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Xbox LIVE Indie Games - The June 2011 Thread
- Thread starter toythatkills
- Start date
SmallCaveGames
Neo Member
It's not a DBP entry, but I posted a new video for Legend of Kilflame last night.
Port Town and Enemies Preview
(custom engine, original music)
Port Town and Enemies Preview
(custom engine, original music)
Hey Toy, what do you think about doing a list of 100 great games on the service and trying to get it picked up by the big blogs/news sites?
Something that lets people know that there is a lot of quality on the service and hopefully gets XBLIG more attention.
Maybe a list from 1-100 in no particular order with a pic for each game, the price and a link to the download.
Something that lets people know that there is a lot of quality on the service and hopefully gets XBLIG more attention.
Maybe a list from 1-100 in no particular order with a pic for each game, the price and a link to the download.
Dark Octave
Banned
Nice.mujun said:
mujun said:
The problem with one of these is that they become so out of date so quickly. For example if it was done in say March, games like Sequence, Blocks That Matters, Upbot would be missed out.
Xbox magazine did a top 50 a while back. I run a page on Grcade that I try to update as often as possible and the front page has recommended games on it (not everything yet and some missing) and Kafel told me about 8 weeks ago he was going to do something like I did for here using as many of the links, images etc that were applicable to his thread. It went quiet.
Trumpets
Member
qupe1975 said:
'This year' is about all I'm willing to commit to, given how everything seems to take four times longer than expected. I've pretty much done all the drawing now and I'm about to start designing the levels. After that it's all just little odds & ends.
Edit: I can't believe they've entered Duality ZF again. Is this the third or forth time?
Dark Octave
Banned
Still better to have it than not.qupe1975 said:
This could be done every 3 or 6 months.
toythatkills
Member
The problem with that is that I wouldn't feel comfortable doing it unless I played every game on the service, and I haven't. Also, I dunno, it seems long. It'd be fun to compile but I'm not sure anyone would bother reading it.mujun said:
Not feeling the love for Sum Fighter. It's competent but has this really annoying quirk where if I'm trying to make a three block, it just defaults to a two block if another two block happens to be nearby, and it makes everything too unpredictable and a little annoying.
Feeling the love for new Apple Jack though. OMG.
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
Trumpets said:
d'oh
HadesGigas
Member
toythatkills said:
That's the way it's supposed to work, two blocks together, three three blocks together, four four blocks together, etc. I don't see what's unpredictable about that.
toythatkills
Member
Yeah I know, but if it's my intention to make a three block, it's kind of annoying that it locks into a two block that I didn't want. It makes it really difficult to clear things the way you want to clear them because it's literally impossible to build a three block if there happens to be a two block in the wrong place.HadesGigas said:
By unpredictable, I just meant that if you don't notice the two block there, you could find your plan totally messed up by being locked into a block that you never wanted to make. If you had more time to make better moves it'd be passable, but the game moves so quickly that you just don't have the time to look around, you have to build build build and just hope that what you want to have happen, happens. It didn't seem to, and so I ended up just building twos over and over again because it's the only thing that works consistently.
toythatkills said:
I wasn't expecting you to do all the work
Call it a "recommended by GAF" list or something.
Is 50 a better number? And I'm suggesting something that doesn't involve much reading, a wall of small pics that blow up to large ones or something along those lines. The only info being a good screen pic, link to the game on Xbox.com and the price.
toythatkills said:
Thats part of the strategy. If you want to start a "bigger" combo, you start off with the large number, and build it up. If you wanna link "2" combos together, then you start with 1s.
This way, it's easy to make a bunch of quick combos to save yourself from death, but also completly possible to start combos from whatever you want, given the space, and a little thinking.
If threw me off at first, too, but then I thought "why don't I just start the threes I want... by grabbing the 2, and adding 1?", and then it all started to click better.
HadesGigas
Member
toythatkills said:
Yeah, I just don't agree with any of that.
