Miner Dig Deep

March 6, 2012 by 13 Comments

Occasionally I’ll get bored trying to pick from newly released Xbox Live Indie Games and put out a call on Twitter asking for older stuff on the platform that has the chops to compete for my leaderboard.  Normally, this results in stuff that I like.  Sure, I thought Apple Jack was hugely overrated, and in retrospect the choice of NYAN-TECH was baffling, but a pair of games have landed on the board.  Those being Decimation X3 and Johnny Platform Saves Christmas, if you were curious.  Of course, I don’t take on every game that’s suggested.  Since starting Indie Gamer Chick in July, one title has popped up more than any other, by far.  And yet, I avoided it.  Why?  Well, call me shallow, but the game had box art that looked like this.

And screen shots that looked like this.

Plus it seems to be riding coattails on the Minecraft craze, which I’m not against, but I just haven’t given it a try yet.  I just figured Miner Dig Deep would be no good.  So I ignored it.  And now I feel like this.

To clarify, this is a picture of a jackass, not Nate Graves. Although the two are interchangeable.

In Miner Dig Deep, the object is to collect precious metals from deep inside the Earth.  Why?  So you can buy better equipment.  What do you use that equipment for?  To collect precious metals from deeper inside the Earth.  And so forth, and so forth.  I don’t get the comparisons to Minecraft myself.  My understanding is that game is equal parts harvesting and building.  Besides the occasional elevator, you have nothing to build here. So it’s all digging, all the time.

Make no bones about it: Miner Dig Deep is a time sink and nothing more.  It has no purpose and no clear objective.  It’s also got addiction potency that rivals weapons-grade heroin.  How addictive are we talking here?  I was ready to write a Dear John letter to Brian and let him know that I had discovered a new love in life and it was time for us to go our separate ways.  And I totally would have done it, if I could have pried myself away from the game long enough.

The grind of making minimal progress and trying to figure out exactly what upgrades to get, only to come up just short on funds and having to dredge back into the mine is both soul-crushingly dismal yet oddly satisfying.  Not so satisfying was filling my pockets with premium materials only to get cocky and stay in the mine long after the kerosene for my lantern had run out, usually resulting in me getting bludgeoned to death by a falling boulder.  If you die, all metals you’ve pocketed are lost, so save often and remember to load if you die, because that stuff you lost isn’t coming back.  It’s gone to where your dog Spot went when it got ran over by that UPS truck.  You know.  Hell.

I wasn’t kidding about the “just a little bit longer” quality of Miner Dig Deep.  I put about six hours into it.  I’m pretty sure I was having a good time.  Brian said it was hard to tell from his perspective.  I tried to explain to him that joy is expressed in me through slumping six inches down into a couch, mouth gaped, drool slowly cascading off my lips, unblinking eyes locked on a television.  He said “whatever” and spent the rest of the day playing Gears of War on his Xbox and trying to convince people that he really does love his girlfriend, the carrot.

Duhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

But all good things must come to an end.  I got to the point in the game where I could no longer place elevators and had to dig for myself.  After finishing upgrades to my drill and buying a large tank of gas to go with it, I dug myself to about 1,500 meters.  Down there, I was harvesting dozens of gems worth 250K a pop.  I was so excited I started singing “We’re in the Money!” while birds fell dead off of power lines and the seas started to boil.  I dug a little more and came across an enormous diamond.  My eyes bugged out and I screamed to Brian “OH MY GOD, LOOK AT THIS ONE!”  And then, as I approached it, the screen faded out and fireworks started to go off.  The game was over.

What?

No.

No, come on, Miner Dig Deep.  Maybe we were spending too much time together, but I think it was too soon to call things off.

I had been dumped.

What followed was the gaming equivalent of a jilted lover cutting her ex’s brake line.  The game gives you the option to continue with your current mine or start a new one while retaining your current items.  For some reason, I figured a new one might have new things.  Sadly, that’s not the case.  Even worse, if you gather “blueprints” that allow you to buy new items, you can’t get rid of them, and they take up a spot in your inventory.  But that’s no problem.  I just bought 100 large elevators and proceeded to line them all in a row across the top of the map.  Now, if you dig too wide open a space in your mine, it can result in a cave in.  Well, elevators can’t be caved in.  So instead the game shook, declaring that a cave-in was happening, although none could be seen.  Finally, the frame rate sputtered and the game crashed.  Ha, serves it right.

Yes, I gave the game the best 300 minutes of my life and it left me high and dry.  But that’s okay, because I’ll always have the memories.  Was Miner Dig Deep the leaderboard contender everyone told me it was?  To hell with the leaderboard.  If things hadn’t ended when they did, I was totally prepared to bear its children.

Miner Dig Deep was developed by Substance Games

80 Microsoft Points tried to explain to their boyfriend that the game really meant nothing to them and he was the only one for me in the making of this review.

Gameplay footage courtesy of this guy.

 

 

Filed under XBLIG / Creators Collection Tagged with

Bug Ball

March 4, 2012 by 7 Comments

Last month, I stumbled upon an Xbox Live Indie Game with beautiful pre-rendered graphics, online play, and a sense of whimsy that could earn the seal of approval from Disney.  Seriously, Bug Ball is just so damn cute I want to hug it and kiss it and love it forever.  Of course, I do so at the risk of infecting myself with leprosy.  As it turns out, the name of the game is quite appropriate.

Ever wonder what the enemies in Pikmin do when Olimar wasn't around? Now you know.

The idea is basically “A Bug’s Life” meets volleyball.  You play as various bugs.  A ball falls.  You want to hit it towards your opponent and hope they don’t return it.  The controls operate like a non-sporting platform game.  A jumps, B does a “spike” jump (which catches the ball and throws it), and the triggers dash to the left and right.  As a fun fact, the original build of the game always had the right trigger going the direction your bug was facing and the left trigger always had it go in the opposite direction.  Well, apparently anyone could recognize how this could be impossible to get the hang of.  Well, anyone but the guys behind Bug Ball.  Thankfully, Brian and I were on the case.  You see, we were unable to fully play Bug Ball due to some severe online glitches, and informed the developers that I would hold off on reviewing their game until some fixes were in.  And then, while they were at it, they should clear up some of the issues with movement as well.

