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[FunInfusedGames]

people can find the game marketplace AND they can find indie games. if they couldn't, the minecraft clones wouldn't be seeing the success they are.

It's not the same stumble upon way it used to be. Trial downloads are down significantly each time Microsoft has moved the Indie marketplace deeper into the Dash. That's a fact. Dash changes have made it much more difficult for XBLIG games to be successful.

 

[Dark Octave]

Of course, but at some point, I need to choose my purchases under certain exigences or I would buy anything that cost a dollar. I buy games that I feel they give a nice playing experience before everything else, be the game at 1$ or 60$. I wanted to like/buy Ocean Drive because those games are rare to come by and I actually went pretty close. But nah, didn't buy it.

I agree. At the end of the day it all comes down to what I want to spend my limited time playing, no matter if it's $1 or $60 as well. Maybe I'm looking down on the service, but it's always a welcome surprise when an XBLIG title matches the quality of a retail or XBLA game, rather than an expectation. I guess I have a "this is good enough" attitude when it comes to XBLIG more than the other services.

 

[Ranger X]

I agree. At the end of the day it all comes down to what I want to spend my limited time playing, no matter if it's $1 or $60. Maybe I'm looking down on the service, but it's always a welcome surprise when an XBLIG title matches the quality of a retail or XBLA game, rather than an expectation. I guess I have a "this is good enough" attitude when it comes to XBLIG more than the other services.

That's good. My expectations are also different depending the type of game or platform.

 

[Gen X]

If this service was available in NZ and Aussie I am sure there would be a small increase in sales as well. I am not sure how true the excuse is that the ratings system in these two countries won't allow it but you can't access it unless you create a foreign account and some people can't be arsed. Whether it's because they can't be bothered purchasing foreign points or whether they don't want the games tied to an account they'll rarely use in an event of a console death/relicensing issue or something.

I'm in NZ but my account was created when I lived in UK. I am just thankful there is no regional IP blocking or something like there is for me here trying to purchase some XBLA titles (Dead Rising Case West and Case Zero are two examples).

 

[Dark Octave]

people can find the game marketplace AND they can find indie games. if they couldn't, the minecraft clones wouldn't be seeing the success they are.

i think the issue lies more in the type of experience users want when they turn on their xbox. why should gamers want to play xblig as opposed to xbla and retail titles? retail and xbla titles are typically of a much higher quality. why spend 240 or even 80 points on an xblig when those points can be put towards a better experience via xbla?

it becomes a matter of differentiation. give users a reason to spend their money on your title. obviously the minecraft clones have succeeded because they are filling a void in the market--neither retail nor xbla titles currently offer a minecraft type of experience (which is very popular) right now. they are meeting a DEMAND.

if your games are not doing well on xblig then i'd say it's for one of two reasons:

1. it's a bad game. it could be so because of concept, presentation, execution etc...
2. there's no demand for the type of game you've made. simply releasing a polished, well-executed game does not mean that you are entitled to success. that's not how ANY market works.

if you want to be in the business of selling video games, then remember you are in the video game BUSINESS and think like a businessman. if you just want to develop cool stuff then do it as a hobby or go work for someone else and let them handle the business side of things.

I gotta agree and I'll be honest, good or not, Nono and the Cursed Treasure is going to sell shit on XBLIG. I already know and accept this. The XBLIG audience is not looking for this style of game. Not saying it's on their level but they aren't looking for anything like Valchaos, Oozi or Sequence either. This is where my business self and my creative self conflict and it's very frustrating. I wish so bad that I had it in me to be a Silver Dollar. I wish I cared about Minecraft. I know how to make money on the service and I know what will work (I think we all do), but my pride won't let me do it.

Anybody here ever tempted to be a "I don't give a fuck, make money bitches, hottest trend clone fest" company?

 

[OnPoint]

I gotta agree and I'll be honest, good or not, Nono and the Cursed Treasure is going to sell shit on XBLIG. I already know and accept this. The XBLIG audience is not looking for this style of game. Not saying it's on their level but they aren't looking for anything like Valchaos, Oozi or Sequence either. This is where my business self and my creative self conflict and it's very frustrating. I wish so bad that I had it in me to be a Silver Dollar. I wish I cared about Minecraft. I know how to make money on the service and I know what will work (I think we all do), but my pride won't let me do it.