Though I already had experience playing this game as Blocksum, so maybe it's a bit overwhelming in Sum Fighter because it has a more hectic feel as a vs. game?
Would have liked to see the 1P mode included in this game. And maybe a puzzle mode where you have limited moves, I'm a sucker for those.
toythatkills
Member
Hah, I didn't think you meant that I'd do it all. But if we're going to compile such an exhaustive list, it wouldn't be fair to do so unless between us we've played every single thing on the service, and there's no way we have!mujun said:I wasn't expecting you to do all the work
Call it a "recommended by GAF" list or something.
Is 50 a better number? And I'm suggesting something that doesn't involve much reading, a wall of small pics that blow up to large ones or something along those lines. The only info being a good screen pic, link to the game on Xbox.com and the price.
It definitely needs text if it's to be done, though. A picture and a link gives people no incentive to download something. I could show someone a screenshot of Hypership and they'd maybe say "oh, well that looks okay" but they might not download it without the explanation of why it's so awesome. There are so many XBLIGs where the screenshot doesn't sell the experience. Even if it's just one line per game. "Buy Apple Jack if... you want a platformer that's so good I stopped playing Mario Galaxy 2 for it." "Buy The TEMPURA of the DEAD if... etc" Something like that maybe.
toythatkills
Member
Yeah, a puzzle mode would have been amazing, I'm basically a bitch for any puzzle game that comes along.HadesGigas said:
Sum Fighter just doesn't work well enough the way it's set up, in my opinion. Maybe I'm wrong! The speed makes it impossible to carefully plan and without that ability it's like dropping Tetris pieces at random. Even if they'd just slowed the first level right down to ease people into the game it'd have been much better, but it's too much right from the very first second, the opponent's no pushover either, even on the first level. It's like they've put all the effort into the presentation (well, outside the weirdly ugly gameplay fields) and forgotten about the player experience entirely.
My teams DBP11 submission: http://t.co/VeMMOuy
Glad the submission is over gives us time to work on other stuff.
Glad the submission is over gives us time to work on other stuff.
toythatkills said:
....Heh, that's kinda funny. Well, more like ironic. Even when my sister was watching me play single player, she was suprised at how slow the CPU moved itself. When I first played, I felt like the ease of making "2" combos would totally make the game overly-easy. It takes a good amount of time for it to start throwing bigger numbers at you. The game stays really "quick to play" for a majority of the play. Making 2's freezes things for AGES as long as you keep chaining them, and the "Top of the screen, you lose!" timer is 10 seconds or so long, which I found really forgiving.
Heck, the first time I faced tha last boss, he was smashed in about 13 seconds. I've beat the game about 3 times now, and very rarely did the CPU feel really difficult...
PepsimanVsJoe
Member
Lair of the Evildoer is a pretty fun little loot game.
Go through twenty floors, find various gun/melee weapon upgrades, and level-up. Not a bad haul for a buck. Music is pretty kickin' as well.
I'll gladly participate if anyone is doing a "Great XBLIG game-list". I gotta say though. 50 or hell even 100 entries is probably too few. I'll have to go over what I've purchased.
Go through twenty floors, find various gun/melee weapon upgrades, and level-up. Not a bad haul for a buck. Music is pretty kickin' as well.
I'll gladly participate if anyone is doing a "Great XBLIG game-list". I gotta say though. 50 or hell even 100 entries is probably too few. I'll have to go over what I've purchased.
PepsimanVsJoe said:
Maybe we could even just have a thread with a list of nominees and then vote for the GAF top 50. Then go from there with whatever info we end up with. My one and only motive is promotion of the service. I see so many great games there and feel like it's criminally overlooked.
SmallCaveGames
Neo Member
mujun said:
Maybe it's because I am steeped in it, but I see lots of "top 50" iterations - think OXM just did one. Not that I am against another one, or maybe one focused on 1st half of 2011?
But for an overall top 50 list, I can pretty much predict 40 of the 50 without trying. 25 of those probably come right off the actual top rated dashboard.