And they did.  Edible Entertainment took on our suggestions exactly as we said them, removing 90% of the stuff I planned on complaining about in this review.  The jumping physics are spot on.  The quick-dash is vastly improved.  When the game is playable, it’s a damn fun experience, and an easy leaderboard contender.  Mostly because it keeps things simple and focused on delivering the most entertaining possible experience.  It embraces its fantasy-sports persona and uses it.  Imagine if a real volleyball game (bore-ring) started tossing extra balls into play that the teams had to keep track of as well.  That happens in Bug Ball.  If the ball comes in contact with a spiny thingie that walks across the ceiling, it splits in two, with each ball now counting against your score.  Ah, but the spiny bug thingie can appear again to further split the ball.  Brian and I had volleys with a half-dozen balls in play all at once.  And trust me when I say, our smiles were never bigger.

Unfortunately, Bug Ball is still besieged with glitches.  Most of them are firmly stuck in online play, so if you’re playing local-only, you’re sure to have a blast.  Maybe the game is a little bit too anal about what constitutes the ball hitting the ground, but otherwise things run smoothly.  Online, shit gets pretty buggy.  It’s not as bad as it once was, where the ball would often go invisible to everyone but the game’s host.  Having said that, I was able to cause the game to “lag out” simply by playing close to the net.  Or by tapping the A button to float in the air.  Or by taking too long to serve the ball.  Or by dashing around before the ball is served.  Or by using the “spike” jump to bounce on and off the ceiling.  Or if more than two balls enter the play field.  Come to think of it, online Bug Ball seems to have problems when you do anything but play the most basic of game with it.

I can only work with the assets I'm given, and for whatever reason the developers decided to post a static shot of the courts on the Marketplace page without any of the action going on. Guys, be more choosey. These pictures could be your one and only chance at making an impression on potential buyers. For the record, the graphics totally hold up in gameplay. These static shots made me think the graphics would suck. They don't, but if I didn't know that I would guess the developers were hiding something.

It’s such a shame, because when Bug Ball worked, it was one of the best times I’ve had playing an Xbox Live Indie Game.  It’s not particularly deep, and it probably won’t excite the type of crowds who expect some kind of six-hour long epic for their $1.  At Indie Gamer Chick, my only criteria has always been “be fun.”  Bug Ball is amazingly fun.  Maybe it’s a call to developers that they should get back to basics.  Drop all the pretentious fluff and filler and accentuate the actual gameplay.  Work it.  Refine it.  Don’t settle for “good enough.”  Strive to be better than all the rest.  If you’re going to put in a half-assed effort, stop developing for XBLIG and go fiddle-fart around with someone who shares your don’t-give-a-shit attitude.  I hear Sega is hiring.

Bug Ball was developed by Edible Entertainment

80 Microsoft Points said more like Buggy Ball.  Nah, that makes it sound like a version of soccer played by Volkswagens in the making of this review.

A review copy of Bug Ball was provided by Edible Entertainment to Indie Gamer Chick.  The copy played by Kairi was purchased by her with her own Microsoft Points.  The review code was given to someone else to provide her with a proper online experience.  That person was not involved at all in the writing or editing of this review.  For more information on this policy, please consult the Indie Gamer Chick FAQ.

 

Filed under XBLIG / Creators Collection Tagged with ,

Let’s Do Launch! I’ll Have a Grilled Cheese with Vel-Vita

March 2, 2012 by 5 Comments

Yea, sorry.  “Living La Vita Loca” was used by just about anyone that’s even thought of video games.

I actually got my Vita for Christmas. It was a neat surprise from my Daddy, which was cool and proves why he totally rocks. Of course, I only had Little Deviants to play around with, and while it was a little fun (and hugely annoying in some ways), it was just a glorified tech demo. Those aren’t exactly famous for their staying power. By December 26, the novelty of having a Vita two months early had officially worn off and it joined my 3DS on the shelf to collect dust. It was either that or look around for smiley faces to take pictures of. Um, yea, no. Dust works.

Well, you guys have had Vita for a few days now, and I’ve been getting requests to “go all Indie Gamer Chick” on it. You know, I resent the idea that I’m some kind of assassin for hire. You guys are big boys. You can fight your own fights. Besides, I don’t hate the Vita. Yet. You see, I’m willing to give it time. Why? Because there’s only three true certainties in life: death, taxes, and hand-held gaming consoles having shitty launches.

Let’s look back to the original Game Boy, which came out very shortly after I was born. At the risk of ruining my credibility here (no shouts of “too late” from the peanut gallery please, thanks), I never played the original Game Boy. Never. Not once. I’m talking about the original model of it, because I caught the Pokemon craze like everyone else who was nine-years-old in 1998. By then, I had got the Game Boy Pocket, and shortly thereafter, the Game Boy Color.

But, in retrospect, I didn’t miss much. The launch lineup for the Game Boy looks a bit abysmal. Sure, it had an iconic pack-in in the form of Tetris. But it also had some pretty craptacular secondary titles. Being the serious journalist I am (and no, I couldn’t even type that with a straight face), I bought them on the 3DS Virtual Console. Baseball, Alleyway, and Tennis. Wow, dynamite launch lineup. And of course, there’s the original Super Mario Land. Which is, sorry to you Nintendo fanboys out there, one seriously fucking terrible game. It’s glitchy, Mario is like three pixels tall, it’s glitchy, the enemies all look stupid, it’s glitchy, there’s horizontal space-shooter levels and oh God why is THIS considered a classic? You guys back then had no taste at all.

But I do have a point to go with this. Things got better. Once a developer gets past the learning curve, good stuff starts to happen. Look at the gigantic leap Super Mario Land made to become Super Mario Land 2.

You don’t need to go back to a period when your friendly neighborhood Indie Gamer Chick was still vulnerable to coat hangers for examples either. Sony’s history with the portable market is shaky at best. The PSP, while simply incredible to look at when it came out, had a pretty underwhelming launch lineup. Sure, Luminies was cool, but does anyone look back fondly on their time spent playing Untold Legends? Metal Gear Acid? Ape Escape on the Loose? Of course not. Nintendo DS was the same way. In fact, it was so bad that people instantly wrote off the machine as the second coming of Virtual Boy. Among the “highlights” was an unplayable port of Mario 64 and a seriously lousy tech demo by Sega themed around fucking called “Feel the Magic.”