Anybody here ever tempted to be a "I don't give a fuck, make money bitches, hottest trend clone fest" company?

I've thought about starting a dev team to do just that haha

 

[Ranger X]

Anybody here ever tempted to be a "I don't give a fuck, make money bitches, hottest trend clone fest" company?

I suppose the temptation can be there but it depends what are your true motives when develloping games. I personnally am becoming an indie dev specifically because I want to make the games I feel like making without listening to somebody telling me it's a good or bad risk. I want to make games for expressing myself before making money. If money comes over and the hobby takes over my day job, it's fine. If it never happens, I'd be happy making games for peanuts as long as I make some gamers happy.

 

[OldmanAndroid]

Anybody here ever tempted to be a "I don't give a fuck, make money bitches, hottest trend clone fest" company?

No, I'm like you, I can't even consider it. Making the games that I want to play is intensely satisfying, and simply love the process of taking a game from concept to launch. I love pushing myself as a game designer, and I feel that if I just keep challenging myself with game design problems, I'll just get better and better at it. Maybe one of my games will become popular, maybe not.

 

[Trumpets]

Anybody here ever tempted to be a "I don't give a fuck, make money bitches, hottest trend clone fest" company?

It doesn't exactly follow a trend, but I've got an idea that will take two weeks to make and is squarely aimed at idiots. It'll be interesting to see how it does compared with the 1yr dev time Apple Jack games.

 

[wwm0nkey]

Anybody here ever tempted to be a "I don't give a fuck, make money bitches, hottest trend clone fest" company?

When I was attempting to learn C# awhile back I was thinking about some clone games but not just copy/paste. Clone games are fine as long as you have your own personal spin on it. Taking gameplay ideas is NOT a bad thing at all and you can do things you wish the other game did but doesnt. Thats the main problem I have with all these cube games, they don't try hard enough to set themselves apart from each other.

Now what kind of clones I would like to see would be different takes on Pokemon or a Megaman Battle Network clone as we are never likely to see those types of games on the Xbox.

 

[barkers crest]

Barker's Crest is probably the best example of a high production value game selling well (Avatar Golf and Avatar Legends). I literally e-mailed the XBLA team like "Why the heck haven't you guys picked this guy up for XBLA" but maybe he's content with his current situation???

I do think it's hard to prove the XBLIG market is growing or shrinking without Microsoft disclosing numbers it's not going to disclose. I hinted at numbers i've seen before but I can't do anything more than that.

I'm pretty darn sure it's not just the Minecraft games that are $100K+ though. Like I've said a bunch of times before, Xbox gamers are hungry for certain types of content (it's supply/demand thing without a doubt).

Three questions marks??? and a smiley? Ok, I'll bite...somewhat.

All kinds of people contact me all kinds of times for all kinds of different things. ;-)
Keep in mind Barkers Crest Studio has always been a side job for me...but I'm always open to hearing new things.

The fact that my next game release will be on XBLIG should speak for itself...in a positive light for XBLIG.

I know XBLIG gets a lot of flack but it truly is a fantastic service.

 

[MikeHaggar]

I gotta agree and I'll be honest, good or not, Nono and the Cursed Treasure is going to sell shit on XBLIG. I already know and accept this. The XBLIG audience is not looking for this style of game. Not saying it's on their level but they aren't looking for anything like Valchaos, Oozi or Sequence either. This is where my business self and my creative self conflict and it's very frustrating. I wish so bad that I had it in me to be a Silver Dollar. I wish I cared about Minecraft. I know how to make money on the service and I know what will work (I think we all do), but my pride won't let me do it.

Anybody here ever tempted to be a "I don't give a fuck, make money bitches, hottest trend clone fest" company?

i think you have a great attitude about your game and its performance. i'll be frank with you... i think you're right. i don't think it's going to sell much either. i haven't played it, so that's not a reflection of what i perceive its quality to be. i just don't think there's a large market for that type of game on the service.

however, you have a good attitude-- the RIGHT attitude--and you're doing what you feel. that's always the right place to be.

with my first title, i'm kind of trying to walk that hard to walk line--i'm making a game that i want to make (and striving for it to be a really good GAME), but the game is also themed in a way that i think will do well on the service. however, i think the theme is a total riot, so there's no conflict about that for me. i've had a blast conceptualizing and designing the game. and i have to admit, i'm eager to release it and see if i understand this market as well as i think i do

Three questions marks??? and a smiley? Ok, I'll bite...somewhat.

