Make Sure You Check Out: Retro City Rampage!

For those of you who haven't heard of the upcoming game Retro City Rampage, here's a quick synapses:

THE PLAYER is out for a friendly frolic of CRIME CAPERS when suddenly ambushed by EVIL GOOD GUYS. They will stop at nothing to end his RAMPAGE OF DOOM threatening the citizens of Theftropolis City. Are YOUbad enough to defeat the EVIL GOOD GUYS?

RETRO CITY RAMPAGE lets you play as THE PLAYER. Take the wheel with five-finger discounts on over 30 vehicles and wield over 20 weapons that will make you say "WHOA"! Run down innocent pedestrians to hear the magnificent monophonic modulated sounds. Order a pint of "SOUR MILK" from the barkeep to make yourself sick and avoid taking responsibility for your actions. At some point, defeat the EVIL GOOD GUYS then relax and go do it, when you want an ICED TEA.

Or to put bluntly, it's an awesome 8-bit parody game with tons of violence, car jacking, and maybe a bit of time travel!  More specifically, the game features:

* Over 50 Story Missions
        - Driving, Shooting, Stealth, Platforming, Swimming, Rhythm, and much more
    * Over 30 Arcade Challenges
        - Instant Action!
        - Record and share replays
    * Over 25 Weapons & Power-Ups
        - From Lightguns to Bionic Arms, Rockets, Guitars and "Grogotovs"
    * Over 40 Vehicles to Steal
        - Cars, Trucks, Bikes, Vans, Skateboards and Tanks
        - Equip Guns, Rockets, Flames & Nitro!
    * Over 100 Character Customizations
        - Hair Styles, Tattoos, Glasses, Even Plastic Surgery!
    * Huge Open-World to Explore
        - Buildings, shops and activities (including over 80 interiors)
        - Bonus Arcade and Casino games
    * Free-Roaming Mode
        - With 6 Playable Characters
    * Featuring Special Guest Stars
        - Each includes their own bonus subgame
    * Supports Anaglyphic 3D Glasses
        - Select Missions Playable in 3D!
    * Playable in 5 Languages
        - English, Francais, Italiano, Deutsch, Espanol
    
    * Steam Leaderboards & Achievements

This game is looking to be very awesome, and has the "Gamerzitch, Seal of Approval".  It will be coming out in May to PlayStation 3, PS Vita, PC/Steam, WiiWare and XBLA for the low price, of $15.  You can pre-order the game for PC today over on the Retro City Rampage Website, which gives you access to not only the Steam version, but a DRM-Free version as well, you also get access to multiple pre-order bonuses, including a 20% off coupon, a mini-soundtrack, and a digital cover/cartridge label.

Dream.Build.Play 2012 Registration is Open!

Indie Fanatics, the time has come again!  The annual Dream.Build.Play competition just updated its website, and is now accepting registrations through May 15th.  For those of you who are unfamiliar with Dream.Build.Play (or DBP) it is an annual competition put on by Microsoft to promote game creation with the XNA Development Platform.  This is the same platform used to create Xbox Indie Games, and Windows Phone games/apps.  The competition has ramped up this year, since it now has an entirely new category for Windows Phone games, with an additional $37,500 of cash prizes, in addition to the Xbox Category's $75,000.  Game submission is May 15th through June 12th, and the winners get announce a couple months later.

So to all you developers, good luck at the competition, and for you non-developers, you can follow Gamerzitch's own Jake Livak as he enters his game Altercation!

Over 200 Indie Tracks for $1

For all you game music freaks, do I have a Black Friday deal for you.  If you are familiar with The Humble Indie Bundles, something similar is going on, except instead of indie games, it's indie music.  For any price, you can get 10 DRM-Free game albums, including the ones from Minecraft and Super Meat Boy.  If you donate $10 or more, you will get 7 additional albums, including the soundtrack from The Binding of Issac.  Check out this amazing deal @ http://www.gamemusicbundle.com

IndieCade Finalists Announced!

IndieCade is the "International Festival for Independent games" and besides being an awesome event, they also hold a contest every year to find the best and most innovative indie games.  This year's finalists have been announced and include some games that have been talked about before on the site/podcast including Solar 2 and Fez aswell as 34 others

The finalists are:

Antichamber-Demruth
Application Crunch-Collegeology Games, The Game Innovation Lab
At a Distance-Terry Cavanagh
BasketBelle-Michael Molinari
Bistro Boulevard-Fugazo Inc.
BIT.TRIP FLUX-Gaijin Games
Black Bottom Parade-SCAD
Deepak Fights Robots-Tom Sennett
Desktop Dungeons-QCF Design
FEZ-Polytron Corp.
Gamestar Mechanic-E-Line Media
Geobook-levitylab
Halcyon-stfj
Hero Generations-Heart Shaped Games
Hohokum-Honeyslug and Richard Hogg
Improviso-GAMBIT
Johann Sebastian Joust-Douglas Wilson and Friends
Kiss Controller-Georgia Tech
Loop Raccord-Nicolai Troshinsky
Ordnungswissenschaft-Till Wittwer, Marek Plichta and Jakob Penca
Papa Sangre-Somethin' Else
PewPewPewPewPewPewPewPewPew-Incredible Ape
Play Kalei-Load Complete
Proteus-Ed Key
Sissy's Magical Ponycorn Adventure-Untold Entertainment
Skulls of the Shogun-Haunted Temple Studios
Solar 2-Murudai
StarDrone-Beatshapers, TastyPlay
Super Hypercube-Polytron and Kokoromi
Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP-Superbrothers, Capybara Games, Jim Guthrie
The Bridge-Case Western
The Depths to Which I Sink-Bigpants
The Dream Machine-Cockroach Inc.
The Swapper-Facepalm Games
The Witch-Elizabeth Swensen
Way-Coco & Co (Carnegie Mellon)

And all of them will be playable at the festival/convention!

Humble Indie Bundle #3 Launches With Five More Great Indie Games

The two previous Humble Indie Bundles were a huge success. Using a pay-what-you-want platform raising millions of dollars for developers as well as the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Child's Play charities.

The third bundle launched earlier today, and as of this writing it's currently racked up over $255,000 in sales with that number constantly growing. You can even watch as the site's money counter updates in real-time.

Humble Indie Bundle #3 includes Hammerfight, Cogs, VVVVVV, And Yet It Moves, and Crayon Physics Deluxe. All five of these games will run on Windows, Mac, and Linux with no DRM restrictions, and each will come with Steam keys.

I've only played VVVVVV and Cogs, but I can vouch for both of them. It goes without saying that these bundles usually include the best of the best the indie world has to offer, so it safe to assume we'll be getting some quality games.

Pay-what-you-want is exactly what it sounds like, you choose what you think you should pay for these games. The average contribution is $4.25, if money situation is tight though you're open to go lower.

If you want to be a real good person though you can try and pay more than the current top contributers one of whom is Minecraft creator Notch. Each donating over $2000 to a good cause.