But things got better. The PSP and especially the Nintendo DS became two of my favorite consoles of all time. It just takes a while for developers to get the hang of a system. In fact, that’s true these days of most consoles. I don’t think I would have trouble finding people to agree with me that the Xbox 360 and the PS3 both got off to a shaky start. I can’t even remember any launch titles for the PlayStation 3. I even forgot about Resistance. It just wasn’t that memorable. For the Xbox 360, all I remember is how disappointed I was in Perfect Dark Zero, and that I spent most of the first week I had with it playing Hexic.

The Vita is too new to write off. I’m not being an apologist for it. I’m just trying to keep it real. Yea, it bombed in Japan, but I think that has more to do with the mentality of gaming having changed so drastically. No matter how much it pains hardcore video game players to hear this, portable gaming is now tied to phones. iPhone moves hundreds of millions of games yearly. Hell, it’s damn near billions. When I point that out to your traditional, old-school, crotchety old gamer, it usually results in a cringe followed by some half-assed attempt at damage control usually discounting it as not being relevant. They’ll say it doesn’t count because phones are for “casual games.” What does that even mean?

Hardcore gamers, who usually also pride themselves on being Retro gamers, want to have their cake and eat it too. They want to talk about the good old days when a quarter bought you three minutes on Defender, but then immediately discount that $1 on your iPhone buys you a game like Cut the Rope, because that’s a “casual” game. I don’t get it. When old farts reminisce with me about the glory days of arcades, they speak with a tremble in their voice and a glimmer in their eyes as they describe rows of games, all unique, accessible to everyone, and cheap to play. Geez, that sounds kind of familiar.

Perhaps we’ve come full circle and the long-time gaming populace doesn’t realize it. I never got to experience a smokey arcade full of class-cutters and mohawk-wearing juvenile delinquents. My gaming life began just as the arcades were dying off. But with iPhone, I think I can kind of imagine the sense of awe players felt in the golden age of the arcade. I think that’s true of many gamers my age. Whether we realize it or not, phones are our arcade. And they’ve changed what we expect a portable gaming device to be. When you can have the gaming version of the Library of Alexandria on you phone, with games costing $1 or less, it’s hard to justify paying $300 for a dedicated console that tries to bring console-quality titles but will inevitably come up short.

The sun is setting on the era of the dedicated portable gaming device. Given its luke-warm reception, I think it’s a safe bet that the Vita will close the book on Sony’s journey in portable gaming. Nintendo will probably stick it out at least one generation longer, if only to triumphantly hold up the dismembered head of Sony much like they did with Sega, NEC, SNK, Bandai, Nokia, and nameless others. But that doesn’t make the Vita a bad console. Yea, the camera is shit, and the much trumpeted OLED display already looks dull in comparison to iPhone’s. You know what? Who cares? I like games, and I like Sony’s brand of games. So in the long run, I’ll probably like the Vita. Plus I’m sure it will be good for a few laughs when professional asshat Jack Tretton takes the floor at E3 next year to announce the next model has a completely unique glasses-free 3D display unlike anything ever done by anyone ever, for real, fingers in ears, la la la la la, we’re not crazy.

We don’t know what you guys are talking about. 3D was totally our idea. Nothing like it out there.

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NYAN-TECH

February 29, 2012 by 3 Comments

I want to try an experiment.  Let’s start by having you pat yourself on the head.  Good.  Now, try rubbing your belly at the same time.  Can you do it?  Impressive.  I can’t even chew in both sides of my mouth at the same time, so I salute you, oh dexterous one.  I have one final challenge for you.  Keep rubbing your belly and patting your head, then boot up Super Mario Bros. and try playing it.  Because that’s essentially what NYAN-TECH is about.

Okay, so maybe the concept is more like Twister meets Solomon’s Key.  You play as an adorable kitty cat person thingie that has to grab a key and exit a level through a door.  The gimmick here is that the platforms you must hop across are activated by holding down various buttons on the Xbox controller.  Usually the combinations are something ridiculous, like holding the X button and left bumper down while jumping, then releasing X mid jump and pressing the right trigger.  To be perfectly frank, I’m not capable of it.  Dexterity is not something I’m famous for.  Well, unless you count my ping-pong ball trick.

I was able to finish NYAN-TECH, mostly by placing the controller on the table in front of me, freeing my hands up to do the proper stretching needed to complete the stages.  Sadly, this wasn’t nearly enough to make the game playable.  Issues with jumping physics, or to be specific, landing physics, kept me firmly grounded in misery.  The ground is slippery, as if the game is set on a glacier.  It’s not.  At least I don’t think so.  It’s kind of hard to tell, what with the camera pulled so far back that you practically need a telescope to decipher things.  My TV could be used by Godzilla as an ironing board, and yet I had trouble seeing which buttons some of the things required me to push.

Finally, I had a big issue with the time limit that is imposed.  Especially on level 3-4, which took me an hour (it felt more like days) to finish.  In NYAN-TECH, the timer only shrinks when you move.  In most of the 27 levels (excluding tutorial stages) you’ll have more than enough time remaining to finish.  But near the end of the “hard” stages, things get a bit fuck-youish.  In 3-4, you literally cannot make a single misstep.  We’re talking about a game that requires you to do things with a game controller that someone with a third arm growing out of their torso would find difficult to pull off, and that’s on top of the questionable physics.  I admit, it felt world-conqueringly amazing when I beat the stage, but then I remembered that I had lost sixty minutes of my life and felt like crying the entire time, which made me feel not so good.

I asked for an XBLIG I missed that could contend for the leaderboard here.  I got a few recommendations of NYAN-TECH, so I gave it a try.  Do I regret that?  Not completely.  After all, I started Indie Gamer Chick looking for new and experimental types of games.  Does that mean I can recommend NYAN-TECH?  Well, no.  Even if I concede that some people are better suited for the type of hand-yoga it requires, the technical flaws still outweigh the gameplay to a significant degree.  That or I’m way off base and the game is spectacular if you can walk and chew gum at the same time.  Which I can do, by the way.  It’s just that I have a 50% chance of somehow landing myself in a coma while trying.

