Lux Delux (Windows/Mac/Linux, $24.95, Demo Available) - Lux Delux is a turn-based strategy game inspired by the classic board game Risk. In fact, it even includes the classic Risk scenario along with thousands of other maps that are available for download. The game is available as a free single-player demo and can be upgraded to the full version, which includes multiplayer access.

Aside from the classic Risk rules, there are tons of neat gameplay features. One map based on the Vietnam war allows players in North Vietnam to infiltrate deep into South Vietnam via the Ho Chi Min trail. Control of the South China Sea also offers players the chance to strike back at Hanoi. Control of capitol cities offers the player a bonus equivalent to controlling a small continent.

Other maps include a World War II scenario and a medieval campaign. The medieval scenario includes strategic towns located on a river that provide army bonuses and allow players to ferry armies across the map. Players can also lay siege to the castle walls and will receive a bonus if they capture it.

The game play is satisfying and breathes new life into a beloved classic. A sequel, which focuses on American history, is also available.

Mexican Motor Mafia (Windows, $17, Demo Available) - This game is a top-down shooter similar to the original Grand Theft Auto games. The player must hunt down “Priest” an escaped convict who murdered your brother and kidnapped his children. Priest escaped with the help of his gang, the Red Texas Four, and sought revenge on your brother because he was the lawman who put him away.

The vengeful motorist drives south in Mexico in his 1983 yellow VW Beetle and must complete missions to earn money and find clues. Vehicles can hold different amounts of cargo, travel at different speeds and sport different amounts of armor. The player navigates a regional map and combats a wide array of desperadoes and banditos. The driver has a limited amount of space in which to mount weapons and can either mount one large gun like a rocket launcher, or a combination of several smaller pistols, shotguns and traps. While in combat, the driver must maneuver his car so that he deals maximum damage while minimizing the amount of fire they are exposed to.

The graphics are not fancy and the system requirements are laughably low, however, the ambience, art and music combine to create a thoroughly enjoyable experience. There are no spoken lines or CG cut scenes in the entire game. Instead, important events are depicted in vivid comic book panels, and the original, spicy rockabilly soundtrack adds flavor. The only drawback is that the storyline is incredibly short and easy.

Firefight (Windows, $20, Demo Available) - Firefight is a top-down tactical World War II game inspired by the popular Close Combat Series. In this version, the gamer actually serves in the heat of battle and is commissioned a junior lieutenant. If the HQ section is killed in action, so is the player.

A wide variety of infantry and armored units are available including rifle companies, machine gun sections, mortar squads, light tanks, anti-tank guns, and heavy tanks. The HQ section must be relatively close to units in order to broadcast radio commands, otherwise, the units won’t respond to orders. Off-screen artillery units also offer support in the form of high-explosive barrages and smoke screens.

Gameplay is occasionally frustrating in so far that enemies are hard to spot and hard to kill. However, the commander must quickly learn to coordinate his units effectively and screen tanks with infantry. However, it’s another enjoyable and lovingly crafted product.

[Editor's Note: Thanks to pmglasser for helping pick up the Indie-Games-You-Should-Know slack. We'll hopefully be able to squeeze out another installment in July, and then be back to being a monthly column.]

Tremulous (Windows/Linux, Free, Open Source) - Tremulous is the first standalone game I know of to come out of the Quake III Sourcecode Release last fall. It started off as a mod, but once the source was out, they worked towards making it a whole standalone game since they could. After about seven months of work they finally released a stable standalone version at the end of March.

Enough about history, though. Tremulous is a class-based multiplayer FPS/RTS hybrid that pits teams of alien vs humans. Apart from running around and shooting eachother, members of both sides can build an assortment of buildings. Stuff like defensive turrets, power stations, supply generators, healing stations, etc. As you fight, you get cash, which can then be used to buy you new gear on the human side or count towards "evolutions" on the alien side. This kind of game has been done before, but not in a free standalone format. So while you're waiting for Natural Selection: Source to come out, check out Tremulous.

