User:Czar/free image request

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 Philippe Poisson (born 1984), better known as Phil Fish, is a French Canadian former indie video game designer, best known for his work on the 2012 platform game Fez published by his company, Polytron Corporation. He was born and raised in Quebec, where his experiences with Nintendo games in his youth would later influence his game design. He studied game design at the Montreal National Animation and Design Centre, and worked at Ubisoft and Artificial Mind and Movement before starting Polytron in 2008.

Fish was a founding member of Kokoromi, a collective that explores experimental gameplay ideas, and organized Montreal's annual GAMMA games events. While Fez was in development, Fish worked on other unreleased games at Polytron, including Super Hypercube and Power Pill.

Fez was released in April 2012 to widespread acclaim after a protracted five-year development cycle. Its final phases of development were shown in the 2012 documentary Indie Game: The Movie, which brought Fish celebrity unusual for game developers. Following an online argument in July 2013, Fish publicly announced his exit from game development citing long-term mistreatment by the industry.

Fez (stylized as FEZ) is a 2012 puzzle platform game developed by indie developer Polytron Corporation and produced by Polytron, Trapdoor, and Microsoft Studios. It is a 2D game set in a 3D world, as the two-dimensional player-character receives a fez that reveals a third dimension and consequently tears the fabric of his universe. Fez puzzles are built around the core mechanic of rotating between four 2D views of a 3D space, as four sides around a cube, where the environment realigns between views to create new paths.

The game was an "underdog darling of the indie game scene" during its high-profile and protracted five-year development cycle. Fez designer and Polytron founder Phil Fish received celebrity for his outspoken public persona and prominence in the 2012 documentary Indie Game: The Movie, which followed the game's final stages of development and Polytron's related legal issues. The game was released as a yearlong Xbox Live Arcade exclusive on April 13, 2012 to critical acclaim, and was later ported to other platforms.

Fez won several awards, including the 2012 Independent Games Festival's Grand Prize, 2011 Indiecade's Best in Show and Best Story/World Design, and 2008 Independent Games Festival's Excellence in Visual Art. It was Eurogamer 2012 Game of the Year. Fez had sold one million copies by the end of 2013. A sequel was planned, but was later canceled as Fish abruptly left the industry.



The high-profile and protracted five-year development of Fez led to its status as an "underdog darling of the indie game scene". The 2012 puzzle platform game built around rotating between four 2D views of a 3D space was developed by indie developer Polytron Corporation and published by Polytron, Trapdoor, and Microsoft Studios. Over the course of the game's development, Fez designer and Polytron founder Phil Fish received celebrity for his outspoken public persona and prominence in the 2012 documentary Indie Game: The Movie, which followed the game's final stages of development and Polytron's related legal issues. The game was released to critical acclaim as an Xbox Live Arcade timed exclusive, and was later ported to other platforms. It had sold one million copies by the end of 2013.

Fish and Shawn McGrath collaborated on a puzzle game that became Fez. When McGrath left the project due to creative differences, Fish, the game's artist, pursued a platform game direction with Renaud Bédard, the game's programmer, who wrote a the game's level editor and game engine from scratch. Levels were built in 3D by extruding surfaces with Photoshop-created textures. Bédard and Fish were joined by three different animators and other collaborators. The game was first announced in June 2007 and won an award at the 2008 Independent Games Festival and entered the public spotlight. Fish created a studio, Polytron Corporation, and was later aided by nearby developer-publisher Trapdoor when Polytron ran out of money. Fez won several more prerelease awards, including the 2012 Seumas McNally Grand Prize.

 Threes! is an indie puzzle video game by Sirvo, an independent development team consisting of game designer Asher Vollmer, illustrator Greg Wohlwend, and composer Jimmy Hinson. The game was released on February 6, 2014 for iOS devices and later ported to Android by Hidden Variable Studios. In Threes, the player slides numbered tiles on a grid to combine addends and multiples of three. The game ends when there are no moves left on the grid and the tiles are counted for a final score.

The basic game was prototyped in a single night, but the team spent over half a year iterating through variations on the idea with visual themes such as sushi and chess. By the end of the the game's 14-month development, the team returned to the game's simple principles and numbers theme.

The game received what video game review score aggregator Metacritic described as "universal acclaim". Reviewers found the game "charming" and "addictive" and compared it to Drop7, Stickets, and Triple Town. Eurogamer and TouchArcade awarded the game perfect scores, with the latter calling Threes "about as close as it gets to a perfect mobile game". Other developers released similar games and clones within weeks of the game's launch.

