For the last seven months I’ve played hundreds and hundreds of trials for games released on the Xbox Live Indie Games service. I’ve done this to draw attention to the good games and to ward you away from the crap. With that in mind I have to tell you this will be the last time you find this column on NG. I will be continuing the column elsewhere but this post can be considered my Negative Gamer swan song. My thanks naturally go out to the entire crew who’ve made my tenure here enjoyable and to everyone who’s read and commented on the posts. Knowing someone pays attention to my writing is a great thrill and I hope that’ll continue to the recaps’ new home. I won’t say where that is yet, I’ll leave it for my heartfelt final paragraph at the end of the article.

Until then though we have the small matter of some games to deal with. 12 in total, including one I’ve been looking forward to for a very long time. For the last time then, let’s do some recapping.

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I’ve been a bit ill this week, so it was with slightly groggy joy that I noticed my wireless adapter worked without a fight when I sat down to play these games this week. Small victories are always nice. So anyway, we have nine games to deal with this week and I don’t have some grand speech to make beforehand. Straight down to business it is then, let’s roll.

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On a night with a full moon, I must offer it salt and vinegar Kettle Chips and bathe it in the blood drawn from a papercut. Then, and only then, will my Xbox 360 wireless adapter light turn green and allow me onto Xbox Live. This has become an issue and not just because I want to play games online. You see to play an Indie Game you need to be signed in to Xbox Live. Not just a trial or to download games, even Indie Games you’ve bought and paid for. This is something I feel has to be changed, I can play XBLA games and disc games offline but not Indie Games. I have to admit this hasn’t annoyed me until now, but I’ve become slightly addicted to last week’s Game of the Week SFG Soccer. I think it’s the first Indie Game I’ve added points just to buy and the stat building in the Career mode is becoming slightly addictive. I introduced it to my brother, who’s a FIFA nut but was raised on Sensible Soccer, and he loved it for its pure simplicity. So I’m extremely happy that this kind of sports game can work on XBLIG, now about College Lacrosse 2010….

We have eleven games to deal with this week including one game that I played in the Indie Arcade at Eurogamer last weekend. For more info on the other games I played there check out the post I wrote about it here.

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It is sometimes said that the little things are where we find the most enjoyment. So on Saturday afternoon at Eurogamer Expo 2009 I joined forces with the lovely Xander from The Independent Gaming Source to check out the Indie Gaming Arcade that was conveniently set up across the hall from the press lounge. 14 of the super-powered orange PCs that were a common sight in the exhibition hall were set up to run some of the most unusual, pretentious and entertaining indie games currently available or in development. The games I want to talk about today were possibly the 3 most interesting of the games available, Joe Danger, Darwinia+ and VVVVV. You can also hear us talking about Eufloria on the Eurogamer NGCast.

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You know what sucks: the 360′s wireless adapter. Mine cut out on me a few weeks ago and started working again this week, so here I am returning to my beloved recaps. The games that were missed while I was out of action will get dealt with, don’t you worry about that, but this week it’s all about the fifteen games released over the last seven days. So grab your indie gear and let’s get down to business.

I think I’ll also mention that we at NG went stomping around Eurogamer Expo this weekend. While everyone else went to play the shiny big budget games I hung around in the Indie Arcade section. I got to check out loads of delightfully pretentious crap and some actual great games. There’ll be a post going up about both those categories later in the week.

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Why is the header image this week of a lacrosse game? Well it’s because while looking over Kotaku this week I came across a trailer. That trailer was for College Lacrosse 2010, a game that’s hopefully coming out next week on Indie Games. This would be the first ‘proper’ sports game to come out through XNA and it even carries the endorsement of Inside Lacrosse magazine. If this game is actually any good I will be supremely impressed, not to mention extremely happy. I’ve been waiting years for a good lacrosse game. Seriously, it’s one of my favourite sports.

You’ll notice a few changes to this week’s recap. First of all the much requested separator line is being introduced. It’s nothing fancy but it should do the job. Also new is my trial opinion of games we have been given tokens for. Many people have asked for this as well so I’m pleased to take feedback from the crowd. If you think there’s anything else that needs changing about the recaps then let me know in the comments. After last week’s jumbo recap I have a much more compact affair for you this week. 8 games are in the firing line so let’s get started.

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Sorry for the delay, a failure with my 360′s wireless adapter kept me away from the games last week but it’s sorted and we have a double week to contend with. I want to share something that caught my eye this week though to do with the brilliant Clover. It’s found a proper publisher! Clover: A Curious Tale has been picked up by Blitz 1up to be published on the PC with improved animations, soundtrack, extra puzzles and generally more stuff. If you’ve held out on getting the brilliant side scrolling adventure then this will no doubt be the version to get. It’s also the first XBL Indie Game to get picked up by a major publisher, so congratulations to Binary Tweed for that.

