2006 Indie RPGs of the Year Announced
GameTunnel has posted the winners for the 2006 Indie RPG of the Year.

The best news of all is that this year, we actually had indie RPGs as a full category. The last couple of years, we've had so few RPGs that were released during the year that the award was simply added to the "special awards" list. RPG fans, rejoice!

I can't let the awards go without my own brand of completely disposable commentary, so here goes.

Empires and Dungeons won fifth place, and I feel it deserves the honor. The game is simple, yet challenging and fun. You need to engage your brain to play it, but not to the point of agonizing over every move. It's more like the amount of consideration you need to put into a casual puzzle game. (Note: If you've only played the demo, the game gets MUCH more challenging in the full version, especially with multiple enemy lords). It's a great "quick" game.

Avernum 4 won fourth place. While very few people (relatively speaking) have even heard of "indie RPGs," most of those who have think exclusively of Spiderweb Software. Jeff Vogel has been doing the indie RPG thing for a long time, and he's gotten pretty good at it. I've not played very far in this game, so I can't really discuss it much detail.

Minions of Mirth took third place. Minions of Mirth is amazing to me, for reasons I have chronicled before. The game is frighteningly feature-rich, and comparable to the original release of EverQuest in 1999 - a task which required a large team of developers and much more time than Josh Ritter spent on it. If I were to offer a truly objective review of the game, I'd probably ding it a bit on the interface and the "first-time user experience." It unfortunately emulates the original EQ release a little too closely in that regard. But it's an amazingly rich, complex, and high-quality game, and massively multiplayer to boot. But that's only the beginning. It's extremely mod-able, and players are allowed to create their own servers for the game, customized to their hearts content. So not only is it an MMORPG, but it's an MMORPG construction set. The community seems to have taken off around the game, and unlike other MMORPGs out there, the developer not only listens to the community, but actively solicits their help in building up and improving the world. Much of the content that has been added over the year has been provided by players.

Absolutely phenominal. But we ain't done yet.

Much to my surprise, Aveyond won second place. I've talked Aveyond up a lot here, interviewed the developer, and turned a few of my friends into ravenous Aveyond fans. I think what is most impressive about this game (from a development point of view) is how the developer was able to combine an off-the-shelf tool with a unique vision, and create something of very high quality. Since playing Aveyond, I have tried other games made with the same tool, and I've found the difference in quality to be remarkable. It's not the tools that make a master in any profession.

I really expected Aveyond to be a shoo-in this year, with Minions of Mirth and Avernum 4 duking it out for second place. Instead, top honors went to FastCrawl. This is the one game in the list that I have not played yet, and it's my own fault. The developer, Glen Pawley, actually ASKED me to try out his game back in October. I found out I needed to upgrade to a newer version of .NET, and got lazy. I never followed through. So Glen, if you are reading this, I apologize. But I wish you a hearty congratulations! You snagged the award from some VERY tough competition, which speaks volumes about the quality of your game! Now I have to finally go back and try it out, and see what I have been missing!

But on to more awesomeness. Geneforge 4 is already out for the Mac, and should be out for Windows "very soon." Amanda is promising the next game in the Aveyond series, "Aveyond II: Ean's Quest", before the end of 2007. There's another promising indie RPG that's shaping up for (hopefully) a 2007 release that I know of, entitled Age of Decadence, using the Torque engine. And Eschalon: Book 1 was submitted this year for the IGF, which hopefully means it is also going to make a 2007 release as well. I don't know what else is in the pipeline, but 2007 is already shaping up to be an AWESOME year for RPG fans.

Man, I don't know how I'm supposed to get any work done this year...

Labels: Indie Evangelism, Roleplaying Games

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