Indie Links Round-Up: A Certain Shade

“Lim is a simple game.

Fair and free-to-play don’t mix, the queer games scene and more in today’s Indie Links.

Just Making Things and Being Alive About It: The Queer Games Scene(Polygon)
“Lim is a simple game. It only takes a few minutes to play. You navigate a square through a minimal world. You have not been told what to do, so you just move through the maze. When you are alone in the corridors, you flash with all the colors of the rainbow. But before long, you start to encounter squares of different colors. They don’t like you. They ram you. They make progress near impossible. The screen shakes; the white noise is violently nauseating. Your only hope is to hold down Z to “blend in.” You turn brown near the brown squares; you turn blue near the blue squares.”

Re-Logic reveals Terraria’s new game mechanics for Windows PC(Polygon)
“Re-Logic released a video preview outlining the new game mechanics featured in Terraria’s 1.2 update for Windows PC.”

The Witness development on PS4 discussed in video(VG247)
“The Witness, Jonathan Blow’s game about exploration and puzzle-solving in an open world, will be released on PS4 and video discussing it is below.It’s all part of Sony’s conversations with developers series. The Witness is releasing as a timed PS4 exclusive and will also be released on PC.”

Sanctum 2 Review: A Change in Structure(Indie Game Insider)
“I’ve always seen tower defense games as a near-perfect genre. They have strong cult fans and an interesting selection of titles. That said, the core mechanic of these titles never seems to grow. This may be seen as a good thing for the fans that are in love with the genre, but from an industry point of view, video games are still young, and innovation is always welcome. This is where Coffee Stain Studios has shined in the past. Sanctum released for PC in April of 2011 and gave gamers an interesting new twist on tower defenses. The game was a hybrid first-person shooter and tower defense. The enemies would arrive in waves similar to any other game of this style, but then you would run around in first-person building your gauntlet of death between the waves of enemies and shoot them during their invasion. The game included leaderboards and had a strong cult following of gamers that put hundreds of hours into the innovative experience. The developers have recently released Sanctum 2 and, in the process, have changed a lot from the original.”

Ryan Clark on making an indie dream team, lessons from Big Fish and Grubby(IndieGames.com)
“Crypt of the NecroDancer developer Ryan Clark shares tips on netting big-time indie developers and lessons he’s learned from shipping 10 games, in this final part of our interview.”

The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Jamsouls(Joystiq)
“Our game is called Jamsouls. We took inspiration from the famous tale of Pandora’s Box to create crazy battles between naughty evil creatures in a vivid and colourful arena!”

Radian Games: Fair doesn’t work with free-to-play(Games Industry)
“The independent developer Radian Games has questioned the ability to be “fair” to players and remain successful with the free-to-play model.”

Bug Zapper and Hop Til You Drop(Indie Gamer Chick)
“Here are two games that seem like good ideas, but the execution is just a bit off, resulting in the losing streak the Leaderboard has been on continuing. First off is Bug Zapper, which comes from the developer of previous Leaderboard title Zomp 3 (#84 as of this writing). This time, instead of a Lolo-esq puzzler, Chris Skelly went for the good-old-boy pasttime of bug zapping, with the idea being you’re the one insect who is immune to the hypnotic glow of electric death device. Thus, you have to prevent your fellow pests from going towards the light. This is hilariously done by beating them to a bloody pulp. As far as solutions to potential problems go, that’s pretty fucking awesome. It would be like helping a coke head stay sober by breaking his nose.”