Next a little bit of business, there’s a patch out for Nasty which supposedly fixes a load of the complaints John had when he reviewed the game a while ago. There’s a proper note of the patch changes at the end of that review. OK then, let’s get down to the 33(!) games that comprise this week’s business.

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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.

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From hundreds of submissions the Dream Build Play judges reduced it to 6, then finally only one stood above the rest as champion. Who was it? Well it was the game I think everyone knew was going to win, the insanely beautiful Dust: An Elysian Tail. Creator Dean Dodrill can now enjoy a fat cheque for $40,000 and possibly an XBLA publishing contract. Max Blastronaut took $20k for 2nd, Rotorscope grabbed 3rd place and $10,000 and the last $5,000 went to Hurricane 2X Evolution. A massive congratulations to all the winners and indeed to everyone who entered. I look forward to playing your games when they hit the Indie Games channel. This week however we have 13 games to deal with so lets get down to business.

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Dust, Kaleidoscope, Max Blastronaut, Hurricane 2X Evolution, Sol Survivor and Rotorscope. One of these games will win its developer $40,000 as the winner of Dream Build Play 2009. Also any of these could get themselves onto Xbox Live Arcade. It’s hard to pick a winner from these to be honest, they all look brilliant but I don’t know how they play. You can see the trailers (in HD) for each by clicking on their names up there and read more about them in this article G4 did earlier this week. This week though we have 14 games including the return of some XNA superstars.

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I’m excited my friends. Tomorrow we enter September and that is results month for the Dream Build Play contest. Run a Youtube search for Dream Build Play 2009 and you’ll find a load of excellent looking trailers for loads of the games that have been entered. I would make special note of Basketball Three, which is the first game I’ve seen to have Avatars as playable characters. The top prize for the winner is a fat cheque for $40,000 and any of the games could potentially become Xbox Live Arcade games like The Dishwasher. Keep an eye on the Dream Build Play website for the results through September.

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When you’ve been doing this as long as I have you start to recognise developer names. At some point I’ll probably start to create a Hall of Shame for the developers who consistently load endless piles of turd onto the channel. A few of the usual suspects show their faces this week, see how many you can spot amongst the 20 games that make up this week’s recap.

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This is usually the bit where I ramble on about stuff that’s rarely relevant. This week however we have a lot of games (21) to cover so I’ll keep this short by just mentioning 2 important things. Firstly you can now unlock Indie Game trials from the game library just like XBLA games. Secondly you can now rate games using a 5-star system. Make sure you rate your favourites and watch the Top Rated section to find the gems everyone else likes. Now we have 21 games to deal with so let’s get going.

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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.

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This week thing have begun to get rather exciting in the world of Indie Games, not least because Japanese games have started to emerge, moonspeak titles and all. A huge thanks to the lovely Atheistium of Viera.nu for her help deciphering the titles.

Also new this week is the ability for developers of Indie Games to send out tokens for their games, hopefully to sexy game reviewers such as ourselves. This ties in with some other work we’ve been doing backstage that should result in us bringing you full NG reviews of Indie Games. Now, on with this week’s recap.

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Oooh, get us and our big new name. Yes the change has finally come and this is now the weekly recap of Xbox Live Indie Games, because Community is rubbish. With the name change has come a few other changes, chief among which is that XNA Studio 3.1 games are coming. Not for a few weeks but they are being accepted for peer review now so we’ll likely see the fruits of those labours when the dashboard update rolls out in August, I can’t wait to massage my avatar. Also there will be pricing changes, games will now fall under 80, 160 and 400 point banners. Can’t see the point of those myself, I quite like the 400 and 200 system. Most importantly for media types like myself though is that iGame developers will now get 50 tokens for free downloads of their game, effectively giving them 50 review copies to use as they see fit. I can only hope that’ll help motivate bigger sites to start reviewing iGames more often and get the service spoken of as something more than the dirt on XBLA’s shoe. You can see the full list of new features and changes over here.

Chart stuff and Kodu has seemingly hit the slippery slope, after a few weeks at #1 it now rests at #7. Somehow RC Air-Sim remains #1 so I have to ask who the hell is still buying this game? It’s been out over 6 months and is still top of the charts. The mind boggles when I consider how much money it’s made. The only other interesting bit of the chart is Gamerbots which holds stubbornly to the lower order at #8.

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I realised a little something before I started writing this. I spend most of my writing time these days singing the praised and bitching about the failings of independant games. I wrote a blog entry over on Destructoid earlier this week actually with a list of what I consider to be the 10 essential Community Games and it kinda makes me feel like a massive Indie Fag to have written an article like that. I don’t really mind though, because I honestly love and believe in this service. That’s why I do this every week. OK, now I feel like a sappy asshole for writing that.

