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The XNA Indie Games Official Thread
- Thread starter Gowans
- Start date
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Ninja Scooter
Member
HadesGigas said:Theres a sequel to very overlooked platformer Chris Unarmed is coming soon. More spikes, more wind arrow things, more doors, Old School Adventure:
Trailer
Official Site
I actually hadn't even tried Chris Unarmed until now, I must have passed on the trial because of the horrible boxart...
They should have tried to get the Head Detective license from the Wayans brothers
I picked up Apple Jack and I have to say that this is not only my favorite XNA game currently, but one of my favorite games I have played so far this year. I dig everything about it. The music is fitting, the art style is cool, the humor is subtle, but well done. Most importantly, the gameplay is tight and the level design and objectives are brilliant. The game could easily be a 800 pt XBLA release, so for 80 points, this should be a no brainer for everyone.
goldenticket said:
I don't think anyone answered this, so in case anyone is stuck, here it is. I really enjoyed this level.
Upon reaching the checkpoint, jump on the yellow bear and use him to jump to the platform above. From there, use the blue bear to jump to the ledge over to the left. Go down the hole and collect the coins along the way. You should land on top of that yellow column that would try to spike you if approached by foot. Pick it up and toss it up to the platform above with the yellow bear. Resist the temptation to kill them both now.
From there, toss one of the yellow enemies to the platform above and use the remaining yellow enemy to jump up there yourself. Now you should be back on the top platform, with a yellow and blue enemy. Toss the blue bear over the ledge to the left and down the hole you fell through a minute ago. Then use the yellow enemy to propel yourself back up there yourself and follow the blue bear down. Smash the blue bear into the blue column, and you now have the opening you need to progress to the next section of the level. However, don't forget your yellow enemies. Go back, grab the one on the lower platform and chuck him at the one on the platform above. They should both die and you are now free to advance.
The end of the level is much simpler. Just smash the blue items together until they are all gone.
From there, toss one of the yellow enemies to the platform above and use the remaining yellow enemy to jump up there yourself. Now you should be back on the top platform, with a yellow and blue enemy. Toss the blue bear over the ledge to the left and down the hole you fell through a minute ago. Then use the yellow enemy to propel yourself back up there yourself and follow the blue bear down. Smash the blue bear into the blue column, and you now have the opening you need to progress to the next section of the level. However, don't forget your yellow enemies. Go back, grab the one on the lower platform and chuck him at the one on the platform above. They should both die and you are now free to advance.
The end of the level is much simpler. Just smash the blue items together until they are all gone.
HadesGigas
Member
Ophidian Wars: Opac's Journey is out now for 80msp. Seems pretty solid from the trial, platformer with no enemies or combat, just exploring for roots and ability upgrades.
Trailer
Blog
Trailer
Blog
LocoMrPollock
Banned
HadesGigas said:
Looks like it might be a relaxing game.
SmallCaveGames
Neo Member
Thanks fellas - yes meant to be relaxing. It's only 'hardcore' if you're trying to complete it in less than 30 minutes with no fails/deaths.
And we're running a contest, 5 chances to win 400 MP, so get in there and find some damn roots. Details here.
Lumi: gorgeous but I too struggled with the controls and it's extremely hard
Platformance: I playtested it. It's very cool and the developer is making some important tweaking on the controls. It can be a casual short adventure on Easy, or absolutely controller-hucking on Insane.
Dungeon Adventure: I enjoyed this one back when it came out. If you like roguelikes it's pretty tight.
It's only 'hardcore' if you're trying to complete it in less than 30 minutes with no fails/deaths. And we're running a contest, 5 chances to win 400 MP, so get in there and find some damn roots. Details here.
Lumi: gorgeous but I too struggled with the controls and it's extremely hard
Platformance: I playtested it. It's very cool and the developer is making some important tweaking on the controls. It can be a casual short adventure on Easy, or absolutely controller-hucking on Insane.
Dungeon Adventure: I enjoyed this one back when it came out. If you like roguelikes it's pretty tight.
toythatkills
Member
Is it just the one level as the trailer suggests? Not that I'll be getting through it very quickly, just wondering!SmallCaveGames said:
SmallCaveGames
Neo Member
Yes, it's one very nicely conceived level.