All kinds of people contact me all kinds of times for all kinds of different things. ;-)
Keep in mind Barkers Crest Studio has always been a side job for me...but I'm always open to hearing new things.

The fact that my next game release will be on XBLIG should speak for itself...in a positive light for XBLIG.

I know XBLIG gets a lot of flack but it truly is a fantastic service.

this man right here is a great example of what is possible to achieve on xblig. he makes quality titles that meet the demands of the marketplace and he's been rewarded (quite well i'm assuming) for it.

 

[Krilekk]

I gotta agree and I'll be honest, good or not, Nono and the Cursed Treasure is going to sell shit on XBLIG. I already know and accept this. The XBLIG audience is not looking for this style of game. Not saying it's on their level but they aren't looking for anything like Valchaos, Oozi or Sequence either. This is where my business self and my creative self conflict and it's very frustrating. I wish so bad that I had it in me to be a Silver Dollar. I wish I cared about Minecraft. I know how to make money on the service and I know what will work (I think we all do), but my pride won't let me do it.

Anybody here ever tempted to be a "I don't give a fuck, make money bitches, hottest trend clone fest" company?

Love your attitude. However why don't you just do both, a simple game that sells and the one where you can do what you like to do? Indie doesn't mean independant of economic decisions. We all have to make sacrifices every day and if doing a thing you don't like is necessary to keep doing the things you love, what is stopping you?

 

[Gaspode_T]

I think Kris's point is that he just wants to be as successful as he was in the past. I totally sympathize there and I honestly thought Volchaos and Orbitron and other games would do better than they are so it boggles my mind why some games are selling so much better than these.

I would say that the Xbox platform is walking a fine line between keeping hardcore Gears of War / Call of Duty loving gamers happy, and also trying to appeal to family audiences more and more. So it's a little outrageous to expect them to put a link to something that has so much unrated content on the very first page you see. My personal expectation is that the "Games" tab be moved to be the first thing you land upon, and that the "Game Type" selection of Arcade/Games on Demand/Indie be added as one of the top level menu (but not the first thing you see, which will probably continue to be "My games"/"game marketplace"/"game type" view that it defaults to today). I will continue to fight for that.

If they make the changes I am talking about I think it's pretty good compromise, I get the feeling they want desperately for people to check out the video/app stuff for different reasons (maybe Apple and Google are working on these TV service things too, maybe they want to prove to cable companies how serious they are, who knows the reasons why but they obviously have reasons to do what they do)

 

[Gaspode_T]

By the way I've mentioned it once or twice before here but indiegamerchick.com is kind of the "voice of the community" that XBLIG world needed, sort of matches the content with her no nonsense attitude and whack the games into submission.

I'm kind of amazed that her site is at 100K views, it means there are a lot of people interested in indie games but confused about whether they are worth buying or not. Apparently a lot of people coming to her site are getting there via searches for games like Trailer Park King.

http://indiegamerchick.com/2012/02/05/100000-served/

She has a review for Katana Land up:

http://indiegamerchick.com/2012/02/07/katana-land/

Xblig.co has a review for Kingdom which I just found out was made by the Beer Pong developers:

http://xblig.co/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=193 So bravo to the Beer Pong guys for going for a game they wanted to make. Maybe you can do both games that sell and ones that don't at the same time???

 

[qupe1975]

By the way I've mentioned it once or twice before here but indiegamerchick.com is kind of the "voice of the community" that XBLIG world needed, sort of matches the content with her no nonsense attitude and whack the games into submission.

I wouldn't quite say she is the "voice of the community". She posts some funny reviews, some have some valid points, some go way over the top. At the end of the day it's all subjective to what the individual likes.

You are all raving about A Voxel Action. I think it shows nice promise but the actual game is fairly dull and left me feeling, "What's the point of this?"