Shadowgrounds (Windows, $25, Demo Available) - Shadowgrounds is a third person shooter from a perspective you don't generally see: Top-Down. It's also the latest game to get a distro deal with Steam, so you may have seen it being pimped out in recent Steam news updates. In Shadowgrounds you play as some guy who runs around and shoots aliens in a rather mindless manner. Sometimes you have to go fix some computer terminal or find some key card, but it's mostly a straightforward arcade-y shooter where you don't have to worry about things like "complex strategy" or "ammunition running out". And there is nothing wrong with that. There's a three level demo available through Steam right now and the full game is being unlocked later today. You can get it through Steam for $25, or wait for physical copies to arrive in stores some time later this month for $30.

Now, it should be noted that even though this is a top-down shooter tied to Steam where you run around and shoot a bunch of alien critter things, this is not Alien Swarm: Infested. Alien Swarm: Infested is a completely different game, which I would be reporting about instead if they had a demo out.

Noitu Love and the Army of Grinning Darns (Windows, Free) - Would you like a side of oldschool beat-em-up with your shooters today? Noitu Love is that. It's a quirky little 2d beat-em-up, sorta like Double Dragon meets Mega Man. You run around as your little pixel-y self punching out Darns and collecting bottles and such. There's six levels, five difficulties, more unlockables than I can really list because I don't know how many there are, and a ton of great (loud) chiptune-y music. It's not a really complex game, and the increasingly difficult Darns get somewhat boring to pummel after awhile, but it's still a great effort worth a couple minutes of your time.

Pirate Baby's Cabana Battle Street Fight 2006 (Mature Audiences only for so much animated gore and nudity, and references you young'uns wouldn't get anyway) - I'm . . not entirely sure how to describe this. First, it is not a game. However, it is close. It's a twelve-minute work of machinima, but instead of being film using a game engine as its base, it's a film that looks, feels and works like a classic arcade beat-em-up would. It's also the most senselessly violent thing I've ever seen in black & white. Which is good.

As I said, it's heavily influenced by beat-em-up's of the late 80's and early 90's. You know, those colossal multi-monitor 8 player beasts like The Simpsons arcade game, or the huge multiplayer X-men game. The silent film follows the two protagonists as they fight their way through hordes of zombies and Metal-Slug-inspired octopi, unleashing special moves, fighting bosses, killing octopi dressed as Chun-Li, standard hero stuff. The 12 minute ordeal eventually culminates in an epic battle vs Pirate Baby, who has apparently stolen some random girl off the street.

I'm really not sure what all else to say about Pirate Baby's Cabana Battle Street Fight 2006, except that it really deserves to be seen. It's like a speed run video of the best game never made. And on top of all that, it was all animated by hand by one guy - Paul Robertson - and it took him about a year to complete it. Oh, and if for some reason you'd like to see it in better quality than what Google provides, check out his blog posting announcing the online version, it has higher-quality mirrors listed.

So, that's all I've got for now. We may have a special post-E3 edition if we somehow come across some indie developers who scraped together enough cash to have a cardboard box in Kentia Hall. . . but if we don't, then expect our next installment in June: Gamera vs. Indie Games You Should Know.

GridWars - A freeware PC/Mac clone of the Xbox Live smash-hit 'Geometry Wars'. If you've played Geometry Wars, you know what to expect. It's a very good clone of the game. If you aren't familiar, GridWars is a retro asteroids-ish shooter that utilizes dual-analog for nearly all of its controls. Left stick controls movement, right stick controls the direction you're shooting. GridWars features a variety of enemies and despite being largely retro-feeling, it still manages to be really quite pretty, what with all the particle effects and field deformation from Gravitrons. It's a really good game, and unlike a lot of things I've featured in previous installments of Indie Games You Should Know, I'm definitely keeping this one in my permanent collection, as it's a solid shooter, and a great little easy-to-get-into time-sink.

Plasma Pong - Pong has been done to death. One could even argue that it wasn't that amazing to begin with, it was just that it was first. Even if something sucks, if it's first it will find a way to stick around. Plasma Pong is probably the best incarnation of the game since Quake Pong. The main thing Plasma Pong brings to the table is fluid dynamics. Instead of just bouncing back and forth, the ball, paddles and entire playing field are in a fluid environment. Moving creates turbulence, and the paddles can spew plasma into the environment, further altering how the ball flies. Furthermore, the paddles can create vacuums to suck in plasma and the ball, and then release everything explosively for a charged shot. It really adds something to the game to make it just interesting enough to be worth downloading and screwing around with.

