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Xbox LIVE Indie Games - The October 2010 Thread

I just bought Fluid on the Xbox.com marketplace. I have to wait until later to play it.

BTW, if anyone here buys an indie game even if it sucks balls can you please give it a rating. It helps the devs out and improves the service. These developers need all the help they can get.
 
Getting Fluid later.

Between real life being rubbish, and Super Meat Boy being awesome, I've fallen behind a bit! Today is catch up day. First:

Bluebones Curse. This is really lovely, from the people behind Being, which is also really lovely. You're a skeleton (with some funny voice work) and you have to traverse a number of small 2D platform levels. It's really satisfying to control, the jumping has a really nice weight to it.

Aagh! reminded me of something, it's like a cross between FlipSide, Soul, and Hypership, sort of. The screen travels quickly left and you control a little ball which you have to manouvre through walls and stuff. The Helicopter Game, it's vaguely like that too. Anyway, you control your little ball and when you hit the wall, you die, and it restarts. Instantly. The instant restarts really make it a somewhat addictive experience. Unfortunately, the level is finite, could have really benefited from an endless mode, but still pretty fun and simple.

Antibody 3D is a 3D platform game, almost. You go around on small platforms collecting pills before making it back to the exit. It's not bad, but poor collision detection on enemies can be frustrating.

Arctic Ball Grind is an odd one. Nearly said "oddball," oh, how funny I am. You control a ball and race it around a course, with inertia/momentum playing a massive part, and you can shift the weight of your ball and everything. There's some real scope to get awesome times here. Except the developers just put in some random fastest lap time that you'll beat the first lap, then there's nothing to aim for. They should have put their own records in. Multiplayer may rescue it slightly.

Alpha Chimp: Episode 1 is pretty horrible. You control a chimp and fight other chimps by throwing rocks and meleeing them. Controls aren't great though, there's a second delay before anything happens.
 

fernoca

Member
Just got Beat Hazard, Explosionade and Crossfire.

EDIT:
Oh! :eek:!
Just got Fluid. (as dirty as it sounds when I say it like that :p)
 
Apparently there's a top 20 indie games feature in Edge this month! Will post the list as soon as I get my copy, hopefully within ten minutes or something.
 
In no particular order...

Ancient Trader
Kodu
I MAED A GAM3 W1TH ZOMB1ES!!!1
Flotilla
Leave Home
Text Zedventure
Platformance
Mithra - Episode 1: The Calling
Apple Jack
Arkedo Series 03 - Pixel!
Miner Dig Deep
Bailout!
Trino
Avatar Golf
Shoot1up
Solar
Sleepwalker
Madrism
Dysnomia
Breath of Death VII

Not sure I'd have Bailout and Text Zedventure in there. They're alright, but there are better games. Old School Racer, for example.

Need to try Madrism and Mithra, don't remember those at all!
 

nli10

Member
toythatkills said:
In no particular order...

Ancient Trader
Kodu
I MAED A GAM3 W1TH ZOMB1ES!!!1
Flotilla
Leave Home
Text Zedventure
Platformance
Mithra - Episode 1: The Calling
Apple Jack
Arkedo Series 03 - Pixel!
Miner Dig Deep
Bailout!
Trino
Avatar Golf
Shoot1up
Solar
Sleepwalker
Madrism
Dysnomia
Breath of Death VII

Off the top of my head I bought 7 of those. Motorheat is my most played game not on this list.
 
toythatkills said:
Need to try Madrism and Mithra, don't remember those at all!

Mithra was a really good looking graphical adventure, only the first episode was released, probably because it didn't sold like hotcakes, It was released on the time when Indie games had more stricted size/price policies, so imo that hurt it a little.
 

Kafel

Banned
Nice cover with that.

EDG221.png
 
In order of goodness, kinda.

radiangames Fluid is excellent. I love it. You have a small level and you have to collect all the little orb things to complete it. When you collect one, though, it turns into an enemy and needs to be avoided. Sneaky. There are power ups and warps along the way, but the key to how good it is is in having a great medal system where you get stars based on your time, and gold stars if you’re REALLY quick. They’re genuinely hard to get. Masses of gameplay in this one. Excellent.

Ripple is a twin stick with a gimmick that works, for a change. You shoot enemies to turn them white, but this doesn’t kill them. The only way to kill them is to press a trigger which sends a ripple pulsing from your ship which kills any white enemy it touches, the more it gets, the higher the combo. So, awesome risk/reward system, in that the more enemies you leave hanging around, the higher your points, but death is pretty quick. It looks great as well, really really retro in the best possible way. Like it.