You might be familiar, but I like what this guy does - Writings of Mass Deduction.
Rather than reshuffle the top 50, he searches for a game a day (incredible pace). He finds the good stuff, not just the great stuff. Today actually happens to be Sequence.
toythatkills
Member
I like that website. Sometimes I get the feeling that he's only just realising what he took on, though. I don't think there are 365 games that are worth raving about to any degree, and so there's a few reviews he's written where he's had to say good things about bad games just to keep up the pretence that he only reviews good games, it feels like.SmallCaveGames said:
Or maybe he's just a lot more forgiving than I am!
I do hope people are trying stuff based on what he writes though, 'cause it's a grand idea.
SmallCaveGames
Neo Member
lol, yeah agreed - I can't believe he's still going honesty - it can't last forever unless a good game comes out every day - and that probably ain't happnin.
PepsimanVsJoe
Member
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
yo PVJ, I like your reviews but I truly don't care about anyone else's, you should get that site to make your name clickable so I can view all reviews you wrote.
Stumpokapow said:
I sometimes write XBLIG reviews on that site too Stumpo...
But if you'd really like to ignore all my hard work, just for you, use this link
PepsimanVsJoe
Member
It's nothing like that.
Stump has been a fan of my work for years.
Good Lord I am ridiculous when it comes to repeating certain words.
Altogether
Altogether
Altogether....sheesh
Stump has been a fan of my work for years.
Good Lord I am ridiculous when it comes to repeating certain words.
Altogether
Altogether
Altogether....sheesh
http://twitter.com/MagikoGamingMagikoGaming said:Platformance: Temple Death in peer review. So it's done and a matter of time until release
SmallCaveGames
Neo Member
DaveVoyles
Member
Geeze, I guess they let anyone on these forums now.......
Took my three months, but I finally got approved.
Yeah WMD has definitely put together quite a project, in reviewing a game a day. That's got to be a lot more work than most people realize I'm sure.
Took my three months, but I finally got approved.
Yeah WMD has definitely put together quite a project, in reviewing a game a day. That's got to be a lot more work than most people realize I'm sure.
toythatkills
Member
You got approved in just three months? People will want to touch you.DaveVoyles said:
The cost of it, if nothing else!DaveVoyles said:
toythatkills
Member
New PLATFORMANCE is out!
Watch as it kicks your ass.
Watch as it kicks your ass.
DaveVoyles
Member
Yeah I know, no idea how I did it in three months. Perfect timing too, considering the Summer Uprising.
Toy, I wanted to say thanks for this thread, you do an awesome job of holding it all together and keeping ir organized up front.
Toy, I wanted to say thanks for this thread, you do an awesome job of holding it all together and keeping ir organized up front.
SmallCaveGames
Neo Member
Oh look who decided to join us.
I am so excited I just had my own uprising, sort of speak.
I am so excited I just had my own uprising, sort of speak.
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
Kafel said:
WB
Honestly, I'm sure the Winter Uprising was very successful from a random person awareness POV, but since I check this thread and keep up on games anyway, I didn't find it that useful. I think I ended up buying Cthulhu and Epic Dungeon... and demoing Soulcaster II. The other games all looked good, but not necessarily my bag.
So with respect to the summer uprising, if a bunch of turds get in or some great games get left out, it's not a big deal for me. I'll check out the good stuff anyway.
Stumpokapow said:
Wouldn't a poor games election potentially hurt future Indie games promotions? People who aren't regular visitors to the Indie channel may get the wrong impression if a few turds make it in. I'm sure MS will have a small panel dedicated to the event on the dashboard (like last time) so I think it's in the developers best interests that they choose games based on actual quality.
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
Shogun PaiN said:
Absolutely. I agree from a health of the service point of view they should really be choosy and put their best foot forward. I just meant that I personally would end up checking stuff out regardless.
toythatkills
Member
They probably won't. In winter there was nothing going on, but in summer they have Summer of Arcade so they could see promoting this as being confusing to users. I doubt the games that are in the SoA want SoI promoted at their expense.Shogun PaiN said:
Stumpokapow said:
*waves*
The problem is that the first Uprising came from people motivated to show that there was quality among the XBLIG. The second one only wants to grab sales and it's poorly organized.