NYAN-TECH was developed by Dot Zo Games

80 Microsoft Points need defibrillators on stand-by just to attempt twiddling my thumbs in the making of this review.

Some dude named made that video.  Only gameplay footage I could find.  Check out his channel I guess.

Filed under XBLIG / Creators Collection

The Lost Indies in Due Time

February 28, 2012 by 3 Comments

Indies in Due Time is coming back this week.  There hasn’t been a new installment since October, and the reason for that is we haven’t had enough developers send us trailers for the feature.  In the four months since it went MIA, I’ve had dozens of requests to bring it back, but when the time comes to actually work on it, nobody sends me their trailers.  Apathy gets you nowhere.

Oh, and there was that time those one guys sent me a bogus cease-and-desist order over one installment of Indies in Due Time because I pointed out that their game was kinda close to another game and the fonts were very similar to a registered trademark of a highly litigious entertainment company and they got bad advice from someone with a vendetta against me who figured they could bully me off the Indie scene so that their site would reap all the kudos in for eliminating the threat of me or some such delusional nonsense, but that’s neither here nor there.

Well, the feature is coming back.  I’m opening it up to Indie games across all platforms.  I define “indie” as a game developed by a smaller, self-funded (or angel-investor supported) studio.  If that includes you and you develop for Xbox Live Indie Games, iOS, Androids, or PCs, I’ll take your trailer.  If you need a reminder of what Indies in Due Time is like, what follows is the “lost episode” that we got halfway through way back in October.  We simply ran out of trailers.  In general, Brian and I prefer a minimum of five.  We’re willing to bring this back as a once-a-week feature, but we need you, the development community, to be active in it.  If necessary, coordinate together.

Expect it to return sometime this week.  Until then, enjoy this lost episode.  Yes, one of these games is already out.  What can I say, I hate for any of my writing to go to waste.

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EvilQuest

February 27, 2012 by 21 Comments

EvilQuest confused me.  In it, you play as the villainous Galvis, a magnificently evil bastard whose goal is to murder God and destroy the world.  Let’s see: in touch with his emotions.  Goal-oriented.  Has a spiritual side to him.  Hey hey, I think I found someone I can bring home to my folks if things don’t work out with Brian.

"Mr. Aladdin, Sir, what will your pleasure be? You ain't never had a friend like me!"

But while Galvis is at times utterly delightful to play as, what with his fondness for casual genocide, or the fact that he’ll ignore the pleads for euthanasia of a frost-bitten old man just because letting him linger in pain and suffering is that much more evil, he’s also a bit of a pussy.  Despite being somewhat billed as a character who breaks all the rules, Galvis walks the line with such determination that he might as well be wearing a hall monitor sash.  He still pays for items from stores with actual cash.  He goes on fetch-quests for random people.  Sure, he’ll occasionally knife someone after they helpfully give him an item, and in the end of the game, spoiler alert, he makes the human race extinct.  But come on, paying for items?  That’s not evil.  Even little kids have the balls to shoplift.

So I’m going to ignore the whole “play as the bad guy” stuff because Galvis is provably less evil than Lindsay Lohan and just treat EvilQuest like the generic action-RPG that it is.  And, let’s face it, that’s the only way to describe it.  A lot of people are calling it “Zelda-like” but that’s a load of crap too.  Zelda had some puzzles.  EvilQuest is all action, all the time.  You walk around killing baddies, then you walk around some more.  Sure, there’s the occasional switch, or maybe a maze-like dungeon, but really, it’s just knifey-knifey, killy-killy, walky-walky for the entire length of the game.

I will admit it’s a little fun.  Not a whole lot.  I certainly don’t get why the XBLIG cheerleader brigade is constructing a human pyramid with only their erect penises to act as support beams over EvilQuest.  It’s a bit on the busted side.  As you progress through the game, you can level-up your stats.  As is my typical strategy in these situations, I just pumped every single point I earned into my attack power.  As a result, by game’s end I was able to kill most of the enemies in a single whack.  Two tops.  And bosses would take me about ten seconds to beat, even on the medium setting.  There was no point in forming any strategy to take them out.  I was easily able to max out the amount of health potions I had, quick-map them to the Y button, and then just tap it while attacking.  I went into the last boss battle with 99 hi-potions and was able to finish all four stages of the fight in about a minute tops, only using 6 of them.  In retrospect, I wish I had played the game on hard.  On medium, EvilQuest was about as easy as kitten piñata.

EvilQuest would have probably been a really strong game about twenty-five years ago.  In 2012, it’s basic even by the standards of modern retro-games.  I will say that it at least looks the part.  It successfully fends off the uncanny valley effect of looking old but having a feature that is decidedly modern ruin the entire feel of it.  And I would like to thank the guys at Chaosoft for including an option to disable flashing effects so that epileptics such as myself can more comfortably play their title.  It was a classy move, and hopefully the start of many developers adding similar options to their games.  Of course, Galvis wouldn’t stand for that himself.  He would intentionally try to set off a seizure in me, then skull fuck me while I was twitching.  Or maybe not.  I mean, if he’s willing to tip a stripper with a C-Note, he can’t be THAT evil.

EvilQuest was developed by Chaosoft

80 Microsoft Points said, spoiler alert, if he kills every human, doesn’t that mean he mercifully put the frost-bitten old man out of his misery in the process?  Wow, talk about a mixed-message in the making of this review.

Filed under XBLIG / Creators Collection

Octogenarian VIP

February 25, 2012 by 2 Comments

Old people creep me out.  And by old, I mean anyone over 50.  Have an odor they do.  It’s the stench of death ripening on their increasingly scaly skin.  So I probably shouldn’t have played a game where the object is to escort one across a psychedelic wonderland while avoiding ninjas and alien monster thingies.  Octogenarian VIP is exactly that.

The basic idea is you and up to three friends have to lead “Granny” around.  Right away, I encountered a laundry list of problems.  Let’s go through them.

