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[Dark Octave]

So summer is finally here but that doesn't mean a thing to us, because we had a few good games this month and that's something to be excited about. So put that sunscreen back in the closet and tell your girl you'll make it up to her. We got some games to play ya'all!

You can buy any of these games via xbox.com by clicking the link associated with each game, or on the Games Marketplace on your Xbox 360. Simply enter the marketplace and scroll up to Indie Games, where you can check the top rated titles, the games that have just come out, or “browse” to find the games mentioned in this thread. Indie Game trials last eight minutes, which is often enough to establish what you think about it. Even if you don’t buy any of these games, at least trial them, tell people what you think, get more people trying them.

Go. Play. Enjoy. Tell us what you think! Tell all your friends! Get them to tell all their friends…

HELP! Xbox LIVE Indie Games aren’t available in my country!

Yes they are! Xbox LIVE Indie Games are available in Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom and the United States. If you’re outside those countries you can still play these games by setting up a Gamertag for free for one of those countries. It’s incredibly simple, and absolutely worth doing.

The Gold award, for the absolute best game that came out last month.

Penny Arcade's Rain-slick 3
Developer: Zeboyd Games

Beautiful. This is the third installment of the Penny Arcade RPGs that came out for the 360 years ago. This time though, the game takes all it's visual cues straight from Final Fantasy VI and it does a good job at it. The writing is funny and the gameplay is exactly what you'd expect from a 16-bit turned based RPG.I'm surprised, delighted, excited and relieved that this title is on XBLIG and I can't wait to dive into it more.

Penny Arcade's Rain-slick 3 by developer Zeboyd Games is our NeoGaf XBLIG Gold Award winner for the month of July 2012.

The Silver award, for games that are great, but hey, only one game can be the Gold award winner.

Apple Jack 2
Developer: My Owl Software

I bought Apple Jack as soon as it launched and loved it. Apple Jack 2 doesn't disappoint. The aiming mechanic never got old and is easily my favorite part of the game. The puzzles are so clever and the visuals are excellent. Even better than that though is the music, which is only topped by the overall gameplay. There is a lot to like about Apple Jack 2 that a tiny paragraph can't express. Check it out.

Aqualibrium
Developer: Archifishal Software

Yeah so let me explain. This game is fun. You are this little guy with a jet pack who can deploy a limited number of blocks. The purpose of these blocks is to plug up passageways and redirect water that is flowing from multiple pipes above you. It's your job to redirect the flowing water through a maze and into a single vent in the center of the level. Later in the game there are enemies who are trying to stop you from doing this task. I'm having a blast with this game so far.

Overdriven
Developer: CuchuGames

Some people frown on the "Euroshump" but this is one of the better 2D shooters on XBLIG, imo. It looks great and has an exciting soundtrack. You have a normal shot and a huge beam blast that lasts for only a few seconds and needs a cooldown time. My only gripe is that every good shooter needs a barrage of enemies that go down with one hit sprinkled with the multi-hit enemies that are tougher to take down. This game only has the satisfying one hitters when you upgrade your weapon pretty high, which is disappointing, but passable. Everything else is great.

Bronze Award winners don’t represent the best games out this month, but every one of these has some really unique aspect to it that more than makes it worth trying, or is more than good enough to warrant a trial. It’s for games that are worth talking about.

Battlepaths: This is a neat RPG with an interesting battle system. Enemies run into you to attack and you run into them to do the same. It has a deep item system to equip your human Garfield and it has a variety of environments.

Minigame Marathon: This is a fun minigame collection that is made up entirely of blocks. Frogger, collect one color while avoiding another, ect... The games switch on the fly once the previous one is passed. The production values are higher than what I would have expected from a dollar game made of blocks.

Microbial: You are a microorganism trying to avoid other microorganisms, while trying to attach to another microorganism as your goal. The catch is you can't get through the walls (red blood cells?) that shield the goal until you pick up the ammo that will alow you to destroy them. Starts off simple and becomes pretty complex and fun.

Andy's Notepad [Saucers]: This is pretty charming. You are a flying saucer that is having a one on one duel with another flying saucer as you both revolve around planets that look like they inhabit some of Dr. Seus' creations. You can upgrade your weapons change them up on the fly.

