Weekly Xbox Indies - 7/31/09
Lots of changes are happening with the Xbox Live Indie Games, so this week we have a particularly long update. With Xbox indie games opened up to new countries we see the first two indie games to hit the service out of Japan. Try to act surprised when I tell you that they are a shmup and a dating sim. Also, thanks to the new pricing structure there were over 30 games with price changes, most of which are dropping to the new 80 MS point price level, which equals about $1 in real money.
Yay
Horn Swaggle Islands - 400 MS points. The ever-popular tower defense genre gets another entry on the Xbox indie games. Horn Swaggle Islands gives you a lot of freedom to build barriers that will guide the path of the attacking pirates, giving you a lot of strategic flexibility. You can even guide the pirates to dig up buried treasure for you, before promptly destroying them with cannons. If you're a tower defense fan, then this is definitely one to check out.
Drop Zone - 80 MS points. You control a machine gun turret shooting down paratroopers before they can land. The game really won me over once I discovered that a shot down helicopter would take out any paratroopers it hit its way down. Sure it's fairly simplistic, but for the MS point equivalent of $1 it's well worth checking out.
Skwug - 200 MS points. Skwug is an excellent platformer in which you teleport, nightcrawler style, across 50 challenging levels. There's a limit to how many times you can teleport before touching the ground again, so careful planning and quick fingers are vital.
Maladras - 200 MS points. Maladras is a wonderful puzzle game where you must clear the board of matching tiles if an invisible line can be drawn between them. There are 40 levels, and they are split into 5 campaigns each adding a new wrinkle to the gameplay so it feels fresh and new the entire way through.
Gum Drop Celestial Frontier - 200 MS points. Gum Drop is a space shooter in which you won't fire a single bullet. Instead, you collect debris around you and swing it around like a wrecking ball to smash enemies to pieces. The game's 20 levels go by rather quickly, but there's also an infinite mode to add replay value.
Ay?
Shopping Crazy - 200 MS points. This is a conversion of the classic Rush Hour game, where you must move cars out of the way so a red car can escape the game board, but with a family mall theme instead of cars. A lot of attention went into the presentation of this game, making it stand out among the Xbox indie crowd.
Lord Ownage: UnBritish Invasion - 400 MS points. I think Lord Ownage can be best described as a combination of Space Invaders and a match-3 puzzle game. Sure it has some odd quirks (I'm personally not much of a fan of the game's sense of "humour"), but luckily the gameplay is solid enough to stand on its own.
XNcAve - 200 MS points. You pilot a space ship through an ever-shrinking tunnel. This type of game has been overdone in the past, I remember having a version of it on my calculator in high school, but this version at least adds a little bit extra with earthquakes now a part of the gameplay.
クレッシェンドシンフォニー (Crescendo Symphony) - 240 MS points. The first XNA game out of Japan is a doujin shmup, and a pretty decent one at that. The character sprite is huge, and it takes a while to figure out just where the hit box for it is, but it's smooth sailing once you get that down.
それでも、私は愛している (XNA ShortNovel Series Vol. 1) - 240 MS points. I honestly have no idea if this game is good or not. I know it's a dating sim but the entire thing is in Japanese, which I don't speak, so I have no idea what is going on. I'll freely admit that I only played the trial version, so I cannot attest to the art for the entire game, but I feel like the high sexual content rating that the game received may be an indication of what to expect. I will say that there seems to be an impressive amount of voice acting in the trial that I played, which was a pleasant surprise for an indie game. But because I haven't actually understood the game I don't feel comfortable giving it a "Nay" or "Yay" rating.
Heavy Payload - 400 MS points. You play as a WWII bomber plane that must reach and destroy a target while shooting down every plane that gets in your way. I can't really say that there is anything wrong with the game, but it overall feels very generic. There is an Advanced mode that adds a unique spin on the genre, which is what kept this game out of the "Nay" category, and the game becomes much more enjoyable once you ratchet up the difficulty level.
Nay
Xtreme Polygon - 200 MS points. I like the idea of the game. After all, who wouldn't want a 16-player, competitive online version of Geometry Wars? But in practice it isn't quite as exciting as it sounds. These twin-stick shooter games gain most of their challenge and fun from having swarms of enemies flying after you, which doesn't translate too well to a free-for-all competitive environment.