Problem #1 is that Grandma looks more like Grandpa.  So I’ll call him Grandpa, because that’s how I roll.

Grandma needs a toupee.

Problem #2 is that Grandpa looks like he’s miserable and ready to die.  Why would I want to escort him to safety?  I should fulfill his wishes and escort him under a pile driver.

Problem #3, and this one is pretty significant, you have no form of defense to keep him alive.  Offensively, you have a cane thingie to swing around.  Why Grandpa’s younger, more nimble escorts would be wielding canes when swords or guns would make more sense against ninjas and monsters is beyond me.  The only explanation I could think of is senility is now contagious.  Meanwhile, there are several stages where the level begins with you and Grandpa being attacked.  And by that I mean the level begins and a ninja or monster is occupying the same space as you, rapidly draining away your lifebars.  Perhaps an allegory for the fact that the grim specter of death is always with you once you get to that age, but more than likely it’s just shitty game design.

Maybe it is a sword. Hell, I dunno. It would have to be the dullest sword in the history of weaponry.

It really didn’t become too much of an annoyance until later in the game.  When I reached a stage called “bad medicine.”  Never mind keeping Grandpa safe.  I could not keep myself, the young and fit protector of the old fart, alive for more than a few minutes because all of the enemies gang-bang you all at once.  The ninjas are capable of throwing stars at you, and if there are any present on the level, they will throw them at you whether you can see them or not.  And they will.  Without any way to block them, your only hope is to jump over them.  That really doesn’t work so well, especially when Grandpa is always a bit slow to react.  The ability to block would have made all the difference.  Well, the game would have still sucked, but it would have been more tolerable.  It’s like the difference between a kick in the shin and a saber through the throat.

Problem #4 is how bad Grandpa’s AI is.  I suppose it makes sense, given that he’s old and therefor decrepit and useless.  But we’re also in a video game where Grandpa is able to jump eleven feet in the air to avoid aliens and ninjas, so to hell with continuity.  Either way, Grandpa is useless.  He can’t defend himself when being attacked.  You have to lock him into following you, but he’s not as spry as you.  Your dude can jump like twenty feet in the air (good genes in this family), but if you’re still completing your jump while grandpa is landing, he’ll jump again.  When you’re trying to zig-zag from platform to platform, that gets quite annoying.

Problem #5 is there’s no old-person sound effects.  None at all.  No moaning.  No complaining.  Hell, the critters in Cute Things Dying Violently were more like geriatrics than Grandpa is.  What, with the random swearing and constant mumbling, it was just like being in the audience of Wheel of Fortune.  All you get here is a completely out-of-place generic metal track.  The graphics suck too.  There’s no blood and limited animation, yet the game somehow got a 2 out of 3 in violence from the XNA community.  Where is the violence that justifies that score?

Problem #6 is that ultimately Octogenarian VIP is boring.  Escort missions are boring in any game, but games based around just escorting characters are fucking awful.  Okay, maybe Ico is an exception to that.  Fine, Resident Evil 4 was too.  Kind of.  That actually gives me an idea.  A game where you tie Ashley Graham to the Grandpa from this game and then feed them feet-first into an industrial wood-chipper.  That’s money right there.

Octogenarian VIP was developed by Enraged Ginger

80 Microsoft Points think old people smell like spoiled mayonnaise in the making of this review.

Video footage courtesy of Aaron the Splazer

Filed under XBLIG / Creators Collection

Warp

February 22, 2012 by 12 Comments

I so want to tell you to drop what you’re doing and go pick up Warp on Xbox Live Arcade.  Even if it means dropping your newborn infant into an industrial-sized blender that will re-purpose its flesh as Soylent Green.  But I can’t.  Among other reasons, I’m pretty sure doing so violates my probation.  I swear, you mistake one hobo for a skateboard ramp and you pay for the rest of your life.  But that’s not the topic.  The topic is Warp, and why I strongly recommend you don’t buy this game that I got a lot of enjoyment out of.

Hear me out on this one.  Warp is sort of what Portal would be if it was a character vehicle by Pixar as directed by Quentin Tarantino.  You play as Zero, an alien captured by some science guys.  While in captivity, he gains the ability to teleport a small distance.  You can also teleport inside objects.  You know, when the game started and I saw that it was actually rated M, I was kind of perplexed.  I mean, the character is cute and chirpy.  It reminded me a lot of Stitch, of Lilo & Stitch fame.

And then I teleported into my first human.

And then I spun the control stick.

And then the human got fat.

And then he exploded in a huge cloud of blood and gore.

And it was fucking awesome.

It never gets old either.  I blew up hundreds of humans throughout the game.  Alternatively, I would teleport into humans, get them shot by other humans, then teleport into the shooter, blow them up, and then teleport back into the corpse and finish the job.  Maybe I’m easily amused, but I was able to sadistically giggle every single time.  It helps if you pretend the guys you’re blowing up are your colleagues.  “Yea, take that AJ!  That’s what you get for getting me a Snuggie when you were my Secret Santa, you rat bastard!”

At its heart, Warp is a stealthy-puzzle title.  The delightfully gushy murders are just window dressing.  In fact, you don’t even need to kill anyone, and you get rewarded with an achievement if you decide to play the game like you’re a member of Greenpeace and humans are slightly malnourished whales.  It’s an achievement I could never hope to get even if forced to at gunpoint.  The real point of the game is to acquire more powers, save a companion alien being held in the same facility as you, and escape.  Along the way, you’ll gain the ability to teleport items inside other items (or people inside other people, another juicy fatality that will make the Mortal Kombat people hang their heads in shame), switch places with objects, or launch the objects you’re inside of at high speeds.  All these abilities are incorporated cleverly into various puzzles scattered throughout the four to five-hour playtime.  Well, give or take.  I never actually finished Warp, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Warp is broken.  I’ll just come out and say it.  This is a game that is full of awesome ideas, but something went wrong along the way.  I’ll start with the camera.  The game plays from a top-down perspective, but the camera is angled in a way that prevents you from seeing objects pinned up against a wall.  You can almost move it to the point where you can make stuff out, but not quite enough to help.  What the game really needed was a better form of ghosting so that you can more clearly see what objects are available for you to beam into.

