Blog for Joshua Dallman at GarageGames.com

Protothea: First Torque Wii Game

Joshua Dallman — 2008-07-03T22:42:31+00:00

Protothea is a re-factoring of the old classic space ship shooting games. In Protothea you are no longer limited to vertical scrolling levels with just vertical firing: you control the ship in the same way you would control a player in an FPS game. Movement is totally free and you aim your ship separately using the pointing device.

In this interview, we discuss Protothea with its developers Sabarasa Entertainment. Sabarasa is one of the leading game development companies in Argentina, producing games for both the local and international market. We'll discuss the game's development, what it was like working with Torque, and what they learned for their next title.

Where did your inspiration come from?

Protothea for WiiWare was a combined effort between Digital Builders and Sabarasa Entertainment. The original game idea, by Digital Builders, was made into a PC game that became a finalist to the IGF competition. Ubisoft later decided to pick up the game on the Wii, brniging the quality bar up and totally redoing it in a 3D world environment.

What is the game development like in Argentina? Are there are particular challenges given your location?

Game development in Argentina is tough, but flourishing. It's still a new industry, and only recently professionals have started to take interest in game development as a career. The exchange rate with the US Dollar makes it a real challenge when trying to negotiate prices with content or technology providers, since most of the industry isn't used to working with companies in Latin America, and are not aware of the need to adjust the products and pricing for specific markets. On the other hand, the same situation also benefits us, since companies hire us to do quality work for them for a fraction of the cost of developing the same content or game in the US.

What was your development process like? (i.e. did you follow any strict principles or methods, and how many people worked on the game team?)

For this particular title our team was small. At the end we had 9 people working on several aspects of the game to polish the look and feel. The game was also developed in a very short time frame, which was originally 3 months, and extended a couple more due to continued development on Torque to support WiiWare and the Nintendo's LotCheck process for the Wii, which we were unfamiliar with at the time. Although we developed for the Nintendo DS, the Wii LotCheck process was a bit more complicated. In the end our development process was simple and straightforward. As our company grows everyday and we start bigger and bigger projects, we are continuously looking into better ways of working and handling our work flow.

Why did you eventually choose Torque? Did you consider other technologies?

We chose Torque because of our previous experience with it and its sudden availability for the Wii platform. It was the obvious pick.

What were a few major development challenges you encountered? How did you overcome them?

Our technical challenges were mainly due to the fact that it was a new platform to us, and Torque for WiiWare wasn't done at the time we started, so we struggled a bit to get WiiWare support, working closely with ProntoGames to try and solve the issues we encountered.

How long did it take to create the game?

The project took about 6 months from start to finish, counting the pre-production, production and release stages.

How did you accomplish QA and beta testing?

We did our QA with RevoSolutions, a very professional group of testers from Romania, heavily geared in Wii equipment and knowledge. Ubisoft also provided their TRC team to make sure we complied with all the Nintendo safety and usability guidelines.

What did you learn in creating the game?

We learnt many things, among them we realized we want to keep doing games with Torque, and we polished our knowledge of the internal APIs of the Wii SDK. Our next project will be more advanced in both graphics and playability.

What can we expect to see next Sabarasa?

There's just one thing you CAN'T expect from Sabarasa, and that's for us to disappear from the Torque for Wii game development scene :)

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Special thanks to Sabarasa Entertainment for participating in this interview, and thanks to Deborah for organizing the questions. For more information on Torque for Wii sales, please see our Torque for Wii information page for developers.

Shelled Online Released!

Joshua Dallman — 2008-07-01T00:00:53+00:00

Shelled! Online released today!

Watch the game video, see features and screenshots, and download the game at www.redthumbgames.com!

Below is the press release that was sent out. The release is mirrored on over a hundred media outlets that picked it up, including Forbes.com, IT Industry Today, LA Times, and elsewhere. These are only press releases, not news items, but regardless, word is out! Now to crack into games press, get some good reviews, and find a publisher! (Note: Shelled will NOT be published on InstantAction.com and is open to other publisher interest).

