The grand prize winner of DICE's 2012 Indie Game Challenge is Closure, a puzzle-platformer developed by Eyebrow Interactive that lets players manipulate light and shadow. The game's developers took home a $100,000 Grand Prize. Puzzle-platformer The Bridge and procedurally-generated musical shooter Symphony won two awards each. Nitronic Rush won the Gamers Choice award, an award chosen by fans.

Indie developer Jeff Vogel (whose Spiderweb Software studio recently released Avadon: The Black Fortress) writes an interesting article for GamaSutra today explaining his philosophy on the most effective method for dealing with piracy. The thrust of his argument is that players will pay for easy-to-pirate games because it makes them feel good about supporting a developer.

Double Fine's Tim Schafer and Ron Gilbert have proven that using crowd-sourced funding can be successful. Last night the company launched a Kickstarter page asking the community for $400,000 to create a new point-and-click adventure title. Around $300,000 of that will go towards development, while $100,000 of the money will be spent to create a "making of" documentary series about the game by 2 Player Productions.

Indie Game: The Movie had a decent showing at the Sundance Film Festival, and now the documentary about the life and craft of several prominent indie game developers is heading to South by South West (SXSW) as a "Festival Favorite."

In case you don't know much about it, Indie Game: The Movie is the creation of first-time filmmakers Lisanne Pajot and James Swirsky who follow indie game developers Edmund McMillen and programmer Tommy Refenes (Super Meat Boy), Phil Fish (FEZ), and Jonathan Blow (Braid) at key moments in the game development process.

Quarrel developer Denki says that its Xbox Live Arcade word game was rejected by several major publishers multiple times. The developers are calling on gamers to prove wrong publishing executives who say that people don't buy word games by buying the game. The multiplayer word game launched on Xbox Live Arcade today.

iPhone game developer Nimblebit is accusing Zynga of ripping off its popular mobile title, Tiny Tower. Last week the company launched Dream Heights, a free tower-building game for iOS with in-app purchases that shares a number of similarities to Nimblebit's Tiny Tower. The popular iOS tower building game received Apple's 2011 iPhone Game of the Year.

Nimblebit's Ian Marsh got his point across about the similarities between the two games by releasing an image via Twitter. The image puts the two games side-by-side for comparison.

Speaking to PC Gamer, Mojang co-founder and Minecraft developer Markus "Notch" Persson said that his company no longer feels like an "indie studio."

According to a tweet from Team Meat, Super Meat Boy has managed to sell one million copies since its release in October. The gory-but-cute platformer was developed by Team Meat (Edmund McMillen and Tommy Refenes) and was released in October 2010 on Xbox Live Arcade as part of Microsoft's GameFeast promotion. The game was later released on Valve's Steam digital distribution platform. The game garnered critical praise from the media and was embraced by fans.

Magazine publisher Computec Media announced details on the second round of its international game developer contest, Make the Game 2012. Indie developers interested in registering for the international browser and social games competition have until April 16 to do so. This year Computec Media plans to invest 1 million Euros in the contest to find the best new browser and social network games. Entries will be judged by a five-member jury of "experts," who will ultimately award prizes to up to three promising games.

According to iOS game developer Black Powder Media, Atari is removing games from the App Store (with the help of Apple, of course) that resemble anything from its extensive back catalog of classic games. The company developed a game called Vector Tanks 3, which bears a slight resemblance to Battlezone. Atari has also threatened legal action against iOS developers who are developing games that it deems are rip-offs of its owned IPs.

Supergiant Games' popular PC and Xbox Live Arcade action-RPG Bastion has sold more than 500,000 copies to date, according to a recent company blog post. Bastion launched for XBLA in July and on Steam in August, and received praise from both critics and players for its unique style and it's wonderful on-the-fly narrative system. The company noted in its blog post that recent price cuts and sales promotions on both platforms helped them attain the numbers they currently enjoy.

Mojang business developer Daniel Kaplan recently told Gamasutra that he did not know what version 1.0 of the mobile versions of Minecraft - Minecraft Pocket Edition for Sony's Xperia Play and iOS - would look like.

"Oh, wow, I really don’t know, said Kaplan. "I can't answer that."

Responding to a Formspring question about a potential port to Nintendo's 3DS hand-held, The Binding of Isaac, co-creator Edmund McMillen revealed that discussions are already underway. In responding to the question, McMillen revealed that "a publisher I know is currently asking Nintendo if they would be OK with Isaac on the 3DS." If Nintendo approves of the game being on the platform, he said that he is willing to "let them port it."

VentureBeat has a great profile on Homeless, an Xbox Live indie game that puts you into the well-worn shoes of a homeless person. The basic premise of the game is that you are a homeless guy who must beg for quarters from passers by, trying to get enough money together to get through another day.

The Humble Indie Bundle 4 is on fire, already generating nearly $1.8 million and well over 340,000 bundle sales. The pay-what-you-want promotion has added an additional five games into the mix from Humble Indie Bundle 3 as well as their full soundtracks. To get all these extras, consumers simply need to pay more than the average price of $5.16.