 

[mujun]

I know XBLIG gets a lot of flack but it truly is a fantastic service.

Couldn't agree more. It's far from perfect and can't compare to indie games on the PC/Steam but it offers a whole bunch of awesome indie gems on a console for really low prices. None of the other consoles offer anything remotely close and there was nothing like it whatsoever last gen.

 

[OnPoint]

You are all raving about A Voxel Action. I think it shows nice promise but the actual game is fairly dull and left me feeling, "What's the point of this?"

I feel the same way. It feels hollow and I don't like the offset perspective.

 

[FunInfusedGames]

I think Kris's point is that he just wants to be as successful as he was in the past. I totally sympathize there and I honestly thought Volchaos and Orbitron and other games would do better than they are so it boggles my mind why some games are selling so much better than these.

Most developers weren't really happy with the visibility of XBLIG from day one (when we got the first sales numbers, after months of having no idea how things were selling, a popular forum thread was titled "I got my sales numbers and I want to cry"). As they say, the devil you know is something better than the devil you don't. Visibility was far better on the old dash and I'd happy go back to that if we could verses what we have now.

The longer lists, the recommended games, bing search, etc are nice new features. But they're offset by making the entire channel harder to find. They don't make up for what was lost.

Anybody here ever tempted to be a "I don't give a fuck, make money bitches, hottest trend clone fest" company?

Every-time I see any Minecraft-clone sales numbers. I just don't get it. At it's core, Minecraft is really just a level editor. Every single game of mine has a level editor, I just don't release the game as one. Spend a month or two polishing that, change the add/remove from mouse buttons to character driven, and make enough money to make any game I want to for the foreseeable future?

 

[Krilekk]

I feel the same way. It feels hollow and I don't like the offset perspective.

This. Feels like a tech demo released as a full game.

Every-time I see any Minecraft-clone sales numbers. I just don't get it. At it's core, Minecraft is really just a level editor. Every single game of mine has a level editor, I just don't release the game as one. Spend a month or two polishing that, change the add/remove from mouse buttons to character driven, and make enough money to make any game I want to for the foreseeable future?

You just showed exactly why you struggle with your own games if that is what you think about Minecraft. And BTW it sounds very jealous.

 

[Warm Machine]

people can find the game marketplace AND they can find indie games. if they couldn't, the minecraft clones wouldn't be seeing the success they are.

Fortresscraft, for example, has over 660,000 players. Obviously the game has amazing word of mouth from the player base. It did so before the dash change and continues to to this day. Once the tidal wave starts it is hard to stop no matter what gets in its way.

You can't have this many people playing a game and not talking about it. The game also has the luxury of good press every time it breaks a sales record. I would guess that people are just using Bing search to find it now instead of going through the dash.

Interestingly, no large media outlet has ever reviewed the game.

 

[jbug617]

Just bought Katana Land. It looks good from the screenshots to take a chance on it.

 

[Stumpokapow]

I've been playing a bit of マイケルの不思議な冒険 Mysterious Adventure of Michael Dream adventure of the little bear recently. It's not... good, really, but I'm having fun with it in a kind of low rent way. The game has "English" dialogue if you're concerned about the language barrier.

Marketplace

Sample screenshot:

 

[OnPoint]

Just noticed the clouds are

Spoiler

n't

the same as the bushes.

 

[jbug617]

Voxel Action looks good for $1.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=mX8waELNP5M

 

[OnPoint]

Welcome to the party jbug lol

 

[PepsimanVsJoe]

The camera in Voxel Action can be switched to a normal view.

And eh...it's the best of the XBLIGs that I've played lately.

 

[OnPoint]

The camera in Voxel Action can be switched to a normal view.

!!!