I don’t think Harmonium is a game, even though it looks like one and it has a timer. You place white squares in a grid and a line sweeps across and depending on where and how many you placed in a column, you’ll get a different sound. So you make little jingles. Basically anything you do sounds kinda cool, I like it. Can adjust the tempo too, or enter Game of Life mode, where the song you made evolves with every pass. Really nice.

Pumpkin Chop 2 isn’t a game either, but is also kinda neat. You just carve a pumpkin and then show it off, and it’s pretty nice looking. The carving works really well, you could get some awesome results with a bit of effort.

Cutouts is a lot of fun. It's a 2D platformer like from years gone by. Three lives. Collect 100 things for a new life. Jump on enemies heads, it's great. The music is really lovely and of course, it looks really cool. As soon as the background starts scrolling you smile at the care that must have gone into making it. Enjoyed a lot.

Blazin' Balls Xtreme Edition is cool. You have to manouvre your ball to the end of a thin course in as quick a time as possible. There are loads of coloured panels which affect you. Cyan inverts left and right, blue jumps, red slows you down, etc. Yellow is pretty funny. It's a pretty fun game to mess with, but thinking about it now I can't remember what it had in the way of leaderboards. Really could use online ones for maximum fun. Checked the trial. No leaderboards at all. Missed potential.

DUENDE <デュエンディ>I liked, I think. It’s weird. It looks really cool, dark, brooding. I like the auto-lock on because I’m shite at these kinds of games. It’s a mech based third person shooter type thing. There doesn’t seem to be much wrong with it that I can see, I enjoyed playing it. I think I enjoyed the look more than the game, overall, though…

Ava Bash is a bunch of 4 player minigames. They're not particularly thrilling or anything, track and field type things without the interesting backdrop. Competent.

Avatar Laser Tag has a cool-looking title screen which implies it's going to be some kind of isometric shooter, but of course, when you play it it's as good as an FPS game, third person over the shoulder type affair with a crosshair and that. It's not that bad, really. The arena was pretty big and it looked good, the avatars were an alright addition. Aiming and shooting wasn't great, but in a match online everyone's hindered the same. I say everyone, I mean just you, because surely nobody's playing online?

Then, bizarrely, Avatar Laser Wars comes out the same day. Didn't like this as much. Only seems to be one level, a tiny little spaceship affair, and why isn't the world bored as fuck of shooting stuff on space ships at this point? Also, lawsuit from Lucas surely pending.

Avatar Massage ONLINE is, oh I don't care, just insert whatever swearwords you want.

Cosmic Crash is a twin stick that takes four hours to get going, and even longer to die. Even if you're intentionally trying to die it takes ages. Got bored long before the game (presumably) gets going.

Defense Matrix is a tower defence game presented in blurrovision. It's really basic, ugly, and doesn't appear to do anything that would elevate it beyond any other TD game.

I would love to like Fear The Dronx but I can’t because it appears to be rubbish. You have to direct blocks around to destroy creatures and what should be a cool Chu Chu Rocket style puzzle game is far too action-oriented and it just doesn’t work at all as it is. There was no fun to be had.

Get Rich or Die Gaming is a horrible looking, horribly voiced point and click game. Humour largely fails, with swearing in place of actual laughs. Can’t recommend much.

Lab Rabbit is a slow, slow, awkward platform game, with pointlessly complex jumping mechanics.

LEUCISTIC WYVERNリューシスティックワイバーン, talk amongst yourselves. I have no idea if this was any good because I couldn’t work out how to play it, and the controls were inverted (or not inverted) so I couldn’t play it long enough without dying because I just couldn’t control it. Is it good? Seemed kinda awkward, with explosions obscuring the entire screen at times.

Mark the Mechanic is an average enough platformer, there’s just so little going on that it’s massively boring to actually play.

Racer Rocket is in no way a racing game. You press a button to launch your rocket then press B every 30 seconds or so as you watch all the other rockets fly away. Right.

Tiny Tim’s Tremendous Tank is some kind of tank based Trials game? Maybe? I certainly got to a hay stack and flipped upside down and then sat there because the game doesn’t actually explain what your goal is or how to shift weight to overcome such obstacles. You can shoot cute fluffy animals too, for some reason.
 

mokeyjoe

Member
On the recommendation of this thread I just bought Hypership Out of COntrol. Glad I did, I've been playing it solid fo rthe last 2 hours.