The game also suffers from what I like to call Blair Witch Syndrome.  No, this doesn’t mean it’s going to gross 500 times it’s budget and that it’s talentless star will go on to be an advocate for legalized marijuana.  For one thing, I think Zero actually has talent, although I can see him shilling Excedrin, for obvious reasons.  No, Blair Witch Syndrome means you’re given little or no direction on what to do, leaving you to wander around aimlessly.  Boringly.  Possibly for hours.  Hell, in the Simpsons Arcade Game, the only thing you have to do is walk to the right.  If you’ve recently suffered some kind of head trauma and are unable to remember which way that is within five seconds of clearing a room, a giant arrow appears telling you “HEY STUPID, THIS WAY!”  Well, maybe not so rudely, but you get my point.  In Warp, you get no such arrow.  There is a map, but it’s hardly helpful.  Midway through the game, I went backtracking from room to room, trying to figure out what I missed.  As it turns out, it was a teeny tiny little escape pipe on the other side of a wall that doesn’t stand out at all.

I guess the argument is that a puzzle game shouldn’t give you any direction.  But when you throw a free-roaming environment into the mix and then intentionally distort that environment, that’s not creating a puzzle.  I’m not exactly sure what you would call it, so I’ll settle for “colossal dick move.”

Don't be scared, buddy. Hey, ever see that movie Scanners?

When you’re actually in a new room, with new puzzles and more meat sacks on legs to blow up, the game is fun.  Like, really fun.  And the sense of satisfaction you get when you clear a puzzle without resorting to GameFAQs is hugely rewarding.  Unfortunately, all the “what next?” wandering kind of negates that. If it doesn’t, what if I told you that you can get inches away from the final room of the entire game only to find out that somewhere along the line you did something to render Warp unbeatable?

It’s apparently true, and it happened to me.  Near the end, you rescue a little sparkly alien thingie that’s trapped in a containment field.  You’re then told to go South.  I checked the map for my path of escape.  A spot is clearly marked that tells you “this is the place to go.”  So I try to get there, only to find that the final room, the one next to the FUCKING END OF THE GAME, was inaccessible.  Period.  There was no way to get past it.  I did everything to try to figure out a way through it, including pretty much backtracking through every previous room I had access too.  But I couldn’t.  It was completely off-limits.  I put over two hours into just trying to get through this one door, or find some other way to it, and couldn’t.  Game over.

I haven’t looked up stuff on GameFAQs or used anything resembling strategy guides since I was sixteen years old.  I’m not a big fan of having someone beat a game for me.  But I did relent on Warp and looked to see what I was missing.  All I discovered was others had pinned themselves in too.  The only option left for me is to replay the entire game from the start and hope I don’t fuck up this time.  In theory, I shouldn’t have been able to, since the power needed for me to fuck it up with I wouldn’t have acquired by that point.  I’m really not sure what happened.  I just know that the game wasn’t beatable the way I played it.  Even though the game encourages you to destroy everything you see.  It keeps a running score of your kills, and compares it to what your friends have done.  So what the fuck, Trapdoor?  Who did you get to playtest this for you?  Did you only test it internally, using guys who know exactly what to do and where to go?  Here’s a thought: rent a conference room at a hotel.  Set up a bunch of stations that have your game.  Put an ad on Craig’s List asking for people with five or six free hours to kill to come in for free games and pizza.  Then just watch.  Don’t offer help.  See if they can beat it.  If just one person renders the game unbeatable, your work is not done.

The sad thing is, the game is beatable.  I know this because while bitching all weekend about all the directionless wandering in Warp, I had people telling me “just wait until you see the last boss.  It’s annoying, not fun, and damn near impossible.”  I can’t really comment on that, because I only got within sniffing distance of the fucking thing.  What a tease.  It especially stings for me because I really, really hate replaying games.  And no matter how satisfying it is to trick the enemies into shooting each other (and it is!  I’m wet just thinking about it), I’m not now, nor have I ever been, interested in playing a game I already played through once.  So basically, Warp can go fuck itself and the guys at Trapdoor can feel free to warp themselves into a jet turbine.

Warp was developed by Trapdoor

800 Microsoft Points said “oh yea, that Blair Witch chick totally looks like she has Glaucoma” in the making of this review.

Filed under PlayStation Reviews, Xbox Live Arcade Reviews Tagged with , ,

Space Command

February 19, 2012 by 4 Comments

What do you get when you cross Space Invaders with Missile Command?  You get an Xbox Live Indie Game that I could play in about fifteen minutes so I could get a review up while I wait to finish EvilQuest and XBLA House Party title Warp.  Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Space Command.  It combines the enemies of Space Invaders with the city-defense firing mechanism of Missile Command.  So what does the offspring of these two iconic games look like?  Well, let’s just say that I think they might have been cousins.

Really, there isn’t much I can say about it.  The blast radius of your missiles doesn’t seem big enough and it disappears too fast.  And the whole point of Missile Command was that it had precision aiming via use of a trackball, something a joystick can’t hope to recreate.  Otherwise, it plays exactly like a mutant hybrid of Space Invaders and Missile Command would play like.  So if you ever wondered, now you have your answer.  As for me, I’m still longing to know what a game that mixes the rhythm and brawler genres would be like.  Sigh, we shall never know.

Space Command was developed by Jason Keiderling

80 Microsoft Points wouldn’t mind seeing a combination of Frogger and Pac-Man in the making of this review.

Video footage courtesy of Aaron the Splazer

Filed under XBLIG / Creators Collection Tagged with ,

The Cusp: 2011 Indie Summer Uprising Retrospective

February 18, 2012 by 6 Comments

The Cusp is a monthly highlighting of three Xbox Live Indie Games that came up just short of the leaderboard here at Indie Gamer Chick.

Way back in August, the 2011 Indie Summer Uprising launched ten games as part of a promotion to bring more attention to Xbox Live Indie Games.  The results were a bit of a mixed bag.  Of the ten games, only one landed a spot on my leaderboard.  That’s at a time when I was still new to the scene and the leaderboard was primed for the taking.  The truth was, I thought some degree of quality control was going to be involved in the selection process.  Instead, games were selected on the basis of variety.  Bad move.  Some of the games were truly horrible, especially the title selected to kick off the event: Raventhorne.  A few others were solid in their concept, but deeply flawed in execution, like T.E.C. 3001 and SpeedRunner HD.

