By now, you have hopefully taken some time out of your schedule to tinker with the more interesting 2010 Independent Games Festival Main Competition entries. If not, it's never too late to remedy your gaming sin.

Today is the day when we get to look over the Student Showcase entries, all 193 of them. Holy carp, Batman! That's a lot of non-commercial interactivity. Like last time, I've skimmed through the list, opened a boatload of tabs, and come out with a handful of neat ones:

• AugustWind: The Season of Dreams and Cloudeels - A post-apocalyptic free-roaming shooter
• Autumn Dynasty - A sleek-looking RTS in which you command troops with an ink brush
• Hazard: The Journey of Life - A first-person philosophical puzzle game
• Vapor Mayhem - A Devil May Cry-style action game with funky rhythm elements

And then there's the one game I had the chance to play, Cut and Paste. It's this cool interactive flip book where, as the name implies, you cut and paste objects to solve puzzles. You could almost think of it as a point-and-click adventure game without the deep story, kind of. Try it out!

What you are no doubt watching right now, as you're reading this, is in fact a playable game. PixelForce, which mainly consists of a single person named Eric Ruth, brought it upon themselves to de-make Left 4 Dead.

Ruth hopes to get this game out for our enjoyment as a free download around January 4. All five maps of all four campaigns plus the entire cast of Special Infected will be present, believe it or not.

Easily the best part of this demonstration is the Boomer having everything from his waist up blown to smithereens; it's going to be neat to see the other SI in low-res form, for sure.

All in all, it's looking like a cool little project. Admittedly, I think the zombie reaction times are a bit on the slow side, but otherwise I dug what I saw wholeheartedly.

[Via Go Nintendo]

Another week, another batch of downloadable games on the little console that could (and did, and continues to do).

If you jump onto the Wii Shop Channel, you'll see the usual addition of Virtual Console and WiiWare games, but the big news is that demos are coming to WiiWare. Of course, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 owners have been playing demos for years now, but who's counting? If you are, make a note that there are currently five WiiWare demos available for your perusal: Bit.Trip.Beat by Aksys Games; Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life is a Darklord  by Square Enix; World of Goo by 2D BOY; NyxQuest: Kindred Spirits by Over the Top; and Nintendo's Pokémon Rumble. You'll notice that at least three of the five available games are really good.

In any case, if you happen to find yourself really digging on Pokémon Rumble, multiplayer action-RPG-lite, the full game is also available for 1,500 Wii bucks.

It's too bad that most people are going to be distracted by the ability to play three of the best games on WiiWare for free this week, because Nintendo also released Factor 5's Indiana Jones' Greatest Adventures (SNES) for 800 Spacedollars. Hearkening back from a time when licensed games didn't insult my intelligence, Indy's Greatest Adventure isn't bad at all, and a lot better than The Last Crusade game for the Genesis that I had when I was a kid. Street Fighter II':Champion Edition, a Turbogafx-16 port of the seminal fighter, is also available for 700 Wii coins, but that game sucks.

Last but not least, DSiWare for this week consists of a new Art Style game, and two games that I've never heard of. Art Style: DIGIDRIVE (500 points) is a puzzle game about traffic management is complemented by Skyworks' Arcade Bowling and Teyon's Robot Rescue, both of which will set you back 200 clams. Robot Rescue actually sounds kind of fun; you can read what it's like for yourself after the jump, where I've posted descriptions of all of Nintendo's digital offerings this week.

A few weeks ago, indie game developer Arkedo sent me an e-mail titled "An Easy Game from Arkedo to Dtoid, with Love": "Do you think it would be possible to have your mad skillz colleague try and beat Level 1 AND 2 of our game? That would be awesome. We put some bright and friendly colours, so he does not get scared too quickly. And a cat."

I'm not too sure, but I think Anthony's getting trolled.

In any case, I rose to the challenge and did just that—I beat levels 1 and 2 of Arkedo Series - 02 SWAP! without dying. Of course, I eventually beat the whole thing, but it took a lot more tries and something almost, but not quite, entirely unlike strategy.

In case you've forgotten (or never got the memo to begin with), Arkedo is trying to make one indie game per month, ostensibly designed around one simple game mechanic. Last month they gave us a platformer titled JUMP!. This month, we're presented with SWAP!, a "dual-stick action puzzle," so they say.

