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The XNA Indie Games Official Thread

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Psychotext said:
Is it ok if I like both? :lol

Heh, I guess. From the trial I don't see how much game there is from the demo. The demo has no difficult levels at all. The dude certainly has graphics down to a tee. It's the same with Smashell. Great looking game, but I don't know how much "game" is there. I wan them to make a Switchball sequel, frankly :P
 
Artoon is a score challenge game as much as anything. Do the low jumps to get the extra style points and it gets significantly more difficult... especially if you're trying to keep your multiplier.
 
Rlan said:
It's the same with Smashell. Great looking game, but I don't know how much "game" is there.

I peer reviewed the full version of Smashell. There's quite a lot, actually...it keeps throwing in new gameplay elements every few minutes, including double jumps, flying enemies and even boss battles. Before I knew it, 45 minutes had gone by...and that was on only one of the game's four maps. And I'd had fun, too.

Consider this a recommendation.
 
don't think it ever got to fad, nowhere near the way the iTunes Apps store games.

The are a hand full of stuff worth checking out but I think the tat is really putting people off.

No real coverage or promotion hasn't helped wither.

There seems to be a lull at the moment with releases hopefully that means people are making some things worthwhile to put up there.
 
Dear community games devs,

If you want your cover to stand out, using a boring font that comes preloaded on every computer is probably not the best idea. There's no excuse for it, there are tons of free fonts available all over the net!

Sincerely,
Someone who's tired of the community games section looking like a slideshow of cached Geocities images from 1996
 
New stuff:

Monaco 360 - Very basic racing game. Looks a bit like Spy Hunter. Isn't fun to play, unlike Spy Hunter. Deleted trial.

Plasma Spheres - Platforming / Puzzle Game. Functional graphics, but it badly needs some audio in the menus and some background music too. Game seems like it could be fun, but it badly suffers with the limitations of the 4 minute trial. Nowhere near enough time to go through the tutorial levels. Shooting enemies seems a little awkward. Will try trial again.

Crystal Crush - Drop puzzler. For some reason I found the graphics / animation quite hard on my eyes. Game seems ok, but really not my sort of thing. Deleted trial.

Thought it might be worth putting down the stuff I've played that I've either bought or I'm considering buying:

Artoon,
Biology Battle (I wont buy at 800pts),
Bloc,
Blow,
Duotrix,
Easy Golf,
Lines,
Plasma Spheres,
Snake 360,
Totem,
Word Soup.

Obviously there's other good stuff on there that just doesn't appeal to me (Like Colosseum, Exisled, Smashell, Weapon of Choice).
 
Psychotext said:
Yeah, there is a game that it's a direct rip off of. But I couldn't for the life of me remember what it was called.
... Monaco GP? It's an old (OLD OLD) Sega game. GIS KLOV Monaco.

edit: GIS Monaco GP arcade. Wiki says it's so archaic that MAME doesn't even support it.
Stumpy said:
A user rating system would essentially result in a lot of machismo assholes rating everything except Tit Destroyer: Attack of Maximum Violence a 1/5. It's the same reason they don't have a rating system for commercial games, only probably amplified here because developers are sort of definitionally unable to advertise and so rely pretty much exclusively on you downloading the demo and hopefully buying it.
I disagree, simply due to the added layer of effort it takes to get XNA games. I could see the launch games having had that problem but I'm betting that from here on out XNA games are going to be played largely by enthusiasts and other developers/publishers looking for untapped talent.
 
Flyguy said:
Is the Community Games fad over? Does anyone know (yyr?) how these are selling?

We still do not have access to sales data. They're supposedly preparing this feature for us but it isn't ready yet.

Psychotext, thanks for your purchase =) I hope you enjoy playing the many unlockable levels and Survival Mode!

I would just like to mention that I will soon be announcing a contest...actually, three separate contests involving Snake360. I won't lie...it's a blatant attempt to separate you from your 400 Microsoft Points. But it may not be for nothing... I'm putting up $450 worth of MS Points and Live Gold subscriptions to make it worth your while.

I'm hoping that at least one major gaming news site will pick it up, and that both my title and all of Community Games will get more exposure as a result.

Stay tuned...
 
This thread is really making me wish that I had quit my summer job a couple weeks earlier and finished a game. *sigh*

yyr said:
Stay tuned...
Given the 30-page legal print for contests run by actual game companies, I would probably be exceedingly cautious about doing so. Given that you're essentially promoting a product that is for sale, making sure that you're within the law in all territories that the contest is open to would be prudent. (lolQuebec.gif)

Anyways, good luck.
 
I did a bit of preliminary research, and also had a lawyer take a brief look at both NY State Law and Federal law. Just about all of the regulations we found dealt specifically with random-chance drawings or sweepstakes, not with skill-based contests. Also, because the value of our prizes is small compared to "the big guys," we won't have to register with anyone before we go forward.