A producer's post-mortem will be written soon, and a programmer's post-mortem too. In short, Torque is still the best engine for indie game developers to work with, and made every part of releasing this game that much easier. Go Torque!

Final thanks to the tireless lead programmer, Gary Preston, for his enormous contributions, without which this game literally wouldn't exist. Additional thanks to Christophe Canon, lead artist, for his beautiful art stylings and attention to detail - thanks for making Shelled look as fun as it plays.

Now go download (and buy) Shelled Online - 6 online servers are waiting for you to play!!!

Josh

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RED THUMB GAMES RELEASES INNOVATIVE PC GAME "SHELLED! ONLINE"

JUNE 30th, 2008 (EUGENE, OR) Indie video game developer Red Thumb Games released "Shelled! Online" today, available exclusively at www.redthumbgames.com. Shelled! Online is a downloadable PC game available as a free trial with purchase option for $19.95. About Shelled, review site VG Core wrote, "Shelled is a classic in the making."

Shelled! Online is a physics-based shooter unlike any other. Players control turtle-tanks firing turtle shell bombs. Angle and shot power determine every shot, so strategic thinking is needed. Fully destructible 3D environments make every round unique. Online games support 8 players per game, and free dedicated servers host games around the clock. Online play modes include deathmatch, team modes, flag capture, base attacks, and more.

Players customize their appearance with over 30 tank parts for thousands of combinations, giving them a unique identity online. Like "Scorched Earth," Shelled! Online has a stash of cool weapons including nukes and multi-explosion spreads. An interactive tutorial teaches the game, and players can use a mouse and keyboard or plug in an X-Box 360 USB controller.

Gameplay is completely unique, requiring you to fire at the right angle and shot power to hit your enemies. The physics-based gameplay makes every shot unique. The controls allow you to independently fly and fire shots, giving you a high degree of freedom of movement. About Shelled, game review site GameTunnel noted that it has "Smart design and great, fun gameplay."

In addition to online play, the game features over 20 uniquely scripted single player missions to challenge your wits. Lead your troops in a massive battle and choose where to attack for victory. It's all up to you in this exciting single player addition to the online games.

Red Thumb Games is an indie game developer in Eugene, OR directed by Joshua Dallman. The lead programmer was Gary Preston of Figment Games and the lead artist was Christophe Canon of FroGames. Shelled! Online was developed over a period of 3 years using the GarageGames Torque Game Engine, the same engine used in the award-winning Tribes game series.

Red Thumb Games is interested in relationships with publishers and distributors. To contact please see www.redthumbgames.com. For screenshots, video, game trailer, and to download and play the game, please go to www.redthumbgames.com.

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Screenshots:

Click Here to Download the Free Demo or Watch the Video Trailer

Download Shelled Online to Review

Joshua Dallman — 2008-03-28T19:57:42+00:00

Shelled! Online is ready for its first public playtesting. I'd appreciate the time that anyone takes to download and playtest this game. The new version works with an X-Box 360 controller, so if you've got one, plug it in and get shelling.

VIEW THE README
http://www.redthumbgames.com/shelledonline/shelledonline_rc1_readme.pdf

DOWNLOAD THE GAME
http://www.redthumbgames.com/shelledonline/shelledonline_rc1_standalonepc.exe

RATE AND GIVE FEEDBACK
http://www.redthumbgames.com/shelledonline/gamefeedback.php

Shelled! Online is a realtime multiplayer 3D artillery combat game made with the Torque Game Engine. Up to 8 people can play together in an online game. Survey your radar to find the best target, turn to face your target, set your angle and shot power, then fire! Watch the result from the air and detonate your shot at any time. If you shoot too high or too low, adjust your angle or shot power accordingly and keep trying until you land your shot. When your jets are recharged, you may fly to a better position for either offensive or defensive purposes. You can also fire shots while flying. All shots you fire deform and change the landscape. Use terrain defensively or against your opponents. Shelled! Online is a Red Thumb Games production and is copyright (c) 2008 Red Thumb Games / Joshua Dallman.