Chart time now and RC Air-Sim has disposed of Kodu to reclaim the top spot. Last week’s game of the week Gamerbots has debuted at #5, which is something positive to look at in a chart which contains 2 screensavers and 2 massagers.

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You realise this feature has been going for 3 months now? Scary huh.

A communication/real life fail meant we didn’t get this done last week and a computer fail on my end meant this didn’t get done yesterday. So shout from the rooftops you lucky Monday fans because you get the Cgame recap on your favourite day for once. In a change to the usual formula we’re only looking in depth at actual games for this double week recap, I’ve come to think it’s not really fair to judge a perfectly functional utility released on the service by the standards of a videogame. Don’t worry, even taking them out there’s been plenty of turds dropped this fortnight.

Chart news and we have a new champion!! RC-Air Sim has been well and truly kerbstomped by the Microsoft Research project Kodu. While Kodu is on the Cgame channel I won’t be covering it in this article, however there will be a full scale Not Review coming up sometime soon. The rest of the chart is the usual mess of Aquariums and Massages, let’s get down to business.

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After the student game blowout a few weeks ago we’re rather stuck in a bit of a Cgames slowdown. only 5 games hit the channel last week and we only have 5 again this week. Must be the hot weather keeping everyone from coding. Get a laptop and do it in the park people! I would actually love to see someone making a Cgame in the park, surely there’s someone out there who can make that happen?

Nothing changes at the business end of the chart with Aquarium and RC-Air Sim holding fort at the top. However #16 is currently occupied by the excellent Light’s End from last week. Extremely well deserved there, though it deserves more. Nothing else to say on that subject so let’s get down to business.

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Last week a big fat 13 games included 3 that were very much worth your cash. What I want to talk about in this little pre-article bit here though is a game I played a few weeks ago called Clover. A delightful little sidescrolling adventure game that I said everyone should buy. Well the always awesome Destructoid this week gave Clover a full review giving it a 7/10 and recommending that people should buy it. I applaud Dtoid for bringing attention to a Cgame like that, especially one I love so much. You all bought unRevolutionary last week didn’t you? Yes? Good.

Quick look at the charts shows myFishtank continuing its reign of terror at the top. None of last week’s games have made the top 10 (figures) but cool virtual Lego kit Constructor from 2 weeks ago has settled in at #7. Other good news is that the excellent Trino has held its place in the top 20 at #16.

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So, Xbox Live Indie Games is going to be the new name for this service once we get into August. Can’t say I’m thrilled but the user ratings coming at the same time should make things interesting. Of course, they’ll have to be pretty damn good to convince me that user reviews are actually worth the time it took to read them.

Bestseller time and MyFishtank has vomited all over the #1 spot, the first time RC-AirSim has been kept down at week’s end since its release. The best performance from last week’s crop is Illusions 360, which says a lot about what people buy around here. Constructor finds itself just outside the top 10 though, silver linings and all that.

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Hey, it’s NJ back from vacation and ready to drive a few more knives into some horrible Community Games. I do, as always, have the bumper chocolate basket ready for any CGame that can genuinely impress me though. Unlike the temp I got in while I was gone I have the occasional flash of charitable thoughts.

A quick look at the best sellers list shows that unsurprisingly MyFishtank has found itself on top. I do often wonder whether some developers miss the whole “Games” part of Community Games. Hell, WiiWare only has 1 aquarium compared to the 2 on CG. Also, XBLA already has a freaking aquarium, only the developers of that at least had the decency to put a decent game of Tetris over the top.

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This week I decided not to use the official Xbox list of new games as I discovered last week that some games appear on that list, even though they aren’t actually new and have simply been updated. Very sneaky. Thankfully, xblcg.info provide a very useful list, so I’ll be going off that from now on.

On to this week. There was not just a new massage game, but also a virtual fish tank! How exciting! Those are the two things I think the Xbox Community Games really need more of.

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As NJ is on holiday and didn’t have the decency to take his Xbox with him, the weekly reviews of the Community Games have fallen to me. Keep in mind I have better things to do on a Sunday (ok, that’s a lie, but I could be in bed eating pizza) so I’m going to be harsh.

The games I’ve marked as Leave to Die I just had no interest in and would likely never consider buying. Also, to anybody making a game, please make it has an exit button. Otherwise you’re just being lazy and an arse.

NJ also never had it so good. Last week he had a moan because there were a whole nine games. This week, there are 15.

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There is a period I knew was coming when I started this. Last week was something of a precursor to it but when I went for my first download session on Tuesday I realised we’d hit that point. The University year is wrapping up and game development students are publishing their XNA projects onto Community Games. This means a jump in quality, as these games have been in development for some time and have the effort of a decent team behind them. However it also means that there’s a hell of a lot more for me to do so my time becomes stretched and I stop being the forgiving reviewer I once was. You have been warned.

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