Not a long game - but at the right price, I think the hardcore crowd will like it. (you get medals for each difficulty, based on number of deaths)
Not a long game - but at the right price, I think the hardcore crowd will like it. (you get medals for each difficulty, based on number of deaths)
toythatkills
Member
That's all I needed to know!SmallCaveGames said:
I'll prepare myself to be destroyed by this game
I found some videos of a group of (4?) students who are making an XNA game for the Dare to be Digital contest.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mcl_KaPiVQ
Not bad for 4 weeks work (so far)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mcl_KaPiVQ
Not bad for 4 weeks work (so far
)toythatkills
Member
Really like this, and bought it as soon as it asked me to! One thing though, am I meant to be completing it in one sitting or is there some way to save/load my game?HadesGigas said:
SmallCaveGames
Neo Member
Yeah, we're heavily regretting that now - we will patch/update as soon as we can. You can save progress by hitting X while on the green gems. But it was intended to be a one-sitting game so there is no formal save system.
You can beat the game in 30 minutes if you're good. Average game time (per the contest I am running seems to be more like 1 hour and 15 minutes. I've done it in 28 minutes, but I have a massive advantage.
Thanks for the purchase - hope you enjoy.
You can beat the game in 30 minutes if you're good. Average game time (per the contest I am running seems to be more like 1 hour and 15 minutes. I've done it in 28 minutes, but I have a massive advantage.
Thanks for the purchase - hope you enjoy.
HadesGigas
Member
Game of the year?
And two other avatar games that actually resemble games are out now too:
Super Avatar World
AvaGlide
I'll have to check them out after work.
And two other avatar games that actually resemble games are out now too:
Super Avatar World
AvaGlide
I'll have to check them out after work.
Platformance looks awesome. Can't wait to try it. I also really like that box art for Ophidian Wars: Opac's Journey. Avaglide looks nice too, could it be, a decent Avatar game (though the Avatar Ninja isn't too bad)?
So I was pretty hyped for both Lumi and Crossfire but after downloading the trials, I can't really seem to get into either of them (though I loved Soul and JoyJoy). What is wrong with me?
So I was pretty hyped for both Lumi and Crossfire but after downloading the trials, I can't really seem to get into either of them (though I loved Soul and JoyJoy). What is wrong with me?
HadesGigas
Member
Kafel said:
Oh my god the loading! Well over a minute to get past the title screen. Loading the high score table of all things takes 20+ seconds (at the end of EVERY level). Only got to play two levels because of all the loading (though I quit partway through 1-1 once to look for an option menu that doesn't seem to exist, bonus load times). Whats funny is loading an actual level takes the least time of anything.
The running and jumping felt alright, and no glaringly bad level design in the little bit I played. Nothing very interesting either. Enemies seemed to just move left/right in set paths. You collect a few stars to win a level. Comes off very obviously like a poor mans New Super Mario Bros, even has the respawn bubbles when you die (even in 1P).
I gave it another go and managed to finish 1-2, 1-3, and start 1-4 before the demo time expired again. It got a little less painfully easy, but still pretty dull. Not sure I want to sit through all that loading again to keep going.
PopfulMail
Member
xbhaskarx said:
Not too bad. I'm not big on Avatar Indie games but I dropped the buck last night after playing around with the demo. The game is pretty relaxing and chill. Graphics are good and the control gets the job done. I believe there are 3 different levels and 3 or 4 different modes to play. What sold me is the online leaderboards for each mode.
toythatkills
Member
The thing with Avaglide is that it feels like a game, and not just some shitty minigame with avatars dumped into it.PopfulMail said:
SmallCaveGames
Neo Member
Wanted to say thanks to those who gave Opac's Journey a try. With your help we've had a great first couple days and sit at #4 on the top download list. Overall people seem to like it, which is all I could hope for really.
Last, I am seriously sitting on a 1600 MP code for the last winner of our contest. If any of you have it already and haven't entered, you should. That's me paying for your copy of LIMBO!
Contest Details
Last, I am seriously sitting on a 1600 MP code for the last winner of our contest. If any of you have it already and haven't entered, you should. That's me paying for your copy of LIMBO!
