Indie Games Uprising Part Dos
Last week, I wrote about the first four games of the Indie Games Winter Uprising– a self-made initiative by some of the Xbox Indie Games developers to really highlight some of the better games that are available for you to spend a few bucks on. To help them out (and to provide myself with some games to play so that I don’t buy any new full priced games before Christmas), I have decided that I will download all their demos and write reviews on these games.
According to their official websites, this promotion is actually working out well. Apparently Epic Dungeon (which I liked, purchased, and spoke of highly last time) managed to sell over 1,000 copies in its first day. I attribute this directly to my review last week, which is 100% true if you completely disregard that my article wasn’t even written by then. I also will take the credit for Decimation X3 (the first of the games for this week) already becoming the #1 indie games selection in Japan, even though we have zero readers in Japan. I’m quite the catalyst for indie game sales.
This past week it was announced that due to most of the games taking longer than anticipated that the “weeklong” promotion will now be “monthly.” This works out well for me, because I don’t want to try and write about 10 more games this week, and that means the ones I do write about I will be able to write more than “I like this game” or “This game is shit squared.” Instead, I can get a little in-depth about each one, and let you know if I think it’s worth spending your MS Points scraps you have laying around after you bought Costume Quest like I recommended before, and grabbed the Winter-themed DLC. You did buy it… didn’t you???
Of course you did, or else I’d be writing these for nobody but me and Burmart who is only reading this because he is at work and bored. Now, onto week two of the Indie Games Winter Uprising, which starts with what is so far my favorite pick of the promotion.
Decimation X3 – 80 MS Points ($1)
Whaaaaaat?
Plain and simple, this is Space Invaders, but with power-ups, 4 player simultaneous play, and boss fight style levels. And it’s amazing. I played the demo for this and purchased it as soon as I died. I know some of you are thinking, “Really, Jeremy P? Space Invaders? What year is it and why should I care?” Well, to you people I say, “Because it’s fucking great and it’s $1 so get it.” This is exactly the sort of game that I was hoping to see via this promotion — fast, simple, and fun.
So other than telling you “hey—Space Invaders,” I suppose I’ll describe the game in case somehow you have managed to get to whatever age you are and somehow haven’t played Space Invaders. In Decimation X3, you are a nameless ship on the bottom of the screen. You move left and right, shooting monsters that move across the screen, dropping down towards the bottom of the screen each time they hit the side of the screen. To add some sort of difficulty, the monsters will fire downwards and you will have to dodge their fire. Please do me a favor—if somehow you have managed to never play Space Invaders and this description actually worked let me know. I can’t imagine we have one reader who doesn’t know what Space Invaders is. My dad even knows what Space Invaders is, and he pretty much hates everything that isn’t Fox News or The Three Stooges (but not Shemp… nobody likes Shemp).
“So how is Decimation X3 different from Space Invaders? Why wouldn’t I just plug in my Intellivision and play Space Armada instead?” That’s a really good question, Jeremy P. I wish all my fake audience members were as insightful as you are. First off, thumbs up to you for using the far superior Space Armada instead of the awful Atari 2600 version of Space Invaders, this shows that you have class. Secondly, I sort of answered you already in the first paragraph… there are power-ups and bosses. Lots of power-ups. Not only do they fall from guys you have destroyed, but after a certain amount of enemies are destroyed, a power-up meter fills up and a stream of power-ups fall from the sky, allowing you to get a drastic change in your ship’s abilities in no time at all. You’ll need all the power-ups you can grab, because to counteract your inevitable transformation into a spreadshot cannon with both a personal shield and overhead ablative shields, the game replies by literally covering the screen in enemy shots in the later levels. It might start out easy, but give it a few levels… it picks up fast. If that’s still too easy for you, try out the harder mode where there are no shields at all. I can’t imagine that I’d last even 5 levels on that mode.
As I said before, I did buy this one. I’d compare it to Geometry Wars in relation to graphic style, simplicity of play, and difficulty level. Unlike Geometry Wars, this is only $1. I can’t recommend this highly enough if you like shooters at all.
Asteroids Do Concern Me – 80 MS Points ($1)
Pew! Pew! Pew!
