Indie Games

Just a short, but exciting, piece of news. GameSetWatch already apparently reported this, but I can’t help pass it along in case you don’t read the major news services.

Although many of you probably did not grow up in the 80s with text-based and graphical adventure games, my sister and I did. We practically grew up on a steady diet of King’s Quest, Quest for Glory, and Space Quest games. The days of huddling in front of the 13″ VGA monitor and solving puzzles together are gone. My sister lives an entire continent away, and we don’t play games together much anymore. Until today, that is.

Which would you prefer more:
A) being able to play your favourite Sierra On-Line adventure games in a web browser?
or
B) being able to play those games in a multiplayer environment?

A + B = Martin Kool’s Sarien.net

Much in the spirit of Jet Set Willy Online, this means that you can now play a handful of Sierra’s old adventure games in a browser-based multiplayer environment. Imagine having 100 Roger Wilco’s walking around, exploring the Arcada. Imagine solving puzzles in The Black Cauldron with a friend 1000 miles away.

And all done by one guy (with the help of a friend). Spectacular.

So head over to Sarien.net if you have a chance and enjoy the ride. The only thing I’d love to see would be names above the avatars (so we can identify each other) and perhaps picking different colors for our characters. It gets tough figuring out who’s who on a screenful of Roger Wilco’s.

Just when we were beginning to fear that Japanese-style console RPGs (JRPGs) were going to go the way of the dodo, Water Melon studio has opened up pre-orders for the best console RPG I’ve played since Chrono Trigger for the SNES: Pier Solar and the Great Architects.

I first got wind of this game in issue #49 of Retro Gamer mag which had an impressive two-page feature on it. The game began as a fan-based project by a handful of folks from Eidolon’s Inn message board (a Sega forum with a long history). The project has been in active development for around 4 years, with the assistance of a dedicated eleven member team that’s passionate about the Sega Genesis (Mega Drive).

So what’s so impressive about this game? First, the entire game has been developed for the Sega Genesis/CD using a fan-developed SDK – that means that the game is truly a console RPG! It is going to be released for the Genesis on cartridge and in CD-format for those with a Sega CD. (At this point I’m unclear if buyers will receive a ROM image of the game to play on their PC, however.) Second, the team released a working beta demo of the game to give us a taste of the final game. Third, this is one of the few JRPGs with a fantastic script/dialogue – it’s witty and charming, and has a way of pulling you right into the game. Finally, I’ve never seen a fan-developed project of this calibre. Even though the demo is a beta (with some bugs), you can see the love and sweat that went into making the game, and the final product looks like it will rival some of the ‘big indie’ commercial releases like Braid.

Normally I avoid raving about new games, but this one has me pretty excited. Is it just me, or is anyone else into the idea of breaking out their Genesis and popping in an old-school Chrono Trigger-esque RPG? If so, head on over to the official Pier Solar web site and download the ROM (playable in any Genesis/Mega Drive emulator). And let us know what you think of it!

Update (Sept. 30th): One of the Pier Solar developers replied officially that the final version of the game will *not* come with a ROM image:

Don´t worry, the game will be well [copy-] protected; that is absolutely possible on MD.
And about releasing a ROM….no, sorry. Just like Zebbe said it would spread and I doubt people would buy the game for a ROM image they can get for free. Also, there will be no emulator being able to play the game even if someone does manage to dump it. We really think that a Mega Drive/ Genesis is so cheap everywhere that it is no big issue getting one if you really want to play the game.

A Virtual Console release would be nice at some point, but the chances we are allowed to do that are rather slim I´m afraid.

Unfortunately that means that if you don’t have a Sega Genesis/Mega-Drive you won’t be playing the full version, nor is it likely to make an appearance on the Wii VC. Bummer. Guess that means I’ll be hauling my Sega CD/Genesis duo from the basement and hooking it up in a few months for some gaming goodness!

I thought I’d create a new regular feature that highlights new or budding indie projects that may not have reached audiences through the regular news sources. This week I bring you two very impressive freeware indie projects, both remakes of the 1993 space-sim/rpg Wing Commander: Privateer.

The first, Privateer: Ascii Sector, is an impressive ascii-based interpretation of the original. The graphics are colorful and almost completely faithful to the gameplay of the original … minus one dimension of course. While the interface shares many similarities with roguelikes, there are many interesting enhancements that give the game a completely unique style. Most of the time I was absolutely stunned that a single developer – Christian Knudsen – built the entire game – ascii art, gigantic maps, fluid and colorful animations, and in-game economy algorithms – his work is absolutely polished. The game is currently at v0.2, and Christian is hard at work at bringing v0.3 to completion. If you play the game, please send Christian some encouragement, either over at his forums or at his Great Games Experiment page – I’d love to see a final release candidate of the game get released some day. Download it here.

The second project, Privateer Gemini Gold, is a 3d platform-independent remake of the game for Windows, Linux and OS X using the Vega Strike game engine. If you’re looking for a way of playing the original Privateer with high-res 3d graphics without running Dosbox – this project is definitely the way to go. A very large team of 3d artists, programmers, designers, playtesters and audio engineers have created a truly faithful reproduction of the original game. The development team is die-hard dedicated to the project, and respond to suggestions and comments on the forums regularly. If you were a fan of the original game, you will be immediately at home with this remake – it is probably the most detailed remake of a 3d game I’ve ever seen. If you haven’t played this classic, I strongly suggest heading over to the download page and giving it a shot.