Go Gimbal Go: This is a nice colorful game that made me smile a little when I first saw it. The whole game is a 2D version of the rail grind levels from Sonic and Ratchet & Clank. You have enemies to avoid and things to collect as you speed through the bright colors and happy imagery.

Some games are bad. Really bad. So bad that they don’t even deserve a functioning link to the Xbox LIVE Marketplace. Seriously. No links. There are a lot of bad games on Xbox LIVE Indie Games, but this section is reserved only for games that are atrocious or fundamentally flawed.

Flying Zombie Invasion: 2D horizontal shooter where enemies only pattern is in a straight line, loot drops from enemies straight down which means you have to be underneath them to collect anything. The only thing cool about this game is the overdrive weapons when holding RT or LT.

My Chabudai: So you have the skill and talent to make a game on XBLIG but you can't put an inch of effort into the art or gameplay?

SHOOTING CHICKEN BrutalSuckers: This one does make me angry. It's kind of the opposite of My Chabudai. The art is so good I angers me to see it wasted on this sad excuse for gameplay. These must be popular somewhere because they keep doing them but all I see is a waste of a potentially good thing.

Cherry Poke Prison: Yeah we get it. Big tits and trailer park trash. Didn't I play this a few months ago from you guys? It's getting kinda old. I'm not a fan of this style and I hope you guys show us what else you can do with all that talent next time.

Avatar Random Chat: Who is going to use this? And if you feel the need to, get off of your Xbox, go outside and meet people.

AVATOUR - VEGAS: Kinda neat, but what's it's purpose? It's glitchy, whole pieces of buildings are missing and your helicopter has no animations. I love Google Maps as well as the next guy, but I don't need to pay for a sand drop's worth of a glitchy version of it. This thing looks like it'll give your Xbox a virus.

CarneyVale Showtime

You are a circus performer who must shoot yourself from cannon to cannon up to a goal while avoiding hazards. The game comes with a level editor and is as fun to look at as it is to play. Give it a chance if you haven't already.

Well, that's it for this month. Tell your friends and have fun playing the great XBLIGs games that are out this month. Send your girl some flowers and don't forget to open the blinds so you can get a little sun this summer.

 

[Stumpokapow]

At the risk of being a downer, I'll just leave a moderation note here--going forward, if you guys sort of collectively feel like there aren't enough releases in a month to justify a new thread (your own discretion of course!) feel free to drop down to bi-monthly or quarterly. June wasn't too bad, but May was terrible and I expect we'll have an increasing number of months where nothing of consequence happens. If there's stuff you want to call attention to and you think the service justifies it, feel free to continue monthly threads.

 

[Rekubot]

A good month! I need to check out the previous Penny Arcade games. Is the third instalment the best of the bunch?

 

[OnPoint]

At the risk of being a downer, I'll just leave a moderation note here--going forward, if you guys sort of collectively feel like there aren't enough releases in a month to justify a new thread (your own discretion of course!) feel free to drop down to bi-monthly or quarterly. June wasn't too bad, but May was terrible and I expect we'll have an increasing number of months where nothing of consequence happens. If there's stuff you want to call attention to and you think the service justifies it, feel free to continue monthly threads.

I feel like, unless the releases get really dire in the coming months, the monthly format suits this best for a couple of reasons. The threads seem to die off slowly over the weeks and are usually almost dead by the end of a month, and the new thread usually seems to rejuvenate interest, even for a short time. Secondly, there's usually a game that warrants a Gold award each month, even if it's sometimes harder to pick bronze titles. Lastly, I like to think the monthly format keeps us from being moved to the community sub forum, which would really be the lid and nails on the coffin.

 

[Everdred]

New Penny Arcade looks great, will pick it up.

 

[timetokill]

I picked up the Penny Arcade game on Steam, but I will vouch for its goodness. Very fun and the writing is great.

I did try demos of quite a few indie games last night, and Apple Jack 2 was fantastic. I might pick that one up.

I wouldn't have given an award to Andy's Notebook though, that game was pretty annoying in a lot of ways (to me) despite the charming visuals.

Similarly, I agree with not awarding SHOOTING CHICKEN which has a similar problem of nice visuals but really annoying and frustrating gameplay.