Ultimately, despite receiving attention from lots of mainstream gaming outlets, the promotion was a bit of a bust.  That’s a shame, because I owe the initial growth of my site in part to my participation in the event.  Interviewing developers gave me a crash course on the XBLIG scene.  But once the games started hitting, in the words of Cute Things Dying Violently developer Alex Jordan, I started assassinating them one by one.  It wasn’t for the sake of being spiteful.  I truly felt the quality of the games failed to match the amount of hype the event was given.

Despite that, there were some pretty good games in the mix.  Although only one made the leaderboard, three other games were up for consideration.  This month, the Cusp honors those games.  But first, I’ve got some comments from the two guys who organized the event: Dave Voyles and Kris Steele.

What does Dave Voyles (one of the founders of Armless Octopus) have to say?

The Summer Uprising may not have had the best games ever featured on the marketplace, but it certainly contained a collection of some of the most diverse. We had something for everyone in there, from a hack-and-slash all the way to a train simulator. The brief organization period which drove rushed development schedules didn’t help the cause either, but I’m confident that we put together a solid package. Some of the developers didn’t put their strongest foot forward, but I believe have since released games which trumped their prior attempts.

Chester was my favorite Uprising title.

I really don’t know if there will ever be another uprising again. I know the community is stronger than ever, but it’s difficult to promote games when they continue to be buried among a poorly organized and support marketplace. I’d like to see the ability to sort by genre, in addition to linking a developer’s other titles when you select their newest one in the marketplace before we begin to organize another one.

As a whole, the Summer Uprising games sold a decent number, but nowhere near what I was expecting, in relation to the amount of press coverage we were receiving. I don’t think the $3 price point helped any of the sales out, but all of the Uprising games have dropped to $1 since, and seen increased sales.

The future of XNA is shaky at best, as we have yet to hear word as to how it will be supported in the next generation of consoles, and we know that XNA created applications will not supported in the new Windows 8 app store. Perhaps if we were more informed, or had a means to speak with Microsoft in a more direct manner, either through a controlled forum or community manager, then I believe we could see the XBLIG marketplace receive the attention it deserves.

I’ll illustrate all of this and more next month at GDC, where I’ll be speaking on behalf of everyone involved in the Summer Uprising in a 60 minute speech.

What does Kris Steele (developer of VolChaos) have to say?

I never expected to receive the kind of attention from developers and the media that we did when we set out to create the Summer Uprising. We quickly had 50+ developers wanting to be included in the promotion and got a ton of press coverage even months before any of the games were released. So much went right in terms of getting developers on board and getting the word out to consumers through the press.

Unfortunately all the press coverage didn’t translate well into downloads of the games themselves. Some out there were critical of the selection of games (like Kairi) and blamed that for the poor downloads but I’ve never believed that to be the case. If it were, you would have seen higher downloads (at least for the first couple games released) and low sales conversion rates. Right from the get-go, downloads were not high. And while not everyone liked all the games, they were all of higher quality that the average XBLIG title.

VolChaos wasn’t finished in time for the Uprising, but it was certainly crappy enough to fit right in.  Sorry, Kris, couldn’t resist.

The Microsoft dash promotion was the only aspect of the Summer Uprising that really seemed to drive additional sales but the overall numbers weren’t huge. It was nice to see Microsoft take notice of the Indie Game channel for once. Perhaps too little, too late though.

I certainly learned new things about marketing throughout this process and learned I severally underestimated the time involvement of running a promotion like this. I highly doubt I will be able to devote this kind of time to another promotion nor will I have my own game to include. In terms of Xbox Live Indie Games, it really only reinforced opinions of the service I already had, perhaps the biggest one being that gamers might take interest online but they don’t often make it to the Xbox to try the games themselves. This makes me sad because XBLIG has a lot of quality games but finding the service isn’t always easy and finding the good games within it is even more difficult. I wish this was something I saw improving but XBLIG today is more buried than it was this past summer.

If another Uprising is to ever occur, one or more people need to step up and take charge. It’s easy to talk about ideas that would be cool but there needs to be someone pushing things forward. I worry that developer interest would not be as high as it was last time though. It’s not a big secret the Uprising sales were disappointing and many developers have fled XBLIG for greener pastures. For all the complaints about the quality of the Summer Uprising games, it would be hard to top the recent selection of titles given that so many developers are looking elsewhere now. That’s not a failing of the Uprising itself but rather Microsoft neglecting and burying the XBLIG service to a point where very few serious developers can be financially prosperous.

And now, for the games.

Cute Things Dying Violently

Reviewed by the Chick on August 24, 2011

What went right?  Some clever physics-based puzzles were married with over-the-top violence to create the best-selling title of the Uprising.

What went wrong?  I’ve always felt that puzzle games are better suiting for smaller gaming sessions on portable devices.  Extending playing sessions of any puzzle game on a television usually lead to me getting bored quickly.  There were also some issues with aiming that have since been patched up.

What does developer Apathy Works have to say?

If you asked me a year ago, “Will Cute Things Dying Violently become an important touchstone in your life?” I would’ve agreed wholeheartedly. Today, I still agree wholeheartedly. Although CTDV doesn’t mean what I thought it would when I kicked off development back in June 2010, the emerging answer is an order of magnitude more revealing.

Back in 2010, I thought I had XBLIG by the balls. I’d been watching it intently, noting what games succeeded, noting what games failed, and I used that knowledge to formulate a game idea that would be in line with the market’s interests (small, funny, quirky) while also being something that I would enjoy making.On top of that, I had a name in mind that was about as subtle as a frying pan to the face. I thought I was going to kick ass and take names. Realistically: 10,000 copies to be sold, easily. Optimistically: 100,000 copies! Next stop, Newt Gingrich’s moon base!

