2008 Top 10 Games of the Year by Game Tunnel

2008 Top 10 Games of the Year

For seven years now GameTunnel has been handing out awards to downloadable Indie games.

After poring through hundreds of releases this year, as in years past, it's a great moment to pause and give thanks to indies.

Driven by passion to make games the way they want to make them, Indies embody perhaps the purest part of the gaming industry. Whether you love or hate them, each of the games below, and the hundreds more like them released this year, came not from market polling, but from the heart.

Oftentimes imaginative, sometimes stunningly innovative, but always singularly personal, Indie had another great year in 2008, and we're happy to celebrate it.

So without further ado, GameTunnel gives you: The Top 10 Independent Games of 2008!

Number 10 - Multiwinia

Developer: Introversion Software	Players: 1-4
System Requirements: Windows

Darwinia was in our Top 10 games of 2005 list, so it should be really no surprise to see Multiwinia here. Multiwinia is really not much more than multiplayer Darwinia, but then Darwinia was one of the most amazing Indie games released to date.

The Darwinian world is a visual treat, inspired by video games and the amazing promises of computing from decades ago. The Darwinians themselves are stick figure characters that would fit into old Atari 2600 games. The landscape is polygonal yet modern and fits the theme well. You really need to see the game in action to appreciate what would be considered "outdated" graphics in other games. In fact, each character in the game seems inspired from classic games and movies, from the �"Centipede' mutant virus to the �"Space Invader' air strike squadrons. The retro/polygonal graphics compliment the story, and you really feel like a part of the world.

Screenshots don't begin to convey how you'll feel when you play this game. You really start to care about the Darwinians. Introversion Software apparently worked with great care to create a living world. The Darwinians aren't just sprites moving about in a 3D world. They wander, they work, and they even have rituals! When a Darwinian dies, it leaves behind a spirit. Any Darwinians in the area will gather around the spirit and sway to and fro. Eventually a kite is created which carries the spirit into the air. It's really a sight to behold.

The big change in Multiwinia from Darwinia comes in the easily accessible multiplayer that sets players up with matches of just about any length, making it easy to jump in and have a quick frag fest ...err... strategically charged encounter that exercises your mental prowess.

If you haven't given Darwinia a go for some reason Multiwinia is essential playing. If you have played Darwinia, Multiwinia is even more essential. The super accessible and fast online multiplayer matches make it some of the best gaming fun you can have in 15 minutes.

Number 9 - Noitu Love 2

Developer: konjak	Players: 1
System Requirements: Windows 98+

Remember those gorgeous chunky pixel art games from the Megadrive and Amiga? No? Well perhaps you're familiar with the more recent incarnations of Metal Slug and its colorful hand drawn 2d artwork? Noitu Love 2 is very reminiscent of that style. It's a 2-D side-scroller with a crazy story that sees you kung-fu fight your way through seven levels of robot bad guys.

The game looks and sounds like the best of the old-school side-scrolling battlers. There is a huge amount of animation in every level and it's worth playing just to smile at all the artwork.

The standard WASD keys let you move, crouch and jump. Adding a modern twist to an old genre, mouse gestures are used to control the main character and access a small number of different fighting moves. Rapid mouse clicking causes your character to literally fly about the screen from one enemy to the next. The mouse can also be used to create a stand-alone shield, which is useful to protect your back. The game play is very fast and there is a great deal of button mashing and mouse waving.

Every character in the game is lovingly hand animated and the whole atmosphere is colorful, cute and fun. The bosses on each level are particularly impressive. Some of them completely fill the screen and they feature some very funny animations. The story doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but it fits the whacky theme of the overall game.

If there is one downside it's the difficulty, which emulates old-school challenge every bit as well as Mega Man 9 (though the journey here is perhaps better!).