Contest Details
VariableTerry
Member
Just finished Ophidian Wars: Opac's Journey. I really liked it. Easily worth the 80pts. It took me 43 minutes with 20 deaths. It would have been longer but I had a few earlier attempts so I knew the first half pretty well. I'll definately be going back to see if I can complete it in under 30 mins.
state_vector_collapse
Member
Avaglide feels really nice to control. They have done their best to capture the hanglider performance and music from Pilotwings, and it works for the most part.
It is just a pity they didn't show a little more ambition and create more interesting levels with maybe some buildings etc. The first level feels like with a little more work it could have done a good job resembling one of the Pilotwing 64 worlds.
I know it is only 80pts. But based on how it controls, I'd have happily shelled out a fair few points for a more blatant PW64 clone.
It is just a pity they didn't show a little more ambition and create more interesting levels with maybe some buildings etc. The first level feels like with a little more work it could have done a good job resembling one of the Pilotwing 64 worlds.
I know it is only 80pts. But based on how it controls, I'd have happily shelled out a fair few points for a more blatant PW64 clone.
SmallCaveGames
Neo Member
tfg9000 said:
Nice! That's one of the faster gametimes I've seen reported.
AvaGlide definitely is one of the better Avatar games. It's nice to look at. Unlike most people though, I actually struggled with the controls. I couldn't get through the damn hoops at all - keep plummiting in the ocean! I guess I was just bad at it.
Anyone try Four Corners? Other than that, not much that's new and interesting.
This game looks close to hitting the shelves and the trailer is a bit crazy but different.
Ninja Scooter
Member
the jumping in Super Avatar World looks horribly floaty and unfun. Its amazing that 25 years after SMB its hard for other developers to emulate that tight jumping mechanic.
SmallCaveGames
Neo Member
Yep - the problem is that two many devs plug in farseer physics thinking that physics is cool. It ends up being a floaty, collision-errored mess (usually). You fix one problem, you make 3 more.
We went there due to peer pressure, and then scrapped it 24 hours later.
We went there due to peer pressure, and then scrapped it 24 hours later.
Heh. I was just coming into the thread to ask that same question. I'm a good hour in and I can't find any way to save. 'Tis bedtime, sadly.toythatkills said:
I enjoy the game, but not sure I want to restart (again, this was my second game). Needs save function, badly.
Edit: what's really odd is when you go to quit, it says "any unsaved progress will be lost". So is there a way to, um save? :lol
Warm Machine
Member
I think the OP to this thread needs screens of every really good Xbox Indie game on there.
toythatkills
Member
Yeah, it is, it's awful. I pressed "play" on the dashboard and then the next day when the game actually loaded, I found it was awful. The jumping is crap, the enemies don't fit into the world whatsoever because they're of a completely different style. It's kinda funny, the dev clearly couldn't do 3D animation so all the moving stuff is 2D, which completely jars with the ready-made avatars they had at their disposal. Unplayable.Ninja Scooter said:
I found This Way That Way to be a quite interesting puzzle game, but it looks horrible which will affect its take-up, no doubt. You can move up/down/left/right and have to make it across a grid to the exit. The thing is though, once you've moved left you're not allowed to move left again until you've moved right, up, and down. Could use an undo feature, too. Lots of issues then, yeah, but a very interesting idea at its core, and worth having a go with.
Superboise, who are Silver Dollar Games with avatars, release the pointless Avatar High Five in which you press A to hi-five, and then you, no, wait, that's literally it.
Bubble Buster gives you a grid of colours and you move rows/columns to match two. There's matches of two everywhere already and no skill or purpose here at all.
Phat Fly. You float around collecting green orbs and avoiding dragonflys (I suspect.) The more stuff you collect, the more you can buy in the in-game store, silly stuff like wigs. Your kids will enjoy this for a while, you won't see the point.
7strains: The Infectious would be interesting with a number of players but if you demo it in single-player you won't see the point. It's a nicely presented twin-stick but with hugely customisable game rules and maps. You also have to collect your own bullets before you can shoot them. Single-player, average twin-stick. Multiplayer, could be something really good.
SmallCaveGames
Neo Member
Mini rant: what kind of annoys me though is that those Avatar Games (crap or not) continue to sell like hotcakes. (what's a hotcake anyhow?)
Most of them, even ones that are basically reaction tests or dumbed-down mini games continue to outsell the good-to-great original titles.
