Tom Sennett (RunMan and Deepak Fights Robots) has paired with Salil Malkan to create the local crowd-player Row Row Row Remote, which runs on a computer and can use dozens of phones or tablets. Though the game may look simplistic (Wii Sports didn't "look" all that impressive compared to the tech it modeled), Sennett and Malkan aim to inspire and empower developers, while exponentially increasing the amount of players involved in a local multiplayer experience and creating "new, awesome games from the ground up" instead of "shoehorning new, awesome technology into old, stagnant forms."

Row Row Row Remote asks players to use their smartphones or tablets as paddles. Each group needs to coordinate its motions to move effectively through the course. The game only uses the devices' touch and gyroscope functions, but Sennett tells IndieGames this is just the beginning.

"It seems like a lot of these modern FPS games take themselves way too seriously," says Brad Carney, the developer behind Wrack, an upcoming shooter which is looking to capture the high-speed, retro feel of classic Doom, albeit with updated, cel-shaded visuals.

"They're way too focused on realism, which I think hurts them in a number of ways," he continues. "Visually, the games are photorealistic and drab, and it's not too interesting to
look at."

With Wrack, Carney wants to offer a first-person shooter for gamers who are feeling bogged down by realism, and want to return to good old-fashioned arena-style blasting. The single-player campaign for the title pits you against the invading alien Arcturan empire, with nothing but speed and a wide range of weaponry to help you off the hordes of monsters, traps, and bosses you'll face.

It's not just graphical advancements that have impeded progress in the shooter genre, suggests Carney. "From a gameplay standpoint, it hurts a lot too. In most of these games, you play as a really slow character that can't dodge anything, so most of the gameplay involves hiding and waiting around for your shields to recharge."

"To me, having all gameplay come to a complete halt every time I take some damage so my shields recharge is really boring."

In this second of a two-part series, IndieGames explores with several developers what first-person shooter (FPS) mechanics should make a comeback and which are overdone and need to suffer a metaphorical head-shot.

Joining the discussion again are Alan Wilson of Tripwire Interactive (Killing Floor, Red Orchestra), Kedhrin Gonzalez of Illfonic (Nexuiz), Alex Austin of Cryptic Sea (A New Zero), Michiel Beenen of Interwave (Nuclear Dawn), Oscar Jilsén of Coffee Stain Studios (Sanctum), and Mladen Bošnjak of Misfit Village (SickBrick).

Here, developers recall some fantastic older games such as Rainbow Six: Vegas, Redneck Rampage, Duke Nukem, Quake 3, System Shock, and Terra Nova as refreshing sources for future FPS titles.

Developers also rehash mechanics that desperately need to be retired, as found in titles such as Call of Duty and its Modern Warfare entries, Battlefield 3, and Halo.

iOS and Android hit Hard Lines developer Nicoll Hunt takes on the beat 'em up genre with FIST OF AWESOME, coming to iOS this winter. The game involves a lumber jack caught up in a needlessly complex interstellar plot to take over Earth, altering history with remote controlled animals (hence the contraption on the bear's head). Hunt says the game takes place over a number of time periods and features original 2D art and animation. Pinapple Smash Crew audio composer Brendan Ratliff is working on the OST, as well.

"The world is often more in control than we are," says Ian Dallas, creative director of The Unfinished Swan -- a former IGF Student Showcase winner and now due to be published by Sony for PlayStation Network this year.

This lesson is one that fairytales teach children, he says, and so his game explores the unsettling spaces in children's picture books. Led by a soothing narrator and chasing a swan -- "our rabbit surrogate" in this Alice in Wonderland-inspired adventure -- the player enters a world completely washed in white.

"Initially it was just a mechanic," says Dallas. "It didn't really feel like a game."

The game, developed by small independent Santa Monica-based Giant Sparrow, is set from the first-person perspective. The world appears to be a blank slate until players start to toss and splatter balls of paint on the environment. When splattered paint hits objects -- a staircase, a frog, a bench, a hallway -- those objects are revealed to the player to evoke a strong sense of exploration and discovery.

A trio of former 2K Marin colleagues are starting a new, Portland-based independent studio where they hope to focus on what they loved most about their old work -- the story-driven game experience.