Noitu Love 2 will test your love with unbridled challenge. Each level introduces enemies requiring a new approach and old-school bosses with unique strategies to test your skills and eat at your limited number of lives. Replaying the levels to perfection so that you have enough lives for later stages is the order of the day. As difficult as Noitu Love 2 is, it is just as rewarding, giving ample reason for you to slug through an equally intense, exciting and difficult (but not punishing) beauty of a game.

Number 8 - Zombie Shooter

Developer: Sigma Team	Players: 1
System Requirements: Pentium II 400; 16 MB Video; 64 MB RAM

Zombie Shooter isn't innovative in any way. It doesn't do anything that hasn't been done a dozen times before. The graphics aren't world-class and the game is short.

With all that going against it you might wonder why it's in our top 10 list at all. The answer is simple, a good game is good regardless of whether or not it is ground-breaking.

Zombie Shooter is the latest in the 'Shooter' series from Sigma Team. Four years ago they brought us the unequivocal Alien Shooter (#4 in our Top 10 games of 2003), which like Zombie Shooter wasn't innovative, it was just good. Since Alien Shooter, two other games have been added to the series Theseus and Alien Shooter 2. However, neither of those games lived up the heritage.

Enter Zombie Shooter.

Playing Zombie Shooter is a blast. It gets everything right from weapons that you desperately want, to a character who looks cool, to the rush of taking on a hopeless throng of enemies and living to tell the tale (if you've got the skills!).

The levels are interesting and varied and the Zombies just keep coming. Like Alien Shooter, which had an amazing room with a huge turret gun that you used to try to keep yourself alive, Zombie Shooter has a very memorable encounter with a unique gun and more zombies than have ever been on a single screen before in any game ever. (Dead Rising on the X360 included)

Zombie Shooter delivers what feels like the first real sequel to the fantastic Alien Shooter. The levels are interesting, the moments of terror are intense and it is full of quick-trigger action that is addictive and exciting. There's nothing innovative about the game, but not every game has to be innovative, some get by on just being great fun. Zombie Shooter gets by on the latter, and boy does it ever get by.

Number 7 - Battle of Tiles

Developer: Bimbosoft Co	Players: 1
System Requirements: Windows 98+, 1.0GHz CPU, 256MB RAM, DirectX 9.0c+

Battle of Tiles is a game that really shouldn't work at all. After all, if you look at the graphics (and based on the number of people dissing the Wii, there are many people who can't look at anything BUT the graphics) the game is ugly. I mean UGLY. It looks like the kind of visuals that you would think anyone could put together in an afternoon.

Then again, Desktop Tower Defense doesn't exactly set the world on fire with its visuals, and perhaps DTD is the best comparison to Battle of Tiles that we could possibly make. However, that said, let's be clear on the point that Battle of Tiles is in no way a DTD clone. BoT is an entirely new type of strategy game, well perhaps not entirely new, but it's as new as DTD was when DTD came out, and it is every bit as addictive and unique.

The game play, revolves around your tile army. You begin the game with 13 members of your army. Each character is represented on a tile. However, they are not all the same. There are a variety of different character types including long-range bowmen, heavy-armor troops, and those that are good with a sword. For each character you get a standard readout of their current abilities and experience in the bottom right-hand corner. It's all pretty standard until you start moving. Feeling much like marching a bunch of scrabble pieces across the screen, you go onward confronting enemies. Of course you don't always have to kill your enemies, and in fact, if you do try to do so, you'll quickly fail. Instead, enemies should be recruited to your side by the greatest of recruitment assets: money!

Building up from your initial army, you may find yourself with 50 or more characters (up to 70!), filling 1/3 to 1/2 of the screen! Choosing who to recruit becomes as much a strategy as how to position each of the many varied characters in the game. Having a full assortment of different types of magic near the front lines can be very helpful, but having enough healers to help them all and bowman to provide a stronger attack punch, provides a wonderful array of potential strategies.

Despite its crude visual representation, Battle of Tiles is one of the most addictive strategy games released in recent memory, and its $4.95 price tag only makes the whole deal seem sweeter.

