If you’re a Cave Story fan I think you’re going to enjoy this video! The game is coming out for WiiWare (North America) on March 22nd. Check the Nicalis blog for more information and other goodies, like fan art.

Chrissy “Nava” Chubala took many fantastic photos of GDC this year – everything from sessions to the awards to the IGF Pavilion to recreation. Check out her photo collection here. Rebekah Saltsman also took some great photos of the various goings on. Nice way to reminisce about the conference for those who were there, and hopefully it will inspire others to make the trip next time. Thanks, Chrissy and Rebekah! UPDATE: There’s also the official GDC photostream.

Platform: Mobile (iPhone, iPod Touch) — Games featured this week: Mole: Quest for the Terracore gem!; Ragdoll Blaster 2; Quizarium — A digging game. A quiz game. And a game about shooting ragdolls out of cannons. It would be a challenge to find a more varied selection of iTunes App Store games. Unless one of them involved monkeys. Monkeys always win the randomness awards. Tagged as: blog, iphone, itunes, mobile, mobile-monday

[This is a guest article by PerrinAshcroft. If you’d like to contribute a guest article to TIGSource, go here.] Digital: A Love Story is a free to download interactive story by Christine Love available for Windows, Mac and Linux. The game is set in 1988 and you begin the game with a threadbare interface closely resembling the Amiga’s workbench. To progress through the game you must use your modem to dial into bulletin board systems (BBS), make friends and enemies, download utilities, hack into protected system and commit phone fraud to make long distance calls. The game has a wonderful retro feel that’s going to tug strings of nostalgia for anyone who built up astronomical phone bills dialling into BBSs back before the internet became so widespread. Parallels can be drawn to Introversion’s Uplink but Digital is very much its own experience. While Uplink was driven by the game elements of upgrading your deck and breaking into systems in a cool cyberpunk-esque world, Digital keeps its focus on characters and storytelling and draws instead from the unglamorous nerdy reality of the pre-internet digital world. The tools at your disposals are primitive, but are interactive enough that it doesn’t just feel like passive story. I don’t want to elaborate too much on the content of the story as finding that out is what makes this game worth playing, but the story is really well structured and paced taking you through quite an emotional three-act tale in only a few hours. While the primary story is a fairly serious affair, Christine is smart enough to include humorous side plots such as getting into arguments with Star Trek nerds, a level of attention to detail that keeps the world interesting. On a technical level I was very impressed once I realised the game was built with Ren’Py, a python based tool for building Japanese style visual novels. The game has been customised to the point where it’s unrecognisable from most projects build using those authoring tools. The interface is slick, the graphics are retro in a perfectly fitting manner and it includes a fantastic ambient soundtrack. A game like this is unlikely to appeal to everyone, heavily story driven games are not to everyone’s tastes. But for those of you willing to spend a few hours, working slowly through an intriguing piece of interactive narrative there is a lot to enjoy about this title. I considered nit picking at a few minor issues but it seemed silly when for the most part this is a game with a specific purpose in mind and it executes it brilliantly. Ultimately for me, when the ending finally came it was a truly emotional moment where I just didn’t want to let go but knew I had to.

Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP is an iPhone game collaboration between superbrothers (aka Craig Adams), singer-songwriter Jim Guthrie, and Capybara Games, the creators of Critter Crunch. These two videos are from the GDC build of the game, where the player engages in some exploration and combat. I got a chance to try it at the IGF Pavilion, where S&S EP was being shown for winning IGF Mobile’s Achievement In Art award. It’s great – the stylized art, the evocative audio, and the detail in each area makes you excited to see what’s coming next. The combat was also fun, if simple. The combat video is after the jump: (Source: GameSetWatch)

Platform: Download (Windows) — Nobody's a stranger to mahjong, the Chinese game of tile matching. According to legend, Confucius developed the game in 500 BC, naming it after the sparrow for the delicate symphony created by the individual tiles coming together to form a whole. Whether or not that's true, mahjong tends to be a quiet, contemplative sort of game, a mood elegantly set by the beautiful music and visual presentation of Mahjongg Dimensions Deluxe. Tagged as: affiliate, arkadium, demo, download, game, mahjong, puzzle, rating-g, windows