No dedicated servers are yet online to host games, so you'll have to host your own (see readme). However you can still customize your tank avatar now for future online play. Email me or post here with your favorite tank creations!

Note that some game text such as informational text in the tutorials or mission design may be updated and other minor graphical changes, bugfixes, and play balancing and timing may yet still occur before the final release version. However, please still report all bugs you encounter.

Thanks for the feedback and have fun!
(remember to use the feedback form above though you can still post here)

Josh

Communify Me! 80 Ways to Add Community Features to Games

Joshua Dallman — 2007-12-14T04:01:14+00:00

Video games continue their trajectory towards increased complexity. We've watched the jump from 2D sprites, to rendered 3D objects, to next-gen shaders and high polygon models. We've seen games go from multiplayer on the same machine, to multiplayer over a modem, to entire server farms hosting persistent games millions of users strong. In the rush to improve the most surface aspect of games - the graphics - other important aspects like building community have been ignored. Community is the latest trend and buzzword to be sure, but an ironic one in that the community features we're seeing now could have been present in games long ago (and many were, but were ahead of their time). In the same way that 3D graphics don't merely escalate 2D graphics but add a dimension to them, adding community to games doesn't merely escalate a multiplayer game but adds a new dimension to them. This blog post is not a theoretical one however, and will help give you ways to "communify" your game, offering you both practical tips and high-concept ideas. Though we ourselves have built a game community via The Great Games Experiment, and are now building a game portal with community features via InstantAction, these tips can be used by any developer for any platform. Use these tips to add the extra dimension of community to your game!

Read the full blog post with all 80 ways to add community features to your game at http://www.makeitbigingames.com/

Red Thumb Games "Shelled 2" Update

Joshua Dallman — 2007-11-18T23:42:45+00:00

It's been 5 months since I first blogged about Shelled 2 and 8 months since the project started so it's a good time for an update and screenshots to share. Note that these are pre-alpha development screenshots, many with temporary art.

Firstly, Shelled 2 now has a custom tank avatar creator. Choose from 5 options each of your tank body, cannon, jets, tail, and color to create a huge variety of tanks with one suiting your style.

From "cute":

To "punky":

It's not as robust as say Tony Hawk's Create-A-Skater, but even some basic customization options can go a long way towards the fun of seeing your creation at play in the battle arena, and relating to and caring about that object.

In addition to the new Create-A-Tank feature, the game now has MORE WEAPONS:

Not only are there now more weapons, but there are more types of weapon behavior, including freezing your target, moving your target, and even healing your target (for team games). The weapons have also been properly balanced, as the original Shelled suffered from an over-powerful triple-shot.

Here is one such new weapon type, the planted mine:

It is great fun to strategically plant one at your target's feet so that if they move they will detonate it, THEN follow up with an aerial shell, making both your aerial shell and the mine explode, destroying your target:

I am very pleased with the new weapons -- it does not feel like we just jammed them in for filler, they are varied and unique and offer differing complementary strategies like the example above.

On the topic of weapons, you can now fly and shoot at the same time. This is a big change and it is indeed a good one. I was stubborn about keeping movement and attack seperate in the first game to stay true to the game's turn-based roots. However, a gameplay exploit allowed you to fly way up into the air, kill your jets, and then fire while your tank floated back to the ground, which proved to be one of the most fun ways to ambush a ground target like a sitting duck. From playing with that style myself, and from listening to player feedback, simutaneous flight and attack has now been made possible.

There are three main modes for Shelled 2:

The single player mode is a 20 level campaign with custom scripted missions that give a ton of depth to the
framework of the fire-and-fly gameplay.

For example in the screenshot below I am in a mission to deliver medical supplies to a remote base in the tundra. It is guarded by two turrets (which are a new object to the game) which will aide me by attacking incoming enemies:

I am surprised by how little it takes to engage a player's suspension of disbelief and have them role-playing with the mission. All it takes are a few well placed story and gameplay cues and soon you are playing in the make-believe world of turtle tankdom wanting to say to your commander, "Red Five standing by."