I mean, wake up, people paid to trick the rating system not so long ago, what do you think is going to happen with the voting there ? The best games will get in ?
*slaps Dave with his own tentacles*
SmallCaveGames
Neo Member
I commend Dave's efforts here big time. Hope it works, and in the end, probably can't hurt.
But the way this Uprising... sprung up (count it), allowed for all DBP entries and any other game that was near-finished to just hop on. That's good in some ways, and messy in others. I would have liked to see a concentrated effort to release games FOR the new Uprising (with quality/polish being the intent), not just the most current selection of titles weeded through.
(which as someone mentioned, is what threads like this and other review sites already do, post release)
It's a subtle difference but I think it sets the tone. Either way, it's a solid way of getting some top-quality games highlighted.
But the way this Uprising... sprung up (count it), allowed for all DBP entries and any other game that was near-finished to just hop on. That's good in some ways, and messy in others. I would have liked to see a concentrated effort to release games FOR the new Uprising (with quality/polish being the intent), not just the most current selection of titles weeded through.
(which as someone mentioned, is what threads like this and other review sites already do, post release)
It's a subtle difference but I think it sets the tone. Either way, it's a solid way of getting some top-quality games highlighted.
DaveVoyles
Member
Kafel,
You are just as negative on the App Hub forums, so I'm not surprised that you would be it here as well.
But to respond your statements, it is actually extremely organized this time around. There's a lot of back end work occurring right now which no one sees other than Kris and myself, and the select few who are assisting. Microsoft is well aware of it at this point as well.
The point of this uprising, is not by any means, to cash in on sales. In fact, the last uprising didn't help out with sales much at all, as a number of the developers I spoke to involved had stated publicly on more than a few occasions. Our goal is to bring eyes to the platform, and showcase the quality games and developers who are on there.
Before we even sent out a press release we've garnered media attention this time around:
Articles
Gamasutra, 6.16.11 Xbox Live Indie Game Uprising Returning For Summer, Taking Nominations
Joystiq, 6.16.11 XBL Indie Game Uprising returns this summer, taking submissions
Armless Octopus, 6.14.11 - The Xbox Live Indie Games Summer Uprising begins in August
DIY Gamer, 6.15.11 Xbox Live Indie Games Summer Uprising Deadline Approaching
Shack News, 6.16.11 Xbox Live Indie Games Uprising returns this summer
MTV Multiplayer, 6.16.11 - Xbox Live Indie Games Will Uprise Again This Summer
True Achievements, 6.16.11 Indie Games Summer Uprising Revealed
Baixaki Jogos, 6.17.11 - Já estão abertas as inscrições para a Xbox LIVE Indie Games Uprising desta temporada
Additionally, from working with others in the professional gaming press over the last year (I'm a hobbyist by all means) I've established a pretty large contact base well, which is another advantage we have over the previous uprising.
Immediately following the Xbox Live Summer of Arcade doesn't really hurt us in any way - in fact it helps us. I can't explain why, at least publicly now, but I should be able to post publicly in a few weeks why it may exactly benefit us.
As far as having DBP around the same time, I only look at it as an advantage. We now have developers who have been crunching to polish their titles in efforts for one highly publicized promotion, now they have the ability to display them in another one as well. Moreover, this allows for a higher number of entries as candidates. Competition naturally breeds the best in people, and the cream will slowly rise to the top.
The list does look cluttered and disorganized at the moment, and that's because it is. You're looking at the wrong one. Kris has created a new list with all of the qualified candidates, as well as their updated media. We're working to put this on our temporary developer site right now, which is just for the developers in the promotion to see in order to have them vote on titles. Although it's a democratically voted event for the most part, Kris and I still have the executive decision should any "turds" get in, but I doubt it will come to that.
