Tag: Indie

Game Club Plays: Galak-Z

Hey everyone. Me again, Scrooloose, with my pick for this weeks game club. This time it's 17-Bit's arcade space shooter, Galak-Z. This one is fun and feels like an old arcade title that you might drop a bunch of quarters in to keep playing.

Battle alien space bugs and run missions for command while earning upgrades for your little space ship in ever increasing difficulty levels of play. It's $10 on Steam and if you want to join us in playing that'd be great. I'm sure there are plenty of Let's Play videos out there as well if you don't feel like spending the money. Goodness knows I feel that.

System Requirements for Galak-Z are as follows:

Windows:

MINIMUM:

    • OS: Windows Vista / 7 / 8 / 10
    • Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo (2.6 GHz) / AMD Athlon 64 X2 (2.6 GHz)
    • Memory: 3 GB RAM
    • Graphics: Radeon HD 2900 XT (512 MB) / GeForce GT 430 (1024 MB)
    • DirectX: Version 9.0c
    • Storage: 3 GB available space
    • Additional Notes: Gamepad, Mouse and Keyboard Support

Mac:

MINIMUM:

    • OS: Mountain Lion 10.8
    • Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo (2.6 GHz) / AMD Athlon 64 X2 (2.6 GHz)
    • Memory: 3 GB RAM
    • Graphics: Radeon HD 2900 XT (512 MB) / GeForce GT 430 (1024 MB)
    • Storage: 3 GB available space
    • Additional Notes: Gamepad, Mouse and Keyboard Support

SteamOS / Linux:

MINIMUM:

    • OS: Ubuntu 12.04 / SteamOS
    • Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo (2.6 GHz) / AMD Athlon 64 X2 (2.6 GHz)
    • Memory: 3 GB RAM
    • Graphics: Radeon HD 2900 XT (512 MB) / GeForce GT 430 (1024 MB)
    • Storage: 3 GB available space
    • Additional Notes: Gamepad, Mouse and Keyboard Support

Opinion: Dear Indies, Communication Is Important

I love indie games. So much so, in fact, that I've basically given up on AAA development. AAA development - to me, at least, seems like an endless cesspool of "generic brown shooter 56," or "Watch The Crew Dogs Cry Far As The Creed of Assassin's" takes over. Or to some degree or other, they're plagued with silly launch day fiascos that involve you paying extra money to get stuff that's already on the disk. Even if you somehow dodge all those bullets, you have to contend with pre-order exclusives, Day 1 "Downloadable content" and my absolute favourite, "we're patching the game on day 1, because we didn't actually test properly, so now we have to fix all these errors at launch." [which, of course, doesn't work for the most part, cf: the fiasco that was Batman: Arkham Knight, where that game just didn't work at launch and then continued to just not work even after patching.]

So, I'll take indies any day over AAA games. The experiences are shorter, more focused, often reasonably tested [within the limits/budgets of the small team, of course] and often, they're just more fun to play.

I'm currently about half way through Evoland 2, a game I've been waiting for for several years, now. It does absolutely everything better than the first game and is proof that indie devs can learn from their previous offerings.

The problem is, indie devs still need to learn one crucial skill and that's communication. Read more