 

[Gaspode_T]

Little Racers Street multiplayer update is apparently coming out any second now (they hit publish button a couple hours ago)

If I'm not mistaken there has been yet another content update for Bloody Checkers: http://xblaratings.com/blog/5223-bloodycheckers-adds-interactive-physics-engine

I'm very confused about the Twitter person @ShellyAutumn, the person making this game is either some sort of Chinese female idol or a big fan of one?? They also have the same ratio that spam accounts usually do but maybe they just did a bunch of follow/follow backs to get this way.... http://twitter.com/ShellyAutumn Anyway, just kind of bizarre things like this are part of the Strange and Wonderful World of Xbox Indie Games

 

[Gaspode_T]

Growing Pains dropped to 80 pts - has anyone played this? I had already promised to buy it because it's the Adventures of Shuggy dev and I thought it was cool that they are trying their hand at smaller indie games

It looks like what would happen if Jeff Minter designed Adventures of Shuggy 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sj51oMAq6Y8

Looks better in motion than still screenshots too...

What is the trick that caused games like Exit and N+ to sell so well but now games like this are struggling on both XBLA and XBLIG?

 

[OnPoint]

Growing Pains dropped to 80 pts - has anyone played this? I had already promised to buy it because it's the Adventures of Shuggy dev and I thought it was cool that they are trying their hand at smaller indie games

It looks like what would happen if Jeff Minter designed Adventures of Shuggy 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sj51oMAq6Y8

Looks better in motion than still screenshots too...

What is the trick that caused games like Exit and N+ to sell so well but now games like this are struggling on both XBLA and XBLIG?

Yup.

Here's my review.

I thought it was a good deal of fun, but it was really short. 80 points is perfect for it.

To answer your final sentence, I'd say the market is flooded.

 

[Gaspode_T]

That's true, technically I haven't bought Exit or N+ myself because I just have so many other games to play and those take a lot of time and energy to clear. It's already tearing my hair out just to beat Splosion Man so I can start working on Ms Splosion man. Splosion Man I am stuck on some level I found out was infamous for people getting stuck there (some flying laser things shoot you and you fall into acid over and over)

It's possible some of the gamers who like those games are now focused on PC gaming with Steam...

Shuggy I'm maybe 40% of the way through - need to get back in there

 

[FunInfusedGames]

I just played the trial of Growing Pains... it didn't tell me enough about the game to determine if I want to buy it. I like the concept but the trial didn't really get into any levels that felt like real levels.

I have such a backlog of games to finish and unless a game really grips me, I'm not going to add it to my list. What I played of Growing Pains just felt like a tutorial section. I saw way cooler looking levels in the videos.

 

[SmallCaveGames]

1. I share the dash concerns. Not a fan, but not going to over-worry about it either. Kind of used to disappointing changes as this point.

2. And my sales haven't really changed - but being a back-catalog game I think my sales are more driven by a small subset of people actively looking for basic/old-school platformers.

3. For the Soulcaster fans out there (and if you're not, you should be!), you may have heard they are coming to PC soon.

4. Mineclone sales/success probably has very little to do with the nuances of the dash. The numbers shock me too, but then you remember how huge the Minecraft phenomenon was on PC, and it starts to make sense. Droves of players obviously wanted console access, and so they hear about it online and go get it without a second thought.

 

[Ranger X]

Growing Pains dropped to 80 pts - has anyone played this? I had already promised to buy it because it's the Adventures of Shuggy dev and I thought it was cool that they are trying their hand at smaller indie games

It looks like what would happen if Jeff Minter designed Adventures of Shuggy 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sj51oMAq6Y8

Looks better in motion than still screenshots too...

What is the trick that caused games like Exit and N+ to sell so well but now games like this are struggling on both XBLA and XBLIG?

hmmm, I might not be able to resist this now.

 

[Gaspode_T]

Be a star in an indie video game:

The dev for BloodyCheckers is posting at CAG and GameFAQs that he will ask for people who want to become a character/enemy in the hallways of the BloodyCheckers castle (with your real picture and AI settings that you pick yourself...) Very awesome thing to do! I have to say this must be one of the diligently hard working indie devs I've ever seen http://www.cheapassgamer.com/forums/showpost.php?p=9364015&postcount=402

 

[Alfred Saxon]

Little Racers Street is fun and very well made. It's got 12 players online multiplayer and join in progress, host migration. P2P leaderboards for all your track times. Good music soundtrack. In game achievements and a single player mode. I am not a big fan of racing games (I love Mario Kart and F-Zero/Wipeout).
but i highly recommend this. It's fun and very well made and cheap too.