So I guess people like them - just not my thang.
Most of them, even ones that are basically reaction tests or dumbed-down mini games continue to outsell the good-to-great original titles.
So I guess people like them - just not my thang.
HadesGigas
Member
SmallCaveGames said:
They're a dollar. The people who buy them are willing to pay 2-5x that for avatar CLOTHES.
toythatkills
Member
It's a cake, but hot! It's not really, it's a pancake.SmallCaveGames said:
Imagine how many copies Avatar Hotcakes would sell though. Press A to see your avatar eat a hotcake and then do a QTE to keep eating them. Superboise will have it out by the end of the week. It'd be the best game since "Avatars slicing bread."
HadesGigas said:
That's the big thing people create their avatars so the chance to see them in games, dressed to the tilt doing what ever a certain game may do impresses people for a short amount of time. A lot of people purchase avatar games without in trying them before hand I bet too. I wonder how many pay certain avatar games repeatedly. How many of them are actually highly rated?
The only ones I have played repeatedly I mentioned above.
There is a ton of crap on the Indie market, but it is no different to any market, every now and then you have to shift through the crap to find some gems.
I have tried to do a one old and one new on the facebook page to mix things up a bit, because some of the better older titles are pretty much forgotten now.
toythatkills
Member
Yeah, I'm putting a couple of old titles in the monthly thread roundups too. Shoot us a PM if you've any suggestions you'd like me to include!qupe1975 said:
SmallCaveGames
Neo Member
You cover Clover yet? I think he's (Deej) about to release it again with big updates.
Platformance is in peer review now, so it will probably be out in a few days. I reviewed it, and it's pretty neat. The art is great, but the controls are hit-or-miss. Took me about 15 minutes to beat it on easy, but the other difficulties probably extend that considerably. When it comes out everyone should at least check out the demo.
HadesGigas
Member
Seph13 said:
What are the controls? I'm hoping simple 1 or 2 face button + d-pad.
HadesGigas said:
Really simple. You use d-pad or stick to move and 'A' jumps. 'X' toggles between different zoom levels which is actually really cool. You play up close for most of the game but need to zoom out for a few parts. Zoomed out all the way you can see the whole map and all the 8-bit art moving around. It looks great!
toythatkills
Member
What's wrong with the controls?
toythatkills said:
Not too much. They're very tight and work well for the most part. Just at times they wouldn't perform quite how I expected. The movement in the air is very slow and has no momentum, so it took me a bit of time to figure things out and get some of the jumps down. Another issue is that the margin for error is very small (IE: large hitboxes), so parts like that blade windmill from the trailer gave me some trouble. This isn't necessarily a major fault though because difficulty is one of the selling-points of the game.
I don't mean to sell the game short, especially before it's even out. It's a fun (albeit short) game with excellent art. I think you guys will like it.
HadesGigas
Member
toythatkills
Member
BRACE YOURSELVES, PEOPLE, INCOMING FLOOD.
Spaceship Game For Kids, you've seen the title and thought, "no." Actually though, it's at least worth a trial. It looks quite nice flying around but mainly, it made me laugh. Give it a couple of minutes play and I can near guarantee that you'll chuckle too. Not enough to buy it probably, unless you have a kid, but it'll raise a smile. It's a nice attempt at a kid game.
Avatar Bowling is hilarious, I played it for exactly one shot. I rolled the ball, and got a seven-ten split. I waited for twenty seconds while one of the pins very slowly hovered further and further left, and then the scorecard awarded me a strike. Trial exited at that point.
Air Forte is actually pretty awesome, the presentation is top notch, menus and everything look lovely. The game itself gives you a number of floating orbs and a task, "multiple of xx" and you have to fly through all the orbs that fit the bill. It's simple, and would be excellent for kids learning math(s), but it's worth a look just to see how nice it all looks. Quite enjoyed playing it, and the full version contains loads of extra modes including vocabulary. Try it.
Wordsearch Rush I entered expecting to roll my eyes and exit, but it kept my attention for the entire game. You do a simple wordsearch based on a category, animals, elements, loads of others. It doesn't tell you what words to look for but you can use a hint to find out. You choose whether you want to find 3, 5, or 7 words based on the category and then you're thrown into the grid with a time limit, and you find what you can. If you find them all you get a bonus depending on how long each word took and how many you chose to find. You then get a wordsearch minigame to get more time or a hint back. Then you move onto another grid It's the most bizarrely compelling score-attack game ever, seriously.