The "Arcade" levels are simply the 20 levels from Shelled 1 with the addition of high score posting and world ranking. In effect this puts the entirety of Shelled 1 into Shelled 2 but with enhancements like firing and flying, new weapons, and the create-a-tank feature. It's "classic" Shelled with some upgrades.

Finally, in addition to the campaign and arcade modes, there's the online game mode, with a total of SIX types of games to play, five of them brand new:

Here I am hanging out with my team, taking a little incoming fire and looking out towards the blue base:

And here I've parachuted into the blue base and am preparing to steal their golden shell (watch out suckers!):

All in all the game is shaping up great but of course there is a lot to do ahead especially in the way of level design, art asset completion, and balancing polishing and testing. Just a few small things right? Look for Shelled 2 on InstantAction in early 2008. Thanks to Project Lead and Lead Programmer Gary Preston, Lead Artist Christophe Canon (both of whom worked on the original), and Evyn Shuley who's cranking on level design.

Josh

How to Focus your Game and Give Players More of What They Want

Joshua Dallman — 2007-09-22T22:51:10+00:00

We're excited about the new platform we're developing called InstantAction. We believe it will be an exciting new medium for indies to publish to. But no matter what platform a game resides on or what new technology exists, the same bread and butter principles still guide all good design. Having a cool platform with the opportunities and features that platform affords is not a shortcut to good design. And a part of good design is focusing your game to give players a satisfying experience. This post describes a technique to help bring focus to your design to give players more of what they want and less of what they don't. This is one technique and not the last word on the matter, but try it and see if it's useful to you.

Read the full blog post and post comments at the jump: http://makeitbigingames.com

How To Pitch Your Game

Joshua Dallman — 2007-09-05T11:53:30+00:00

It was one year ago that GarageGames introduced the Affiliated Developer program. Over that year I've reviewed countless video game pitches from good to awful. I marked this one year occasion by guest authoring Jeff's blog to offer broad tips that will help independent game developers successfully pitch themselves or their game to any publisher without boring the publisher or losing their interest. Check out the full blog article with over 25 tips at this jump: http://makeitbigingames.com/

-- Josh

GGE & TLD's: BFF!

Joshua Dallman — 2007-07-09T04:06:32+00:00

I am a domain junkie. I've got 12 TLD's (top level domains) and seem to collect them faster than a Roddenberry era space captain collects Tribbles. Where do they come from? Why do they multiply? Beats me. In the meantime, I'm tending and feeding them as best I can. And there's nothing they're more hungry for than TRAFFIC.

As an indie game developer, you wear the hats of both development and post-development (marketing). If you create a game of substance, one you plan to market and promote and not just let idle as a prototype, a good way to promote the game is with a TLD. They're cheap, they give whomever (game reviewers, publishers, players) a one-stop location to find your game, and they reinforce game branding. But what to do once you have your TLD?

Previously, in my 1.0 world, my indie game TLD's pointed to subdirectories on my developer website. These were simple static pages that "did the job": they showed screenshots, offered a basic description, and had a download link. Good for utility and getting the job done. Bad for going beyond that and building any real community and traffic.

Enter GGE and the power of its 2.0 world. GGE game pages are instantly part of a dynamic and growing gamer (and developer) community. GGE game pages are each like a mini "blog" allowing players to comment on the game, formally review it, rate it, add it to a gamelist (which further embeds the game virally), and link to a GGE group where the game can be discussed, play sessions can be organized, etc. All that and the page itself can be "watched" as a feed. Dynamic, interactive, portable, community based. Brilliant.

In a 1.0 world you have to constantly connect to an FTP site containing the webpage source code for your game page to make updates. After a dozen times of going through this annoyance, you might not bother anymore. With GGE as your game page you can easily edit page content from any computer, making updates painless and accessible.