The award for “most overproduced game on the Indie Games Uprising” goes to Asteroids Do Concern Me. From the moment I started playing it, I was impressed with the amount of polish put into the game. You are treated to an epic story that spans generations, a story of man vs. the elements, a story of man’s triumph read out loud as if this was a story of biblical relevance, and is accompanied by an equally impressive musical score that prepares your entire being for greatness. The set-up to this game would make you believe that you’re about to play not only the most amazing Xbox Indie Game of all time, but in fact the most amazing game of all time. This game might make you throw all your other games out in disgust that they aren’t even a fraction of the game that Asteroids Do Concern Me builds itself up to be.
And then you play the game and it’s… that flash helicopter game, except your ship looks sort of like a penis.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a way prettier version of the flash helicopter game… but it’s a one button game where you thrust towards the ceiling when you push the button, and fall towards the ground when you release that one button. That’s the only button you push. There are no other controls, no directions to push, no shots you can fire, nothing but “push A to thrust, release A to stop thrust.” You can play this exact game for free on a million websites—but nowhere else can you play it with over 100 different messages to taunt you when you crash into an asteroid. Nowhere else can you play it with 4 different modes like Notebook mode where the game looks like it was drawn onto notebook paper in black and white, or Double Rainbow mode where there are unicorns and hot air balloons.
I can’t explain why I love this game, because I could just play the free version and it’s the same exact game, yet here I am playing this repeatedly and getting no better at it. I paid the $1 it cost for this game, because if nothing else I’ll reward the effort put forth into making this game humorous and because I’m sort of impressed at the balls it takes to make this game and then charge $1 for it. Well done.
Chu’s Destiny – 240 MS Points ($3)
ChhhuuUUUuuUUUUU!
I have a confession to make before I get to this game: sometimes I like to wait until you’re asleep and then I stare at you while you sleep for hours. I have another confession to make: I’ve never liked the Smash Bros. series of games. I’m not quite sure why not, the idea of playing Mario or Link or Samus fighting against up to 3 other players should be fun for me. Everyone else seems to love the series. I just don’t get the appeal. Smash Bros comes across as chaotic and unfun for me. I even tried it again with Brawl on the Wii, and I still don’t like it. Maybe it’s because Power Stone is a far superior 4 player fighting game design, but I could play that game for hours, and have never enjoyed any of the Smash Bros. games for more than 10 minutes tops.
Why did I have to make this confession? Well, because if we’re not honest about these things we’re never going to make this relationship work, no matter how many romantic comedies we watch or Bryan Adams songs we listen to. Also, because I believe that my dislike of Smash Bros has a lot to do with my immediate reactions to Chu’s Destiny. This is the first game of this promotion that I don’t like at all—and I don’t necessarily think it’s because this is a bad game as much as it’s a game that I will never enjoy.
According to the developers page, this game has been 2 years in the making. It’s definitely got a lot of quality to the visuals and feel of the game, and it’s a very good quality clone of Nintendo’s mascot brawler, but to me at least it’s not quite there. The controls are fairly responsive, but something about the collision between character moves and the art style for the game (which is very pretty in motion) just makes the game sort of feel wonky– like it’s missing some animation frames or something. After playing the above two games, with incredible control (for their appropriate genres), this one just doesn’t feel as tight. For me, tight control is a necessity for fighting games, or else it just feels like I’m mindlessly mashing buttons. Add in that you only get 4 characters that are just different enough from each other and this game just left me feeling like I’m missing something.
So, keeping in mind that I’m the only person that doesn’t like Smash Bros., my review of this game is “meh.” It’s the first of these games to cost more than $1, but it’s only a whopping $3. This could turn out to be the best indie game ever released on the Xbox, and I might be the only person who doesn’t like it, but even my second, third, and fourth impression of this game is that I’ll spend my $3 elsewhere. However, if you like these sort of games and don’t own a Wii– maybe you should give this one a try. There are loads of other places online that liked this game, so it might just be me.
Soulcaster II – 240 MS Points ($3)
Go forth.
This game is more interesting than I thought it would be. Based on the trailer and the general look of the game, I thought this would be another Gauntlet-style game like last week’s Epic Dungeon, but instead this is a far more interesting concept. Soulcaster II is instead a weird blend of RPG, action, and real-time strategy, and I can’t think of another game it’s similar to. I was going to describe it as “a simpler 2d Overlord,” but I might as well just say, “It’s like a slower Pac Man… but not in a maze… and there are no dots or ghosts… and you cast spells.” Not useful.
