store for $9.99. For more information, you can visit the game's website or follow developer on the game or its developer Alexander Birke on Twitter.

Armed with vibrant weapons and time-shifting powers, Boiling Bolt drops you into the frenetic conflicts of a futurisitic rebellion. Your ship is crafted with the powerful tech of a forgotten era, giving you an effective edge in this side-scrolling shooter's stylish battles.

Playing solo or co-op with a friend, Boiling Bolt revovles around intense bullet hell action, as you face hordes of enemies and massive bosses with your own impressive arsenal of Plasma Whips and black hole launchers. Playing with a friend adds another tool to your offensive repertoire, a lightning link between you and your ally that can devstate enemies that pass through.

But your powerful advantage is the Time Breaker, an ability that slows time for everything except yourself. Activate it and the world slows to a crawl, letting you deftly manuver through projectiles hanging in mid-air and blow away helpless ships.

Boiling Bolt is currently available as a closed beta through itch.io Refinery service, essentially their take on Early Access; while the beta only features one level, a few powers, and co-op, the final game is expected to have six levels with varied difficulty settings and modes, more weapons and abilities, and additional challenges.

Boiling Bolt cost $6.99 on itch.io; there is only a limited number of beta slots available. You can learn more about the game and developer Persistant Studios here, as well as their Twitter and Facebook pages.

When I saw the achievement names of Cubway, I was certain I'd be in for something weird and wonderful - or something awfully pretentious. The likes of "I saw the wheel of Samsara," "Death is the Road to Awe," and "Touch the art" don't really hint at lightweight casual fun. Turns out the following experience was neither wonderful nor pretentious - in fact, I don't know how to feel about Cubway. It utterly defies interpretation.

Accompanied by a somewhat foreboding drone, you steer a small cube through complex-looking levels full of geometric shapes which interact with your presence. Move left to right, don't mess up by running into things, repeat. There is a feeling of wandering, of a journey, and the visual minimalism somehow seems to imply that it's a very basic concept I'm struggling with here. In any case, I'm lost.

According to the developers Armnomads, the game is about the abstract lifecycle of rebirth, called Samsara. Without further delving into Indian religions, I'm afraid that this information will be of little use to most players. What remains is an elegant puzzle game that offers a somewhat relaxing, but later mostly infuriating experience and which could probably be compared to last year's Expand due to a similar vibe.

You can purchase Cubway on iTunes ($0.99) or on Steam ($2.99) for an expanded version. Developers Armnomads can be found on Twitter and on Facebook.

Every day can be a challenge with depression. Getting out of bed, getting dressed, and grabbing a shower can be herculean tasks, with every one leading you to the same self-doubt and scathing self-examination, which is what Thais Weiller explores in Rainy Day, a free game about trying to get yourself out of bed and ready on a rainy day.

The interactive fiction game will have you making decisions about what to do and what to wear, but the game fights you at every step. The unnamed character's doubt, mental fatigue, and pain keep tripping up your decisions, forcing you to exhaustingly repeat the same instructions, over and over again, typically to poor, saddening results. It mimics the kind of self-berating feelings of being depressed, and puts you in the same kind of battle a sufferer has to endure to get moving every day.

Accompanied by some lovely, yet downcast, artwork from Amora B, it's a striking look at a too-common day-to-day struggle.

Rainy Day is available to play for free on Itch.io. For more information on the game and developer Thais Weiller, you can head to the developer's site or follow them on Twitter.

Jack isn't aware that he's a video game character, but perhaps the constant animal attacks and lightning strikes will help him figure that out. When he does, he'll forge a strange new relationship with the player, the game's developers, and the characters in his world in Mayhem in Single Valley, an RPG currently in development.

Mayhem in Single Valley has you trying to navigate Jack's life problems (which include losing his life's savings to a squirrel) and dealing with an unusually high level of mayhem as he starts to figure out his relationship with his cruel creators and controllers. Along the way, he'll sort of be able to fight back against the angry wildlife and townsfolk he runs into throughout the game, thankfully, using food to distract, knock out, or put animals to use in keeping him safe.

While he may be living in a world strictly created to make him miserable, that doesn't mean he has to be a jerk himself. The game features a karma system that will track his deeds, changing how other characters see him depending on how much of a dink he is.

If you want to make poor Jack's life miserable (or better), you can grab the demo now. And also see just how dangerous a crazed squirrel can be,

For more information on Mayhem in Single Valley and developer Fluxscopic Ltd, you can head to the developer's site or follow them on Facebook, YouTube, IndieDB, and Twitter. You can also vote for the game on the Square Enix Collective.

This Screenshot Saturday takes us on a trip from the innards of a computer to across the galaxy, where alien discoveries and lovecraftian horrors await.

Visual Out
Diane Mueller | PC, Mac, Linux
Set within the confines of a outdated computer, Visual Out is a metroidvania following the journey of a stray program seeking the truth about its creators. A demo can be found here.

Moons of Madness
Rock Pocket Games | PC
Moons of Madness promises to combine lovecraftian cosmic horror with hard sci-fi, as Shane Newehart investigates an otherworldly incident on Mars.

Dogos
OPQAM Studios | PC, PS4, Xbox One | September
Featuring frenetic shmup gameplay in expansive open levels, you wield a varied array of weapons and ships to defeat Dogos' bosses and waves of enemies.

Hellion
Zero Gravity Games | PC | Late 2016
Survive the dangers of space with friends on your space station. Hellion combines multiplayer and raiding with sci-fi survival in an unknown solar system, where extreme temperatures, radiation, and dwindling resources are constant threats

Anathema
Esperware | PC
Using devastating weapons like the dagger, sickle, murder of crows, and others, you face hellish forces as a warrior imbued with the powers of the angel of death in action platformer Anathema.

Venineth
Venineth Team | PC
Venineth is a marble-rolling exploration game that challenges you to learn the secrets of unknown technology across alien landscapes, through puzzles and platforming.