As a scout for games I am always searching for developers and games in Google. Anecdotally I am often finding hits for game or developers I am looking for under the greatgamesexperiment.com URL. There are a ton of sites linking to GGE, upping the site's pagerank. With regard to SEO, using GGE as your game's page should up your search engine ranking, and if it's linked to a TLD (granted via a forward and not actual DNS parking) that should up your ranking even more.

Best of all, page views for your game page within GGE ups your game's visibility from within the GGE ecosystem itself, so the more you can do to promote it externally - for example, by using GGE as your de facto game landing page - the better.

Here's a few tips for good modules to have on your game landing page:

- Foremost, have high quality screenshots, and an assortment of them.

- List game features in a module, such as whether it has online multiplayer capability.

- List awards in another module, such as download sites that have recognized or featured your game.

- List press and selected player reviews in seperate modules. I suggest seperating them out as press has more credibility than players, but both will be good to reinforce the message of your game.

- Create a GGE group for your game for players to discuss and share items, and link to it from your GGE game page.

- Create one or more videos for your game, upload them to YouTube, then link directly to them from right within GGE.

- Finally, don't forget to promote the fact that you have a download module, and that players can download and play your game RIGHT NOW.

For examples, my game studio site, http://www.redthumbgames.com/ links to both http://www.shelledgame.com/ and http://www.sploidz.com/, each of which were sub-pages on the Red Thumb site, both URL's of which now go directly to GGE. I plan to use GGE to host game pages for all future titles as well. The Shelled GGE page has been grossly updated, and now looks better than both my old static page and the GG Game Store page. Viva la GGE.

We'll see how using GGE for my TLD's shapes download numbers and traffic, but for the above reasons and more, GGE and TLD's are BEST FRIENDS FOREVER, a match made not in heaven but here at The Garage. Consider using GGE for your own game pages and TLD landing pages, and at the very least make sure your game is listed in GGE at all. We've got amazing tools for empowering indies, leverage them!!!

Josh

some Red Thumb Games projects

Joshua Dallman — 2007-06-16T07:24:06+00:00

One of the best perks of working at GarageGames is being surrounded by game development all the time. As such you end up learning a lot whether you set out to or not. There's a number of GG'ers who have side projects on their own. Admittedly it's hard to find time, but when you outsource all programming and art it doesn't take much. I released Shelled as freeware because I joined GG and I don't regret releasing it free, Shelled was essentially a prototype or sandbox of the game elements and not a full game experience. But it has nagged me that it didn't turn out to be the game I wanted it to be even after multiple years in development, and it nagged me that I wasn't able to monetize it, so in March I decided to apply what I have learned while working here towards a sequel. Three months later I have enough to show. To be sure, this is a Red Thumb Games blog and not a GarageGames blog as these projects are wholly my own (like Eric Hartman's Blockland or Brian Ramage's Metal Drift).

In retrospect, one failure of Shelled was my complete ignorance of understanding what a casual versus a hardcore player is. Even after I thought I knew and greatly simplified the game to take it in the direction of casual, it ended up being a hardcore game. I truly had no clue.

Another major failure was near-complete-reliance on multiplayer. The game was designed as MP from the very first concept document. MP games are easier to design and program because you get to leverage the intelligence of other players competing against your player to provide the dynamic entertainment. The few matches I played with other players were very fun. The single player game however was not. The servers, save for launch day, have been deserted. Even with a price tag of zero.

Yet another failure was in making the game too complex. I'm often telling developers to ease the player into their game slowly, introducing elements incrementally, not throwing them in all at once. Yet the game did just that. You must learn to aim, learn to fly, learn the HUD elements such as jet fuel meter, learn the radar, and learn defensive strategies -- oh, and what weapons to use and how best to use them -- all at once. It's a wonder anyone even attempted.

A final noteworthy failure was the rushed manner in which I released the game. I just started at GG and wanted to close the chapter on Shelled, so weapons went unbalanced, level design went incomplete, and player feedback (such as allowing firing and flying at the same time) went ignored. And no Mac build when it was ripe for the picking. All of these hurt the game.