Finally, like I said before, this has nothing to do with immediate sales. Kris and I are organizing this on our own free time and I have nothing to benefit from it. I don't develop titles using XNA (I use Unreal Engine 3), and I no longer write for Armless Octopus. I want the best titles available to be showcased as this event reflects on me as one of the organizers just as much as it would on any of the developers. It's one of the many reasons I'm doing my best to make sure it's organized, efficient, and as public as possible. In the coming weeks you'll begin to see all of our back end work come together.
You are just as negative on the App Hub forums, so I'm not surprised that you would be it here as well.
But to respond your statements, it is actually extremely organized this time around. There's a lot of back end work occurring right now which no one sees other than Kris and myself, and the select few who are assisting. Microsoft is well aware of it at this point as well.
The point of this uprising, is not by any means, to cash in on sales. In fact, the last uprising didn't help out with sales much at all, as a number of the developers I spoke to involved had stated publicly on more than a few occasions. Our goal is to bring eyes to the platform, and showcase the quality games and developers who are on there.
Before we even sent out a press release we've garnered media attention this time around:
Articles
Gamasutra, 6.16.11 Xbox Live Indie Game Uprising Returning For Summer, Taking Nominations
Joystiq, 6.16.11 XBL Indie Game Uprising returns this summer, taking submissions
Armless Octopus, 6.14.11 - The Xbox Live Indie Games Summer Uprising begins in August
DIY Gamer, 6.15.11 Xbox Live Indie Games Summer Uprising Deadline Approaching
Shack News, 6.16.11 Xbox Live Indie Games Uprising returns this summer
MTV Multiplayer, 6.16.11 - Xbox Live Indie Games Will Uprise Again This Summer
True Achievements, 6.16.11 Indie Games Summer Uprising Revealed
Baixaki Jogos, 6.17.11 - Já estão abertas as inscrições para a Xbox LIVE Indie Games Uprising desta temporada
Additionally, from working with others in the professional gaming press over the last year (I'm a hobbyist by all means) I've established a pretty large contact base well, which is another advantage we have over the previous uprising.
Immediately following the Xbox Live Summer of Arcade doesn't really hurt us in any way - in fact it helps us. I can't explain why, at least publicly now, but I should be able to post publicly in a few weeks why it may exactly benefit us.
As far as having DBP around the same time, I only look at it as an advantage. We now have developers who have been crunching to polish their titles in efforts for one highly publicized promotion, now they have the ability to display them in another one as well. Moreover, this allows for a higher number of entries as candidates. Competition naturally breeds the best in people, and the cream will slowly rise to the top.
The list does look cluttered and disorganized at the moment, and that's because it is. You're looking at the wrong one. Kris has created a new list with all of the qualified candidates, as well as their updated media. We're working to put this on our temporary developer site right now, which is just for the developers in the promotion to see in order to have them vote on titles. Although it's a democratically voted event for the most part, Kris and I still have the executive decision should any "turds" get in, but I doubt it will come to that.
Finally, like I said before, this has nothing to do with immediate sales. Kris and I are organizing this on our own free time and I have nothing to benefit from it. I don't develop titles using XNA (I use Unreal Engine 3), and I no longer write for Armless Octopus. I want the best titles available to be showcased as this event reflects on me as one of the organizers just as much as it would on any of the developers. It's one of the many reasons I'm doing my best to make sure it's organized, efficient, and as public as possible. In the coming weeks you'll begin to see all of our back end work come together.
SmallCaveGames
Neo Member
Props man. Looking forward to watching this unfold.
You no longer write for AO?
You no longer write for AO?
Why noone told me that Platformance: Temple of Death is out..right now!! and like the first one just 80 MSPoints ($1)! :O!!
8.56MB by the way.
EDIT:
The Marketplace is wonky..so I can't buy it at the moment!
8.56MB by the way.
EDIT:
The Marketplace is wonky..so I can't buy it at the moment!