Last year, I tried for a while to write a review of Clear Vision, a sickeningly addictive iPhone title that I ultimately didn’t write about. Part of that is the game is fairly one-dimensional, takes only thirty minutes to beat, and I feel that praising a game that involves violently assassinating unsuspecting victims will get me listed on some type of government watch list. Since then, a teeny tiny bit of DLC was released for the original, and this month a sequel hit, and I can’t turn it down.
So here’s the concept: there’s a world of stick figures, and you’re an assassin for hire. Someone will slip a request for murder under your door. You then murder that person. Rinse and repeat around twenty or so times each game. Murders are typically done with a rifle, but occasionally you’ll interrogate someone in a car crusher, or make a murder look like an accident. At the start of each game, you simply line the person up in your sight and fire. Later, you have to account for distance and wind resistance. It’s the same thing over and over again, but it never gets old. In fact, the splatter of blood and slumping body are pretty dang satisfying to watch and an indication of a job well done.
Hold on. A self-realization and reflection moment just overcame me.
I make no apologies for the fact that I had a good time playing these games. I would have had a better time, if not for some glaring technical issues. No matter which iDevice I was using, both games tended to crash. Last year, the original Clear Vision, at times, crashed nearly every mission. This year, Clear Vision 2 not only crashed on both my new iPhone and iPod, but would also have the occasionally stunted-frame rate that would require me to completely exit out of the game and reboot it. Obviously this can be patched out, since I had to go through the original Clear Vision all the way from the fucking beginning just to play a measly five-minutes worth of DLC, and the game never once failed. Crashes are not infrequent on iOS, for whatever reason. This is one of the major reasons why I quit reviewing iPhone games. On Apple platforms, even major titles (your GTAs, Dead Spaces, and Angry Birds) crash if you so much as attempt to play them. I can’t really complain about indies doing so frequently. But it craps up the play experience. Clear Vision 2 was one of the worst offenders of this ever. I counted it out: the game had seven hard crashes and four instances of game-killing frame rate issues on my fifth gen iPhone alone, plus several more while attempting it on my iPod. Not even XBLIG puts up this big a fight when you attempt to use it.
I fucking HATED this mini-game in the sequel. It took me about twenty tries to get it right. I felt like an ignoramus.
If you can get past the crashes, Clear Vision is fun. You need both parts to get the full story, but they will only run you a combined $1.98. You can also play half of the first game (or fifth game, depending on how you look at it) for free online. Though there’s probably no harm in waiting a year to pick up Clear Vision 2, or at least waiting long enough for all the bugs to be cleaned up. I do recommend both, but remember something before each time you pull the trigger: stick figure dudes have stick figure families too.
How hard can it be to make a semi-decent Punch-Out!! knockoff? You create an over-sized monstrosity, slap some boxing gloves on it, have it telegraph its moves at you, give your avatar accurate dodging controls, and tada, you have a Punch-Out! knockoff. There should be dozens of these scattered throughout the gaming spectrum. For all I know, there might be. Steel Champions is only the second one I’ve encountered on XBLIG. The first, Honey Badger: Slayer of Memes was a total piece of shit. The gimmick being Punch Out!! if you beat up long-since unfunny internet running gags. Well, now we have Steel Champions. Its gimmick is Punch-Out!!, only with robots and anime boobies. It also is a total piece of shit, but boobies will always trump the Star Wars Lightsaber dude. Who, ironically, also has boobies.
Honestly, it doesn’t look bad. And it’s not. It’s terrible.
Let me be clear: I fucking love Punch-Out!! And this love isn’t based on nostalgia. I played them in reverse-order. The Wii version first, Super Punch-Out!! second, and NES Punch-Out sans pre-crazy Mike Tyson last. Enjoyed each and every one of them. And they’re all so simple when you get down to it. This should be one of the easiest games to clone out there, but nobody can seem to get it right. Steel Champions is no different. Oh, it looks like Punch-Out!! High and low punches, dodging, and ginormous opponents that telegraph their moves. But it just doesn’t work. The dodging feels imprecise and floaty, and the telegraphing becomes so fast that it’s damn near impossible to dodge. Plus, I couldn’t find any noticeable pattern that allowed me to consistently dodge-and-stunlock opponents. That’s the most rewarding, satisfying aspect of Punch-Out!! Here’s a game that has all the ingredients that makes that game work, except the most important one. It’s like making a cake without sugar.