Cheerily, all of these can be remedied. And where Shelled became a chore to develop towards the end, the sequel is exploding with fun. I don't care how it ends up because I'm having too much fun making it. That's a feeling I haven't had with the game since its first months in development.

So first of all, let's dispense with the notion that Shelled is a casual game. It's ridiculous. Diner Dash is casual, Bejewelled is casual, TubeTwist is casual. Shelled offers too fine a level of control, too competitive and adreneline inducing of an experience, and has too much in common with hardcore FPS's to be anything close to casual. It may be on the "casual" end of the hardcore spectrum, but it's firmly hardcore nonetheless. As such the graphics don't match it well except for those hardcore players looking for lighter fare both in gameplay and graphic. There's no real solution being offered here, but it's important for me to keep this in mind as the game develops. I'm not making this for housefraus over 40.

Next biggest failure, near total reliance on multiplayer. Shelled 2 will instead offer as its chief value a compelling single player experience where every level is essentially its own little game. The missions are boilerplate and unoriginal, you could write them in your sleep. Shell x number of tanks. Rescue the hostage and return him to home base. Nuke the enemy base. The innovation of the game lies in its firing mechanism -- Scorched Earth meets a FPS, which has never been done before -- so other parts of the game need not be innovative. In fact, other parts of the game need only SUPPORT that innovation. So we have missions designed around exploiting the innovative firing mechanism, rather than everything having to be innovative. Shelled 2 will still offer a MP mode (since it already works in Shelled 1), but this will be an extra rather than the sole game. Mission design is also where we're having the most fun, especially since we know this game inside and out and know how to best exploit it.

Now to address the failure of the game to incrementally invite the player into it. Again, this is where mission design is leveraged. Earn your shooting license. Got it down? Great, now let's learn basic flying. Now let's give you a mission where you can make use of a special weapon type to "learn" how to use it. And so forth. This is a major area where programmer Gary Preston has added new code, the ability to script events and customize each level into its own game. No longer will players distinguish between tutorial and game. The first series of levels IS the tutorial AND the game. You'll learn the game without even knowing it.

And finally, there's no rush to release this, so we have plenty of time to appropriately balance the weapons, allow player requested features such as flying and firing, and be satisfied with the level design.

All of this will not a good game make. But we're having fun doing it, we have reasonable cause to believe there will be a positive response, and with some 25,000 copies of Shelled already out there, and some decent indie game media coverage and reviews, there's already enough of a player base for traction to throw a sequel at for a low price ($10) and see what happens.

Here's a few quick screenshots of Gary's new scripted event system:

5 years ago, when I spent $4k on a game that I went straight into development on without prototyping then had to scrap, I learned the lesson the hard way about the value of prototyping.

I had an idea for a Shelled mod and wanted to try it out, so the Sploidz programmer (who also helped on Shelled) threw together a quick prototype of the concept in less than a week. It turned out cool, so we polished and experimented with the prototype until we were satisfied with it as a proof of concept for the design.

The game is tentatively called "GravGolf" and the premise is simple: aim in FPS mode to fire your ball towards the golf hole, then while your ball is still in the air, aim and fire again and again, making successive "jumps" around in the air until you reach the hole. Try to make it to the hole in as few shots as possible.

The prototype was great, but we set it aside because it has that same problem that Shelled did, which is falling in an uncomfortable space between casual and hardcore. Non-sim golf games are typically casual fare, but the FPS style aiming and fairly advanced spatial reasoning and reflexes required put it towards hardcore. Moreover, with Shelled 2 in development, it's difficult to do two 3D projects at once, as 3D games require much more in the way of level design and play balancing than 2D games do.

Here is a quick screenshot of Andreas's work on the GravGolf prototype:

Again I was disappointed that I pinched Sploidz off at the $1k budget mark without it feeling complete, and disappointed I was unable to monetize it. I hadn't planned on selling it from the very beginning -- I know how hard match games are to sell in a market crowded with them -- but then the game turned out more fun and addictive than I had thought it would be, leading to the disappointment in not finishing it proper and selling it.

