Indie Games: Here as long as you make them

Indie games – you love them, you hate them, or you don’t know your SCP from your Slender.

In recent years, indie games have seen a huge resurgence in popularity, and despite reacahing a peak point over and over, the ceiling keeps getting higher with every new free game and excessive mod that comes by. Demiurge Studios CEO Albert Reed said only this morning a similar thing to GamesIndustry International, of a “permanent renaissance” for indies, noting that they will remain an “essential part” of the business.

This year alone Falskaar gave us an extra few hundred hours in Skyrim, Gone Home gave us something new, and Outlast made Slender look like a barrel of laughs.

Frictional games (see: Amnesia) recently announced Soma, which looks set to give us a similar but fresh horror from them, and all around, apps are still selling like crazy.

Gone are the days of Karoshi and Polychromatic Funk Monkey being indie highlights; publishing has gone through an industrial revolution.

Gone are the days of Karoshi and Polychromatic Funk Monkey being indie highlights; publishing has gone through an industrial revolution, with smaller publishers, trade organisations like TIGA, big hitters like Apple and Google, and small guys with a few grand and some guts taking a 2000’s hobby, and giving everyone a platform to self-publish and succeed with, with even consoles having open indie marketplaces in this generation.

As long as consumers, academics, and geeks have access to these platforms, indie isn’t going away soon, and there is a plethora of these games; half-finished, on sale, or going for zilch out there right now, and there’s never been a better time to get involved. I encourage everyone to have a crack at Unity, a streamlined, 3D games development program, that can output to 360, PS3, Android, iOS, PC and more platforms.

GameMaker: Studio is also on Steam for some basic, 2D aciton anyone can throw together. Stealth Bastard Deluxe was made with it, so it does complexity as well.

Anyone can do it with persistence, and there’s never been a better time to get into games. All you need is a decent computer, spare time, the ability to wade through forums, and enthusiasm. And it’s all free.

Below are snippets of what you can do with each program, with links to their websites and download pages – it could be your next career move, or your decision to remain a consumer and appreciate devs that bit more after dealing with a few inexplicable syntax errors and build failures.

Download Unity – Unity Website

Download GameMaker: Studio – GameMaker Community