I only made it to the third fight, which I had trouble finishing because the game kept randomly dumping me back to the Xbox Dashboard. No Code 4. No crash screen. Just “back you go to, to your game library.” This happened twice, and it won’t be happening a third time. By the way, this happened to other people too. Not that it matters much. Even if it didn’t crash too often (some would argue that once is too many), what we have here is a pitiful button-masher that’s only selling point is there are anime boobies on the box art. A selling point so utterly transparent that it’s practically a poltergeist. Actually though, I think we’re getting past that point. Interest in your Don’t Die Dateless Dummies and Team Shuriken crapola and assorted other titty games are circling down the drain. My site is getting far more searches for “Best Xbox Live Indie Games” instead. Sorry, smut developers. You’ve got to step up your game now. Consumers are more interested in GOOD games now, so step up and give them what they’re looking for. Sweaty palms, not blistered ones.
Update: Arcadecraft received a Second Chance with the Chick, where many problems talked about in this review were addressed, and new gameplay features discussed. The price is also now only $1 instead of $3. Continue reading this review and then click here for my updated thoughts.
Arcadecraft is brought to you by the guys who did the incredibly awesome Orbitron: Revolution. What was Orbitron: Revolution? Why, it was an insanely fast-paced modern take on the classic Defender formula that featured arguably the best graphics in the history of Xbox Live Indie Games. It will undoubtedly go down as one of the most professional-quality, vastly entertaining games ever on the platform.
Total bust. Sold fewer copies than an 8-track of Gary Busey belching into a microphone.
What went wrong? Well, I think the name was way too generic. Orbitron sounds like an off-brand anime that would air at 4AM on Cartoon Network. The graphics might have also been too good. Hear me out on this one. I’m of the belief that XBLIG consumers are conditioned to associate good graphics with bad gameplay. Unless those good graphics are of the 8-bit or 16-bit variety, “modern” graphic decency in an Xbox Indie means shitty play control, glitches, and typically rushed game design. Trust me, I’ve reviewed over 300 of these. The better the graphics, the shittier the game. Orbitron is one of the rare exceptions to that.
There are other possible explanations that are beyond my scope of understanding. Perhaps the demo doesn’t hook players in. Or maybe the general gaming populace is indifferent to Defender. Hell, I would actually believe some kind of Gypsy Curse is in play. Either way, the guys at Firebase took no chances with their follow-up game. It’s called Arcadecraft. The presence of the word “craft” in the title alone is probably good for at least 2,500 units sold on XBLIG. Kraft could put out a game where you build stuff out of macaroni called Kraftcraft and it would probably sell a gillion copies. But Arcadecraft isn’t a “build stuff out of stuff” game at all. A more accurate title would have probably been “Sim Arcade” or “Arcade Tycoon.” But Sim Tycoon isn’t trendy on XBLIG right now and Craft is, and Firebase are capitalists first and foremost.
Face it guys, you’re going to hear people keep asking if they can play the games. Better get cracking on making it happen.
Sadly for me, lots of the things I planned on complaining about Arcadecraft are already being fixed. Although the patch isn’t live yet, it covers nearly every problem I had. So I’ll just focus on the gameplay. Honestly, the shocking thing about Arcadecraft is that nobody has thought to make this game before. Build your own arcade during the Golden Age of CoinOps? How is this not already something that exists? You have to buy games, set the prices, set the difficulty, place them, empty the coin boxes, buy more games, pay off your loan, kick out hooligans, buy more games, sell old games, upgrade the power supply of your building, allow world champion players to attempt to break records on your machines, unjam coin doors, buy more games, survive the gaming crash of ’84, stock soda machines, and buy more games.
So yea, it’s a time sink.
A lot of stuff I disliked about Arcadecraft is being patched out. The hooligan won’t appear while you’re in menus anymore, and a more satisfying animation will appear when you boot him. Not too satisfying. If I owned an arcade and someone started kicking my machines, nothing short of Joe Pesci taking a nail gun to his temple would please me, and it would serve the little fucker right. It would be totally justified too. The kid starts kicking machines, somehow teleporting from machine to machine, disabling them before I can clearly identify him and eject him. A better indicator of where he is would be nice, given the fact that he’s powered by the mystical forces of Satan and all.