Designer, speaker and blogger Steve Gaynor recently revealed he'd left Irrational Games to found The Fullbright Company with friends Johnnemann Nordhagen, a programmer, and Karla Zimonja, a "jack of all trades" who collaborated with Gaynor on "story stuff" as they worked together at 2K Marin on the acclaimed Minerva's Den DLC for BioShock 2.

"We were all kind of a team on the story and look of that project," Gaynor tells Gamasutra.

Although it was "super exciting" to have worked at Irrational and to have contributed to a project like BioShock Infinite, Gaynor says part of the decision to make a move now comes down to simple homesickness.

As longtime West-Coasters, he and his wife just weren't taking to life in Boston as well as they'd hoped. And given that Gaynor and his two colleagues wanted to recapture the small-team feel they'd had with Minerva's Den, it seemed like there was an opportunity there.

Gaynor's beloved Portland isn't exactly a hotbed for variegated game development: "Nobody's doing the kind of stuff in games that I want to be doing in Portland, and we were going to have to start up our own thing."

In the following interview, Nigoro's Takumi Naramura, La-Mulana's director, sheds details on the WiiWare cancellation and candidly discusses the deveoper's dependence on overseas sales of its forthcoming PC port. He also urges Japanese indies to open up the export market, stating that there are several unnoticed masterpieces that need to be introduced overseas so that the Japanese indie game scene flourishes.

Last week, strong community reactions followed Nigoro's blog announcement and Nicalis' subsequent cancellation of La-Mulana for WiiWare in North America and Europe.

When speaking with IndieGames, Naramura shared he was "very surprised at this situation," and in a few days the team would post something new to La-Mulana's official website. Despite the ongoing Golden Week holiday in Japan, though, Naramura wanted to share as many details as possible now.

The above two-month old trailer of Dark Computer Enterainment's Vektropolis made the rounds this month thanks to Pixel Prospector originally, charming gamers with its classy 80s arcade vector style. IndieGames caught up with developer Frank Travaini to find out the latest on his team's retro rescue game/first person shooter.

"[The above] video shows us playing around with just some of the features, but it's still very much a tech demo at that point. Andrew Crawshaw's been working on fine tuning the challenge of the game, and trying to tie together as much of our feature set as we can in a way that make sense but most of all is going to be fun. The video might make it look like an out and out shooter, but there's going to be a strategic element, too."

Lead Vektropolis developer Daniel Gallagher is no stranger to 80s vector graphics, seeing as he co-founded Vektor Grafix, which ported the 1983 Star Wars arcade game to several platforms.

Kurt Bieg and Ramsey Nasser, the creators behind this week's Swordfight, used "plain, stupid fun" to breathe life into decades-old peripherals and to test the boundaries of players' comfort.

With crotch-mounted Atari 2600 joysticks, a player in Swordfight must touch the other's action button, while their arms are (optionally) bound behind their backs. The duo learned this awkward, intimate interaction can be fun, to the point of being emotionally releasing, as long as the rules of engagement and tools used keep the game "safe".

Subverting, or re-purposing, technology isn't anything new. Die Gute Fabrik showed the world two very different games people can play with PlayStation Move controllers: the award-winning Johan Sebastian Joust and Dog the Wag.

Bieg, being particularly fond of subversion, jumped at the chance to make Swordfight a reality, even though it started out two weeks ago as an inappropriate conversation between him, Nasser, and friend Kaho Abe. Swordfight was then developed and playtested at the Eyebeam Art + Technology Center and eventually was taken to the street for public exhibition.

In the following Q&A, Nasser and Bieg tag-teamed their responses to provide extra insight into their experiment.

There's a certain game trailer doing the rounds at the moment, and few are really very sure where it has come from.

Quite out of the blue, a new start-up called Theory Interactive has posted a teaser trailer for Reset online, and it is quite spectacular, both in visuals and in cinematic direction.

Gamasutra delved deeper, and found that Theory Interactive consists of writer and artist Alpo Oksaharju and musician Mikko Kallinen. The duo has previously worked at Futuremark on first-person shooter Shattered Horizon, and both share the game design work on Reset.

The studio's first game focuses on story and atmosphere, with the main goal to travel back in time and co-operatively help yourself out -- a "single player co-op" title, as it is described.