Still didn't get past wave 8...
 
Fluid has fantastic presentation, but I didn't like the gameplay.

Ripple has a novel mechanic, but again it didn't really work for me.
 
I love the way Fluid makes me have to have one more go to shave milliseconds off my time. I love the effect in Ripple that you get when the ripple hits the wall. It's really simple, but quite pretty.

The Chaos Gateway is a visual novel, of the kind I'm led to believe the Japanese enjoy so much. It's kinda interesting only because I can't remember the last time I saw one on a console in English. So even though the writing isn't great, and the story is a bit convenient and lazy feeling, it's still weirdly compelling. Looks like there's some basic QTE type minigames in there too. If you ever enjoyed Choose Your Own Adventure books, this is probably for you!

Mower is a first person game where you mow a lawn, and that's literally all it is. Mental.

Head Shot Z is another Silver Dollar Games affair, and their second game in a row that I haven't hated. I mean, it's not amazing or anything, but it's playable and has a decent scoring mechanic. You have people on a horizontal plane, and some are zombies. You have to move your crosshair and shoot them. You then get a little gauge that you can press A at with the correct timing to reload quicker, which is neat. You get scored at the end for things like accuracy and not having any humans get killed by you or them. The best bit is when you kill the final zombie on a level, it's pretty satisfying. This is gonna top the Top Downloads charts for the next three months so get used to seeing it, but it's not so bad, really.

Impossibly Dodgable is a minigame I swear I've played in Mario Party before. You just run forward moving left and right to dodge stuff. It's too slow and clumsy to be that much fun, unfortunately.
 
The Chaos Gate seems a bit silly and contrived. Japanese visual novels are already super boring, but The Chaos Gate takes it up a notch.

Like, it'll provide you a list of named areas to choose from on where to go next, and then you pick the area, and it shows you a titlecard? You don't have to sit there and fade out and go "THE MYSTERIOUS FACILITY" when it's been previously established in the preceding menu.

The "combat" third eye stuff brings to mind plenty of bad flash games you see on Newgrounds.
 
Avatar Mini-Putt Challenge isn't amazing, but it's not bad. Not the massivest game in the world and you'll probably see everything it has to offer within half an hour, but there's always scope to better your score so there's some replay value there. It controls like a decent game of mini-golf should control. It could just be more... Exciting, is all.

Oh Noes!!1 puts you in charge of a giant chicken bent on world domination. You dominate said world by taking part in a really dull game. You stand in the same place as the world scrolls around and hold the right stick in the same place to kill everything that comes nearby until you've had enough of it. Then you stop. The jaunty piano music is pretty cool for the first minute or so, then is incredibly tiresome.
 
toythatkills said:
In no particular order...

Ancient Trader
Kodu
I MAED A GAM3 W1TH ZOMB1ES!!!1
Flotilla
Leave Home
Text Zedventure
Platformance
Mithra - Episode 1: The Calling
Apple Jack
Arkedo Series 03 - Pixel!
Miner Dig Deep
Bailout!
Trino
Avatar Golf
Shoot1up
Solar
Sleepwalker
Madrism
Dysnomia
Breath of Death VII

No Mamotte Knight?
Wow..
 
PepsimanVsJoe said:
No Mamotte Knight?
Wow..
Yeah, there's a lot of great games missing with good games in their place.

Last night I played Of Steel and Sorcery, which I just quit about 20% of the way into the first battle. Which actually took about two minutes, I'm pretty sure the trial isn't long enough to kill the damn thing. You can do 8/9 points of damage, and it heals 10 every turn or other turn. It has over 500 HP. You basically hammer A and that's it. You can buff slightly but it barely made a difference to how long it was taking. It was like playing Track and Field as an RPG and it took so long to reduce its HP by 100 I just could not be bothered to continue. And that was the very first battle. Can't play a game full of that.

Chain Reaction has tons of dots on the screen floating around. You press A and a dot expands for a few seconds, any dots that hit it expand, any dots that... and so on. I like the idea, I've seen it before, but it never ever feels like a game. You press A at random and cross your fingers, that's all you can do.
 
Yeesh I have so much to get caught up on when I finally get my Xboxlive back.

Going nearly a month without internet access has nearly killed me.
 

AKingNamedPaul

I am Homie
sciplore said:
This isn't a monthly response right? I haven't bought one indie game yet, And I want to buy at least 2. I have tried the demos for Soul and Fluid, as well as lab rabbit and I am seriously considering Soul/Fluid.

