Xbox Indie Games Recap: Just Playing

There’s a tab in the Indie Games section labelled ‘Contest Finalists’. A load of great games come under that tab like Blow, Carneyvale Showtime and Trino. The contest in question is Dream Build Play, a game making contest for XNA developers. Entries for this year’s contest closed this week so naturally YouTube is rather full of trailers for beautiful looking XNA games like Dust: An Elysian Tail which,above, you can see promo art for. Go check out the Dream Build Play website here for more info.

Extreme RPS Online
Monkey Ware – 200 Points

RPS Online has had a lot more effort put in art wise than most of the rock paper scissors games. Weirdly it also has a neat little combo mechanic where you expend power to throw out more than one symbol in a round. No amount of neat little touches however can cover up the fact that this is Rock Paper Scissors.

Reef Rave
North Squard – 80 Points

Yet again we have a screensaver. There are plenty of styles to choose from but I repeat, this is a screensaver.

The Oracle
Loidi – 80 Points

Magic 8-ball. Nothing more, nothing less. A magic 8-ball that gives me attitude as well for not buying it.

Spectral Music Massage
Pow Studios – 240 Points

You’ve already seen the key word in that title. Massage. Yep it’s been a while since we last got one of these but here’s one to open that crap salon once more. This one’s gimmick is that it will vibrate to your music, so I threw in some Queens of the Stone Age (Little Sister if you’re wondering) to really try it out. My controller was not vibrating anywhere near where I would expect it to, hell it wasn’t even matching the basic rhythm. It’s sad when a massage game can’t do what it says it will.

Mayan Countdown
Zenfar – 80 Points

December 21st, 2012. That’s the date this glorified pre-set stopwatch is counting down to. It’s the date on which many people believe will bring the apocalypse and the end of civilisation based on ‘evidence’ taken from the Mayan calendar. There is no proof of this and even Mayan descendents say it’s balls. Ignore.

Ultimate Sacrifice
Teasoft – 80 Points

Yay it’s an XNA shooter. YAY IT’S JAPANESE!! OK so it’s not terribly brilliant. A massive ship seems cool to control at first but quickly becomes unwieldy when you realise you’re too big to dodge anything for certain. The game compensates for this by having a massive life bar so you’re rarely going to find yourself in trouble. Disappointingly dull really.

Card Arcade
YYR – 240 Points

It seems like it could be a perfect cash in, but this is instead a collection of games designed to be scored in this videogame format. From the no doubt familiar Three Peaks to a rather nice variation on Blackjack. I expected this to be a rather cynical collection of games but I ended up enjoying it a lot. The minimalist pixel style of card art appeals to me as well. Worth at least a trial.

Steel Transfer Tiyou Oshi
Shingahaku – 240 Points

Yeah I used Google for the translation. So what we have here is a bit of side scrolling ninja action not unlike Shinobi. If Shinobi was horribly unresponsive and too fast for its own good. Half the time I didn’t even see what killed me (which I would imagine is appropriate, these being ninjas) and the other half of the time I was cursing the controls for not doing what they were told. I wanted to like it and it’s pretty to look at, but it just isn’t fun to play.

GLITNER
Hironori – 80 Points

Tower defence time again, but in 3D? It works a lot better than you might think. The enemy path is shown and you can’t put satellites on that, but having a full 3D area to work with allows you to get a lot more creative with your defences. Other improvements over the classic formula include an excellent controller optimised toolbox for quick placement and even a stat box to show clearly the sort of enemies you’re currently facing. For 240 points this would’ve been excellent, for 80 it’s a freaking steal.

Division Omega
Murkaeus – 240 Points

Right, time to play with some tanks. I wasn’t expecting much from this basic looking game but I ended up pleasantly surprised. The tanks are simple enough to control (though a bitch to get used to), the guns are sufficiently meaty but the scrolling levels are only functional. Worth a try I think.

Veks and Silence
i ENDER i – 400 Points

The smash hit game Veks and Silence has been BANNED and its hero thrown into the videogame asylum. Soon enough though zombies fill the streets and it’s up to Veks to save the day by storming through 13 levels of zombies and gaming satire. This is at its heart a 2.5D shooter platformer but has 4 very nicely balanced weapons, a glorious art style and a great sense of humour. Those factors make it a huge amount of fun to play, another essential Indie Game. Also, it has zombies.

Headshot
North West – 80 Points

Wait for one of the hundreds of identical sprites to draw a gun and shoot him in the head. That’s all there is to it, the gunmen will get quicker but that’s about it. Not to mention there’s no indication of where the gunner might be making it almost pure pot luck whether you actually see them before they fire. Don’t even look.

That’s your lot for this week. My Game of the Week is easily Veks and Silence. More finely crafted games with zombies like this please.

If you’re a developer who wants a bit more exposure for your game then feel free to send us a token, every game we get a token for will get £250 a full NG Review as well as their bit in the recap. If you want to get in on the XNA action yourself then check out XNA Creator’s Club or Kodu Game Lab.