Mu-cade - This is the latest offering from Kenta Cho's ABA Games, home of such games as rRootage and Torus Trooper. It . . well . . I'll be honest with you here. I have no idea what is going on in this game. No clue whatsoever. It seems like something with flying death centepedes that fight and shoot lasers, but I really have no idea. I tried playing this for awhile, but then went back to playing GridWars. I love me some GridWars.

Minerva: Metastasis 2 - Part 2 of Minerva, an episodic single player campaign for Half-Life 2. I know this is "Indie Games You Should Know", and this isn't really a "game" its a mod, but it's good, and fits enough for me. We reported on the first episode, Metastasis 1, some months ago, and the second episode was just released. It's tough to pinpoint what it is that really makes Minerva stand out. I think it's that you can tell that effort was really put into it. The architecture is all amazing, all on-par with what Valve themselves put into the game, and everything flows back in through areas you explored like a good Valve level would. The plot is great, as are all the scripted elements that keep you on your toes. Puzzles are present, and again all feel like the kind of things Valve would make. Puzzles with purpose, but purpose that doesn't beat you over the head until you "get it". It's also long, genuinely difficult, and still not over. Metastasis 1 has been packed along with the newly-released 2, so if you missed the first round, you can easily hop in. Also, if their site goes down, the ~23-meg file is available at Mod DB.

PixelShips - One part 'Defender', One part Pokemon, One part "feels like I should be playing this on a 386". Pixelships is currently my favourite game to play instead of paying attention during a physics lecture. In Pixelships your immediate goal is to - like any good shooter - blow things up. Levels are randomly generated, and there's a few different broad types with subgoals of shooting targets or collecting coins. As you make your way through, there are mid-bosses where the screen stops auto-scrolling. After you fight these bosses and they explode into a shower of pixels, you can suck up said pixels to be able to use that ship later on. Furthermore, apart from collecting new types of ships, you can upgrade existing ships for new abilities or stats. There's a ton of gameplay in here, and it's got a great retro vibe going on, so check it out.

Finally, though not an indie game, an indie game developer recently had this article published over at IGN's RPG Vault. His claim: innovation is hard, time consuming and expensive, therefore indie developers should not be expected to innovate. While I don't disagree with his initial claim, I strongly disagree with his followup. Yes, taking chances on innovation is risky and not necessarily a great idea for someone getting their start, but on the other hand, deciding that it is outright impossible for an indie developer to produce something new and wonderful is ridiculous. Furthermore, the article felt like the author was just trying to justify his failures, and explain why all it seems he is good at doing is regurgitating Ultima-online-esque RPGs. Seriously. Look at this. Look at the screenshots. Now guess when it was released. 1996? 1998? Wrong. Avernum 4 was released last Thursday.

Innovation isn't impossible or dead in the indie game scene, look at the yearly Indie Game Jam or everything from Introversion or the results of the Experimental Gameplay Project. It also isn't easy, but no one ever said it would be easy. Because of this, innovation shouldn't be abandoned outright, in favor of rehashing the same thing over and over until you're jaded. That's just dumb, and a kind of mindset that doesn't help anyone.

Right, well, that's Indie Game You Should Know for March. Have you come across some indie game worth talking about? Feel free to tell us all about it in the comments.

First up today, a game I've had installed for quite awhile now, Break Quest. Break Quest is at its core a very solid breakout clone, where you control a paddle and use it to bounce a ball to break bricks and clear a level. Break Quest sets itself apart from pretty much every other breakout clone I've ever played in two ways. First is powerups, there's a huge variety of powerups in Break Quest which go far beyond the Arkanoid-standards of sticky ball and shooting. There are powerups that change ball attributes like speed, shape and material. Others let you use all manner of different weapons such as dumb-fire rockets, fly-by-wire rockets, spread guns, dual-guns, all kinds of different alternative ways to blow things up, even mines that your ball can drop off when it hits a target. Then there are ones that do things distinctly special to Break Quest, like modify your semi-circular paddle by changing its size, pitch, shape, etc.