I asked for the best 2 games, But now that I put some thought into it, I think what I want is a platformer. Thanks to anyone willing to help.
 
D

Deleted member 1235

Unconfirmed Member
why isn't this stuff good enough for europe?
 

sciplore

Member
FootNinja said:
This isn't a monthly response right? I haven't bought one indie game yet, And I want to buy at least 2. I have tried the demos for Soul and Fluid, as well as lab rabbit and I am seriously considering Soul/Fluid.

I asked for the best 2 games, But now that I put some thought into it, I think what I want is a platformer. Thanks to anyone willing to help.
It is a weekly response actually and I was a bit dissappointed that you only just want two. But since you did put more info for the kind of genre you want I would recommend:

Both Arkedo games: Pixel and Jump. I think Pixel is the best but Jump had its quirks too.
Another good one is Apple Jack.

Honestly two is still hard for me to decide so just try the trails from the top-rated list. A lot of good platformers to dig through.
 

djtiesto

is beloved, despite what anyone might say
Anybody play Aphelion (I think that's the name?). Was wondering what people thought of the full game. It's a turn-based RPG with actual battle animation and fairly decent 2D graphics, even if the main character's running animation looks very strange and awkward. Plus I'm a fan of sci-fi settings in RPGs.

Any GAF made games on the service yet aside from the forthcoming Dudebro? I'm gonna try my hand at making a J-adventure style game really soon.
 
Dudebro isn't coming to Indies, is it?

Aesop's Garden and Star Crisis are by StAiden. Excruciating Guitar Voyage is made by someone here, as is 360 Megapack HD Remix (don't let the name put you off.) Trumpets posts here, he made Apple Jack, best game on the service.

There are plenty more I've forgotten, I'm sure, and there are some that are made by people that are registered here but not authorised to post yet...
 

N4Us

Member
Chaos Gateway is *really* short. Like, I played it for about an hour and a half and all of a sudden, roll credits.

It's not bad if you're itching for an interactive story game, though. Kinda wish there was more variety to the action parts though, it was all just the arrows game and a number puzzle.
 
N4Us said:
Chaos Gateway is *really* short. Like, I played it for about an hour and a half and all of a sudden, roll credits.
That's not that bad, for a $3 game.

Decay - Part 1 was about 10 minutes long :lol
 
Quantum Ninja, oh my God, it's amazing. In a "how can a game be so bad?" kind of way. It's a 2D platformer in which you don't run on the platforms, you run slightly above them, and your shadow casts on the sky behind you. You don't have any kind of attack aside from Super Sonic which you get from a red diamond pickup. You can jump through certain walls. Platforms sometimes appear at random (this is not a game mechanic, this is pop-up in a 2D platform game). The sound when you die is horrendous. The menu is the blandest thing you'll ever see. I almost love it.

Br00t4l Qwest. Nice name. Joke's old now. It's a horrible game. You move an awkward character around thin corridors shooting stuff and finding buttons to reach exit. It's Inferno if Inferno were ugly and not at all pleasant to play.

Burn1420 is an ugly shmup on a ridiculously small playing field. It would be quite fun as a bullet hell type affair were it not so slow. Weird controls, too. You can only switch auto-fire off or on, rather than shooting.

Melon Madness is a 2D Association Football game. It doesn't work very well, because all you can do is move left and right, but rather than press left to move left a bit, you press left a bit and it just keeps going and going. It's really hard to play, and everything's so fast that the games are just luck, in the end.

Avatarmageddon is terrible. The plainest, dullest, boringest over-the-shoulder shooter I've ever played. Your enemies are coloured squares, that's how much effort's gone into this one.
 
djtiesto said:
Any GAF made games on the service yet aside from the forthcoming Dudebro? I'm gonna try my hand at making a J-adventure style game really soon.
Yeah, if you have any experience programming at all it's a piece of cake. C# is much much easier than other languages like C++, and XNA is so simple it practically writes itself.

Like my game, Opposites, includes online multiplayer over Xbox Live. I would've never attempted something like that before, but XNA wraps everything up so well it was a peice of cake.

The new XNA 4.0 coming out makes it even easier and cleans up a bunch of stuff like the audio (no more XACT, blech!). It's also incredibly satisfying getting your stuff on the 360.

Too bad there's no money in it :(
 
the_dannobot said:
Too bad there's no money in it :(

There is money in it if the effort level and the creative are high enough. Also, the $1 a game thing shouldn't be the expectation for games with effort applied to them. It is unfair to the creators and impossible to ask given the marketshare.
 