Platform: Download (Windows) — Despite the similarities to the other Farm Frenzy games (or, perhaps, because of it), Farm Frenzy 3: Ice Age is still a rollicking good time. With tons of trophies to win and lots of levels to conquer, you're still looking at hours and hours (and hours of casual gameplay and replay value that is fun for a wide range of ages. So enjoy the cute animals, and look out for an appearance from a very special guest star. Tagged as: action, affiliate, alawargames, arcade, demo, download, farmfrenzyseries, rating-g, simulation, timemanagement, windows

Platform: Download (Linux, Windows) — Games featured this week: Fatherhood; Fishface; Desktop Dungeons — It's a roguelike-like Weekend Download! Two of our games this weekend snuggle up to the famously non-casual sub-genre without turning up the complexity. Same RPG flavor, one tenth the time commitment! Quaffing potions should be a standard roguelike feature, though... Tagged as: blog, download, weekenddownload, winlinux

Platform: Download (Mac, Windows) — Flo's at it again in the fifth installment of the popular time management series. Deal with troublesome customers, wicked weather, and much more across fifty fast-paced levels of Diner Dash action as you work to rebuild the diner of your dreams. Although, we gotta tell ya, if we ever worked in a restaurant and actually blew it up, we'd probably be in a lot more trouble. Tagged as: affiliate, demo, dinerdash, download, game, macwin, rating-g, timemanagement

Platform: Flash — Experience the world from the point of view of an alien who only wanted to help and ended up paying the price for it. Tagged as: browser, flash, free, game, interactiveart, macwinlinux, narrative, pixelante, rating-y, sidescroller

Former IGF Awards host Andy Schatz (pictured above) got to take the stage again tonight, only this time it was to accept both the Seumas McNally award and the Excellence in Design Award for his 4-player co-op stealth game Monaco. Other winning games included the long-lost Limbo, which won awards for Visual Art and Technical Excellence, Closure, which won Audio, and cactus’s Tuning, which won the Nuovo Award. You can view the entire show here. Seumas McNally Grand Prize:

• Joe Danger
• Monaco
• Rocketbirds: Revolution!
• Super Meat Boy!
• Trauma

Excellence in Visual Art:

• Limbo
• Owlboy
• Rocketbirds: Revolution!
• Shank
• Trauma

Excellence in Audio:

• Closure
• Rocketbirds: Revolution!
• Shatter
• Super Meat Boy!
• Trauma

Excellence in Design:

• AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!!—A Reckless Disregard For Gravity
• Cogs
• Miegakure
• Monaco
• Star Guard

Nuovo Award:

• A Slow Year
• Closure
• Enviro-Bear 2000
• Today I Die
• Tuning

Technical Excellence:

• Closure
• Limbo
• Heroes of Newerth
• Joe Danger
• Vessel

Student Showcase:

• Boryokudan Rue
• Continuity
• Devils Tuning Fork
• Dreamside Maroon Student Version
• Igneous
• Paper Cakes
• Puddle
• Puzzle Bloom
• Spectre
• Ulitsa Dimitrova

Cactus gave the best IGF acceptance speech I’ve ever heard!

Games featured this week: Keyboard Mayhem; Valthirian Arc; DuckLife; GeoGame; Sideways — Friday has once again arrived to shower you with pre weekend joy and a fine assemblage of games indeed! Test your geography skills, your typing skills, your... duck... skills?... hmm. Well, it's awesome. Just trust us. Tagged as: blog, browser, linkdump

Platform: Flash — The steadfast knight in this latest game from Nitrome has decided that all that romping through dank dungeons and random-encounter-laden forests is overrated; instead, he launches himself out of a cannon through waves of enemies and sees how far he can get. Click your mouse to fire the cannon at the get-go, accounting for angle and power, and then hold the left mouse button down in a direction to give the airborne knight a general idea of where he should aim for. Tagged as: action, arcade, browser, flash, free, game, macwinlinux, nitrome, rating-g, rpg, tossing

