After years of work and several awards (including Sundance) under its belt, James Swirsky's and Lisanne Pajot's Indie Game: The Movie is finally available to purchase through direct download, on Steam, and on iTunes. The documentary follows Phil Fish (Fez) and Tommy Refenes and Edmund McMillen (Super Meat Boy) as they work towards the release of their games, with some Jon Blow (Braid) interview segments peppered in for added flavor.

The three arcs offer something different for everyone beyond the obvious game culture. Team Meat's story touches on family, feelings of isolation, and a beautiful parallelism to the characters of Super Meat Boy. Edmund and his work seems to be to me the raw and exposed Meat Boy, and his wife Danielle, the Bandage Girl that helps hold him together. Phil Fish's story explores legal complications and the dangers people face when partnerships dissolve.

We editors want an indie-character, star-studded version of Wreck-It Ralph to happen. Further, we think it could happen more easily than Disney's film, which must have involved so many suits to get the dozens of AAA IPs to appear on the same screen.

Indie characters seem to make cameo appearances at a much higher ratio than their AAA counterpart, so this daydream could come true. Each editor weighed in on what ten iconic characters should be included:

The co-founder of French indie developer Arkedo (Hell Yeah!) takes stock of the trade show, finding that it doesn't represent the state of the industry -- just a slice of it.

With the backing of publisher Sega, which signed his game Hell Yeah! Arkedo co-founder Camille Guermonprez found himself at E3 -- but he found the show out of touch with the real pulse of the game industry.

"This show is a little bit out of focus with reality, I think," Guermonprez told Gamasutra. "There's never been so many indie successes, and people are still trying to do the same old thing with more money and more boobs."

"There are new things happening somewhere else, but we just don't have the right prism on the industry right here."

The first Jam O'Clock is set to take place today from 1 to 2pm PST, with games to be hosted later at Ludum Dare.

Creator Andy Moore (Steambirds) expressed last week that this one-hour jam has the ability to motivate and constrain, bringing about an "innovation rarely seen in gamedev."

Ludum Dare's 48-hour, and even sporadic 8-hour, competitions bring games whose innovation catch the attention of the media and dev communities. They are so well-known now that the last jam brought over 1,400 entries.

Can a game made in extremely less time warrant such attention, too? I turned to Ludum Dare staff members Mike Kasprzak and Phil Hassey for their input. Additionally, QWOP, 2QWOP, and GIRP developer Bennett Foddy weighs in, admitting he appreciates games with long development cycles like Braid and games quickly developed in "violent, heavy brush strokes."

Paul Eres of RPGCreations (creator of Immortal Defense) is planning a five-year come back with Saturated Dreamers, an open-world, story-based, action-adventure, exploratory game due late 2012 for PC.

Saturated Dreamers follows the scientist Mercedes who is sent to the ice planet Lake -- a sentient, alien lake-world -- to search for the remains from a previous expedition. Players pilot a multi-purpose ship to explore and purify the Lake, friend its creatures, and find and equip new abilities.

The graphics are pretty, and the choice of trailer music is enjoyably peculiar. However, I couldn't quite figure out what the game would be like. So I spoke with Eres, who had me at "intelligent lake" and "Zelda." (Hopefully he comes back around to talk about what's up with the fetuses, hearts, and position of these hands).

Steambirds and IceBurgers creator Andy Moore has announced the first Jam O'Clock for Friday, June 8th, from 1 to 2pm PST, with completed games to be hosted at Ludum Dare.

Moore sees his constrained but motivational, one-hour jam as a practical way to get developers actually creating and to see if a feature is fun, circumventing time-consuming discussions and design docs. Further, he believes "strict timetables evoke a certain kind of innovation rarely seen in gamedev."

Moore is no stranger to creating commercially viable products in a short amount of time. In fact, Moore made Steambirds in a weekend and his iPhone title IceBurgers in 8 days, and the longest project he's worked on took 30 days. "I have trouble believing anything beyond content generation would take more than that (unless you're dealing with 3D, or ports, or whatever)."

When you're two young guys from Helsinki, Finland, it can be hard to get your game a) funded; b) noted by the public; and c) finished. But Facepalm Games' The Swapper is hoping to do just that after February's announcement that it is being backed by Indie Fund.

Facepalm Games is primarily the work of two people, Olli Harjola and Otto Hantula. Neither has much game development experience, with Harjola developing some minor personal projects, and Hantula's experience being limited to mods and Counter Strike maps.

Despite this, the pair -- who are also being helped out by a third team-member, Carlo Castellana and occasional freelancers -- have struck a chord with The Swapper. The sci-fi puzzle/platformer "is inspired by films like 2001: A Space Odyssey and Solaris," said Facepalm's Olli Harjola. It has been in development for about three years in total, but only the past seven months have been full-time, as the game has gathered momentum and development ramps up towards release.

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.