Our local homies at Luma Arcade (swell buncha folks) have recently been up at GDC along with everybody else in the industry, and have just showcased The Harvest, an XNA-based game made for ... well, the new ASUS Windows Phone prototype (some cool pics over at the link for interested parties).

Needless to say, seeing a phone-based game demo of such promising caliber is probably going to send all of the XNA fans out there into one great big excitable tizz. At least, it will if the proposed new platform lives up to expectations. And despite Engadget's coverage mentioning that some of the scenery in The Harvest was pre-rendered (a claim which is now being popularly referred to on several other sites), Luma's Dale Best insists that the whole game is in full, real-time 3D.

Either way, more chunks of information (and hopefully some nice 'n proper videos and stuff) are due to be unveiled at MIX next week, so the rest of us mere mortals will be able to get our answers then. In the meantime, here's a cool little showreel of the stuff Luma's done over the past three years:

Luma Arcade Showreel 2010 from Luma Arcade on Vimeo.

Look! More stuff comin' from sunny SA. Bounty Arms is a side-scrolling platformer thingum, made with the recently released Unreal Development Kit, and has been under development for quite some time. But just today, the developers have just released a playable demo. It's quite a hefty download, be warned, and the game is in no way complete just yet, but the video below gives you a good idea of what you can expect so far:

Over the course of the final game you gather power-ups that hugely alter your character and weapon arsenal, travel across the galaxy to many different worlds, unlock hidden doors to secrets, join with new comrades, fight the multitude of varying enemies that each world will bring, and defeat the bosses that rule them.

In addition to the above description, the developers even provide a game manual for you to review, though it'll likely change a lot as development progresses. Go on ahead and give it a shot, it's free! Oh, you'll probably want to have an Xbox 360 controller plugged in for this. (280mb)

- Chippit

Look, here I am again, trying to get you to spend money. Don't you just love me? No? Well you should, because it was just Vamlumtimes Day and that's what you're supposed to do, I'm told. Anyway, this is all beside the point, because there are a whole bunch of developers who do love us and are offering a deal all sorta like that awesome Natural Selection/Overgrowth pack that was floating around the Internet a while back. Except this one involves 6 developers with their recently-released games. It's the Indie Love Bundle.

Cheesy name aside, the pack includes six fantastic indie games at a price that'll save you a whole 65 units of American cash money. You'll get Osmos, Machinarium, Eufloria, Aztaka, Auditorium and And Yet It Moves all for only $20. And you get a trailer video absolutely free!

This fantastic offer makes the other two notable deals going around now – that is, a limited set of 555 hand-numbered Machinarium vinyl soundtracks, and an offer that nets every tenth person a free copy of Grappling Hook—look almost not worth it.

♥ Chippit

So I was poking around on Twitter today (Digsby, thank you for making the Internet tidy again!) when I saw mention of an IGF student entry called Continuity. Armed with a decent Internet connection and high spirits, I decided that now was the time to spread my wings and get into the habit of clicking on random links once more.

Turns out that this is quite the gem. Continuity distinguishes itself from other platformers in the way that the various "building blocks" which make up a level can be rearranged while you're moving through them. And so, while half of the game may just be about runnin' and jumpin' and gettin' keys to open various red doors, it turns into quite a fiendish puzzler later on when you have to keep zooming out and sliding bits of the level about to make sure you can get from A to B via C and — somehow — D.

On top of that, it really is quite well-designed. Puzzles are precise, new concepts are introduced gently and the background music is ... well, awesome. Give this one a shot, it won't disappoint!

-Nandrew

Okay, so today I'm going to be lazy (I'll accept the explanation that I did this to save all our readers time too) and lob a whole bunch of stuff in this post. Not because all of this isn't particularly important, but just because I either somehow missed it or it all appeared magically over this last weekend. Anyway, here goes:

• Remember that super awesome pre-order deal I mentioned a little while back? Well, the Wolfire guys wrote up a post-mortem about the deal over here, and give everyone a good idea of how well it went. In fact, it went so well that beards were, in fact, dyed pink.
  
• In related news, Natural Selection 2 (one half of the super awesome pre-order deal I mentioned a little white back) snagged itself ModDB's prestigious Indie Game of the Year award, edging out Wolfire's own Overgrowth. Following that, they released a super awesome looking new pre-alpha trailer, showing off their pretties and simultaneously offering an interesting physiology lesson: aliens see out of their mouth. Apt, really.
  
• The IGF's released its next batch of competition winners under the mobile games category.
  
• Finally, and most importantly, some news from the home-front. I'm posting this because Nandrew's both too modest and too busy making awesome things to post it himself: see this forum thread? You can find an early version of a game there. Go and download it right now, because you'll certainly be seeing and hearing a lot about this one in the near future. And I told you right now.

- Chippit