Weekly Xbox Indies - 11/28/09

Yay

• City Rain - 400 MS points. City Rain is what would happen if Sim City and Tetris had a baby. City pieces fall from the sky, and you need to set them on a landscape grid to build a functional and sustainable city. Schools, police stations, power plants, houses, all of them become literal building blocks to construct your city. It's not all just about building though, since you need to balance your city budget with the cost of the buildings, as well as building shops and factories to bring in more revenue. Not to mention also balancing the city's level of jobs, health, leisure, security, education, and environmental sustainability. It's an excellent game, with an obscene level of depth and polish that would have made it a perfect $10-15 Xbox Live Arcade game (and in fact the PC version is a $10 game). Instead it's released as a $5 Xbox Live indie game. Sounds like a good deal to me.
• Platypus - 400 MS points. Platypus is a horizontal shooter with a well balanced difficulty curve and an absolutely joyous claymation art style that could easily pass for an Xbox Live Arcade game. Each of the game's five levels consists of five stages, making the game fairly long for a shooter so you definitely get your money's worth. Of special note is the game's power-up system, which allows you to change which power-up ability you will get by shooting the power-up before collecting it. This is especially helpful since not all power-ups in Platypus are created equal (blue is awesome, green should be avoided). If you need a good shooter to get you through the holidays, and haven't already picked up Platypus for the PSP or iPhone, then it makes a great choice for the Xbox 360.
• Gravity - 240 MS points. Gravity is a side-scrolling puzzle/platformer in which you manipulate gravity to get through levels. Gravity can be shifted with the right analog stick to make your character jump higher, or gravity can be applied to other objects to move boxes or doors to help solve puzzles. The gravity shifting works very well with the game's controls, so while the game is often hard, it is hardly ever frustrating. There's also some dialog and a decent story to follow that ties the entire experience together. If you liked Portal, then definitely give Gravity a shot.
• Balloon Blocks - 240 MS points. Another match-3 puzzle game? Not exactly. Yes, Balloon Blocks has colored blocks that disappear when you match 3 same colored blocks together, but it has something that other puzzle games don't: Physics. Now I don't normally think that adding physics to a game automatically makes it better, but in Balloon Blocks' case it does. There is some significant gameplay depth to this simple puzzle game. For example, matched blocks take a second or two to disappear, so it's possible to bounce a block off of a match to have it land on another block of the same color to clear them all. The physics add a whole new layer to the game, making it one of the top puzzle games on the Xbox Indie games service.
• The Impossible Game - 80 MS points. As far as I can tell, the title of this game is entirely accurate. So why am I recommending it? Because I can't stop playing. The game throws obstacles at you like spikes and platforms, and you're only ability is to jump over and around them. The game scrolls at a fixed pace, so timing is everything. Each time you die, and you will die often, a counter at the top of the screen tells you what number attempt you are on. This counter will taunt you, driving you to come back to the game time and time again to try and beat the game in fewer tries. There's also a practice mode that you can activate by setting respawn flags throughout the level to help you memorize particularly tricky sections. Also worth mentioning is that the game has an awesome soundtrack that is timed with the jumps and obstacles to make it almost feel like a rhythm game, helping to make the punishing difficulty more bearable. If you can remember the speeder bike levels in Battletoads, then that should give you an idea of the kind of "one more try" challenge that The Impossible Game will give you.
• Catch-22 - 240 MS points. Catch-22 is a bizarre and unique twist on Tetris. Falling blocks come down, and you control a smiley face that must collect the blocks before they reach the bottom. Match a line of 10 blocks and the line clears, making more room for you to collect more blocks. The levels also twist and turn frequently, so if you're prone to motion sickness you should be wary, but the game is a lot of fun, well made, and has a ton of personality. If you're craving something new from the Tetris formula, then Catch-22 is the game to get.