Greg Wohlwend is an American independent video game developer and artist whose games include Threes!, Ridiculous Fishing, Hundreds, Gasketball, Puzzlejuice, and Solipskier. He originally formed Intuition Games with Iowa State University classmate Mike Boxleiter in 2007 where they worked on Dinowaurs and other small Adobe Flash games. Trained as an artist, Wohlwend worked mainly on the visual assets. As Mikengreg in 2010, they released Solipskier for iOS, whose success let the two take a more experimental approach with Gasketball, which did not fare as well. At the same time, Wohlwend collaborated with Asher Vollmer to make Puzzlejuice and with Adam Saltsman to make Hundreds based on Wohlwend's first game design. He later released Threes! with Vollmer in 2014 to critical acclaim. He was named among Forbes' 2014 "30 under 30" in the games industry.

Ridiculous Fishing is a mobile fishing video game where players use motion and touch controls to catch fish and consequently shoot them out of the sky for cash. The game is known for its developers' battle against a cloned version of their game released by another company. The game was developed and published by Vlambeer—Rami Ismail and Jan Willem Nijman—and released for iOS on March 14, 2013, and later that year for Android.

Players cast a fishing line into the ocean and use motion controls to avoid fish as the hook sinks and to catch as many fish as possible as the reel retracts. Players then touch the screen to shoot fish out of the sky for money that can be spent on upgrades. Nijman developed the idea during a television show about tuna fishermen. The game was first released as Flash game Radical Fishing with the same basic mechanics. A year after Vlambeer began their iOS development, Gamenauts released Ninja Fishing, a clone of the game that hurt Vlambeer morale. The team worked on other games and spoke publicly about the situation to a standing ovation at the 2012 Game Developers Conference before resolving to scrap the majority of their work and finish the game. Artist Greg Wohlwend moved in with iOS developer Zach Gage to work 14-hour days on the game.

Ridiculous Fishing received "near-universal perfect scores" at launch—what review score aggregator Metacritic describes as "universal acclaim". It won an Apple's 2013 Design Award and was their iPhone game of the year. Reviewers noted Vlambeer's struggle against the copy of their game and praised the game's balance and both visual and game design.

Hundreds is a mobile, puzzle video game where players touch circles to make them grow without overlapping. In the game's 100 levels, the player interacts with different types of circles to bring a counter to the number 100. The game was developed and published by Semi Secret Software in collaboration with Greg Wohlwend and was released for iOS on January 7, 2013, and on Android later that year.

It was originally built for the Adobe Flash platform in 2010 as indie game artist Wohlwend's first self-developed game. The game idea came from staring at the ceiling, and Wohlwend applied a grayscale color palette from his first year in art school. When Flash game sites did not purchase the title, he open sourced the code. Eric Johnson of Semi Secret ported the game to iPad, which began a collaboration between Wohlwend and the company's Adam Saltsman, who became the primary puzzle designer.

The game received "generally favorable" reviews, according to video game review score aggregator Metacritic. It was an honorable mention in Best Mobile Game and Nuovo Award categories of the 2012 Independent Games Festival, their honorable mention in Excellence in Visual Art the next year, and an official selection at IndieCade 2012. Reviewers praised its minimalist design aesthetic and puzzle variety, and criticized its obtuse cryptography subgame. Ian Bogost wrote that the game functioned like a design object, a feat unique for the video game medium.

Puzzlejuice is a 2012 indie puzzle video game for iOS produced and developed by video game company Sirvo. The game is a combination of Tetris, tile-matching, and Boggle: players rearrange falling tetromino blocks into rows of similar colors, which turn into letters that are cleared from the board by forming words. The fast-paced game also includes challenges and power-ups. The development team consisted three people; programmer Asher Vollmer initially developed the game alone, before reaching out to artist Greg Wohlwend for advice on the aesthetics. Composer Jimmy Hinson produced the game's music.

The game was released January 19, 2012 to what video game review score aggregator Metacritic called "generally favorable" reviews. Multiple reviewers mentioned the difficulty involved in juggling the three game components simultaneously.

Mikengreg is an independent video game development team of Mike Boxleiter and Greg Wohlwend. Their games include Solipskier and Gasketball. The two met in a game development class at Iowa State University and later began to collaborate on the Adobe Flash game Dinowaurs. When the project was funded, they founded Intuition Games with other college friends in Ames, Iowa, where they worked on small Flash games such as Gray, Lifecraft, and Fig. 8 for Flash game sites such as Kongregate. Dinowaurs was one of the first games signed for the Kongregate platform. Their other games involved controlling the weather, influencing individuals in a riot, and riding a bicycle. Boxleiter and Wohlwend worked on several additional games that were put on hiatus.