 

[toythatkills]

At the risk of being a downer, I'll just leave a moderation note here--going forward, if you guys sort of collectively feel like there aren't enough releases in a month to justify a new thread (your own discretion of course!) feel free to drop down to bi-monthly or quarterly. June wasn't too bad, but May was terrible and I expect we'll have an increasing number of months where nothing of consequence happens. If there's stuff you want to call attention to and you think the service justifies it, feel free to continue monthly threads.

Yeah, I did toy with the idea of just setting up an XBLIG thread and ditching the monthly ones last month, but figured I'd give it one last chance and it turned out June was actually pretty awesome. Apple Jack 2 and Penny Arcade are two of the best games on the entire service, and and with stuff like A Pixel Escape (to an extent), Microbial, Crystal Skies, Battlehearts, Aqualibrium, Minigame Marathon, Manic Miner 360 and Pig & Bullet, it was actually one of the better months for games on the cusp of greatness too.

But yeah, with many more months like May it'd probably make more sense just to have an XBLIG thread and then do OTs for the better games among them, so I guess we see how it goes.

In other news, some stuff worth browsing on IndieGamerChick. Her site's a year old so she's made a huge leaderboard and ranked all the stuff she's liked over the year, which is over 100 games long. It doesn't include Apple Jack so naturally I disagree with it entirely, but there's Aesop's Garden pretty high up so I've decided all is forgiven. Can't really argue with the quality of most of the stuff on this list and so it'd be a pretty awesome starting point for XBLIG.

Also, and fucking finally, someone's written a piece about XBLIG devs that isn't all moaning about how shit the service is and how they can't make money and how depressed they are because they expected their farting game to have made them a millionaire by now. Tales from the Dev Side: What Xbox Live Indie Games Have Meant to Me

 

[clockpunk]

No love for A Pixel Escape...?

Edit: Ah, saw it mentioned in your post above. I do think it is worthy a bronze award, though - tis proving a lot of fun.

 

[Messofanego]

Also, and fucking finally, someone's written a piece about XBLIG devs that isn't all moaning about how shit the service is and how they can't make money and how depressed they are because they expected their farting game to have made them a millionaire by now. Tales from the Dev Side: What Xbox Live Indie Games Have Meant to Me

Wow, that's a really cool article even if I don't know most of those developers.

Apple Jack 2 looks hilarious! I'm sure the Penny Arcade game being on XBox Indie will bring quite the number of people trying out other games.

 

[N4Us]

It really pains me that Shooting Chickens 2 has so many problems, especially since the first one is pretty good and didn't get the attention I thought it deserved.

I'd still buy the soundtrack though.

 

[Gaspode_T]

Indiegamerchick is the sort of hand crafted site that I used to love about the early days of the internet, when it was not all about ads and evil. Her youth, out spokenness and tough words have all been a clear message of tough love to the Xbox indie devs that were in a downward spiral of self loathing and self pity before she came around. She really does deserve some sort of recognition for how much she has done for the community. So does toy here and OnPoint and Dave Voyles and so on and so on...the scrappy crew of XBLIG lovers has kept the service secretly fueled with some sort of underdog love.

 

[qupe1975]

Yeah, I did toy with the idea of just setting up an XBLIG thread and ditching the monthly ones last month, but figured I'd give it one last chance and it turned out June was actually pretty awesome. Apple Jack 2 and Penny Arcade are two of the best games on the entire service, and and with stuff like A Pixel Escape (to an extent), Microbial, Crystal Skies, Battlehearts, Aqualibrium, Minigame Marathon, Manic Miner 360 and Pig & Bullet, it was actually one of the better months for games on the cusp of greatness too.

But yeah, with many more months like May it'd probably make more sense just to have an XBLIG thread and then do OTs for the better games among them, so I guess we see how it goes.

In other news, some stuff worth browsing on IndieGamerChick. Her site's a year old so she's made a huge leaderboard and ranked all the stuff she's liked over the year, which is over 100 games long. It doesn't include Apple Jack so naturally I disagree with it entirely, but there's Aesop's Garden pretty high up so I've decided all is forgiven. Can't really argue with the quality of most of the stuff on this list and so it'd be a pretty awesome starting point for XBLIG.