And the power goes out a lot. Like, at least every three game months, or about six minutes . Where the fuck is my arcade at that the power keeps failing every three months? There’s no “turn on every game” master switch. You have to pick up and slam every machine against the ground. Individually. When you have 30 machines, this becomes a pain in the ass, especially when you’ll inevitably have the hooligan show up to start shit while this is going on. I did find it mildly amusing that jammed coined slots are unjammed in the time-tested tradition of banging the machine repeatedly until it works again. See, who says Armageddon wasn’t factually accurate?
I swear to Christ, every time the dude came by with the premium machines, my arcade was full. The game totally needs to give you the option to make him wait while you hock a machine to make room.
My biggest gripe with Arcadecraft is how fucking slow a start it gets off to. A lot of time sinks are lethargic in the beginning. Arcadecraft is practically in a fucking coma, sort of like I’ve been over the last four days. A common theme among players is one itty-bitty mistake forces them to start over. I never had to myself. I guess I had as perfect a run as anyone could have, but I still only finished 99th on the Leaderboard (now like 118th or some such shit). I could see why others would die though. You’re given too little of seed money and new games cost too much money early on. In theory, you can set a machine to 50 cents a play, but that causes its popularity to plummet. Here’s a hint: sink a soda machine pretty much anywhere and set the price to $1 per can. Occasionally a “hot spot” will appear in the arcade that increases a machine’s popularity, but they’re typically in the least convenient spot. Like in front of the bathroom door, where you then trap a helpless little shit inside, not to mention the kid that made it.
With all the planned changes, plus future expansions, Arcadecraft feels more like a really good beta than a finished game. That’s okay, because it’s a really good beta, sort of like Lexiv was. You can see the potential. If Firebase plays its cards right, they could probably make this a hit iOS game with microtransactions up the ass for years to come. Think of all the stuff they didn’t include this time around. There’s no novelty games, no redemption games, no pinball machines, no skeeball, no air hockey, no cigarette machine in the corner (you know, for the adults, wink), and only a limited supply of larger cockpit games. Arcadecraft has a chance to be a full-blown franchise, and we’re getting in at the ground floor.
You also don’t get enough info on each game. Again, there’s lot of patchwork needed here.
And by the way, in case you’re wondering, it’s fucking awesome as hell. For all the problems, of which there are numerous, Arcadecraft is one of the best sims on XBLIG. But, let’s face it, it doesn’t belong on XBLIG. This should be on PCs, with the convenience of a mouse and keyboard. This would also allow the expansion packs I mentioned above. Plus, let’s face it, we all want to play the actual games. Dead serious when I say that I would pay the full disc-based retail price of $60 for a version of Arcadecraft where you could play the games. Assuming they didn’t suck. Which I’m guessing they wouldn’t. I mean, Firebase did make the coolest modern version of Defender on the market. This would give them a chance to make the coolest versions of EVERY vintage game. Which they should be doing right now. They’re capitalists after all. Don’t believe me? Their next game involves making stuff out of feces. It’s called CrapCraft. And it will be fucking awesome.
Today we’re playing the Lightning Round of game reviews. I played four PlayStation Mobile games this week in a quest to find something fun and original that justifies the existence of the platform.
First up was Gun Commando, a neo-retro Doom clone. I have no idea why such games fascinate me, considering that Doom was well before my time. I don’t know. It just seems to me like the classic formula should be able to lend itself well to hit neo-retro indie titles in 2013. However, Gun Commando is not that game. It feels like Doom, what with brain-dead enemy AI, retro graphics, and labyrinthine levels. Where it falls apart is the God awful controls. Adjusting the sensitivity settings doesn’t seem to fix button-based controls, and thus lining up enemies to shoot is damn near impossible. You’re forced to do everything on the touch screen, and this would work except any slight twitch of your finger forces you to fire your gun. This is combined with enemy fire that is nearly impossible to avoid, dull weapons, and an absurd difficulty spike about halfway through. It looks the part, but in truth, Gun Commando was doomed from the start.
If Doom was set in a trucking scrapyard and demons were replaced with angry football players.
Up next was Samurai Beatdown, which was free last week, normally priced at $0.99. It’s alleged to be a rhythm game, but I found the actions on screen rarely seemed to synch up to the generic beat. The concept is operating-a-light-switch-simple: enemies run at you from both sides. Tap the left side of the screen to kill enemies running at you from the left, and the right side to kill enemies running at you from the right. Again, even when you’re perfect, the enemies don’t seem to match up to the beat of the music. I’m not musically inclined, so that was fine with me, but even on the hardest difficulty setting, Samurai Beatdown is so easy that it’s insulting, and it gets boring quite fast. Not really worth the bandwidth when offered for free, I can’t even fathom paying money for it.