So we put GravGolf aside and Andreas is now working on turning Sploidz into a complete game experience, complete with "twist" and polish.

Whoever says that there's enough match type games in the world already is not very creative. That's like saying there's enough word games already, or enough FPS games already. It's dismissive and small thinking. Personally I would prefer to see entirely new game genres created at every turn, but there's also nothing wrong with expanding existing genres. If you do nothing to improve or innovate you're wasting time, I agree. But is the genre truly tapped out? I thought I'd seen every word game there was and was sick to death of the genre, and then I ran into a gem called Dungeon Scroll, which mixes word and RPG genres.

Further, those who shun match style games are likely males under 40, which is not the target demographic. 70% of casual gamers are females 40+ years old. If gamers only make games for themselves, which has historically been the case, you end up with a very narrow selection of games available, and you continue to see mainstream culture slight video games as a juvenile medium. Grimm's Hatchery isn't my cup of tea, but it's a smash hit. I'm not a 40 year old woman, but that doesn't mean I can't think like one (as long as I don't dress like one).

So GravGolf will remain a prototype -- and thank god I prototyped it instead of launching right into production -- while I fix Sploidz up into a portal-whoring match game instead. And I'm just as excited about this match game as I am about Shelled 2, in fact a touch moreso. It represents new territory I haven't explored yet, and where there's new territory there's something to learn as you set aside what you think you know. No screenshots on the matchy-match-match game, that would give away the "twist" :) But here's that old familiar shot of Sploidz:

In another 3 months I'll share more on both side projects, in the meantime it's been hard to keep quiet about them these last 3 months and I'm glad to finally share my thoughts.

Cheers and keep indie'ing.

Josh

GG Game Store Turns 50 Games Strong

Joshua Dallman — 2007-05-25T01:04:29+00:00

Today the GarageGames Game Store just published its 50th game! With the recent open beta launch of the Great Game Experiment the timing couldn't be better. Together the two are a growing platform for empowering indies. That's exactly what's front and center in our game store: the best indie games!

All our games are from the people who made them. That means you. We are not a reseller or affiliate, we publish your game. If you are an indie developer and you want to sell games, make them and we will publish them.

If you have a game and stay exclusive to your site, you will get a fraction of the exposure. Personal game site sales increase, not decrease, when that game is published elsewhere. Add to that the fact that GarageGames has the best royalty rate for developers and you can't lose.

We are publishing more games than ever before, and we are also publishing more Torque made games than ever before. Both are increasing, and this is good for both Torque developers and all indie developers.

Developers frequently respond with surprise upon expressed interest in publishing their game. Word on the street is that we only publish Torque games. That has never been the case, Robot Battle was one of the first games published here (and remains incredibly popular). We publish great indie games no matter what the engine.

That's not to say Torque won't help, but not because we want to sell more Torques. From a publishing standpoint, Torque games are ideal because the agile portability of the codebase opens opportunites to take the game to other formats like consoles and arcade. It further opens the possibility of us continuing work on the game with the developer as co-developers, or taking it from Windows only to Mac. A custom engine will simply not have those opportunties. Further, Torque games come in with the fewest problems and get published with the highest confidence of technical reliability. Games on custom engines have given us QA headaches; we cannot put out technically shoddy games, and it's hard for developers to do full professional QA when they have shoestring resources. Torque will save you the headaches. I'm not the best impartial observer, but I lauded Torque when I was myself an indie and it's still the best thing out there.

I've encountered several developers whose first games were made using a custom engine because there was no TGB at the time. Now there is TGB, but new games are still in development and just starting to arrive more regularly. We used to wonder where all the games were. It was once a big deal when a new Torque game was published. Now it is routine, thanks in part to TGB.

With time we will no longer be thought of as a Torque game store. We are GarageGames afterall and not TorqueGames. GarageGames means indie games, i.e. garage developers. With time and more games, the idea should continue to root that if you make a quality independent game we have a loving home for it here.