Also, and fucking finally, someone's written a piece about XBLIG devs that isn't all moaning about how shit the service is and how they can't make money and how depressed they are because they expected their farting game to have made them a millionaire by now. Tales from the Dev Side: What Xbox Live Indie Games Have Meant to Me

XBLIG dev's whinged about sales so I posted a list of sales for XBLA sales last year from Gamasutra it makes for interesting reading, so many games have poor sales. So it's not all rosey on the other side.

There are alot of people who do their bit for XBLIG, Catherine, Dave etc etc etc alll have stuck with the cause. My third year running the Grcade thread next month I recently realised. That's nuts, did many think it would last that long? Some great fun to be had on the service.



Anyone played Avaglide 2 yet? Any good?

 

[toythatkills]

Anyone played Avaglide 2 yet? Any good?

I missed it unfortunately, looks like it got pulled almost immediately

 

[OnPoint]

Indiegamerchick is the sort of hand crafted site that I used to love about the early days of the internet, when it was not all about ads and evil. Her youth, out spokenness and tough words have all been a clear message of tough love to the Xbox indie devs that were in a downward spiral of self loathing and self pity before she came around. She really does deserve some sort of recognition for how much she has done for the community. So does toy here and OnPoint and Dave Voyles and so on and so on...the scrappy crew of XBLIG lovers has kept the service secretly fueled with some sort of underdog love.

Aw we love you too. Don't sell yourself short, though. You've been a big help as well, as far as I can see, and an important member of this community.

 

[slash000]

Thank you for the Gold Award! It really is an honor to us to receive that, since this is probably the most active XBLIG thread on the entire internet. And this thread and the people here really do help the XBLIG service and community a great deal, it's something that we and most devs appreciate.

 

[DaveVoyles]

That Tales from the Dev side story that Indie Gamer Chick ran was great. It really allows outsiders (and by outsiders I mean everyone outside of the 100 or so people writing about the games, making them, or are active in this thread) aware of how great the service really is.

I'm really hoping that Microsoft, or even another company continues to support an open platform like XBLIG with the next console generation. Let's not kid ourselves; there are many terrible things about it, but at the same time the benefits far outweigh them. To this day, there has yet to be a platform where *anyone* can openly release their titles on a console. $100 and a little but of C# knowledge can go a long way.

She does quite a bit for XBLIG too. Sure she was initially seen as a troll, but she's really matured in both terms of her writing and herself as a person, but it has also helped the community greatly. Besides, her writing requires a lot more work than I think most of us (myself included) can fully grasp. Even brief features and reviews take me forever.

As far as slowing down things in the thread:
Sure it has its ups and downs, but I feel as though now it will be more popular than earlier this year, with the recent DBP submissions, PAX coming next month (along with the announcement of the winners), and another uprising (or two).

 

[Warm Machine]

By request, we are holding off increasing the price of Orbitron: Revolution until the 9th of the month. People have a whole other weekend to get it at 80msp.

As far as our next game is concerned. Today I said wow. Just a few more features and a little cleanup assuming nice people don't ask for it to be published.

 

[DaveVoyles]

How does everyone feel about the ability to raise/lower the prices of games on a whim?

I only see it a a good thing, and could even be used as a summer promotion of some sort, where "all sports titles are only 80MSP this week!" or something along those lines.

 

[barkers crest]

How does everyone feel about the ability to raise/lower the prices of games on a whim?

I only see it a a good thing, and could even be used as a summer promotion of some sort, where "all sports titles are only 80MSP this week!" or something along those lines.

With the way the list order is generated right now, I prefer the stability of the lists.

If the pricing were more volatile I could see lots of daily price wars happening. I don't think I would be a big fan of that.

However, I do like the idea of the occasional short term sale but I'm not expecting any infrastructure changes in XBLIG from this point on.

 

[qupe1975]

How does everyone feel about the ability to raise/lower the prices of games on a whim?

I only see it a a good thing, and could even be used as a summer promotion of some sort, where "all sports titles are only 80MSP this week!" or something along those lines.

It depends on how it's utilised. People increasing it then decreasing it regularly I don't think is a good thing. Price drops are good but need to be managed and marketed in a certain way.