Jurassic is an interesting take on Tower Defence. Layout is a bit like Plants vs. Zombies, but rather than using money to make units, you play a simple match three jewel dropping game. It's a bit too simple, really, but if the game adds more colours and therefore units later, it could get interesting. Full version has minigames too, and the ability to play as the enemy. Worth looking at at least.
WordWise is WordJong but with uglier presentation (quite difficult to read the tiles) and faaaaar too many letters to select from at every stage of the game.
Fly, Butterfly, Fly is for kids, which is of course an excuse to draw everything in MSPaint and include no gameplay whatsoever. Perfect if your kids are fucking morons, but they're not, are they?
D.O.T.S, get a ball to the exit and avoid walls and enemies. Alright apart from horrendous collision detection, which basically destroys the game.
Runic3D is a competent enough game, you shoot runes into a board from all four sides and match three to reveal some "god tiles," you then remove the god tiles by matching three other runes adjacent to them. It's competent, but ultimately pointless, because there's no skill and nothing to solve, you're just going through the motions.
Acid Rain was rubbish. You just run around avoiding rain and trying to do escort missions for NPCs that have a range of vision of approximately one meter around themselves. You can't see any of your surroundings and if you try to zoom out it just rains more. Kept losing energy at random, whether I was hit by rain or not. It's basically no fun.
Chemical Chaos is an interesting concept. You get a grid of different colours and you start in the top left. If you press X, the square turns blue. If you then press A, the square turns green and any blue ones it was touching turn green. If you then press Y, the square turns yellow, the other squares turn yellow, and you have to keep spreading and spreading like this until the whole grid is one colour - you have 30 turns. Interesting, but ultimately success felt a bit random.
Blox, saw the screenshots and thought "hey, this looks like that shitty ice game from before that didn't fit on my TV!" It's by the same people, and it's the same game, except this time it's been skinned and it works. It's still nothing special though. You keep shooting blocks at a pile on the left and matching the colours to make them disappear. It's just really boring.
How Smart Are You? IQ Test does exactly what it says on the tin. It's actually more fun than you'd expect, just a bunch of anagrams, sequences, maths questions and picture puzzles. I kinda like that sort of thing though.
Opposites. You only need to look at the screenshots to realise that this is the most genius idea for multiplayer Tetris ever. A black side shooting white blocks, and a white side shooting black blocks, both aiming to the same point in the middle. So the more they shoot, the bigger the white side gets, etc. Turns out it's sort of hard to follow. It also suffers from the same problems every Tetris clone does, it thinks that Tetris isn't perfect and can be improved upon. So it adds new block shapes and sizes. Ruins it. Doesn't control the best on the 360 pad either, unfortunately. Still, an awesome concept.
Operation Old Spice has Old Spice in the title, and is therefore terrible. Eagles are trying to steal Old Spice from a gym and you have to hold LT to make the entire screen but for a small circle go black, and then press RT to shoot them. So it's a shoot-em-up where you can't see what you have to shoot. Yeah, great idea.
B-A-Maze'd took me ages to work out how to play. Turns out you use the right stick to tilt the maze and your little guy falls around it, you have to get to the end before your opponents do. Promises to get more and more complex but is really ugly and the more complex it gets, the uglier and harder to make sense of it'll also get.
Ballern 2D will try its damn hardest to give you a seizure. This is to prevent people from getting to the actual game which is Galaga if Galaga were shit.
Cerebral Arena is a shit twin stick with a plot. It will take you an hour just to die if you want to quit.
Classic Minesweeper is Minesweeper, big whoop. The trial doesn't even let you finish a puzzle so screw it. Controls OK, but better with a mouse, I mean, what's the point? Who doesn't have access to Minesweeper? You'll never solve a small grid in six seconds with a controller.
Four Corners is some RTS crap with seasons. Spri'Jing, LOL. It's really unbalanced and not at all interesting. Absolutely needs a tutorial too because the help screens just make it sound far more complex than it is. Got to a point where half my units stopped and froze for no reason before stopping. Bad RTS.