The other main difference is that the game's levels are unique. You won't be blowing up bricks for 100 levels. Instead, levels are all "themed". Sometimes it'll just be a cosmetic thing, where bricks are all of a certain size and are being used to draw some large pixel-art drawing that you'll be chipping away at. Other times it'll be retro game clashes, for instance one level that puts you in the middle of Space Invaders, with real working aliens that will attempt to fire at you, and if they hit your paddle will stun you for a short period. Other levels remove bricks altogether, and have you shooting at pinball-ish targets until they explode. Some levels end up looking like physics experiments, with dangling boxes hanging from the ceiling, which all react to your little bouncing ball.

Break Quest is good stuff, $19.99 gets you 100 levels and three difficulty levels. If you're on the fence, they've got a limited demo available on their website. Oh, and there's also an OSX port. Macs can play games? Who knew!

Next up, Oasis, a past winner of the IGF. Oasis is sorta like what would happen if Civilization and Minesweeper were to collide at high speed. The setting is Ancient Egypt, and you play a young prince trying to gather and unite his followers. Your goal, in general, is to survive. At the start of each round you're presented with a grid obscured by fog. Under that fog are three things: cities, barbarian camps, and an oasis. In a limited number of turns, you need to accomplish a few things: find some cities, fortify them, and find the oasis. There are side goals that need to be accomplished, too, like discovering technologies, finding advisors, and locating the barbarian camps, but the main point is to get ready for the barbarians. As you prepare, you can shift resources around to put up a better fight against the barbarian hordes, but eventually there won't be any turns left and it'll be time.

When time runs out, the barbarians attack the closest city to their starting point, and civ-style combat takes place. A fight of numbers takes place, and you either kill the barbarians or lose a city and they roll on to the next one. If you win, well, great, you move on to the next level. If by some stroke of misfortune, the barbarians trash all your happy cities, you have one last line of defense: the oasis. If you found and fully uncovered the oasis you can use the adjacent obelisk to fight the remaining barbarians on your own, using patented Ancient Egyptian magic. If you lose then well, you lose. Sorry.

Oasis has a lot of levels, and hard mode is really hard. It's a nice novel little game, and it involves a good deal of strategy and thought to really do well. If you're into that kind of thing, it can be purchased straight from Mind Control Software for $19.95. As always, there's a time-limited demo available on their website, and it's a nice and long one, the tutorial alone lasted me about 45 minutes, and I still had plenty of time to screw around in the actual game modes before the trial ran out. So go check it out.

Finally today, a brilliant and still-topical game from "Thompsonsoft", a wonderful traditional pixel-tastic sidescrolling platformer entitled "I'm OK". I'm OK is the result of everyone's favourite insane anti-gaming pundit Jack Thompson's "Modest Video Game Proposal", in which Jack described a ridiculously ultraviolent videogame about going on a murderous rampage that was in-turn justified by violent video games. Jack went on to make a challenge: if someone actually makes his game, he'd personally donate $10,000 to charity.

So, of course, someone made the game. The result is - amazingly - really pretty well done. I'm OK is an oldschool sidescrolling beat-em-up filled with equal parts gore and parody. It's short, but only because it follows Jack's ridiculous plot rather strictly. Luckily, it makes up for its short length by being nice and hard. As you travel through this trip into the deranged mind of Jack Thompson, you get to use a slew of weapons: uzis, a rocket launcher, a shotgun, a large friendly baseball bat, and so on. There isn't really a whole lot to talk about, but it's good ridiculous ultra-violent fun, exactly the kind of fun Jack Thompson doesn't want us to have. It's also free, so what are you waiting for? Go simulate yourself some murder. Oh, and be sure to check out Thompsonsoft's "A Brief History of Video Game Violence" timeline, and take heed of the cautionary tale of the horrors of "Wand of Gamelon".

Right! So that's our latest installment of "Indie Games You Should Know". Three more great games altogether costing less than $40. Coming next week: more news, a couple reviews, and [if you're all good] a sizable serving of "other stuff".