If anyone here has knowledge of or links to any sort of relevant info I'll gladly take them, but I'm fairly certain that what we're going to do is within the law.

Thanks for your concern =)
 
yyr said:
I did a bit of preliminary research, and also had a lawyer take a brief look at both NY State Law and Federal law. Just about all of the regulations we found dealt specifically with random-chance drawings or sweepstakes, not with skill-based contests. Also, because the value of our prizes is small compared to "the big guys," we won't have to register with anyone before we go forward.

If anyone here has knowledge of or links to any sort of relevant info I'll gladly take them, but I'm fairly certain that what we're going to do is within the law.

Thanks for your concern =)
Good to hear. I love to see this.
I'm constantly astounded at what I've been seeing over the past few years with XNA.
 
Anyone else have Easy Golf? I'm looking for people to play multiplayer with or share my course with. Gamertag is gi11is
 
Psychotext said:
Thought it might be worth putting down the stuff I've played that I've either bought or I'm considering buying:

Artoon,
Biology Battle (I wont buy at 800pts),
Bloc,
Blow,
Duotrix,
Easy Golf,
Lines,
Plasma Spheres,
Snake 360,
Totem,
Word Soup.

Obviously there's other good stuff on there that just doesn't appeal to me (Like Colosseum, Exisled, Smashell, Weapon of Choice).

I was going to ask which games people recommend.
I'll just try out some of these and the stuff from the Eurogamer list...
 
I bought Artoon, it's pretty fun but seems awfully short I'm at the last stage after only about an hour of play. Should of been 200 points intstead of 400 points.
 
Two recent games I thought that are worth mentioning.

Ladybird Galaxy - really simple concept wrapped up in really nice graphics and music. The overall design really stood out from previous community games I've played. It's a score based game, where you zip around the screen grabbing gems for points and stars to multiply. It also supports 4 player local which could potentially be awesome. Fun game, picked it up for 200 points.

Galax-e-mail - Old school look and feel but some really cool ideas in there. Basically deliver an email from point A-B in an overhead shooter, whats cool is you can pick up friendly ships who you take over when you die. And you can transform into 3 different ships with varying speed/firepower. After each level it asks how the difficulty was which determines the next level (difficulty scale is 1-100). Only 200 points too, may have to pick this up next.
 
Psychotext said:
I enjoyed your credit reel btw yyr. Also, please tell me that your sound effects are intentionally hilarious... :lol

Yeah, the voices are intentionally made of lol. =)

I, too, enjoyed Galax-e-mail and think it's definitely worth the 200 points.

I did get to try RPaints during review and I'm pretty shocked that it's priced at 400... Snake360 took 11 months to create, has high replay value, and is priced the same.

I think that most of the games' price points reflect their value but in many cases it's really hard to judge, especially given the very limited 4-minute period that you have to evaluate them. Off the top of my head, I know that Snake360, Smashell and In The Pit could all definitely benefit from a trial that was 8 minutes. I think most of the creators feel that the trial is too short and are hoping for a change in policy soon.

The developer of Swords & Monsters stated that it was supposed to be something in the vein of "Quest For The Crown" and "You Have To Burn The Rope." So I believe it's meant to be a parody and little more. I haven't actually played it.

btw, some of the upcoming games currently in review include a couple of puzzle games, some more space-themed shooting games, and a music creation tool.

EDIT: I just tried Swords & Monsters...
...and that's 3 minutes of my life that I can't get back.
 
So I picked up Weapon of Choice do to the fact that nothing else really seems to be well.. good. And wow, this game is kicking my ass, at first I thought the whole bullet time thing was gonna make the game super easy, however that's not the case at all. I really haven't played around enough to tell if the game is gonna be a fun challenge or super frustrating, but I'm enjoying it and think it's one of the few XNA games worth my money.
 
Psychotext said:
Service still badly needs a chunk of Arkanoid. :(
I wouldn't try to make something similar right now. Atari went after the devs of breakout clones on the iPhone so they would probably do the same thing here...

And after playing several of the games on the service now and seeing the overall level of quality/gameplay... I don't think my game would have that hard of a time fitting in. Winter break project might be to get it up and running on a 360 and add in the other 85 levels I was thinking about...
 
The Snake360 Holiday Contests begin on Tuesday. I'm giving away $450 worth of prizes... Microsoft Points and Live Gold subscriptions are waiting to be won! One fanatic will win 4000 MSP and 13 months of Live Gold!

For more info, go here: http://www.snake360.com/contest/
 
Was just listening to to the Major Nelson podcast where they listed the top 10 community games sales for 11/24 to 11/30.

