Indie Speed Run is a rather nifty gamejam with a number of high-profile names attached. From November 26th to January 6th, developers were invited (well, after paying a $25 fee) to create a game from scratch in the indie-stry standard jam period of 48 hours. As of the 7th, the entry period is closed, which means the games are now online for us - and the judges - to play. Hooray! You'll find them on The Escapist (they organised the event), including creepy typing game Abby - Jurassic Dark and the extraordinarily named Buforella and Her Quinwa MaoMao , which I'm fairly certain isn't a euphemism for anything. Fairly .
There's no over-arching theme to the jam, but the developer/s behind each game were randomly assigned various themes and elements as the competition began, which will have a heavy bearing on the scoring process. If you were wondering, that's already begun, with your favourite indie developers - including Kellee "Journey" Santiago, Ron "Double Fine" Gilbert, Jason "Passage" Rohrer, and Notch "Markus Persson" Minecraft - judging the entries as we speak . Probably. I mean, they could just as easily be eating toast instead. This indie supergroup will whittle the games down to a small number of finalists, which Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw will then evaluate at the start of February, presumably by speaking very quickly into a microphone. The ultimate winner, revealed on February 5th, will receive $2,500.
In the meantime, here's a ton of free games . (Thanks, IndieGames !)
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Tom loves exploring in games, whether it’s going the wrong way in a platformer or burgling an apartment in Deus Ex. His favourite game worlds—Stalker, Dark Souls, Thief—have an atmosphere you could wallop with a blackjack. He enjoys horror, adventure, puzzle games and RPGs, and played the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VIII with a translated script he printed off from the internet. Tom has been writing about free games for PC Gamer since 2012. If he were packing for a desert island, he’d take his giant Columbo boxset and a laptop stuffed with PuzzleScript games.