Number 6 - New Star Soccer 4

Developer: New Star Games	Players: 1
System Requirements: Windows XP+ or Mac 10.3+

The New Star Soccer series is one of the real gems of Indie gaming. Actually scratch that. The New Star Soccer series is bar none some of the best sports gaming that you can find anywhere.

The core of the game revolves around taking a single player (yes, just one) from unknown, struggling for a few spare minutes off the bench, to international superstar playing for one of the best teams in the world, in addition, of course, to the national team in its pursuit of the World Cup.

The depth is staggeringly phenomenal. Leagues from every side of the world are included, with higher and lower leagues represented and the ability for you to make your club climb from one division to the next. Or, you can make yourself available for a transfer and try your luck on a different squad.

Even with all that, the depth of the game is just beginning. Players control every aspect of their player's life from how much money they spend, where they spend it, and what they spend it on, to how they spend their 'freetime.' The game includes the diversions of a casino and horse track racing, both of which are good enough to stand on their own as games, but here are just a fraction of a huge game. Relationships are also fully simulated from friends and family to teammates and the media, and you can even settle down with that special someone who you find and woo into becoming your wife and yeah, eventually, mother of your children.

It's a complete life sim built around an amazing soccer game. In building your character into a star, if you can step away from your girlfriend and the horse track long enough to do it, you'll be able to practice however you think is best and buy equipment to improve your abilities. Actual match play will also improve your skills, helping you turn your somewhat skilled young pup into a cool scoring machine. Or defensive stopper, or amazing goalie, or whatever you want them to be.

The matches themselves are a joy to play, if you choose to play them, though they're notably better with a joystick in hand. NSS4 features a robust engine that has a lot of depth built around some basic game play simplicity. Shot angle and height can be precisely controlled, though to do so you'll need to spend some time on the practice field, where both your real and on-screen skills will benefit. (just be sure not to skip out on hanging with your teammates or you'll find they won't pass you the ball on the pitch!)

All in all, it's an amazing feet of game making that makes for one of the most enjoyable and addictive sport games available.

Number 5 - Everyday Shooter

Developer: Queasy Games	Players: 1
System Requirements: Windows 2000+, 1.7 ghz, 256 mb RAM, OpenGL

In seeing Everyday Shooter here you might be wondering what year these awards are from. I mean the game is positively ancient. It was released in 2007! Well at least on the PS3. However old that may (or may not) make the game, Everyday is a PC new-comer having been released on the PC for the first time in spring of 2008. So, though it may feel like a bit of deja vu, it's a path well worth taking again, or for the first time if you aren't one of the 5 or 6 people who owns a PS3.

Everyday Shooter is a hard game to describe though reviewers have gone to great lengths to describe it. At it's most basic, it is a multi-directional shooter through a variety of levels with unique challenges and soulful music. However, while the game is basic and perhaps even simple in some ways, the sensations you feel while playing the game are wonderfully complex.

Each level in Everyday Shooter is a unique journey. The graphics are procedurally generated and respond to both your ship and to the music. Due to their more esoteric style and reactive nature, the visuals give the player the sensation of creativity that is added upon by the game play that consists of choosing to grow some enemies larger while removing others from the artistic canvas in front of you.

There are plenty of games that have been called art for their significance to the industry and approach to game play, but Everyday Shooter is art in a different way. It is a game that makes players feel like an artist. That same sensation leaves players feeling like they've more than just played a game; in playing Everyday Shooter they've had an experience. Or maybe that's all bull and it's just a fun shooter with cool reactive graphics. In the end who knows, and who cares. Everyday Shooter is great and a rewarding play that is always worth another [first] go.

Number 4 - Dangerous High School Girls in Trouble!

Developer: Mousechief	Players: 1
System Requirements: Windows 98+, DirectX 7+, 256 MB RAM or Mac OS X 10.3+, 256 MB RAM

Dangerous High School Girls in Trouble! is a game that absolutely fits its title. Not because the girls are really in all that much trouble or because they are actually dangerous. Rather, the title of the game is outrageous. Absolutely, totally outrageous, and that fits the game perfectly.