Cloud - Cloud is a game about clouds. It combines all the rolling-stuff-up fun of Katamari Damacy with neat globby cloud physics and a bonus side-serving of terminal illness. You pretty much spend your time flying around in the sky and manipulating clouds. You can take bright clouds and drag them around. Lead them into less-bright clouds and you'll convert the dingy clouds into bright ones and then be able to drag those. After a couple minutes of this you're dragging a supercell the size of Texas, ready to take on the world. You can also store these clouds and then fly around and release them like skywriting, which is necessary to complete some level objectives. Right now it's at a very early stage of the development process, but it's neat and free, so go check it out. There's four levels and a free-form level-building mode right now, with more to come.

Seiklus - Seiklus is a short little 2d platformer. It's a pretty simple game, but the art of the 2d platformer is one that's quickly being lost in today's market, so I feel obligated to give props to anyone still carrying the 2d platformer torch. In Seiklus you wander around this hand-drawn world collecting assorted colored . . things . . to help you proceed and solve puzzles. Apart from the little colored things you also have artifacts to collect that give you a special ability like the ability to see hidden platforms. Unlike Cloud, Seiklus is done. Very done, actually, it's been pretty much completed for the past couple years, but every time I mention it there's always someone who hasn't heard of it. So hey, it might be new to you. Go check it out.

Experimental Gameplay Project - I could probably do an 'indie games you should know' on nothing but EGP games, but I won't, because I'd never run out of things to feature. So instead I'm just going to give the project as a whole some coverage. The idea behind the project is that over the course of one semester a team of four students will attempt to produce ~50 games. They might not all be amazing, but some will be good, and will have been developed over a VERY short dev cycle. The project is in it's second semester right now, so new games should be showing up on a rather constant basis again, but as of yet I haven't come across any amazing must-play games. That will probably change at some point, though.

I brought up the Experimental Gameplay Project for another reason, too, not just that they have new stuff coming out again. Two weeks ago the project's creators had a rather lengthy article published over at Gamasutra. The article is a really neat look at their motivation behind starting the project, plus a recap of what exactly they learned from this endeavor. Even if you're not heavily in to game development it's a good read, and hey, if you are in to game development, definitely check it out since some of their findings can be applied to everything, not just the rapid prototyping process.

So there, there are some free little games for you to go waste time with. Have you got a favourite Indie game you'd like us to expose to a larger audience? Send it on in and we'll queue it up for the next installment.

Cave Story [aka Doukutsu Monogatari] - Cave Story is a side-scrolling exploratory-platformer (you know, like Metroid, Castlevania, etc.) for the PC, developed by one-man-army 'Pixel'. It's a really really wonderful game that looks like it just rode a time machine straight out of the 16-bit era. It was initially released in japanese, but has since been translated by awesome guys over at agtp. Both the game and the translation patch languished in my temp directory for several months, and ever since I finally got around to installing it I've felt compelled to show it to anyone who will listen long enough.

Really, though. It's a great game, several weapons, several endings, several pathways to play through the game, all which add together to result in a really fun game with a ton of replayability. So go check it out. The game and the translation patch are both available from agtp's translation page.

Gunroar - Every few months I make a point to stop by ABA Games, hoping that some great new shooter will have been released. Well, last month I was pleased to be greeted by exactly that, a new great shooter. ABA Games is known for churning out free indie shooters like there's no tomorrow (see: rRootage, Noiz2sa, Torus Trooper, etc.), but Gunroar is a bit different in that you have more free movement and the ability to shoot independent of the direction you're moving. It really requires dual-analog to truly appreciate, but you all have PS2 -> USB converters, right?

Definitely Not Lumines - It's . . well . . it's the wonderful PSP game Lumines, but ported to PC by some guy in China. Please don't tell Sony. While it isn't an exact replica, it's the closest we've got right now, and it's still pretty good. wasd for movement, j and k to rotate blocks, o to accept in the menu, i to toggle music and p to pause.

Eetz - I'll admit it, I read Penny Arcade. I enjoy it sometimes, too. Sometimes I even read the news. Luckily, on one of these recent trips to their frontpage I was presented with a shameless plug for Eetz, and was informed that it was "like Lemmings meets the Incredible Machine". How can you really turn that down? Only downside: it isn't a full game yet, just a ~10 level preview. Even then, it's under 50 megs, it's free, it's innovative, and it's really rather fun. . . so what exactly do you want?

So, that's my backlog of stuff I felt I needed to get Out There, more will obviously be coming, but since this is the indie game scene, who knows when.