GameShark | PSP | Features | The Indies Issue #10

Those of us that lived through the retail horror of the Deer Hunter franchise can attest to the fact that those hunting games were more popular than any other game genre on the planet.. expect for those horrible mass-produced Barbie games that battled them on a monthly basis. Wildlife Explorer – Birds of North America feels and looks like a budget hunting title at first pass, and though it may use many of the same conventions, its hook is that there's no violence. The game lets you go on the "hunt" for birds in exotic locales, snap pictures and just have fun learning more about birds in general.

The game kind of reminds me of one of my favorite shows (Northern Exposure) when "Brick" proprietor Holling went birding with Ruth Ann. His friend, the town millionaire (Maurice) mocked him about giving up hunting, but old Holling shrugged off his comments and found a new way to enjoy nature without destroying it. Even the non-tree hugging, Petco-avoiding, NRA-member in us all can sit down and enjoy this game without feeling like they've just joined the local chapter of PETA. Just Sayin' - give it a try.

Our last entry this week is a work in progress that deserves to be checked out. Armed with a freshly released tech-demo for this rather ambitious role-playing game, it's pretty easy for me to point out why this indie game has the potential to be great. The game in question is called Fountaindale , and the goal of it is to create a computer game that combines an original story, deep character development, an intricate battle systems and a fully 3D world built from scratch. But the graphics are secondary to the main goal of this project - it's all about creating an experience that is worth taking part in. The final product will let the player control the main character and a party of NPCs as you use research to unlock new abilities, skills, and magic. You can get a taste of the game by hitting the link above and downloading the very first tech demo.

Bonus Round: Game Development Competition

This week's Bonus Round is a public service message to highlight a pretty cool game development contest being put on by GarageGames, GreatGamesExperiment.com, Combustion Entertainment and www.mygmgame.com. You can check out the details below - which were swiped from the news page over at GarageGames.com:

GarageGames , GreatGamesExperiment.com, and www.mygmgame.com are sponsoring the first Game Development Competition from Combustion Entertainment . The competition began July 18th and continues for 2 months ending September 18th. The contest theme is comedy, so developers are encouraged to incorporate comedic elements into their game in which ever way they wish. The contest site is up and running with forums which contain all of the necessary contest info such as rules and guidelines. One of the guidelines for the competition is that all games must be uploaded to the Great Games Experiment, so be sure to check GGE for new games that are part of the competition.

Entrants will submit their entry and at the end of the deadline 10 finalists (Chosen by a group of judges) from each category will go into a public vote to determine the category winner. Then, the winners are put in for one final round of voting to determine the grand prize winner. The overall winner will be awarded the complete Torque Suite (TGB, TGE, TGEA), and winners of each category will receive the Torque Game Engine. The Combustion Ent Choice Award will receive 1 Year Free Domain Name sponsored by mygmgame.com. We hope many people will enter and are looking forward to seeing the great games that are produced. (Find out more at www.gdcomp.uni.cc ).

And that's all for this week. Thanks for reading - see you next week. As always, questions, comments and hate mail are welcomed - send it along to jamesbfudge@gmail.com or gameshark.feedback@yahoo.com . - James Fudge

Previous Issues:

[ The Indies Issue #9 ] [ The Indies Issue #8 ] [ The Indies Issue #7 ] [ The Indies Issue #6 ] [ The Indies Issue #5 ] [ The Indies Issue #4 ] [ The Indies Issue #3 ] [ The Indies Issue #2 ] [ The Indies Issue #1 ]