Blackspace: Not what it sounds like, but still cool

Upon first hearing the title Blackspace, one is libel to think of one of three things:

1. A secret government research facility.
2. A blacksploitation Star Wars knock-off.
3. A mid-90s R & B group.

Despite how amazingly cool option 2 is, the Blackspace in question is, unfortunately, none of the above. It is, however, yet another entry in the indie game revolution happening on kickstarter.

Ever since Tim Schaeffer and Double Fine blew the doors off of crowdfunded gaming expectations, a certifiable flurry of developers have looked to the crowd to finance their development process. Pixel Foundry seeks to join the ranks of kickstarter success for their seriously-it's-not-an-R&B-group game Blackspace.

The game is something like a real-time strategy game merged with an in-game level editor. Using the exciting (and safe!) occupation of asteroid mining as a backdrop, Blackspace has you piloting a hovering-lander vehicle around spherical asteroids while building bases, fighting off waves of enemies and mining. With rockets!

I could go into some long-winded (and inelegantly overwrought, knowing me) description of the game's mechanics, but there's a great video on the kickstarter page that explains it much better than I could. Also: Why read when you watch rocket mining?

So get your wallet out an head over to Blackspace's kickstarter page and fund this bidness.

Overgrowth: Does gaming need another samurai-influenced, man-rabbit hand-to-hand combat simulator?

It seems like every year, another installment is made in the seemingly omnipresent anthropomorphism-based brawlers genre. Attempting to break into what is easily one of gaming's most over-saturated fields can be a mind-numbingly difficult task. With labels like, "copycat" and "clone" flying like shuriken, what chance does Overgrowth, the latest effort from ultra-small indie dev Wolfire, have of cracking the entrenched mold of the anthropomorphized characters with multiple classes competing in rich, physics-based hand-to-hand weapon combat in a gorgeously rendered world built from a proprietary engine genre?

Probably a pretty big one, it turns out.