 

[bede-x]

I'm not sure if this is what he was mentioning: http://xona.com/2010/05/03.html

The Xona guys have been trying to get on XBLA for a long time. They are EXTREMELY popular as a niche in Japanese shmup circles, especially Decimation X3.

I know. Personally I'm big fan of Score Rush and hope to see those guys on more popular platforms than XBLIG. They're simply too talanted for that.

Thanks for the link btw.

 

[Dark Octave]

I know. Personally I'm big fan of Score Rush and hope to see those guys on more popular platforms than XBLIG. They're simply too talanted for that.

Thanks for the link btw.

I can only speak for Mathew personally but every time I turn on my 360 the guy is either in XNA or doing his homework in some classic shooter. Nicest guy on Earth as well.

 

[slash000]

3. For the Soulcaster fans out there (and if you're not, you should be!), you may have heard they are coming to PC soon.

Coming to PC soon?

You can get them right now for really cheap!

They're part of the current IndieRoyale bundle:

http://www.indieroyale.com/

For both Soul Caster games, along with Zeno Clash, Hoard, and Lume.

It's going for about $4.44 lowest right now (you can always pay more to support the indie devs).

 

[Gaspode_T]

It was cool to see Chris Charla tweet that he loves Escape Goat (he directs the XBLA Portfolio and is former Next Generation magazine editor)

The music is the most underrated or at least underhyped things about Soulcaster I, Soulcaster II and Escape Goat...pure talent.

 

[OnPoint]

Finished Oozi Ep 3. The formula got to me around level three, which is a pretty big accomplishment three "games" in. I stopped trying to get the secrets and all the gems and just started completing the levels barebones. More of the same here, folks, and a little boring.

It was cool to see Chris Charla tweet that he loves Escape Goat (he directs the XBLA Portfolio and is former Next Generation magazine editor)

The music is the most underrated or at least underhyped things about Soulcaster I, Soulcaster II and Escape Goat...pure talent.

I couldn't agree about the music more. It's all phenomenal.

 

[Gaspode_T]

Would a single Oozi release with all 3 have been more satisfying or no?

I frankly view 2D platformers as "Hey, let me take a game that pretty much everyone has ridiculously high expectations of" (blame Miyamoto) It's becoming the same sort of thing with the tower defense genre, or runner genre, you have to really do something unique and interesting or have incredible levels of polish to get noticed there.

xblig.co reviewed Katana Land and gave it pretty positive impressions: http://xblig.co/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=206

Japanese message board 2ch is saying the menu music for FPS Trainer is awesome.

Light-cycle game Positron is coming out soon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5_dSog2nsI

I'm looking forward to this one, he's smart for making a WP7 version too: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=So4_w-SMEBM

 

[GcRayden]

I'm not sure if it will be done in time for the end of this month, but I'm releasing an indie game called "Wave Cave" soon. I had an issue with Microsoft cutting off my subscription to XNA after I already paid (a growing problem I heard), so I lost about 2 weeks of Xbox 360 development time.

The game is basically a bullet hell style game made into a side scrolling space shooter that allows you to play your own music through Window's Media Sharing Service or your Xbox 360 Hard Drive. The game will have tons of options so you can customize your gameplay as you choose and you'll be able to not only choose your ship, but perks and other different attributes that change how the game is played and which strategies are used. The unique thing that sets wave cave apart from most music games is the fact the music you play not only randomly generates enemies based on the frequency, but it also has the deadly waves created from the music that form the cave, meaning the louder / more up beat music you play, the less room you have to move around.

A recent gameplay video of us showing off our new Clausto-mode with Multiplayer:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10150654056767652&set=vb.122597157859705&type=2&permPage=1

Wave Cave was also featured on Screw Attack with the early beta that I showed off at MAGFest:
http://www.screwattack.com/shows/originals/random-awesomeness/checking-out-wave-cave

And I have a facebook to where I am trying to gather up a community to help make the game better.
http://www.facebook.com/TheWaveCave

And finally my website:
http://www.chickopie.com (currently WIP)

Let me know what you guys think! We are always looking for suggestions on how to make the game better!

Old Boxart for the Game:

A gamemode to which the Wave Cave constantly closes in on you, the only way to stop it is to collect the coins.