For me a weekly price drop on XBLIG is not going to make the same difference a Sales & Special would on XBLA because the marketing is different. A sale period would need to be for a minimum of at least 2 weeks on XBLIG.

If you look at this list XBLA Sales stats 2011 you'll see even that market has games that don't sell well, even games that have been heavily featured in sales promotions.

Price reductions need to be handled in a sensible way and marketed properly. Maybe like a collection of games featured in a sales package and made to look like a compilation for 400pts, that's potentially 5 excellent games. Things like that.

 

[qupe1975]

Shame to see Gamergeddon are stopping their XBLIG round-ups.

Video of their last round-up here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uvbDKwOw7M

 

[toythatkills]

How does everyone feel about the ability to raise/lower the prices of games on a whim?

I only see it a a good thing, and could even be used as a summer promotion of some sort, where "all sports titles are only 80MSP this week!" or something along those lines.

Yeah, I like the idea some devs could band together and reduce their games' cost for a week, but any other price changes seem pointless because nobody publicises them. Customers don't see them aside from us. So sure, they're great for us, but a waste of time for devs who will see sales increase by one unit, if they're lucky.

Shame to see Gamergeddon are stopping their XBLIG round-ups.

Their text round-ups did my head in. They'd just put a bunch of games in an arbitrary order and then if the game was bad, they wouldn't even bother to say why, they'd just include the game's description from the marketplace. So they'd file the game with the rest of the total garbage, and the comment underneath it would say "OMG THE BEST RACING GMAE EVER!!!!1" I can't see how that's remotely helpful other than having the appearance of recommending crap.

 

[qupe1975]

Their text round-ups did my head in. They'd just put a bunch of games in an arbitrary order and then if the game was bad, they wouldn't even bother to say why, they'd just include the game's description from the marketplace. So they'd file the game with the rest of the total garbage, and the comment underneath it would say "OMG THE BEST RACING GMAE EVER!!!!1" I can't see how that's remotely helpful other than having the appearance of recommending crap.

They did that for a while but they started to change things over the past few round-ups. I agree with what you say above, I didn't see the point of what they did previously because it gave no opinion.

 

[PepsimanVsJoe]

In other news, some stuff worth browsing on IndieGamerChick. Her site's a year old so she's made a huge leaderboard and ranked all the stuff she's liked over the year, which is over 100 games long. It doesn't include Apple Jack so naturally I disagree with it entirely, but there's Aesop's Garden pretty high up so I've decided all is forgiven. Can't really argue with the quality of most of the stuff on this list and so it'd be a pretty awesome starting point for XBLIG.

There's no Protect Me Knight.

 

[HadesGigas]

There's no Protect Me Knight.

She hasn't reviewed it yet. It's one of the games she already owns that you can suggest she review, though:
http://indiegamerchick.com/katch-up-index/

Looks like she was going to review it but never got around to it, but doesn't think it's great or anything anyway.
http://indiegamerchick.com/2011/10/19/shoot-1up/

 

[PepsimanVsJoe]

Looks like she was going to review it but never got around to it, but doesn't think it's great or anything anyway.
http://indiegamerchick.com/2011/10/19/shoot-1up/

Wow...
WOW





wow?
Doesn't even like Protect Me Knight.

That's a deal-breaker.

 

[qupe1975]

You must remember some games she can not review due to her epilepsy too. As we all know we all have different tastes in games, some you'll like I'll hate and vice versa.

Lists are good to give people an idea of some of the quality on the service and help sift through the crap. Send in Jimmy shouldn't be in there lol

 

[Gaspode_T]

Some of what she wrote about how some of the games are seeming like they are written by 30-somethings who don't understand what today's gamers want or even what young gamer's understand really resonated with me. Pretty soon here we are going to be dealing with a majority of gamers that their first experience with gaming was on iOS, take that for an eye opening thought...I think lots of other gamers I follow and read reviews very closely because they closely mirror my own thoughts, but then I have to self check whether that actually represents what the average young gamer is like.

