"Pay what you want" indie game store opening soon

As the independent developer community argues back and forth over the relative merits of Steam's Greenlight initiative, the people behind the self explanatory Indie Game Mag are planning to launch a grass roots rival aimed at showcasing "small or unusual" games.

IndieGameStand plans to showcase a new game every 96 hours (that's four days, maths fans) and you'll be able to download the game in question for whatever price you think it deserves. Once a game has given up the spotlight to something new, details will still be available on the site, directing customers to buy the game directly from the creators.

10% of whatever you pay will go to a charity of the developer's choice, and all games will be DRM free.

"We created IndieGameStand to put a spotlight on indie titles that provide fantastic experiences, but may have been passed over by the mainstream gaming public. This site is about supporting all of the fantastic and worthwhile indie developers out there," says co-founder Mike Gnade.

There's no list of what games will be featured, but over fifty indie devs have apparently signed up, including Spiderweb Software, Cipher Prime, Digital Eel, Magical Time Bean, Headup Games, and Zachtronics Industries.

As an added incentive, anyone who registers with the site before the launch on September 26th will get a free copy of Brilliant Blue-G's hand drawn "platform epic" Chester, the Xbox Live Indie Games version of which we reviewed last year, with Kristan declaring it "better than 95 per cent of the drivel you'll find on Xbox Indie Games".

That's assuming, of course, you didn't already get the game for free when the developer offered a generous 100 per cent price cut to celebrate the launch of Steam's Greenlight.