Helico Hero is horrible. Nice alliteration. It's just a bitch to control and it saps all the fun from the game completely. 2D helicopter game where you have to... I don't know what you have to do, I couldn't be bothered to pass level one because fun: sapped.
Immunogen was odd. You're given a random combination at the start, red pill beats blue virus, or something, and then you have to drag the red pills to the blue viruses to kill them. Then you have to remember the other colour combos too. Controls terribly on a controller, and should be a PC/DS/iPhone game. But not a very exciting one.
Starfield Battle 2 is the follow up to the critically acclaimed Starfield Bat... No, hang on, no one's ever heard of Starfield Battle. With good reason if the sequel is anything to go by, because it's a poor twin-stick even by XBLIG standards.
Sudoku Geek doesn't feel like a finished game. It's like they got half way through and got bored so just put it out as it is. It's Sudoku. But there's no challenge, because it tells you straight away if you're wrong and doesn't penalise you for it. Buy a book of Sudoku and a pencil.
UFO Commander is a little shooting game where you have to travel to your enemy's base and destroy it before they destroy you. Different vehicles to choose from, and a certain cuteness, but the full game looks like it has 16 levels and they're very short. Weirdly difficult sometimes though.
The Quest for Freshness is tower defence. I didn't kill a single enemy though, because it's SO FUCKING SLOW that the trial would have expired before the first enemy reached my defences.
Spaceship Game For Kids, you've seen the title and thought, "no." Actually though, it's at least worth a trial. It looks quite nice flying around but mainly, it made me laugh. Give it a couple of minutes play and I can near guarantee that you'll chuckle too. Not enough to buy it probably, unless you have a kid, but it'll raise a smile. It's a nice attempt at a kid game.
Avatar Bowling is hilarious, I played it for exactly one shot. I rolled the ball, and got a seven-ten split. I waited for twenty seconds while one of the pins very slowly hovered further and further left, and then the scorecard awarded me a strike. Trial exited at that point.
Air Forte is actually pretty awesome, the presentation is top notch, menus and everything look lovely. The game itself gives you a number of floating orbs and a task, "multiple of xx" and you have to fly through all the orbs that fit the bill. It's simple, and would be excellent for kids learning math(s), but it's worth a look just to see how nice it all looks. Quite enjoyed playing it, and the full version contains loads of extra modes including vocabulary. Try it.
Wordsearch Rush I entered expecting to roll my eyes and exit, but it kept my attention for the entire game. You do a simple wordsearch based on a category, animals, elements, loads of others. It doesn't tell you what words to look for but you can use a hint to find out. You choose whether you want to find 3, 5, or 7 words based on the category and then you're thrown into the grid with a time limit, and you find what you can. If you find them all you get a bonus depending on how long each word took and how many you chose to find. You then get a wordsearch minigame to get more time or a hint back. Then you move onto another grid It's the most bizarrely compelling score-attack game ever, seriously.
Jurassic is an interesting take on Tower Defence. Layout is a bit like Plants vs. Zombies, but rather than using money to make units, you play a simple match three jewel dropping game. It's a bit too simple, really, but if the game adds more colours and therefore units later, it could get interesting. Full version has minigames too, and the ability to play as the enemy. Worth looking at at least.
WordWise is WordJong but with uglier presentation (quite difficult to read the tiles) and faaaaar too many letters to select from at every stage of the game.
Fly, Butterfly, Fly is for kids, which is of course an excuse to draw everything in MSPaint and include no gameplay whatsoever. Perfect if your kids are fucking morons, but they're not, are they?
D.O.T.S, get a ball to the exit and avoid walls and enemies. Alright apart from horrendous collision detection, which basically destroys the game.
Runic3D is a competent enough game, you shoot runes into a board from all four sides and match three to reveal some "god tiles," you then remove the god tiles by matching three other runes adjacent to them. It's competent, but ultimately pointless, because there's no skill and nothing to solve, you're just going through the motions.
Acid Rain was rubbish. You just run around avoiding rain and trying to do escort missions for NPCs that have a range of vision of approximately one meter around themselves. You can't see any of your surroundings and if you try to zoom out it just rains more. Kept losing energy at random, whether I was hit by rain or not. It's basically no fun.