Admit it: if you never found this device diabolical there might be something wrong with you. Tagged as: babylonsticks, comic, funny

Platform: Flash — Taberinos shows the brilliance of stripping down a type of game to its very basics. Simple, elegant gameplay that changes every time you start it up. Yes, that is a recipe for serious time suckage. So get shooting! Just, you know, don't let the boss catch you. Tagged as: browser, flash, free, game, geometry, macwinlinux, rating-g, skill, strategy, tonypa

Platform: Flash — Mou haru desu ka? Yes, the Japanese are asking "Is it spring yet?" too. A sure sign of spring is the release of a new PonPon House escape game from Orange Biscuit. And now PonPon House 3 is here! The Komorebi house is awash in pastels and cute details, and the relaxing music and birdsong of the soundtrack will bring spring to you, even if the weather where you are isn't cooperating (just yet). Haru desu~~~~~! Tagged as: browser, escape, flash, free, game, japanese, macwinlinux, orangebiscuit, pointandclick, ponponhouse, rating-g

REDDER is a game by Anna Anthropy / Auntie Pixelante, with music by Amon26. It’s an exploration platformer focused around an alternating green/red block switch mechanic, similar to the mechanic used in the third pendent dungeon in the SNES classic A Link to the Past. I found the colors very nice (even though the backgrounds are often just gradients, there’s a lot that can be done with just gradients of color), and the exploration of a fairly large world excellent. In a few ways the game resembles VVVVVV, but only in basic structure: a world of screen-sized rooms, numerous checkpoints, things to collect, but is more non-linear, slower-paced, and not as focused on challenge (you won’t die very often if you’re decent at platformers). I’ve played through many of her other games (When Pig’s Fly, Calamity Annie, Mighty Jill Off, Invader), and so far this one’s by far my favorite; maybe you guys will agree.

Platform: Flash — It's bigger, badder, and, yes, REDDER than other platformers. A retro-styled adventure of space exploration set in your browser, REDDER offers a big map to explore chock full of challenges. Collect the gems you need to escape and make your way back home... or settle in to stay with the scenic vistas, strange environments, and hostile red robots. We won't judge you. Tagged as: adventure, browser, dessgeega, exploration, flash, free, game, macwinlinux, pixelart, platform, rating-g, retro

Platform: Flash — In this unique offering, you dive into the dreams of sleeping babies only to find yourself taking on the guise of strange aliens in an even stranger universe. Through the dreams of infants you will explore the lives of each of these aliens, experience their hopes and help them attain their dreams. You will do this despite the encroaching darkness, and the ever growing warnings of a dying world. Tagged as: abstract, art, browser, experimental, flash, flixel, free, game, gweir, macwinlinux, newgrounds, pixelart, platform, rating-y, unique

At work I have to provide a progress report. It details what I've achieved and what I'm going to do. Seems to help keep me moving (I dread the idea of filing a progress report that says this week I've mostly achieved nothing) so I thought I'd try it here. All past game attempts are currently on the cutting room floor. I need to make some cash so I'm gonna try my hand at money making games for a bit. Current plan includes and is probably ordered in priority:

• Finish reviewing 4K games for the contest. These need to be done by next week and I'm only about a third of the way through.
• Do the Slick bug run. I know I know, there are lots of bugs outstanding and I will be getting to them ASAP.
• Start porting some of my mobile creations to Flash with a view to selling them on. Hopefully this will be reasonably easy using Flex and FlashDevelop
• Facebook games, I have a few ideas here and I think I'd like to give them a go. It seems like a place you can make an impact pretty quickly if you get it right and looking around some other indies I can see some extensions to existing ideas that might fit the facebook platform pretty well.
• Finally the circle art game. I have this art farty idea about a game with circles. Thats about all I have but there will be lots of circles. Possibly in different colours. I'm sure it's going to be great :)