We goofed a bit on getting Episode 44 out in a timely fashion, which means that people who only get our audio feed just got the contest details now, 2 days before the deadline.

That seems unfair, so we’re extending the submission deadline to the end of December 31st. You have until the New Year (midnight EST) to get entries in, and we’ll pick a winner during the IMmies episode in January.

Happy Holidays!

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Is the Digital Distribution of PC Games unfair for retailers that choose to also sell PC Games? That’s our main topic for this show and we do the full gambit of discussion on this topic. There is a bit drift here and there as we also compare this situation to how music is distributed digitally but still sold in retail outlets. We also cover how Steam is being pre-installed on Alienware machines, how some games are only available on certain digital outlets, Steam on the Mac and finally what sort of anti-competitiveness (if any) there is in the market of digitally distributing PC Games.

Overall it is a very good conversation and if it is a topic that interests you, I highly recommend giving this podcast a listen.

Hosted by James [Vigil80]
Summarized by Clayton [Voodoo]
Participants are Eric [Ravenlock] and Robert [Trebor]
Produced by Clayton [Voodoo]

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They can’t all be winners.  Boy, that’s a pretty auspicious start to the post, huh?  Really makes you want to dig in there.  Well, don’t walk away just yet – we have two games for this installment of the IndieCast, and at least one of them is a winner.  The other…

I had high hopes for Guardians of Graxia, really I did.  Petroglyph received a lot of good press for their XBLA effort (and then board game), Panzer General:  Allied Assault.  Most everyone who played it reported it to be a friendly but deep game of strategy, enjoyable both in single- and multi-player, with some great design aesthetics and impressive production values for the price point.  Getting a fantasy-themed spin on the same basic concepts sounded pretty great to me, so when they announced Graxia I was on the hype train right away.

In execution, though, I found it to be a really mixed bag.  The lack of any multiplayer is utterly baffling, and the gameplay systems at work here, while obviously containing a good amount of depth, are poorly explained and seemingly not handled terribly well by the AI.  There’s also a surprising lack of content for a single-player game, and they’re already charging for expansion DLC.  On the other hand, it is a unique, nice-looking game, and I think it has a lot of potential.  The underlying game seems like a good one.

There’s more to say about that, and you’ll hear it in the show.  Our second game is a much easier recommendation:  Sidhe Interactive’s Shatter.  This one isn’t a new release, but it might have slipped under your radar when it came out earlier this year, and if it did we’d like to help you rectify that.  You might not think that the Breakout genre is one clamoring for someone to come along and revitalize it – I certainly didn’t – but you’d be wrong.  A push / pull physics system, boss battles, new power-ups and miles of polish make Shatter a real breath of fresh air where I didn’t expect it.

So let’s talk about all that stuff.  Your IndieCast awaits.

Want to join the discussion?  Come visit the forum thread over at Colony of Gamers.

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If you listened to our most recent episode, you might have noticed that I teased a prize that might be connected to listener submissions for the 2010 IMmies.  We’ll discuss that in detail in the next episode, but since that won’t be recorded for a few more days, we wanted to get this information out there so that everybody has a chance to enter if they want.

What Are the IMmies?

To some extent this is self-explanatory, right?  Every year we do a “Best Of” round-up episode where we talk about our favorite PC games of the year.  We don’t actually name awards or anything (or at least we haven’t before), we just want to recognize the year’s great experiences.

What’s This Giveaway All About, Then?

Obviously we want to know what YOUR favorite PC games of 2010 were, both to get a sense for what the community liked this year and to make sure we don’t miss any.  But we’re not going to give you a game you already played, so here’s how it’s going to go down:  one of you will win the chance to give a favorite 2010 game to somebody else on our dime.   You get to spread the love of a great game and we put a little more cash in that developer’s pockets.  It’s all very Christmas-y.

(Disclaimer:  Depending on the game and how it’s available, there are several ways this could work. We might gift the game of your choice to the recipient of your choice, if on Steam.  Or we might buy and ship them a box.  Or some other arrangement.  We’ll work it out.)