In any case, more visibility of the platform is a great thing and influences what happens in the future. Although I honestly have absolutely nothing to do with Xbox team at Microsoft...2 years ago I knew enough acquaintences over there to start somewhat of a ruckus but unfortunately I started out with the stance of "we need to hook up achievements to this thing asap omg such an opportunity!!!" somewhat naive thinking, which led quickly to a shocking realization of the actual situation of what the Xbox team is focused on (which is pretty clear these days) combined with how unrealistic the things I was asking for were.

From about a year ago I got into the acceptance phase and have been basically consistently banging into heads that indie games are important and XNA devs are important. As a small example of the sort of uphill battle this is, most people on the Xbox team probably wouldn't know what "XBLIG" is if I asked them (maybe they do now from me spamming the term to some of the mailing lists, but anyway...) I have found that simple advocacy of the good games is the most effective way of winning supporters of the channel, rather than whining about what it does not have.

A thing as creative and risky as XBLIG coming from a huge company like Microsoft in the first place is somewhat of a miracle, unfortunately it mostly can be traced back to people who are not even at Microsoft anymore (Chris Satchell). If you imagine yourself being in Don Mattrick's position, spending a lot of money to add achievements to indie games is probably not as high on your priority list when you have a bunch of companies throwing flaming axes at your head and the entire existance of your division constantly being questioned by investors (Microsoft investors have never liked Microsoft to deal with anything but software). It also is simply a business model thing that still needs to be shaken up - if anything the Windows team is the one that will do the shaking with Windows Store being exactly like iOS app store model. The F2P model has only been embraced with turtle paced baby steps by Xbox team, we will see how that changes when people have Surface with Xbox Live tightly integrated.

XBLIG is not going anywhere - it is basically like a fountain of pure profit I think they would be smart to do their best to encourage XNA devs to make WP8 games though, since they really need exclusive games and not just a bunch of iOS parity ports.

 

[Dark Octave]

How does everyone feel about the ability to raise/lower the prices of games on a whim?

I only see it a a good thing, and could even be used as a summer promotion of some sort, where "all sports titles are only 80MSP this week!" or something along those lines.

The more direct control devs have over their product once it's released, the better.

 

[qupe1975]

Out of interest what's the age range in here?

 

[OnPoint]

I'm nearly 29. It's depressing to think that kids growing up now aren't going to like the same games I do when they hit my age

 

[toythatkills]

I'm 30 in under a month.

 

[qupe1975]

I am 37.

I can see why some will appreciate Manic Miner but I can also understand why some under a certain age will not.

 

[toythatkills]

I am 37.

I can see why some will appreciate Manic Miner but I can also understand why some under a certain age will not.

Give Manic Miner to a kid these days and they won't know what to do without a 20-minute tutorial

 

[DaveVoyles]

25

 

[slash000]

28 here. It's often speculated what the typical age range of the biggest market for XBLIG is. I think one of the major, running theories is that most of the XBLIG market is kids and young teens based on the sales success of a lot of particular games. I dunno, I think there's at least a decent portion of the market that is older ( mid to late 20's, 30's), since at least a number of retro style (in terms of presentation or in mechanics) games seem to do okay here and there. I mean our own retro turn-based RPGs have done pretty well, and I expect that most people that enjoyed these types of games are in their 20's and 30's.

 

[DaveVoyles]

You raise a good point about an older demographic being present. I wouldn't imagine that many young gamers would enjoy the 8 or 16bit graphics that many of us grew up on, along with some of the older mechanics, like slow turn based combat, but it still seems to sell pretty well.

 

[Gaspode_T]

Dave at 25 I am honestly kind of impressed you like Mega Man LOL, you are basically a 32-bit generation boy right...(maybe end of 16-bit?) I don't mean it in a bad way, just that you must really be on the tail end of people who appreciate retro games. Maybe there are middle school kids who appreciate 8-bit games, it would make me teary eyed.

All I have to go with anecdotal data is that a lot of my friends on Xbox GT are more the 25 to 40 YO age range, and while they do seem to play indie games once and a while (the ones besides toy I mean) it is more like once in a blue moon, they seem to sort of play it safe - sticking to AAA games and the most popular XBLA games only.

Speaking of games from the 80s - new Oregon Trail parody looks great: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkT-kfgwbZQ

 

[qupe1975]

I asked the question as I got the impression a lot of the guys that post here were over 25. I wondered how many developers were under 25 and what sort of games they were making.