Microsoft announced this week that it is taking part in next year's Independent Games Festival, the annual celebration of all things indie game-related that runs in conjunction with the Game Developers Conference. The new partnership with Microsoft adds a new prize to be awarded to the winner of the festival: a first-party publishing deal through Microsoft's Xbox Live Arcade service. The news is part of a multi-year partnership between the Independent Games Festival and Microsoft.

The Sundance Film Festival's official film selections list was released today, and Indie Game: The Movie will be one of the many fine films to be screened and eligible for the World Cinema Documentary Competition. The documentary gives viewers a behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to make an indie game. It features Super Meat Boy creators Edmund McMillen and Tommy Refenes, FEZ creator Phil Fish, and the Braid creator Jonathan Blow.

Customers who pay more than the average price for the Humble Introversion Bundle will get Dungeons of Dredmor for free. The pay-what-you-want bundle that lets consumers divide the money up between the game's developer, Child's Play, or Electronic Frontier Foundation can get Uplink, Darwinia, DEFCON, Multiwinia, and two bonus prototype games - the Voxel Tech Demo and the Subversion City Demo. These last two are prototypes, or works in progress. If you pay more than the average price currently being offered, you can also get Crayon Physics Deluxe and Aquaria.

Another week, another Humble Bundle. This time out Introversion's line-up of games are the focal point of the bundle. By choosing to pay what you want (and divvying that money up between the game's developer or the Child's Play or Electronic Frontier Foundation charities), you can get Uplink, Darwinia, DEFCON, Multiwinia, and two bonus prototype games - the Voxel Tech Demo and the Subversion City Demo. These are prototypes which means they are works in progress.

Train2Game and Epic Games announced the winners of the Train2Game and Epic Game Jam, the 48-hour event that was held November 4-6 at the University of Bedfordshire, England. More than 100 game developers showed up for the event and created 10 playable games for the iOS platform using Epic’s Unreal Development Kit (UDK). The final Game Jam winners will receive a commercial Unreal Engine 3 license for iOS. The winner will be crowned at Make Something Unreal Live, to take place at the Gadget Show Live in Birmingham, UK from April 11-15, 2012.

After a two-week run, the Humble Voxatron Debut is now closed.  So, how’d it do?

Humble Bundle sold 172,261 bundles for a total of $902,448.11 making it one of the lower earning bundles but certainly not a comparative failure.  Here’s how the previous bundles shook out:

Developers joining the ranks of the UK game industry trade group TIGA will be delighted to hear that the group is hosting two events for indies and mobile studios to recieve free consultation from PR experts. In announcing it, TIGA said the initiative is part of a wider goal of supporting the new wave of independent start-up studios that seem to be emerging across the UK. Some of these new studios popping up are the result of massive layoffs by big studios.

A new Humble Bundle went live today and has already managed to move an impressive 19,000 units (as of this writing). The new bundle, the Humble Voxatron Debut, features the Voxatron alpha, Lexaloffle Games’ brand new voxel-based action-adventure game.

Hungry Shark developer Future Games of London says that smaller iOS developers are being pushed out of the Apple App Store charts by larger publishers who are buying their way to the top of the list. Future Games MD Ian Harper claims that media companies are using a method called "Cost Per Install" to quickly drive downloads, improve rankings and increase visibility by hitting the top of the charts.

In these trying financial times it's nice to see a developer care about the little guy. Spiderweb Software is one of those development studios. The one-man operation run by the outspoken Jeff Vogel has cut prices across the board for its entire catalog of role-playing games for Mac, iPad, and Windows by 20 percent. In addition, for the month of October Spiderweb has slashed an additional 10 percent off of all of its games.

tinyBuild Games has found success in uploading its new game, No Time To Explain, to the Pirate's Bay, according to a SlashDot report, by way of Ubuntu Vibes. The game has a unique feature that the full-fledged normal version does not: all of its characters wear pirate hats in-game, along with an ever-present pirate theme.

Two iPhone games produced in 12 working days during UK event Gamer Camp: Nano are now available on the Apple App Store. The games were built during a month-long game developer training course at Birmingham City University. The game are free to download. The two games, They Came From the Deep and Aliens vs. Humans, were created by thirteen trainee artists and programmers working together in teams. The one month course is a scaled down version of the full 12-month long Masters version of the course, Gamer Camp: Pro, which starts in September.

Thanks to the success of its indie game LIMBO, Danish developer Playdead has made enough money to buy itself back from investors. The game was released on Xbox Live Arcade, followed by the PC and PlayStation Network. Limbo's development was funded out-of-pocket by Playdead founders Arnt Jensen and Dino Patti, along with some grant money from the Danish government. Later investors were brought in to get the money needed to get the games across various platforms.

A new indie game which aims to combine elements from Portal and Super Mario Bros., which many simply thought was a clever video, is real and in development. Called Mari0, the game is being built using the Löve framework and combines the 2D scrolling action of SMB with elements from Portal.

Mojang front man Markus Persson has revealed that Minecraft is not and probably will not ever be sold through Valve's Steam service because of its "restrictive terms of service." In a post on his blog, Persson said that while Steam is "the best digital distribution platform I've ever seen," Valve's control of the platform (which he doesn't have a problem with) limits the freedom Minecraft requires.