Let me preface this little preamble to issue #20 by saying that I mean no disrespect to the folks behind the wonderful IGF festival held in conjunction with the Game Developers Conference every year - they do god's work in the eyes of many indies - but the way they pick finalists really bothers me a lot.

Every year a good percentage of thr games or projects selected aren't even near complete or even playable. While many of these titles are ambitious, artistic endeavors, being tangible seems more important to me. What we need from finalists are games that have been battle tested, played and enjoyed - not high concepts that have not yet met the measure of their ambitions.

Want some examples? World of Goo comes out on Valentine’s Day 2008, The Path was shown at GDC 2007, OokiBloks is not complete and doesn't have a release date, Noitu Love 2: Devolution has no date, and on and on and on. Don't get me wrong - there are some wonderful projects in the '08 list but 13 out of the 20 finalists in various categories aren't even playable and many of them don't even have a video available.

So why I am I saying all these harsh things about what is basically the only serious awards for indies? Because I respect what the IGF does for indies too much to keep quiet. I am seeing an alarming trend from year to year that mirrors what's going on in the mainstream game media (I use that term loosely) with big budget titles. Let's not give out accolades for games that we have not played yet. Guarded enthusiasm is fine, but blind enthusiasm comes back to bite us all in the ass when a game doesn't get finished or it doesn't measure up to our expectations.

In closing, i'd like to add that I do my fair share of cheerleading for untested indie titles in this column, but readers are smarter enough to know why most of these games are listed under the header 60 seconds With.. - these games look promising, but the measure of their worth is out of my hands beyond brining them to your intention. In other words, it's in your hands to decide.

Anyway, for better or worse here are this year's finalists . And with that disclaimer in mind, here's a look at some promising indies that you may want to check out:

Amanda Fitch tries to recapture the magic of Aveyond with here latest RPG Maker XP created title Aveyond 2 . Will this title bring fans of the previous game back inot the fold? I'm not sure but the game looks promising and offers a handful of new improvements to the system. Aveyond 2 promises more than 60 quests to take on, over a hundred places to explore, mouse support, guilds, new secret areas, karma and attraction systems, and the ability to buy "the farm." Hit the link above to grab the demo and see for yourselves if Aveyond 2 delivers more of that old RPG magic.