Space Math - 200 MS points. Developer hotshot10101 appears to be obsessed with making math games. This is his 4th Xbox indie game, and all of them have been essentially the same game re-skinned over and over again. I feel like, with the number of math options he alone has created, if someone wanted a math game on their 360 they would have bought it by now. The fact that this game came out less than a week after his last Xbox indie entry doesn't speak well for the amount of effort put into these games either.
The Periodic Table - 200 MS points. It's the periodic table of elements, now on your Xbox 360. I will say that the information is well laid out and there's a nifty picture of the molecule, but I can get all of this same information for free through the wonders of Google.
The Review Channel - 200 MS points. I feel sorry for The Review Channel. It's a great idea, and well executed too, but it happened to come out at exactly the same time as Microsoft's own rating system on the dashboard. If it had come out earlier in the Xbox indie game lifecycle I would have said it was a must-have, but with the dashboard rating system in place it's kind of unnecessary.
Who Did I Date Last Night - 80 MS points. Some guy has forgotten who he went out with last night, but remembers vague descriptions like "I think she's a brunette." Finally, a dating game where I can judge women solely on their appearances. Pass.
Game Training Vol 2: Flight - 200 MS points. Vol 2 is definitely a better game than Vol 1 was, as this time around feels a bit more polished. It's a flight game this time, with the goal to fly through all of the rings within a time limit. The controls sure were complicated though, especially for a game labeled as "Game Training." Ultimately the game feels more like an introductory level to a bigger game than a game on its own, and though that may have been its purpose that isn't really worth paying for.
Max Fun Times - 200 MS points. A drinking game where you press A to spin a wheel, and it tells you how many drinks to take. You can also make a custom wheel with whatever commands you want.
Updates
Chick Chick Chicky
Nebulon - added traditional twin-stick shooter controls
World Clock
Bowling X
Air Legends
Meet UR Match
Scrambled Egzz
Doodleman
Illusions 360
RC-AirSim
Price changes
Planet Crashmania 9,000,000 - price drop to 80 MS points
Puzzle Pandemonium - price drop to 80 MS points
Nextwar: Quest for Earth - price drop to 80 MS points *highly recommended*
Bomb Disposal Expert - price drop to 80 MS points
Totem - price drop to 80 MS points
Tower Revolution - price drop to 240 MS points
Rumble Massage - price drop to 80 MS points
Fireplace - price drop to 80 MS points
Zoom - price drop to 80 MS points
Sudoku X - price drop to 80 MS points
Wordzy - price drop to 80 MS points
Hieronymus Bash - price drop to 80 MS points *highly recommended*
StrikeForce-Psi - price drop to 80 MS points
Aquarium HD - price drop to 80 MS points
Aria - price drop to 80 MS points *highly recommended*
Corsair - price drop to 240 MS points
Being - price drop to 80 MS points
Joint Strike Future - price drop to 80 MS points
Aaron's Ping-Pong - price drop to 80 MS points
Adventure Pets HD - price drop to 80 MS points
Head Banger - price drop to 80 MS points
Time and Tune - price drop to 80 MS points
Revenge of the Ball - price drop to 80 MS points
Time Flows but Does Not Return - price drop to 80 MS points
Calculator 360 - price drop to 80 MS points
RPaints - price drop to 80 MS points
Alchemist - price drop to 80 MS points
ZenHak - price drop to 240 MS points
The Collector - price drop to 80 MS points
Swords & Monsters - price drop to 80 MS points
Foosball for Two - price drop to 80 MS points
Mithra: Episode 1, Chapter 1 - price drop to 240 MS points
Sol Invasion - price drop to 80 MS points
Battle Bubbles - price drop to 80 MS points
Easy Golf - price drop to 240 MS points *highly recommended*
Patterns of Light - price drop to 80 MS points
Beat Blox - price drop to 80 MS points
Zoomaroom - price drop to 80 MS points *highly recommended*
PuzzXXI - price drop to 80 MS points
Rocket Fart - price drop to 80 MS points
Penga's Peril - price drop to 80 MS points
Couples Sudoku - price drop to 80 MS points
Hive - price drop to 80 MS points
Poker Squares - price increase to 240 MS points
Trajectory - price drop to 80 MS points
The Gravity Effect - price increase to 240 MS points
Cuadro - price drop to 240 MS points
DrumKit - price drop to 80 MS points
Shed - price drop to 80 MS points
A Fading Melody - price increase to 240 MS points *highly recommended*
NaviFairy
Posted to Hot Stuff, Video Games on 31 July 2009
Other stuff like this: community games, indie, price drops, Xbox 360, XNA
