Resources

We know that making a game can be a challenging process, so therefore we've decided to bring you the best online resources we can find that will help you get started. We will use our experience and try to get hot inside-tips from the winners of previous years. But it depends on your interest, and what you want to know. What do you need to learn? Or do you have any good links to online resources that could help others?
Email us at -> contact[ætt]gameawards.no

Current resources

This will be a page were we will try to post as many brilliant links, tutorials, and other helpfull game develpoment resources as possible. Our goal is that this will be a page you can visit when you want to learn something new, and that NGA contestors will find this site a helpfull friend in the (sometimes) frustrating game develpoment process. We rely on your suggestions to make it better.

Tutorials, articles and communities

How to become a game programmer

How to make a game with HTML5

Game Development Stack Exchange - this is a good Q&A site where you can get answers to most of your game development related questions

Game Development Camp - game development summer school for teenagers located in Denmark. Open for international participants.

Here is a compilation of the XNA-resources given at the NGA Game Development Night:

C#
C# Tutorial

Sprites/Textures/Graphics
Studio Evil
SpriteLib GPL
XNA Resources

Sound clips / music
Soundsnap.com
Sounddogs.com

Tools
Paint.NET

Other tutorials
XNA 101 Tutorial
XNAtutorial.com - Tutorial videos (a bit old)

Blogs
Shaw Hargreaves' Blog - advanced XNA tips

Game Development Software:

Unity - simple and powerful program for game development for multiple platforms.
Blender - a really powerful 3D modelling program, where you could also make your entire game.
Game Maker - especially for those of you with no programming experience.
Torque Game Builder - free demo of the 2D game builder. WYSIWYG drag-and-drop editor. Also has a 3D game builder version that can be bought.
Stagecast Creator - a simple game maker where you can make small games with little or no real programming effort.

ARM workshop software

OpenGL-ES 2.0 Emulator
Mali GPU User Interface Engine
Thorium Game Optimization Use Case
Mali GPU Performance Analysis Tool v2.2
Mali GPU Texture Compression Too
Mali GPU Shader Development Studio
Mali GPU Shader Library
Mali GPU Offline Shader Compiler

To run this software you will need:
- Microsoft Windows XP Professional Version 2002, service pack 2, or later
- Microsoft Visual Studio 2005, or later
- The Microsoft .NET v2.0 framework, or later
- OpenGL 2.x compliant drivers

Innovative games for inspiration:

Portal - originally developed as "Narbacular Drop" by a student team
Braid - created by one guy
World of Goo - created by two guys
Puddle - created by a student team
Devils Tuning Fork - created by a student team
Continuity - created by 4 students in Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden during a 16 week period
Paper Cakes
flOw
Patapon
LocoRoco
Akoha - a serious game set in the real world (pervasive).
Sky Island

These are games we would undoubtedly consider innovative, but there is nothing wrong with creating a game over a known concept (a platformer for instance) and give it a small innovative twist (like Braid did). Remember, a game doesn't have to be big or fancy to win the competition!

Also, check out the following sites/videoes for more inspiration:
Student-developed games show bright future for industry
The best indie games (at Reflexive)