'Road to the IGF' Pt. 2: more stories behind this year's top indie games

Gamasutra's Road to the IGF continues to highlight every 2013 Independent Games Festival finalist - and here's the second batch of interviews, including Little Inferno, FTL, Inrusion 2 and Spaceteam. All finalists will be playable at an expanded IGF Pavilion on the Game Developers Conference 2013 Expo floor from March 27-29, 2013, at San Francisco's Moscone Center. This year's 'Road to the IGF' series continues with interviews on games such as the "spaceship simulation roguelike-like" FTL by Subset Games, the one-step-a-day VESPER.5 by Michael Brough, and the multi-generational family history game 7 Grand Steps by Mousechief. This second helping of highlights from this year's finalists are as follows: - Spaceteam creator Henry Smith discusses the various influences he drew inspiration from, and what he plans to do next with the space genre. - Mousechief's Keith Nemitz talks multi-generational family history game 7 Grand Steps, and how history helps us understand humanity. - Once you see other people playing Teknopants' games, you really can't wait to jump in and try them for yourself. His latest is Samurai Gunn, and it's up for the design award at IGF. - Subset Games' "spaceship simulation roguelike-like" FTL took a year-and-a-half to make, but once it launched, it was an overnight sensation. Now it's up for two awards at IGF 2013. - Imagine a video game in which your character can only take one step per day. Michael Brough not only imagined that game, but he created it in about a week and named it VESPER.5. - Gamasutra speaks to the team behind the the slightly controversial and decidedly subversive "throw your toys into the fire" send up of social games and consumer culture: Little Inferno. - Gunstar Heroes, Metal Slug and Castlevania -- these are few of the much-loved side-scrolling action games that inspired Aleksey Abramenko's Intrusion 2, which is up for IGF's Technical award. - Gamasutra speaks to the team behind the IGF-nominated game, 140, about how marrying platforming and audio is trickier than it might sound at first blush, and why the game's visuals are so abstract. - "For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction." It's Newton's third law of motion that's a key influence for David Scamehorn and Alexander Baard's cooperative game Super Space ____. - Student IGF finalist Back to Bed places a narcoleptic, sleep-walking boy in an M.C. Escher-inspired isometric puzzler, where the player must nudge the boy safely to his bed using a creature from his subconsciousness. All of these interviews join the seven from the first 2013 'Road to the IGF' recap, including those with Kentucky Route Zero, Cart Life and Incredipede creators. See all of the Road to the IGF interviews on our event page. The 15th annual Independent Games Festival Awards will announce its winners on the evening of March 27 during GDC 2013, alongside the Game Developers Choice Awards. IGF Award recipients will receive nearly $60,000 of prizes in various categories, including the $30,000 Seumas McNally Grand Prize. The games highlighted above will join over 20 additional titles at the IGF Pavilion on GDC 2013's Expo floor, accessible to all passholders. GDC still offers over $100 discounts to select pass purchases made by March 20th, at 11:59pm EST, with prices increasing for onsite registration. GDC 2013 itself will take place March 25-29 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. Gamasutra and GDC are sibling organizations under parent UBM Tech.