 

[Stinky Badger Games]

Mod Edit:

The Gold award, for the absolute best game that came out last month.

Picbox is Picross, basically. Umm, there’s not really much else to say as far as gameplay goes, other than that it controls really well and has some neat features like a counter that means you don’t have to do the counting yourself if, you know, you hate counting.

Where Picbox really shines is in its presentation.

It has great music and great sound effects, and as you solve a puzzle the background (which scrolls) changes alongside the changes you make in the puzzle. It’s a nice effect and as Picross games go, this really is as good as it’s going to get on a controller.

It does commit the cardinal sin of penalising you for making mistakes (instead of just letting you carry on, oblivious) but that just means DON'T MAKE MISTAKES!

For your dollar, you get 100 puzzles with a three-star rating system, and a bunch of awardments to unlock. The puzzles come with varying degrees of difficulty.

(NB: if you downloaded this before and had issues with long loading times, there’s an update already out that fixes them; it’s super-smooth now!)

Hey, sorry to resurrect an old post, but I finally got approved for NeoGAF!

I wanted to thank Toythatkills and everyone else who has contacted me to say how much they have enjoyed Picbox! Whilst it may not have been a big seller, the reception that it has received has been phenomenal. A massive thanks to you all.

Also, to celebrate getting approved... who wants some free codes?! Just replace the ‘?’ with the correct number/letter. If you do happen to claim a code, if you could reply here to let others know that it’s gone I’d be very grateful!

Many thanks,

Liam.


Free Picbox Codes!

CJYYD-8JBYW-CYR7K-Q882V-BRXM?
HHDW6-P82YV-MRBTY-RC9CY-9KGY?
XKW6B-RVWRQ-WHQPK-W6T38-G8KM?

 

[Turnstyle]

CJYYD-8JBYW-CYR7K-Q882V-BRXM?
HHDW6-P82YV-MRBTY-RC9CY-9KGY?
XKW6B-RVWRQ-WHQPK-W6T38-G8KM?

Redeemed, many thanks!

 

[Stinky Badger Games]

Great, enjoy!

 

[Tomat]

Are there any metroidvania style games on XBLIG?

 

[Santiako]

.

Picbox is my favourite XBLIG, congrats on the fantastic game!

 

[SirKhalid]

Thanks I used CJYYD-8JBYW-CYR7K-Q882V-BRXMQ

 

[Stinky Badger Games]

Picbox is my favourite XBLIG, congrats on the fantastic game!

You just made my day, thanks a ton. =D

 

[Stinky Badger Games]

Thanks I used CJYYD-8JBYW-CYR7K-Q882V-BRXMQ

Awesome, thanks for letting us know. I hope you enjoy!

 

[DaveVoyles]

Glad to see that another XBLIG dev has made their way onto here. Hello!

 

[Stinky Badger Games]

Thanks Dave, happy to be here!

RE: the above free codes, I'm unsure if anyone has claimed the middle code. If you wanted to try grabbing it, the missing letter is 'T'...

If its gone I apologise.

 

[DaveVoyles]

This thread got so quiet in the last few days, what happened? We get a new guy and suddenly everyone goes into hiding!

Anyway, we started a new feature at Armless Octopus called At A Glance, where we offer 3-4 paragraph reviews of some of our favorite games in the past weeks. The first one is for Go Gimbal Go, which I really enjoyed for a number of reasons, but perhaps mostly because it reminded me of a hybrid racing game on rails.

I've also played a few others this week, but didn't write anything about them.

Overdriven is a shmup that I initially didn't enjoy for one reason or another, but came to love over the following days. It's got some nice weather effects, and although it doesn't do anything extremely well, it does have all of the correct pieces in the right spots.

I've also put quite a few hours into Penny Arcade 3. I've always loved RPGs, so naturally I felt right at home with this 16bit gem. The combat does get monotonous after a while, but that is to be expected in any JRPG. Robert Boyd's writing is as snarky as ever, especially when combined with everything that Penny Arcade brings to the table, and the nostalgic art style really hits home with fans of the genre in the 90s. If you don't mind a lot of combat then you'll get more than your money's worth out of this.