While Dangerous High School Girls in Trouble! claims to be a board game, it doesn't play like any board game that we've every played, and we've played a few.

Players take on the role of one of the many girls at a small high school where a story lays hidden. A story that will take players well beyond the walls of the school as they look for clues behind mysterious accidents and discover dastardly secrets such as 'The game that adults play in private.'

That makes it sound like there is something devious and questionable going on, but really there isn't. It's all just a part of the quirky nature of the game that will leave you with smiles as you realize what they really mean.

While on your quest you'll recruit new girls to your cause (party), add noble boyfriends (NPC protectors), and improve your abilities and attributes (level up). All of which gives the game a RPG flavor that doesn't end there. Each location on the board comes with a description that feels like the work of a Dungeons & Dragons dungeon master.

Game play proceeds with lots of encounters that are played out through challenges (we'd call them mini-games, but that would be unfairly labeling them). Using the girls to take on the challenges that they are best suited for, piece by piece, you'll unravel the mystery at the school (with a lot of help from the NPCs).

Of course the real fun here isn't having another game with a mystery in it, but in having a game that is quirky and innovative and totally different, while at the same time being an absolute blast to play and completely engrossing. Dangerous High School Girls in Trouble! definitely delivers on that front with a unique and fun game that is absolutely different and completely indie.

Number 3 - Mount & Blade

Developer: TaleWorlds	Players: 1
System Requirements: Pentium 766 MHz; Memory: 128 MB; Video Card: 32 MB

Mount & Blade has been in development for over 6 years and it shows. The game is absolutely huge.

Immense really.

Mount & Blade is an RPG, but unlike most RPGs. Its really more a game of party management. Actually, due to the size of your 'party,' army management is probably a better term.

In Mount & Blade you start out as a single character with your horse. The world is pretty wide open, letting you roam wherever you want between different kingdoms, as and as long as you don't side yourself with any one group too much, it will remain that way.

Along the trail you can recruit peasants from cities to be a part of your army, and that is where the fun begins.

With an open world, you can travel anywhere your wanderlust leads you too, that is if you survive.

Confrontations can be found everywhere with a high density of roaming bands and freedom fighters moving at all times in every corner of the world. Thieves and brigands are an easy first target that will give your band experience. That experience will let you level up the members of your band and specialize their abilities and classes as they become either support or direct combat units.

The battles are all in real-time 3D, and while Z-targeting is sorely missed, the sensation of taking your own army into battle is something that no-one should miss. The game borrows some themes from Braveheart and the battles are also very reminiscent of that movie.

Through it all are dozens of towns, cities and castles to visit where you'll become a part of the interwoven stories, be assigned quests, and find characters who will join your ranks as a sort of hero unit. It's got all the RPG things you'd expect, but instead of focusing on the typical RPG story of discovering your past, Mount & Blade is all about building up your unique future as a general of your own army perhaps aligned with one of the territories, or perhaps creating your own. It's fun, different, and overwhelming in scope. It's an indie love-letter and we're happy to have received it.

Number 2 - The Spirit Engine 2

Developer: Mark Pay	Players: 1
System Requirements: Windows 98/2000/Me/XP/Vista

The Spirit Engine 2 is a side-scrolling, pixel graphic, content-heavy piece of awesome.

The game departs from the 3D RPGs of our day and creates a lavishly drawn and animated 2D world that has the depth to go toe-to-toe with any RPG on the market. It's flat-out beautiful to see in motion, but that's only one of the reasons that the game is such a winner.

Built around a party of 3 characters that you select, The Spirit Engine 2 has a deep story, and a bountiful one. The amount of text to read in the game would be a chore in most games, but here the dialogues that occur between your characters are just riveting. It's not the kind of text you skip through, and the story that spills out through it all is fascinating to be a part of.

