In March this year, an exciting new initiative called the Indie Fund was announced to help talented independent game developers get the funding they need to take their unwieldy but promising videogame prototypes all the way to finished product.

The fund was started by successful independent developers such as thatgamecompany’s Kellee Santiago (Flower), Number None’s Jonathon Blow (Braid), Capy’s Nathan Vella (Critter Crunch) and 2D Boy’s Ron Carmel and Kyle Gabler (World of Goo).

Their hope is “to encourage the next wave of game developers” and create a “serious alternative to the traditional publisher funding model. Our aim is to support the growth of games as a medium by helping indie developers get (and stay) financially independent.”

Earlier this week, it was announced that the Indie Fund is now taking game submissions for consideration.

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One of the creative cads behind World of Goo, Kyle Gabler, and Kyle Gray, the mind behind the awesome puzzle platformer Henry Hatsworth, have come together to form the official- and oppressive-sounding indie developer Tomorrow Corporation, powered by “authentic indie labor.” A ‘press release’ reads:

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For those not ‘in the know,’ World of Goo is a wonderful little (big) independently produced game available for the PC (and Mac and Linux) and on the Nintendo Wii via WiiWare, which tasks players with building a construction of dozens of goo balls to reach a specified goal.

As players have noticed, not only is the setting and general atmosphere amazing, the music is a little bit of awesome as well. So, after many requests were made to 2D Boy, the creators of World of Goo, the soundtrack for the game has been put up for free. From 2D Boy member Kyle Gabler’s site:

“Thank you to everyone who emailed asking about a World of Goo Soundtrack. This is probably as close to an “official” soundtrack I’ll ever make for the game World of Goo. I’m making it available here on my personal portfolio for free.

“I wrote much of this music specifically for the game, but many of the tracks were excerpts from music I had written previously for various small projects, or just for fun. This soundtrack includes the full versions of most of those songs, as best as I was able to recover them.”

You can get the World of Goo soundtrack for free, as well as read the release notes, over here. If you haven’t yet played World of Goo, go get the PC demo over here, or try it out on WiiWare.

Over on Gamasutra, you can read a cool little interview with indie developers, 2D Boy, which consists of Kyle Gabler and Ron Carmel.

Their latest (and first) game to be released is the wonderful World of Goo, a physics-based game in which you build towers and structures using balls of goo, with the aim of reaching an exit point. Be sure to check out a trailer for World of Goo as well as make a point of visiting 2D Boy’s site.

The game is available on WiiWare as well as a multitude of PC online stores (Steam, Direct2Drive etc.). Spread the word and support developers of awe-inspiring indie games! Oh, and also go get the demo for World of Goo, up now on Filefront. At only 33 MB, it’s a no-brainer!

World of Goo’s premise seems simple enough; build a bridge or tower to reach the end of a level. With goo. Lots of goo. The thing is, there is a lot more to World of Goo than meets the eye, such as the awesomely stylised art, the colourful characters and peculiar situations you’ll find yourself in.

Maybe just watch the launch trailer below to get a better idea of just what World of Goo is all about, developed by indie developers, 2D Boy.

Fantastic! World of Goo releases today on PC (Steam, Direct2Drive, Greenhouse, Beanstalk Games) and WiiWare, but you can buy it right now through 2D Boy’s website.