Warm Machine said:
There is money in it if the effort level and the creative are high enough.
:lol look at the best-seller list and explain to me how all those crappy avatar/zombie/massager games required effort level and creative

I stand by my statement. Sorry dude, making XBLIG is easy and fun, but compared to similar markets like iphone and android, there's no money in it.
 
the_dannobot said:
:lol look at the best-seller list and explain to me how all those crappy avatar/zombie/massager games required effort level and creative

I stand by my statement. Sorry dude, making XBLIG is easy and fun, but compared to similar markets like iphone and android, there's no money in it.

Name me a good high production value game on indie...then name me one that hasn't made money.

First, a high production value game on indie doesn't really exist. There is little on there that honestly should be on XBLA.

and besides from the App Hub forum....

Baller Industries:
The first ten days for Get Rich or Die Gaming

Period Statistics Trials: 54590
Purchases: 9641
Purchase/Trial Ratio: 17.66 %

54590 people went to the service and downloaded the guy's trial. 9641 people bought the game. If the game was better the tie ratio would have been even better. No one can say that no one is going to the service. You can argue that the quality of the games that people are getting is not high enough to get them to lay out the money.
 
Warm Machine said:
The first ten days for Get Rich or Die Gaming
After the first week or so the game is taken off the New Releases list. If it hasn't made it onto one of the other lists like Best Selling or Top Rated, downloads and sales will taper off significantly. Basically, any money to be made is made while the game is on the new releases list.

Warm Machine said:
If the game was better the tie ratio would have been even better.
If the game was for iphone, he'd be driving a ferrari by now ;)

I still stand by my statement. Making games for XBLIG is rewarding and fun, and the XNA framework takes a lot of the tedium out of game development. Just don't quit your day job.

Akira said:
I haven't bought an XBLIG game ever and I have 100 pts left. What's the one game I need to get?
Radiangames: Inferno is one of my favorites and only costs 80 points.
 
The Beat Hazard guy made over 100k in 9 months. Time vs. effort that is more money than most people make in the game industry.

The problem with iPhone is that there are too many good games on the service. Competition is harder so if you are the average run of the mill indie game you'll get stomped and buried.

No one has yet to release anything on indie that approaches the equivalent XBLA game which I find very strange. Avatar Golf is probably the closest but that is miles from Golf: Tee it Up.

Radian Games games are really good and I'll buy sight unseen but his production values need to jump a bit and his art needs to be more approachable instead of abstract. Geo Wars 2 is still a more polished experience than anything he has made and it has been over 2 years since that game released.
 
I really liked For Glory. It's kind of Roguey, in a way. You have to fight right and right and right until you die, then you start again from the beginning with upgrades you've bought with all the gold you won the last time through. You get further, and further. Etc. It's really simple, but the gameplay fits really nicely with the style which looks kinda simple in screenshots but in motion looks awesome.

Turret Battlefield; not so good. Kind of like Pong but instead of bouncing a ball, you shoot your opponent with guns. The rate of fire is so slow that it's really easy to avoid, and really hard to hit your opponent. Games go on for a loooong time and there's nothing exciting that happens that holds your attention for that long.
 

Shig

Strap on your hooker ...
Warm Machine said:
No one has yet to release anything on indie that approaches the equivalent XBLA game which I find very strange. Avatar Golf is probably the closest but that is miles from Golf: Tee it Up.
Eh, I think you're overselling the bottom tier of stuff that makes it onto XBLA... Encleverment Experiment, OD Beat Drop, Pirates vs. Ninjas Dodgeball, etc...

Stuff like CarneyVale Showtime, Flotilla, and Explosionade could hang on XBLA if those can, I'd say.
 

Joshery

Neo Member
As we've done with our past two games (Dreams of Witchtown, and Zombie Sniper HD) we want to throw some love to the best indie game player community around here on NeoGAF. Here are some free tokens for Elite Pinball HD which released yesterday 11/4/2010:

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MPPYX-XY27M-DDHK7-VR7JX-WF2KY
DTQCW-HYMX6-RKWY6-FVD84-T9JX3
BWB46-BQYK9-TRQBK-MRQBJ-CBRDT
B9642-FWJMV-XT2XH-GFVYC-B8DHJ

Game can be downloaded here: http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/Product/Elite-Pinball-HD/66acd000-77fe-1000-9115-d802585506c8
 
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