What happened next is instructive. CTDV took 14 months to develop (10 months longer than I expected), hitched a ride on the Indie Games Summer Uprising, reaped all the good press that the Uprising afforded, and landed with good to great reviews. It sold 10,000 copies in less than a month and hit 21,000 copies sold in less than six. Hell, even Kairi managed to not hate it outright, although that might be because she thought I didn’t have a Fainting Couch nearby and was afraid I’d hurt myself when exposed to her vitriol. (It’s like opening the Ark of the Covenant.)

Soon to be a major motion picture by Pixar.

CTDV wasn’t life-altering moment, of course. It didn’t become the next XBLIG darling… not even close… and I didn’t make enough off of it to quit my day job. Hell, I didn’t even make enough off of it to live in a shack outside of Bumfuckleton, Iowa (founded in 1878). 70 cents per purchase (before taxes) doesn’t get you very far in this world. I never truly thought my moment in the sun would come, but hey, who doesn’t entertain that notion every now and then?

But as I said earlier, the experience was instructive. CTDV was a good game that could’ve been better. It needed and still does need a lot of work, especially its graphics. Sales were great on XBLIG, everything considering, but I can always do better. And that’s why CTDV is so revealing, and why it’s an important touchstone in my life. And, dare I say, a lesson for just about anyone out there: life is a work in progress. You can always do better, there’s always so much more to achieve, and get-rich-quick options are few to nonexistent. Just because you didn’t make your pie-in-the-sky expectations doesn’t mean the journey was wonderful and valuable.

Which it was, of course: the best side effect of developing CTDV was how it brought me closer to so many interesting, talented people. Fellow developers, gaming journalists, ardent fans, supportive friends… for me, creating games would be only a fraction as fun as it is without the pleasure of knowing and interacting with these people.

I’m not done yet, not by a long shot. CTDV is on its way to PC, I’m entertaining the idea of porting it to mobile devices (if only to get everyone to shut up for three seconds), and there will almost definitely be a CTDV2. With some elbow grease and a little bit of luck, I’ll do a bit better next time, and a bit better the time after that. Hey, that’s life, right?

Oh, and buy my game, dammit!

Doom & Destiny

Reviewed by the Chick on August 30, 2011

What went right? Doom & Destiny made good use of its RPG Maker license to create a genuinely funny JRPG experience.

What went wrong?  If you’ve ever played any RPG Maker title, there are no surprises here.  Basic, generic gameplay and a complete lack of plot.

What does developer HeartBit Interactive have to say?

It took more than one year for Doom & Destiny to become what it is now and we are proud of every character, map, dialogue line and misspelling in it. We don’t care if it’s not in the top 10 of XBLIG, that’s the place for mincraft clones with busty zombie in it. We don’t really look down on the Marketplace, but it’s clearly rewarding low-level marketing rather than quality.

But most of all, we are proud of our fans! Their support and enthusiasm keep us releasing updates with new content, bug fixes and hopefully less misspellings.

Our dedication to the game was the main reason why we did not lower the price to 80 MSP. We believe in the quality of our product and we don’t want to undervalue it with the minimal price tag, just to lure some cheap consumer.

We are just two joyfull nerds wanting to make videogames we would like to play.

No compromise!

Well maybe a few… given we are just two guys with limited resources.

We dream of making bigger games, we dream of expanding our team with talented artists and musicians, we dream to become famous, rich and conquer the Ultraworld… No wait, that’s the dream of the villain in Doom & Destiny.

Right now we are still working on another Doom & Destiny update, the third big one in a few months.

Fans want a ship, a zeppelin and a new continent to explore and we are gonna give them just that!

The WP7 and PC versions are coming soon and we hope to join all the other indie games on Steam and various indie bundles (and make more Golds).

We are also helping a duo of friends into creating a spy themed inspired puzzle game for XBLIG, WP7 and PC.

Last but not least, we are, drum roll, working on a Doom & Destiny sequel!

We just need a 60 hours day long to accomplish all our goals and we are done!

Take Arms

Reviewed by the Chick on September 5, 2011

What went right?  An awesome 2D online shooter that features a variety of maps, character types, and objectives.  Take Arms came the closest of any game in the Uprising to making my leaderboard.  Well, besides Chester, which did make it on.

What went wrong?  The game’s fun is so tied to online play that it makes it a risky investment.

What does developer Discord Games have to say?

Creating our debut title Take Arms was a true labor of love. It was a culmination of almost 5 years of partnership between Tim Dodd and I. We went through failure after failure, with some projects never even getting off the ground. Our ideas were just simply way beyond our reach. We would get a few months into a project, and either reach a challenge we couldn’t achieve technically, or crush ourselves under the weight of a flawed design we just kept throwing more at to make it fun. Our dream games turned out to be just that: dreams. As time wore on, we knew that something had to give. Either we were going to throw in the towel, or figure out some way to actually get a game made.

 

As a last-ditch effort, we decided to make the “simplest” game we possibly could that still caught our interest and did something different. We started with just the idea of a 2D version of Battlefield for XBLIG, and the design quickly evolved from there. We finally started to learn from our failures, and focused on getting the core gameplay working quickly to make sure it was fun. Simultaneously, we worked on the design and were consistently cutting fluff and keeping it as lean as possible. After getting a playable prototype and finalizing the design document, we spent the next 18 months working tirelessly on just that. We very rarely strayed from the document and only added details, not features. It’s awesome when people take notice of small things such as the camera zooming out when you crouch for increased visibility. If you can nail good core gameplay, everything else is just in the details.

As we wrote in the post-mortem and other places, doing a multiplayer based game for Xbox was very difficult due to a variety of factors. That combined with the incredibly flawed launch, the over-inflated expectations of sales and market size, and the total lack of traction pretty much just devastated us both. Tim decided to call it quits to focus on other stuff and I started looking into mobile development to keep the studio alive. I don’t think either of us found what we were looking for, and after the New Year we slowly began talks of a new game. It started as an idea I had for a mobile game, but it continued to evolve as we threw ideas back and forth. After we were comfortable with the concept, we approached Take Arms artist Jianran Pan and got him back on board. We’ve settled on PC as our primary platform this time, with our eyes dead set on Steam. Hopefully we can take the skills we’ve learned over the past 5 years, and finally go full-time doing what we love. Look for an official announcement of our next game in the coming weeks!

Filed under Editorials Tagged with , ,

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