Similar to the text, the battles are also not just something that occurs blindly. There is no grind or unexpected random encounter. Instead, you fight through expected encounters to move to the next area and see your character's skills appropriately increase.

The Spirit Engine 2 features a unique battle system that, while at times seems overwhelming, is another place where the game really shines. The variety of actions you can take in a battle is truly prodigious and leads to epic encounters that require precise use of your character's skills in order to overcome enemies that will carefully wear down your party through auto-resurrections and a variety of attacks.

And the music? It's simply phenomenal. The songs are rich and perfectly fit every situation bringing even more life to a world that is already glowingly vibrant.

Overall, even with so many great parts, The Spirit Engine 2 excels by being better than the sum of its parts. Everything flows together beautifully. It's an excellent orchestration that belies its indie roots and dares every player to find some reason not to like it. We couldn't find any and were happy to sing its praises as our 2008 RPG of the year, and now are equally happy to include it in our Top 10 as our GOTY runner-up.

2008 Game of the Year - World of Goo

Developer: 2D Boy	Players: 1 (1-4 on WiiWare)
System Requirements: Windows XP+ or Mac OS X 10.1+ or Linux or WiiWare

It's hard to write something about World of Goo that hasn't already been written. The game has been gushed over from every level of the gaming media and rightfully so. World of Goo is a game that defines more than just Indie gaming. It's one of those rare moments where madness and genius come together gloriously, leaving all humanity to stare in wonder.

The basic goal of the game is to save goo by getting it from point A to point B. Doing so is based on your own mental prowess and ability to use a variety of different goo balls, typically to create lattice structures that need to survive just long enough to see the last goo ball sucked up into the safety of the pipe on the other side.

The goo balls come in all sorts of flavors with specific abilities, such as being removable from the lattices you build, catching fire when exposed to a flame, and being air-flight worthy.

The variety of goo balls and the challenges they create is just one of the things that makes the game such a joy to play. Every time you believe you've seen everything the game has to throw at you, some new puzzle and goo type appears to tantalize your mind with the possibilities.

Along the way, through signs both written and in the visuals of the gooey world, there are continual references to the world we live in when we're not playing games. The developers let some of their own random musings about mankind and its place in the real world slip out and invade the game world. The thoughts are often poignant and provide an interesting philosophic back-drop that will often leave you ponderous, if you have any brain cells left after completing yet another mind-bending puzzle.

The greatest thing about World of Goo is that it lives up to the hype. It is a game that stuns everyone who plays it. It transports, it awakes, it transcends. And it does it without any pretense or intent to be more than what it is. The game doesn't care what you think. It's just a game. But, among the thousands of 'just a game' titles that come out each year, World of Goo is one of the very best.

Other Awards & Game of the Year Award History

GameTunnel Independent Game of the Year History:
2008 - World of Goo
2007 - Aquaria
2006 - Gumboy Crazy Adventures
2005 - Oasis
2004 - Gish
2003 - Starscape
2002 - Mutant Storm

Game of the Year by Genre:
Action - Everyday Shooter (link to Top 5)
Puzzle - World of Goo (link to Top 5)
Adventure - Dangerous High School Girls in Trouble! (link to Top 5)
RPG - The Spirit Engine 2 (link to Top 5)
Sim - Democracy 2 (link to Top 5)
Sports - New Star Soccer 4 (link to Top 5)
Strategy - Battle of Tiles (link to Top 5)

Special Awards
Game of the Year: Graphics - World of Goo
Game of the Year: Sound - Everyday Shooter
Game of the Year: Innovation - Dangerous High School Girls in Trouble!
Game of the Year: Multiplayer - Multiwinia
Worst Script Translation - BC Kings
Most Overhyper Criticism - Eternity's Child
Most Liberal Application of the F-Word - Penny Arcade Adventures
Most Characters without Arms - Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People
Best Arthouse Game - Gravitybone

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By: Russell Carroll
Posted: Monday December 29, 2008