I was once asked to name which games in the store I didn't like. I earnestly looked over the list but couldn't find one. Though the number of games is increasing, the quality is not diminishing. Maybe not every game will be for you, but that isn't the point. You don't enjoy every movie you try either because you have preferences. Other people may have opposite taste. There are games in our store for all preferences, and they are all special in some way.

Growth continues, but not with schlock. Some game sites are nothing but endless schlock, as if a thousand of something lame could equal one of something cool. That's not a long tail, that's a crap trail.

Some sites have games "published" that they aren't even hosting. Downloading and installing the game, you wouldn't know the "publisher" was carrying it because there's no branding. There's no branding because they're not really publishing it. All they're providing is a link from their site, then claiming the game as a title in their library. When we publish games, we host the game on our super-fast distributed connection at considerable cost to us, and the game gets the full backing of our marketing department. We don't pad our library with quick links to games we think are cool. Our games are actually published by us.

The industry is full of affiliate programs, resellers, custom branding. You'd be amazed how deep this goes, and who's doing it that you wouldn't guess. It's all too easy for game "publishers" to cherry pick games from other publishers (the big ones) and resell them without ever having contact with the developers. That's not publishing, it's reselling. The game looks like it's in their publishing library but it's not, it's just been transparently branded and you've been had. You will not find that with us.

Some game sites brag about the sheer number of games they have. But who else has all their games from the people who made them, raise your hand. That's hardcore. It takes a little more time, takes developing relationships, takes something you can't just click to get. It's part of what makes our game store offerings special.

Here's a story. One time I was pursuing a hot indie game from a fabled bedroom programmer that was the toast of the town. I contacted the developer and they wanted us to publish their game. However, the rights were exclusively in a big publisher's hands, and I was told to go through the publisher. I went to the publisher and was told to go to a distributor. I went to the distributor and was told to go to an affiliate. I didn't go to the affiliate. How many people have their hands in this little cookie jar of a tiny first-time indie game. Who is really making the money. Not the guys at the bottom. Not the developer.

Independent means being able to independently make decisions. The game was developed independently, but that is not the full lifetime of a game. Once the game meets its audience the real fun begins. Having signed over exclusivity before that happened, that person was no longer able to independently make decisions about the fate of their game. Such as allowing us to carry it, a simple enough thing. How indie still are they?

Another indie can't publish with us, or make any real decision, without the approval of their of the board of directors. How indie are they?

There's celebrity game designers that work for big game companies yet independently make decisions. They wouldn't be considered indie, yet how indie are they?

Take casual games. Go to all the casual game portals and check out the sea of games. Read casual game developer sites and articles about casual games. They make decisions based on market conditions, not game design. How indie are they? Yet ironically most of them actually are indie though they wouldn't identify as such as their indieness is a temporary ailment until they make their fortunes and incorporate or sell off or become a portal themselves.

Shareware games are all indie, but somehow the shareware culture has never been the same as indie culture, though some overlap exists. Reviewers comment that a bad or unfinished indie game "feels like shareware" in a disparaging tone. Indie games came from but surpass shareware. Yet including shareware games as indies doesn't quite fit.

What about an indie studio with funding from a not-so-indie company using a not-so-indie license. Is that legit indie?

What about an indie getting paid to create a game for a client -- is it much different than creating a game for an employer?

What is the cutoff for indie anyway? Two people are indie, ten could still be. What about a hundred? There could be a studio of a hundred that's still indie. Five hundred? It's a little fuzzy what the number is, but we have a feeling for it.

You can't put your finger on it, but you know it when we see it. Whatever indie means to you, I'm happy to say I'm seeing a lot more of it and hope to keep seeing more. The indie game community is larger and more vibrant than I ever thought.

We're looking for and publishing your indie games. This is the best place for indie developers to sell their games. You've heard it before, but now you can see it with your own eyes. Opportunity has never been greater. 50 games published: have one be yours.