They later became Mikengreg in 2010 and released Solipskier in August for both Flash and iOS later that year. Its success let them take a more experimental approach towards their next game, the free-to-play Gasketball. Mikengreg ran out of money during the game's development and the two lived on friends' couches. The game was reviewed favorably upon its August 2012 launch, but did not earn near the developers' estimates.

Solipskier is a sports video game for Adobe Flash, iOS, and Android developed and published by Mikengreg, a two-man independent development team consisting of Michael Boxleiter and Greg Wohlwend. In Solipskier, the player draws the snowy slope for an on-screen skier to pass through slalom gates and tunnels. The character accelerates with downhill sections and can launch into the air to perform tricks and earn a higher score. The idea came from a brainstorming session about parallax scrolling with speedy action in the foreground and the ability for the player to "paint" the terrain. It was Boxleiter and Wohlwend's first game to receive public appreciation. It was released August 29, 2010 to generally favorable reviews and was a runner-up in the 2011 Game Developers Conference Independent Games Festival's Best Mobile Game category.

Gasketball is an action, sports video game for the iPad by Mikengreg, an independent development team of Michael Boxleiter and Greg Wohlwend. Players flick basketballs through 2D physics puzzles into the hoop in single-player, local multiplayer, and asynchronous HORSE-style online multiplayer modes. The game is free-to-play with in-app purchases. Development began in mid 2011 following Mikengreg's successful Solipskier. They were able to live off of the earnings for Gasketball two year development at their previous salary, which afforded them the stability to try new avenues and reject prototypes, though they worked 100-hour weeks. Towards the end of their development, they ran out of money and lived on the couches of friends. It was released on August 9, 2012, and the game did not reach their desired conversion rate at the time of launch.

The game received "generally favorable" reviews, according to video game review score aggregator Metacritic. Pocket Gamer gave the game their silver award, and Tim Rogers of Kotaku named Gasketball his 2012 game of the year, calling it "the beginning of the hardcore social game genre".

Blek is a 2013 puzzle video game for iOS and Android by Kunabi Brother, a team of brothers Denis and Davor Mikan. The player draws a snakelike black line that recurs in pattern and velocity across the screen to remove colored dots and avoid black dots. It is minimalist in design, features excerpts of Erin Gee, and takes inspiration from Golan Levin, the Bauhaus, and Japanese calligraphy. The brothers designed the game as a touchscreen adaptation to classic game Snake and worked on the game for over six months. It was released in December 2013 for iPad, and was later released for other iOS devices and Android.

The game received positive reviews, and critics praised the game's degree of unrestricted play. The game reached the top of the Apple App Store charts several months after its release. It received a 2014 Apple Design Award, and has sold over one million copies.



Nidhogg is a side-scrolling two-player fighting game by Mark "Messhof" Essen. Players duel with swords in a pixelated environment. The game was commissioned for the New York University Game Center's annual multiplayer show, and was revised and demoed at private events over the next four years before its final release. It won Indiecade 2013's Game Design award and the 2011 Independent Games Festival's Nuovo award. It was released for Microsoft Windows on January 13, 2014, and later ported to OS X, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation Vita. Critics praised the feel of the gameplay and its balance, and thought the single-player mode to be unsatisfying. Some critics found technical issues with the online multiplayer code, while others only had issues finding other players.

TowerFall is a 2013 archery arena indie video game created by Matt Thorson where up to four players use arrows and head-stomps to fight in a battle royale. It was released as an Ouya microconsole exclusive on June 25, 2013, and was later ported to PlayStation 4, Microsoft Windows, Linux, Mac OS X in 2014 as TowerFall Ascension. TowerFall was Thorson's first full game, and it grew from a June 2012 game jam single-player prototype. Thorson tested the game on his indie developer colleagues with whom he lived, and developed its capacity as a party game. Its mechanics were inspired by games of Thorson's youth, such as Bushido Blade and Goldeneye 007, and influenced by feedback received at the Evolution Championship Series fighting game tournament. The game was known as the standout title for the Ouya at the console's launch, and sold well.

When the Ouya exclusivity expired, Thorson signed another exclusivity agreement for the PlayStation 4, where Ascension received an expanded single-player mode, and new levels, weapons, and gameplay variants. Ascension received generally favorable reviews. Reviewers praised the game's balance, compared it favorably with Super Smash Bros., and recommended it as a party game. Critics felt that the single-player mode was a nadir, and lamented for an online multiplayer mode.