Xbox Indie Games Recap: Start The Victory Lap

2 weeks ago Dust: An Elysian Tail ended Dream Build Play 2009 as the 3rd winner of the competition. It joins The Dishwasher and Carneyvale Showtime in the very exclusive winners club. Now the contest is over we regular gamers get to see what all the fuss is about as the contest games start to appear on the Indie Game channel. We have one of those exalted six in this week’s 20 games so let’s get busy.

Charlie Cat’s Hot Air Balloon
Cute Cat Games – 80 Points

Yawn, the usual rubbish side-scrolling shooter fare which is going to get bought because OMG IT HAZ CATS IN! If you think your faith in humanity is flagging you should see mine when I see people praising games like this. Also there’s no exit button, that’s just lazy coding which no peer-reviewer should allow to pass.

Words Search
KRGkill – 240 Points

It’s a word search. What more can I say to fill this space so that picture doesn’t look weird? Well the menus are horribly designed and ugly, the game auto-plays music from your media library which doesn’t fit the game. Also words you’ve found don’t remain highlighted on the grid, which is a fundamental part of a word search in my opinion.

The Headsman
David Flook – 80 Points

So some shit wuss-metal band want to have their music video playing in the background of an extremely basic (and crap) chopping heads off game? Who the hell do you think you are? Journey? I swear there is no ego that can match up to a band who’ve just made their first video.

Crazy Coins
ByteMaster – 80 Points

When the main menu of a game has every option mapped to a button you know you’re not in for anything special. This doesn’t prove that rule wrong. Moving piggy banks from side to side would disgrace basic flash, let alone something as powerful as XNA.

Graviton AI
BlatterChip – 240 Points

Side-scrolling shooter action now with the “Thinking Gamers’ Shooter” or rather, the very poorly explained shooter. The idea of the game is that your weapon loadout and repair schedule and general strategy will determine whether or not you’ll make it through the badly designed levels and curtains of bullets. The basic idea is sound, but as usual with good concepts it’s the execution that rips this game up. With no tutorial to explain all the game elements you’re left to find everything out for yourself. In a game this dense and complex that’s something I really don’t have the patience to do. Whether you do or not is obviously up to you, but I don’t feel the rewards would be worth it.

Hollow Ball
Victor Ortega – 80 Points

2-player only Pong? That’s laziness taken to a new level if you can’t even be bothered to code a basic AI. As with most Pong clones there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with the gameplay but not having a CPU opponent puts this behind all the others.

2GoVids: Rachel Star Stunt Show
GoVids – 80 Points

Oh fuck off. I’m not a video reviewer and the Indie Game channel is not freaking Youtube. Take your crappy videos and get the hell out of my yard. You have no idea how hard it is to keep more cussing out of this section.

Hypnotizing
GoVids – 80 Points

And the same dev brings more guff to our playground. This time one of those rubbish swirly things that don’t hypnotize people. Listen, hypnotizing someone takes more than just a swirl. It takes skill and a willing victim for starters.

Sol Survivor – Dream Build Play 2009 Finallist
Cadenza – 800 Points

Oh now we’re talking. Full 3D tower defence and a Dream Build Play finallist to boot. The game can’t compete graphically with recent XBLA offering Defence Grid but has a few other things to offer. Complex paths from the beginning will tax genre veterans while different selectable COs provide various support options to help out if you get into trouble. The COs also offer varying tower selections. The rebel pyromaniac has little in the way of accuracy but gets to use the flamethrower while the distinguished veteran forsakes firing rate for accuracy. Getting to choose a set of towers that fits your style is a big plus, but at 800 points I honestly struggle to recommend this over other tower defence Indie Games like Electron Defence, Nextwar and GLITNER.

Fire
GoVids – 80 Points

Back in the good old days there was the app that started it all. The one useless screensaver that opened the floodgates for the massagers, magic 8-balls and others. That app was Fireplace and simulated…well a fireplace. This is something of an encore presentation, but somehow manages to be even worse. That’s special.

Dead Meat
x68ST0X20 – 80 Points

Dead Meat’s devs clearly saw the glorious GAEM WITH ZOMBIES IN IT and decided they wanted some of that. What they’ve produced has clunky controls, dull graphics and none of the speed and charm that made I MAED A GAME such a smash. Accept no substitute.

Azubi’s Pool of Bethesda
Azubi – 240 Points

In mythology the Pool of Bethesda (from which I assume the developer got their name) was a healing pool made sacred by angels. In this game the Pool of Bethesda is a 10×10 grid in which are hidden 25 angels. You have to put your patients into the pool where you think there might be angels. However there’s no indication of where the angels are which makes this pure random chance. As anyone will tell you, pure randomness is not something you can build a game on.

Johnny’s Skydiving Lessons
North West – 80 Points

North West. Once again the biggest shit-spreaders on the channel bring us another double bill of games. This is just following an arrow to try and retrieve a parachute. Once again there’s nothing even vaguely interesting here.

War: The Card Game Advanced
North West – 80 Points

Card game? Ooh I like card games. Oh, so by card game you mean button masher? Oh yeah, I see how that fits. Let’s get something straight people, button mashing in athletics games is fun but mashing for mashing’s sake is not fun. Got it?

Origin
William Ulrich – 400 Points

Block breaking now. Multiballs, moving bricks and 360 movement for your paddle help to separate this game from the other breakout clones. However it’s the dull presentation and slow, sticky controls that kill it dead. Not even full circle paddling can save this one.

Pyromanic
Tricktale – 240 Points

I’ve never liked the games that fire different coloured shots based on the colours of the 4 face buttons. Pyromanic somehow manages to bypass that though. Mainly because of the bright and fun presentation and the soundtrack, however once that’s stripped away you’re left with a fairly standard twitch-shooter. So simply put, it’s fun so long as you focus on the visuals and not the actual gameplay.

Fishing Girl
Errcw – 80 Points

Woo, token! We got a token for this rather pretty and stylised fishing game and to be honest I’m very eager to play it. Yeah I’m a sucker for fishing games, but when you’ve played Sega Bass Fishing on the Dreamcast you’re pretty much in for life.

Chillax HD
Mrsquare – 80 Points

Supposedly soothing music played over what look like someone’s holiday snaps. OK so the photos are a little bit nicer than my average vacation pics but it’s still fairly banal stuff. Also no exit button, so laziness points again.

Pixel Man
Super Gravelyn Bros – 80 Points

When did a lack of a save system a selling point for a game? Well here’s Pixel Man, a lesson in 8-bit frustration. Only that’s not quite the case as unlike rubbish 8-bit games there are no unpredictable controls or input delay on this game. When you die it’s usually your fault and dying sends you back to the start of the level rather than right back to the start. The super simple artwork fits perfectly and subtle little platform placement gives out the controls required (i.e. Jump) in a nice invisible tutorial. For 80 points, I can’t find much wrong with this.

Velocity
AxB – 80 Points

More ice block sliding now only the ice is hell and the slidey bit is a ball. Extra little bits and pieces like moving doors and teleporters help to mix things up a bit but the levels get very complex very quickly and once again I am forced to point something out. This is not a fun game even when used as a one-off puzzle in a bigger game. Stop trying to make it into a game by itself.

This week’s best game goes to the immensely charming Pixel Man though if you have the points then do check out Sol Survivor as well, it certainly earned that DBP finalist spot.

If you’ve been struck by game-creating inspiration then check out XNA Creator’s Club or Kodu Game Lab for tools and advice for making that dream a reality. 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 a full NG Review.