We are trying to have alot of fun with the game, so we have funny levels too like this haunted house.

 

[OnPoint]

Wave Cave looks pretty cool.

Would a single Oozi release with all 3 have been more satisfying or no?

I frankly view 2D platformers as "Hey, let me take a game that pretty much everyone has ridiculously high expectations of" (blame Miyamoto) It's becoming the same sort of thing with the tower defense genre, or runner genre, you have to really do something unique and interesting or have incredible levels of polish to get noticed there.

I've been wrestling with that idea since I'm planning to review episode three soon, and I feel like I'd end up getting bored all the same. They really haven't added all that much between the episodes in terms new abilities or challenges, so it really does feel like one game cut up into four pieces. If it was four "worlds" that felt this similar instead of four "games", it would probably feel more stale since there wouldn't be weeks-to-months between each one.

I guess my problem is that the platforming itself is pretty boring. I didn't have a problem with it in the first episode since that was "world 1", but it never really built off of that in a satisfying way. I'd like some challenging jumps, but the difficult spots usually boil down to either time-jumps-through-obstacles or wait-for-the-hazard-to-pass-by... and these are growing in quantity as the series progresses.

 

[FunInfusedGames]

> I guess my problem is that the platforming itself is pretty boring.

This is why we added lava to Volchaos. Platforming is far, far easier if you plod along but it's ultimately not nearly as fun either. You need something (even a timer) that drives you forward. Not necessarily at the pace Volchaos requires but you need something.

This is a problem I've always had with the 2D Sonic games. While the first bunch of levels are full of speed, later you have to really slow down if you expect to beat them. In absence of speed, you need other unique hooks, original platforming elements, etc. Look at the levels in Super Mario World, there is a lot of variety in them and Nintendo added in several unique elements (fences, bubbles you can ride in, water to swim in, etc). IMO Super Mario World is still the best platformer ever made.

In the simplest sense, don't make it boring. Repeating the same thing over and over is boring. Plodding along through levels is boring. Making a pretty game doesn't make it not boring.

 

[FunInfusedGames]

http://www.videogamer.com/news/schafer_xbox_360_patches_cost_40k.html

In this post about XBLA games costing $40,000 to patch, Tim Schafer also mentions this:

"I just wish there was more support, more marketing, more placement on the dashboard. It could have been our own little Sundance Film festival, a great sandbox for indie development."

Seems to echo the same sentiments of XBLIG developers. Not surprising, XBLA games are more visible being included with new releases but they're also far too buried in the Dash. And these are the guys paying big $$$ to get their games on the service... I'd be pissed. I bet more would speak out if not for NDAs.

 

[DaveVoyles]

It appear as though Super Meat Boy will appear as a character in an upcoming XBLIG, Night of the Fred.

See what happens when you ask nicely!

 

[Dark Octave]

It appear as though Super Meat Boy will appear as a character in an upcoming XBLIG, Night of the Fred.

See what happens when you ask nicely!

I actually thought about asking Team Meat if I could have SMB as a random wtf playable character in Nono, but I scared myself out of the thought.

 

[Gaspode_T]

For Volchaos I do think you did a great job implementing the lava hook, which makes it unique and interesting. I'm not sure how much games like League of Evil or Mos Speedrun are selling on iOS but my pure guess would be 10,000 or less, the market is basically a niche and it's even smaller on XBLIG...like I said before the N+ game and Super Meat Boy are almost like exception to the rule. It seems to really take off if you get the hipster gamers to rally around you. So hopefully you can push the extreme-ness of the game and the custom level editor on PC version. Just see games like I Want to Be the Boshy, the hardcore PC gamer's expectations for 'challenge level games' is getting out of control. If you don't want it to be considered a challenge level game, then it would probably need more of story/variety/different types of worlds...

The Nono game I think has a chance of making the Bomberman, Mr Driller, Rainbow Islands, Bust a Move etc style fans happy...those games were never super hard just kind of fun to play. I would put it in the same bucket as Elfsquad7 or something, it's hard to get the people who would be interested in a game like Elfsquad to realize it exists because they are probably playing Bejeweled or some Facebook Zynga games