  1. Word Soup
  2. Weapon of Choice
  3. Sin Surfing
  4. ZSX4 Guitarpocalypse
  5. No Frills Sudoku
  6. Coliseum
  7. Aaron's Ping Pong
  8. In The Pit
  9. Snake 360
  10. Brain Party

Some really odd games being bought... Pong WTF! :lol
 
If Sega won't port Chu Chu Rocket then someone needs to code up a clone on XNA. They need to remake Return Fire as well, while they're at it.
 
Psychotext said:
Was just listening to to the Major Nelson podcast where they listed the top 10 community games sales for 11/24 to 11/30.

  1. Word Soup
  2. Weapon of Choice
  3. Sin Surfing
  4. ZSX4 Guitarpocalypse
  5. No Frills Sudoku
  6. Coliseum
  7. Aaron's Ping Pong
  8. In The Pit
  9. Snake 360
  10. Brain Party

Some really odd games being bought... Pong WTF! :lol

There's a new list on Major Nelson's site. It says it's for the week of December 1st.

1 Word Soup
2 Golend Royal Balckjack
3 Weapon of Choice
4 Colosseum
5 ZSX4 Guitarpocalypse
6 Sin(Surfing)
7 In the Pit
8 Head Banger
9 Snake360
10 Swords and Monsters

I can't believe that anyone would pay money for Swords and Monsters...
 
yeah bring Shuggy to XNA loved the PC trial.



But yeah has Swords & Monsters some secret that only happened when you get the full game or something? If not then what are people doing? or to get on that list the numbers are LOW!?
 
I heard some rumblings that Shuggy was being reworked for XBLA.

As for Swords and Monsters, the only thing I can guess is that overall sales are so low for Community Games that anything has a shot at making the top 10. :(
 
CindyBee said:
There's a new list on Major Nelson's site. It says it's for the week of December 1st.

1 Word Soup
2 Golend Royal Balckjack
3 Weapon of Choice
4 Colosseum
5 ZSX4 Guitarpocalypse
6 Sin(Surfing)
7 In the Pit
8 Head Banger
9 Snake360
10 Swords and Monsters

I can't believe that anyone would pay money for Swords and Monsters...

I can't believe that the Golf game isn't on that list, it looks pretty well done
 
checked a few of the latests arrivals out tonight, a lot of shit is really starting to clutter the place up now.

These were were a look


World moulder is an interesting idea for a platformer to tweak the levels to platform, its nicley done.

The pet bowls game was oddly relaxing to but the art will give my nightmares.

The tower defence game seems decent but its hard to muck that up the formulas down now, but again the art, ui & polish isn't there.

The collecting blobs game was ok too.
 
I wandered into the community games section (Really, I got lost in the new dash and just randomly clicked a picture linking to em) and holy fuck there's a shitload of these things. I'm in the middle of downloading like 10 gigs of demos so haven't tried any, but some seem really decent investments of 200 points.
 
I played todays new releases, the rock moving one and the paper and pen shooter, sorry I forget the names right now.

The rock moving one was rather good, moving coloured rocks to produce 3 touching = destroys them, I cleared about 5 rooms in the 4 minute demo time.

The paper and pen looking shooter is terrible though, you don't aim with the right stick like geowars but projectiles fire the direction you are moving, real bad gameplay and rather annoying to aim.

*edit* I also agree that the community games list needs a prune, RPaints should NOT be on the list for a start, and there is an rpg that is just 3 lines of written story that can be beaten by pressing the A button 3-4 times, seriously wtf.
 
Diablohead said:
I played todays new releases, the rock moving one and the paper and pen shooter, sorry I forget the names right now.

The rock moving one was rather good, moving coloured rocks to produce 3 touching = destroys them, I cleared about 5 rooms in the 4 minute demo time.

The paper and pen looking shooter is terrible though, you don't aim with the right stick like geowars but projectiles fire the direction you are moving, real bad gameplay and rather annoying to aim.

*edit* I also agree that the community games list needs a prune, RPaints should NOT be on the list for a start, and there is an rpg that is just 3 lines of written story that can be beaten by pressing the A button 3-4 times, seriously wtf.
I actually kind of liked the paper shooter, even though I was dissapointed by it's shooting style at first. I got used to it and it was a nice little twist on it. The faster you are going, the more momentum the bullets have. 200 points ain't bad either.

I believe the bar for entry should be lower than AAA and XBLA titles, but I still think MS should monitor what games go up on the service to some degree. There are some gems but a lot of these games really are ridiculously unfinished.
 
Dark Octave said:
I actually kind of liked the paper shooter, even though I was dissapointed by it's shooting style at first. I got used to it and it was a nice little twist on it. The faster you are going, the more momentum the bullets have. 200 points ain't bad either.

It wouldn't have been half-bad if the ship turned where you aimed, like in Asteroids or Thrust. As it was implemented, it was just annoying.
 
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