IndieCade: International Festival Finalists #6-10
by Ross Miller 
{ Sep 23rd 2008 at 12:00PM }
All week, Joystiq will be revealing the 25 finalists for the IndieCade: International Festival of Independent Games, set to take place October 10 through 17 in Bellevue, Washington. The winners will be announced on October 11.
Machinarium
We would hope it'd be enough to say it's from the creators of Samorost, but if we have to go on, Machinarium takes the classic point-and-click adventure game model and applies it to a world with more character than the 1,000 copies of Scrapland sitting in American McGee's garage waiting to be loved.
Democracy 2
Running a country is probably a hard thing to do, especially when it's not a totalitarian dictatorship (if it was, our Sims and RTS skills would kick in and we'd totally be an awesome Supreme Ruler). With Democracy 2, you can put your "compromise" skills to the test. Or maybe just ignore the people and do what you want. A demo is available for both PC and Mac.
Global Conflict: Palestine
Trying not to take sides, Global Conflict: Palestine puts you in the role of a reporter in Jerusalem trying to capture the stories of the event and prove that the pen is mightier than the AK. Or so we hope. A demo is available for both PC and Mac.
Polarity
Following in the great tradition of "platformer games with a twist," Polarity has you jumping between two magnetic polarities to traverse the levels by attracting and repelling off the environment. You can download the full game here.
You're a tank in a Tron-like world. You blow stuff up. What else do you need to know? A demo is available for PC.
Previously: See finalists #1-5
Machinarium
We would hope it'd be enough to say it's from the creators of Samorost, but if we have to go on, Machinarium takes the classic point-and-click adventure game model and applies it to a world with more character than the 1,000 copies of Scrapland sitting in American McGee's garage waiting to be loved.
Gallery: Machinarium
Running a country is probably a hard thing to do, especially when it's not a totalitarian dictatorship (if it was, our Sims and RTS skills would kick in and we'd totally be an awesome Supreme Ruler). With Democracy 2, you can put your "compromise" skills to the test. Or maybe just ignore the people and do what you want. A demo is available for both PC and Mac.
Gallery: Democracy 2
Global Conflict: Palestine
Trying not to take sides, Global Conflict: Palestine puts you in the role of a reporter in Jerusalem trying to capture the stories of the event and prove that the pen is mightier than the AK. Or so we hope. A demo is available for both PC and Mac.
Gallery: Global Conflict: Palestine
Polarity
Following in the great tradition of "platformer games with a twist," Polarity has you jumping between two magnetic polarities to traverse the levels by attracting and repelling off the environment. You can download the full game here.
Gallery: Polarity
You're a tank in a Tron-like world. You blow stuff up. What else do you need to know? A demo is available for PC.
Gallery: Tank Universal
Previously: See finalists #1-5
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Mike @ Sep 23rd 2008 12:19PM
God that is some tasty artwork.
Mike @ Sep 23rd 2008 12:20PM
(in Machinarium)
Nigeria @ Sep 23rd 2008 12:50PM
I loved the Democracy 2 demo. But just when I was getting to grips with the entire concept, then the demo ended.
Even though it's clearly created by UK developers, you're limited to a single opposition party. Though, I guess, the simplistic two party system would suffice in a game as complicated as this. Also, from what I can remember, it was like 2/3 months ago, you can to appease/eliminate terrorist groups such as ALF, and such. That was really cool. All the fundamentalist groups are represented, aside from one obvious omission, but it's easy to understand why they chose ignore; controversy is not always nice. It's rather micromanagement heavy, but I like that.
I should really get around to buying a copy.
And I might download a demo of that Palestine game. Sounds interesting.
Nigeria @ Sep 23rd 2008 12:54PM
Though, I can't bring myself to spend £13 on it at the moment, or any moment. Democracy 2 seems really comprehensive but I did wonder whether all my tinkering was rather superficial. The cause and effect spiderdiagram seems really complex, but within a few minutes you do start to see flaws.
j.howlett @ Sep 23rd 2008 2:13PM
polarity and tank universal look fun and machinarium looks beautiful
Kamui @ Sep 24th 2008 2:37PM
Polarity looks like a rip off of super magnetic neo.