'Indie' Games

Indie Games

Independent games, mostly known as 'indie games' are the games that are created and designed by an individual or a small team (mostly about 3 people but can be as many as 10 people) without any financial support of video game publishers. Depending on the complexity of the game, it can take up to just only a few days or if it is more complex game it could take a few years. Indie games rely a lot of digital distribution for their funding and marketing as they don't want to pay a lot of money for the shipping or manufacturing of the game because indie games are not as known as the big company games so therefore they will not get much money or possible no money at all of gamers do not take to their game, but because indie games don't need to pay license fee's etc the games a generally cheaper than mainstream games so this might help their profits increase.

Indie developers do not need approval from publishers and do not have any limitations so they are known to be very creative, artistic and have unique ideas for games, also because possible anyone can be a game developer in the indie game industry their is a wide variation in the types of games. The games within the individual industry have their own section on game consoles such as the xbox live, which will help increase the amount of gamers that play the games to give it more popularity and get it known more.

Although indie games are expected to be small in the gaming industry, games such as minecraft, super-meat boy and braid prove that indie games can become massively known and used by many gamers across the world.

Braid

Braid is a video game developed by an independent developer called Jonathan Blow who funded the three year project with his own money. It was release on August 6th, 2008 for the Xbox 360 Arcade Service. This game was one of the small indie games that became a massively known game as it has a Microsoft Windows version released on April 10th, 2009. Although this is the only game Jonathan Blow has developed he is currently developing a new game; The Waitress which has been planned to hopefully release by the end of this year.

The main aim of the game is to help Tim attempt to rescue a princess from a monster.  Their is a story behind the game and text passages from the story are laid throughout the games which unfolds the story and gives clues to help Tim. The player progresses by finding jigsaw puzzle pieces and assembling the puzzle after collecting each piece, using the traditional aspects of the platform genre within the game and the various powers of time-manipulation. 

The games received highly positive reviews from critics, eventually becoming the highest critically rated title on Xbox live.