It finally happened. Someone made a Half-Life 2 mod about Nazis, dinosaurs, and Nazi dinosaurs. Sure, the main reason why I want to even give it a try is incredibly shallow, but even still, it's got dinosaurs who moonlight as Nazis. How can you say no to that?

If you'd rather jump straight into downloading the mod, head on over to ModDB; there's also a trailer located there too. Here's the brilliant story description:

You’ll play as Sgt. Jack Hardgrave, a renowned paleontologist who thought he put his career on hold to go to war…then Hitler resurrected dinosaurs and unleashed them on the Allies in 1942. When the Fuhrer’s monster army saw battle for the first time in North Africa Hardgrave was on the front lines – nearly getting eaten alive by beasts he spent his life studying.

We don't normally delve into the modding community too much here, but because Digital Ranch Interactive is releasing Dino D-Day as a full commercial game on Steam in 2010, and this mod is merely a way to hype up the final product and get feedback, I figured it deserved to be highlighted.

Tim Langdell, founder of EDGE Games and former IDGA board member, is evidently not a big believer in freedom of speech -- at least, not in respect to the word "edge." 

After managing to remove Mobigames' EDGE from the iPhone app store for a few months under the pretense of copyright infringement, Langdell is now going after PuzzleKings' Killer Edge Racing, yet another app to have committed the unforgivable sin of using a word Tim Langdell thinks he has a monopoly on. According to gamesindustry.biz, Langdell is now applying for a trademark for the name "Killer Edge Racing" in order to force PuzzleKings to drop the title altogether.

In a charmingly creative move, a slew of indie devs have decided to protest Langdell's greedy idiocy by using his own whininess against him. Critter Crunch is now Critter Credge, according to the game's official Web site; Polytron recently announced that 2.5D platformer Fez will now be called Fedge, Canabalt is now Canabedge, and so on.

You can find a relatively complete summary of all the indie game name changes here.

Jonathan Blow's beautiful puzzle-platformer Braid has been an Xbox 360 exclusive for a very long time, but PS3 fans with a penchant for time-travel and artsty fartsy metaphors will finally get a taste of the action. The game will be arriving on the PlayStation Network today, and if you're yet to try the game out, I highly suggest you make a point to do so.

We reviewed Braid last year and results were conclusive: Braid is a superb title that demands attention. I'm really pleased to see it hit the PS3 and expand its audience, so if you're a PS3-only kind of chap, please check it out. It's really worth experiencing.

Hit the jump for the official press release.

Titmouse Games has finally revealed an early trailer for its upcoming title, Seven Haunted Seas, shown only to press at E3 earlier this year. 

The developer says it's a "prototype" video, but it's already looking pretty impressive in this early stage. A few months back, Titmouse's Aaron Habibipour gave us the lowdow on the adventures of Scurvy Pete -- an undead pirate with a machine gun arm -- but it's great to finally see the game in action. 

So far, I'm loving the look of Seven Haunted Seas, and I'm looking forward to getting my hands on the game. Oh, and for Titmouse to finally tell us what platform the game is going to be on. It's not the Saturn, I know that much.

The ten finalists for 2BeeGames' Indie Game Competition have been chosen. Let it be known that this is the second competition -- our strict headline character limit here at Destructoid didn't want to cut me any slack today. The jerk!

Of the ten independent games, the one who gains the most support from voters and a panel of judges will get a cool $10,000 and the chance to get their project published on consoles with Zoo Games. As we recently heard, last year's winner, Auditorium, is being brought to consoles.

So yeah, those votes matter. The top games this year are:

• Bullets of a Revolver -- submitted by Diefox
• Climb to the Top of the Castle -- submitted by TwO Bros. Games
• Cavemen Vs. Aliens -- submitted by John Sear
• Cochon’s Pursuit -- submitted by Edouard Mercure
• Daytraders of the Dead -- submitted by Mat Groves/ John Denton
• DriftMoon -- submitted by Ville Mönkkönen
• Kablooey! -- submitted by Vertigo Games
• Tower of Heaven -- submitted by Askiisoft
• Turba -- submitted by Binary Takeover
• Vector Conflict: The Siege -- submitted by Dig Your Own Grave Games

While I can't say I am completely familiarized with all of the entrants' games, I can certainly vouch for Tower of Heaven. The game even comes with the Joseph Leray seal of approval to boot.

I've had my eye on Joe Danger since it was announced. Admittedly, it was because the games developer, Hello Games -- a small, indie start-up made up of industry veterans -- had sheepishly approached me to say "Hey, look at our game? Maybe? If you'd like."

