Just over two months after we began, we bring you now to the conclusion of our 2009 GDC/IGF coverage. Between the original impressions and the post-GDC impressions, we have collected hands-on impressions of all of the 32 IGF games. If you want to know in what directions gaming is growing and expanding, you need look no further than our actually *cough* freshly *cough*updated GDC 2009 hub.

The feedback we have received from the developers looking at our site has been great, and we really appreciate it. One of the great things about independent gaming is that you feel as though you can actually have a dialogue between game makers and game players.

Before we return you to your regularly scheduled reviews (Monday evenings) and news (Wednesdays and Fridays), we’d like to share with your our favorite photos from the hundreds we took at our very first GDC, now available on Flickr.

When we went to the GDC, we already knew that Zeit² was a rewind-able shooter with where the time travel mechanic basically lets you play the game cooperatively with yourself. What we didn’t know was that developer Thomas Bedenk had a human factors engineering background that makes travelling through time silky smooth without sacrificing the game’s challenge.

Zeno Clash was released yesterday, making it the first IGF game to go live since the GDC. Seeing the game in person last month reinforced our original notion that Zeno Clash is a brutal first-person melee fighting game with a surreal story set in and beautiful and disturbing world. This debut title for Ace Software brings something truly original and creepy to the table.

Times are tough, or so the old RPG cliche goes, and it seems harder and harder to pursue a career in something so frivolous as game development. Nevertheless, the games industry has been characterized by many as remarkably recession resistant. It’s a gleaming beacon of hope to the aspiring nerd, but what’s it really like out in the development trenches?

We asked IGF finalists and student finalists what they thought about developing independent games under the shadow of economic collapse. Not only that, but we asked them for words of wisdom for the aspiring indie developer. Some were flippant and funny while others were concrete and helpful. Read on for their insight.

Conventional wisdom (or at least wishful thinking) says that death is like being in a featureless white room forever, a sort of insensible nothing without beginning or end. It’s an idea built on the inductive proof of self: if you can (not) sense a world outside yourself, then there must (not) be a self that does the sensing. If you take this idea to its boring conclusion, you question your perceptions and ask, “What is the Matrix?” The Unfinished Swan asks something more interesting, “What if there is something there, and I just can’t see it?”

Winds of Orbis is a game with a simple premise: a classically-styled action-adventure game that uses a dance pad and Wiimote. These two factors combine to make a game that is highly recognizable in terms of gameplay on the screen, and is good for your health in your living room. The game turned out to be what we expected to see based on the information found on their website, but we learned a lot about the philosophy behind their game design as well as specifics about how the controls work when we encountered the game in person.

Snapshot looks to be a more clever puzzle-platformer than we were worried it might be in our original impression. The GDC build of the game showed off how the camera mechanic could be used both as a glorified inventory system and as a very different way to solve puzzles. This charming game boasts incredibly easy to pick up controls, making the game instantly accessible to anyone who has ever played a platformer before. Not much about this game is written in stone, but it will prove to be a game to watch for as it develops.

We never managed to corner one of PixelJunk Eden‘s developers, but the game ended up being exactly what it looked like—an organically growing platformer where you learn to jump rather than walk. We did learn some of the rules minutae that make Eden something more than a banal exercise in being pretty, however.

As Nintendo has passed from the Gamecube, through the DS, and to the Wii, they’ve gotten better at bridging the gap between developers and Nintendo’s constantly fluctuating vision of interactivity. Nobody ever really figured out how to make good use of the Gamecube-GBA connectivity, and it took a year and Canvas Curse before anybody really did anything with the DS’s touch controls. It took still less lead time before Wii waggle started catching on. The incredible shrinking lead time derives partly from increasing developer interest as Nintendo’s market presence grows, but it’s also because Nintendo has learned something that authors figured out centuries ago: show don’t tell. If there’s a series that’s as much tech demo as it is video game, it has to be Warioware, and guess what? Warioware: Snapped accompanies the newly camera-enriched DSi as a downloadable game. Read on for our impressions.