Instead, here’s a useful description. In Soulcaster II, you are a summoning magician and you must make your way through levels collecting gold and such while fighting enemies. Alright, I just described every fantasy game ever made. What makes this different from most other fantasy games is the way you fight — you yourself can’t really fight outside of some emergency “kill all enemies on screen” scrolls (which are few and far between). Instead, you summon 3 different types of units to help you survive. There’s an archer who does a lot of damage at range but can’t take a lot, a warrior-type that can take a lot of hits but can only fight adjacent units, and a mage-type who seems to do a lot of damage but can’t take more than a hit or two before dying. Even in the early levels you can clear in the demo get pretty hectic with summoning, dismissing, resummoning, and generally trying to find the best placement for your summoned crew to be to kill everything before it kills you.
It’s not quite as fast as Epic Dungeon, but it’s not a slow RTS-style game either. You’ve got to be pretty quick with setting up your team into a useful unit, or you’ll die fast. There are shops where you can upgrade your units or buy more scrolls / potions for your own safety, but the first shop I went to had a lot of stuff that was way out of my price range and I got all the money I could in the previous levels. You’ll really want to upgrade those units, so money isn’t trivial either.
This one was a nice surprise for me. I didn’t expect anything even remotely like this from this game. Apparently I could have tried the original Soulcaster and had a pretty good idea of what to expect, but up until this promotion I hadn’t really given the indie games channel a second thought since first seeing nothing but avatar games, zombie games, trivia games, and games where your avatars answer trivia about zombies. It’s a rare game that doesn’t allow me to say that it’s exactly like any other game at this point, and Soulcaster II is exactly that sort of game. It definitely feels like several other games, but none of them are just like it. I managed to get to about level 6 before my time ran out, and then I had to decide — was this game worth 240 MS Points? When you say “hey, I just bought a game that’s alright and it was only $3!” it somehow makes it seem obvious, but when you’re staring at a screen where you only have 240 MS Points left it becomes a tougher choice. I ended up going with grabbing it.
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So we’re at the end of the second week of the Indie Games Winter Uprising with 8 games down, 6 to go. If I’m lucky, the breakdown will be 3 this coming week and 3 the week after that, but there’s a chance I’ll have to cover 6 next week. I suppose that’s better than only one showing up next week and the rest of the article being filled with pictures I took of my cat in funny outfits. At any rate, here’s the third installment here.
So far, even the games I don’t really like are at least worth trying the demo for, and this really seems to be helping them get some notice among the daily supply of new games to the service, which seems to include at least one zombie themed game. I can’t believe that I’m saying this– but ok, I’m done with zombies now. Thanks.
Of the remaining six games, we’ve got 2 RPGs, two shooters (including Crossfire 2, which looks amazing), and two action games including the next game from Dishwasher: Dead Samurai developer, Ska Studios. I’m pretty sure I’m going to like all 6 of these that are left, and thankfully I can pay for all of them with a handful of change, which conveniently is the total amount of money I’ve ever made writing on the internet.
A request — If you are enjoying these reviews and would be interested in making this a regular feature where we find the best (and of course the worst) of the previous weeks worth of Xbox Indie Games, let us know. I like writing these and would continue, but Amanda keeps pushing to dedicate Wednesdays to her awful Star Trek poetry and it’s getting hard to fend her off.
Finally, someone else that doesn’t like SMB. I thought I was the onl one.
Indie games deserve better recognition. There are some really good gems buried in mountains of fart and zombie games. It’s a shame that no one else really gives the genuinely fun games the coverage they deserve.
Edit: another perfect example
http://kotaku.com/5714036/seems-the-xbox-360s-indie-uprising-was-more-of-a-mild-foot+stamp
I mean, any coverage is better than no coverage, but that’s a pretty rough article. Decimation X3 would have been worth $5 easily, and at $1 it’s a steal. Thankfully (that’s probably not the right word…) the indie developers are used to pretty much getting no recognition, except for the occasional enthusiast blog mention. So far, the developers seem pretty pleased with how the promotion went.
… although I do kind of agree with the comment that half of the games are still not out and it’s well past the week they promoted. That’s sort of a bad model for a promotion.
That said, I’m keeping it up, the rest of these games look like they won’t disappoint.