Xbox Live Community Watch - 5/8/09

This was a good week for indie gaming. Halfbrick returns this week to community games with another great game, making me think that they may become the Xbox 360 equivalent of PS3's Pixeljunk games. There's also a number of other games of interest ranging from new takes on classic games to an easy to use music making tool.

I'm also introducing a new feature this week to the Community Watch, and that is to give you a heads up on games that have received updates. One nice thing about the community games is that developers can update their games, meaning either adding new features or fixing a few small bugs that may have remained. If you've already bought a game, you can simply go to the community games section of the Xbox Live Marketplace and choose the "Download Again" option to get the update.

Yay

• Halfbrick Echoes - 200 MS points. Halfbrick strikes again with another winner. In Echoes you control a girl with a delightful hat who has the unfortunate ability to create murderous clones of herself wherever she goes. You must collect crystals to complete each level, but for every crystal you collect a clone is born that marches along the path that you just walked, forcing you to watch both where you're going and where you've been.
• Orbyx: Magic Orbs of Chaos - 400 MS points. Orbyx is a Peggle clone with a great presentation. If it were just a Peggle clone I wouldn't be recommending it as much, but there are some interesting new gameplay twists that make Orbyx its own. For example, some levels may move where you launch the balls from, and other levels may give you a paddle to control making it an awesome Peggle/Breakout hybrid.
• Carrum - 400 MS points. Carrum is a tabletop board game that has been around for a while, and has now been brought to community games. It's like a cross between shuffleboard and billiards, and a lot of fun. This digital version supports single player against the computer, as well as up to 4 players both on and offline.

Ay?

• Karnn Age - 400 MS points. If you thought Smash TV wasn't mindless enough, then Karnn Age is the game for you. With only 9 levels, each of which only lasting a few minutes, it's a little on the short side, but each level can also be played on 4 difficulties which significantly changes the level for added replay value.
• Ezmuze+ Hamst3r Edition - 800 MS points. This is a great music creation tool for would-be musicians. With a very streamlined interface and over 500 music samples to piece together, the song possibilities are pretty extensive, although most of it will fall into the techno or electronica genre. You can share your music with others over Xbox Live, but there doesn't seem to be a way to transfer your music to a computer or MP3 player, which is a downer.
• Ye Olde Dice Game - 200 MS points. You may better know this game as Yahtzee, though some of the terms have changed. A full house is now called a castle, small and large straights are called a neat and a right, and yahtzee has become a match. There is some nice medieval-sounding music accompanying the game and you can play with up to 3 other people.

Nay

• Fridgy - 200 MS points. Do you enjoy making words? How about numbers? Well now you can! Fridgy gives you access to all of the letters of the (English) alphabet - both upper and lower case - as well numbers 0-9 and mathematic symbols, and lets you place them anywhere you want on a blank white screen. Yeah, there's not really much else to it. Oh, and the color of the letter changes depending on if you place it with the A, B, X, or Y button.
• Cocktail Paradise - 200 MS points. Unfortunately this was not the cornucopia of homoeroticism I had hoped it would be. Instead I found a comprehensive recipe guide for some 100 drinks and instructions for 20 drinking games to go along with them. If you're a person who is prone to having cocktail parties then this is an excellent companion application, otherwise you won't find much here.
• QuadTrix - 200 MS points. A puzzle game that has you rotating colored triangles to match them with their appropriate column. The catch is that there is a move limit, and every move after that limit takes points away from your score. It can be fun, but the controls can be a bit iffy sometimes, since I found myself sometimes needing to press a direction two or three times before the move was registered by the game.

Hit the jump to see which games have been updated.