This Week's Waste of Time

Occasionally I find games from local sources. Either a local developer made them (like Canabalt) or they recommended the game personally or to the Twitterverse. I also occasionally snag a game from the monthly Fistful of Indies blog on the Juegos Rancheros site. But, more times than not I find games by visiting established browser developers sites somewhat regularly (eg., Stephen Lavelle, Yoshio Ishii, Nitrome, and others). New kids – who appear to be popping up every day – I find on sites like Free Indie Games and IndieGames.com.

Free Indie Games is a relative newcomer to the scene, but its founders are legends in the free gaming biz. Terry Cavanaugh has been featured in this column several times and the aforementioned Lavelle (aka Increpare) not only makes free games like it's going out of style (which it isn't), but also made one of my favorite games of last year, English Country Tune. A few recent games I discovered on that site include the made-by-kids audio/visual onslaught called Love Punks and the minimalist Mario homage Cat Gets a Hundred Stars. The site has been on kind of a cat kick lately. All the more reason to check it out.

There's also IndieGames.com – the name really says it all. They feature regular free games like tank shooter Gare and masochistic proofreading simulator First Person Tutor to name just a few recent offerings.

Just wanted to put those out there so you didn't think I was the center of all things playable, free, and online. You know what they say, give a man a fish, and he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he never reads your blog column again. Oh, wait ... crap.