Chemical Chaos is an interesting concept. You get a grid of different colours and you start in the top left. If you press X, the square turns blue. If you then press A, the square turns green and any blue ones it was touching turn green. If you then press Y, the square turns yellow, the other squares turn yellow, and you have to keep spreading and spreading like this until the whole grid is one colour - you have 30 turns. Interesting, but ultimately success felt a bit random.
Blox, saw the screenshots and thought "hey, this looks like that shitty ice game from before that didn't fit on my TV!" It's by the same people, and it's the same game, except this time it's been skinned and it works. It's still nothing special though. You keep shooting blocks at a pile on the left and matching the colours to make them disappear. It's just really boring.
How Smart Are You? IQ Test does exactly what it says on the tin. It's actually more fun than you'd expect, just a bunch of anagrams, sequences, maths questions and picture puzzles. I kinda like that sort of thing though.
Opposites. You only need to look at the screenshots to realise that this is the most genius idea for multiplayer Tetris ever. A black side shooting white blocks, and a white side shooting black blocks, both aiming to the same point in the middle. So the more they shoot, the bigger the white side gets, etc. Turns out it's sort of hard to follow. It also suffers from the same problems every Tetris clone does, it thinks that Tetris isn't perfect and can be improved upon. So it adds new block shapes and sizes. Ruins it. Doesn't control the best on the 360 pad either, unfortunately. Still, an awesome concept.
Operation Old Spice has Old Spice in the title, and is therefore terrible. Eagles are trying to steal Old Spice from a gym and you have to hold LT to make the entire screen but for a small circle go black, and then press RT to shoot them. So it's a shoot-em-up where you can't see what you have to shoot. Yeah, great idea.
B-A-Maze'd took me ages to work out how to play. Turns out you use the right stick to tilt the maze and your little guy falls around it, you have to get to the end before your opponents do. Promises to get more and more complex but is really ugly and the more complex it gets, the uglier and harder to make sense of it'll also get.
Ballern 2D will try its damn hardest to give you a seizure. This is to prevent people from getting to the actual game which is Galaga if Galaga were shit.
Cerebral Arena is a shit twin stick with a plot. It will take you an hour just to die if you want to quit.
Classic Minesweeper is Minesweeper, big whoop. The trial doesn't even let you finish a puzzle so screw it. Controls OK, but better with a mouse, I mean, what's the point? Who doesn't have access to Minesweeper? You'll never solve a small grid in six seconds with a controller.
Four Corners is some RTS crap with seasons. Spri'Jing, LOL. It's really unbalanced and not at all interesting. Absolutely needs a tutorial too because the help screens just make it sound far more complex than it is. Got to a point where half my units stopped and froze for no reason before stopping. Bad RTS.
Helico Hero is horrible. Nice alliteration. It's just a bitch to control and it saps all the fun from the game completely. 2D helicopter game where you have to... I don't know what you have to do, I couldn't be bothered to pass level one because fun: sapped.
Immunogen was odd. You're given a random combination at the start, red pill beats blue virus, or something, and then you have to drag the red pills to the blue viruses to kill them. Then you have to remember the other colour combos too. Controls terribly on a controller, and should be a PC/DS/iPhone game. But not a very exciting one.
Starfield Battle 2 is the follow up to the critically acclaimed Starfield Bat... No, hang on, no one's ever heard of Starfield Battle. With good reason if the sequel is anything to go by, because it's a poor twin-stick even by XBLIG standards.
Sudoku Geek doesn't feel like a finished game. It's like they got half way through and got bored so just put it out as it is. It's Sudoku. But there's no challenge, because it tells you straight away if you're wrong and doesn't penalise you for it. Buy a book of Sudoku and a pencil.
UFO Commander is a little shooting game where you have to travel to your enemy's base and destroy it before they destroy you. Different vehicles to choose from, and a certain cuteness, but the full game looks like it has 16 levels and they're very short. Weirdly difficult sometimes though.
The Quest for Freshness is tower defence. I didn't kill a single enemy though, because it's SO FUCKING SLOW that the trial would have expired before the first enemy reached my defences.
Chauncy Talon
Member
My favorite game is Aphelion. The story is not to shabby, but the controls are quick and easy. Also, it bring back to the timebased RPG games. We are receiving less and less of these games.
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