And I looked, and I was interested based on what I had seen in screens and read in print. But this video, "leaked" out of the recent Eurogamer Expo, has me completely convinced -- Joe Danger is now one of my "most wanted" games for (presumably) 2010. 

It's looks like an interesting mix of Motocross Maniac's side-scrolling moto-racing, with Uniracer's tricks, and... LittleBigPlanet? As far as I'm concerned, these are all good things.

Hello Games still hasn't confirmed which console the game will be available for, but that's definitely an Xbox 360 controller diagram I see in the video, so draw your own conclusions.

Why haven't I posted about Futuremark Games Studio's self-published, FPS-in-space Shattered Horizon?

That's a damn good question, really. As a lover of Dead Space and all things similar in nature to that game, I'm required by law to tell you about Shattered Horizon. Unbeknownst to me, it went up on Steam on Wednesday; apparently I am alone in this, because it's sitting in the top ten sellers section.

The main draw here is easily the zero gravity gameplay. Imagine a multiplayer session with 32 people in deep space. More specifically, on an asteroid. Bingo! Sounds sexy, huh? FGS shot us over a new video about Shattered Horizon's other neat feature called "silent running."

Yes, there is no sound in space. By default, your character's suit simulates audio to make the game more enjoyable. But with silent running, you can turn all audio cues off, meaning "a stealth advantage while sacrificing radar, HUD, and maneuverability."

I need a DirectX 10 graphics card, and I need this game.

Cipher Prime's Auditorium is a relatively simple, very self-explanatory game that's presented brilliantly. Rather than listen to me elaborate further, you can hear Samit discuss it or even try a demo, for that matter.

Oddly enough, GamerBytes reports that Auditorium is making it beyond the realm of PC exclusivity and onto Xbox LIVE Arcade, PlayStation Network, and even PSP Minis sometime next year. Not to discredit the game, but it doesn't seem like the sort of thing those services tend to offer usually.

Hell, I would take that as a compliment. More than anything else, it's good news because it means more money will go in the pockets of the guys who created Auditorium. They deserve it.

Forget Silent Hill or Fatal Frame. You know a game that's terrifying? Bay12's Slaves to Armok: God of Blood: Dwarf Fortress II, colloquially shortened to simply Dwarf Fortress. If being one of Armok's slaves wasn't bad enough (it isn't), consider that the game's visuals are totally in ASCII, that there's no user interface to speak of, and that all of commands are mapped to the keyboard.

In case you're not hip to frustratingly opaque indie games, Dwarf Fortress is a mix of city-building "God game," real-time strategy, and roguelike, all wrapped up in a procedurally generated bow. Wonderful things can happen as you build your eponymous Dwarf fortress (it can be flooded by lava, for example), but trying to figure out how it works is like trying to dig a hole to China with toothpicks. That've been jammed into your eyes.

Luckily, developers Jonask and Solifuge have addressed at least one of the barriers to entry into Dwarf Fortress: enter Stonesense, an isometric visualizer that runs alongside the game, ostensibly providing the player with some visual orientation that's easier to handle than the original ASCII. The open-source project is currently in alpha (whatever that means), and the DF community has been contributing sprites.

You can download the file here (.zip), and check out a video of Stonesense in action in the video embedded above.

Maybe I've been spoiled by modern standards for aesthetics, but the impenetrable graphics surely aren't helping Dwarf Fortress win the hearts and minds of any but the most dedicated gamer. Stonesense makes another attempt at Dwarf Fortress tempting, but I'm still not sure that, even with the facelift, I'll ever be able to wrap my brain around the deep calculus at work here: that sounds like a fool's errand to me.

[Via TIGSource]

P.S. If you're interested in Dwarf Fortress, here are some other resources cribbed from some some old comments: May Green's nice-looking tileset, and a how-to from Rock, Paper, Shotgun.

Braid is a pretty terrific game as far as platformers go, and anyone gaming primarily on a PlayStation 3 will soon have the chance to see what all the fuss is about; cause for celebration if I've ever seen it.

First up is the North American release, which is happening on November 12. Or, using my new method of telling game release dates, it's coming out on the Thursday after Modern Warfare 2 hits. As for the European launch, well, be on the lookout for an announcement in the coming weeks.

Pricing? Nothing official yet. But after the outrage for the PC version's original cost, I think Braid on PS3 for $14.99 is most likely a safe bet.