Samurai Beatdown was developed by Beatnik Games ($0.99)
You can enter an indestructible mode if you’re running out of health. This will never happen.
As it turns out, the best PlayStation Mobile games are actually ports of existing PlayStation Mini titles. Cubixx is free this week on Mobile. It’s basically the exact same game as the PlayStation Mini title from a few years back, only the graphics are ever so slightly improved and it weighs less (22MB) than the original Mini version (29MB). If you don’t already own it somewhere, shame on you. It’s a fantastic take on the classic Qix formula. I would actually recommend Cubixx HD on PlayStation 3 first and foremost, but Cubixx on Vita for free isn’t a bad alternative. Draw lines on a cube, avoid enemies, fill in as much area as possible, move on to the next level. It sounds dull, but if you’re gutsy, it can be an intense, extremely rewarding experience. However, I can’t really get too excited over it, because I’ve played Cubixx to death over the last four years and it has nothing new to offer me. If you haven’t already played it, it’s one of the best neo-retro games of the last generation. If you have, there’s absolutely nothing new here.
Cubixx was developed by Laughing Jackal ($2.99, free right now)
Probably the most unenthusiastic I’ve ever wrote about a game I loved. Sorry, but after four years it’s tough for me to get excited about the same game.
Finally, OMG Zombies, by the same guys that made Cubixx. It’s also a PSP Mini port, but I somehow never played it despite apparently owning it. The only explanation I can think of is I must have gotten it for free with PlayStation Plus and never touched it because I avoided zombie games like the plague before I started Indie Gamer Chick. My loss really, because OMG Zombies is fucking awesome in a time-sink kind of way. The idea is a field of zombies shamble around aimlessly, and you have a limited number of shots to pick them off. Shooting a zombie causes them to explode, and if another zombie is close by, it detonates them too. You have to set off a chain reaction that clears as many of them as possible. There’s five classes of zombie. Normal ones explode, fat ones explode bigger, cop zombies shoot bullets in a straight line when they die, commando zombies fire off a round of Uzi bullets when they die, and acid zombies turn into a pool of acid. As you beat levels, you accumulate money that you can spend to upgrade the strength of your gun, or the potency of the damage zombies do to each other.
Where’s Waldo has gotten pretty dark lately.
OMG Zombies is so smart, because you can’t abuse the upgrade system with random grinding. You can only earn each stage’s four monetary rewards once. It makes the gameplay so very engaging and rewarding that I almost forgot that OMG Zombies is much more based on luck than skill. I would often restart levels multiple times because the exploding barrels were randomly placed together instead of spread apart. Or there are stages where every enemy is one of the cop zombies, where no amount of skill is going to help you make sure that when the bullets start flying, they fly in the correct directions. It can be frustrating for sure, but I never grew bored with it. Everything you need to know about OMG Zombies can be summed up with the following two statements. #1: I ran out my Vita’s battery twice playing it. #2: I can’t even remember the last time I felt compelled to achieve 100% completion of a game, but I simply had to here. I would say that qualifies OMG Zombies as a worthy use of your time. My boyfriend might disagree. He says with the amount of time I spent with it, it qualifies more as a hostage situation.
It’s been 580 days since I started Indie Gamer Chick. In that time, I’ve reviewed 352 games, 327 of which are for Xbox Live Indie Games. My participation in the XBLIG community has been nothing short of life changing for me. Sometimes my reviews aren’t exactly nice, so being embraced by developers was not something that I expected. I feel like I’ve been adopted by a loving, nurturing family. Yea, Xbox Live Indie Games don’t always produce the highest quality of titles, but that’s the price you pay for having an open platform. For all the bitching people (including myself) do about some truly abysmal games that were intended to be bad from the get-go, it’s all worth it. It created a place where talented, enthusiastic dreamers could create and market their very own video games.
Proof that XBLIG isn’t dead: there’s some very exciting looking titles still on the horizon. This is Ring Runner, coming this Summer. Check out their YouTube channel by clicking the picture.
Unfortunately, word from Microsoft leaked this week that XNA, which is the sole development language of Xbox Live Indie Games, has begun to be phased out. While not discontinued, XNA is now classified as “no longer under development.” Along with this, all current XNA MVPs will be relieved of their duties on April 1, 2014. This has caused widespread mourning among the XBLIG community. Mind you, we’re over a year away from the date that MVPs are being let go. Still, the future of Xbox Live Indie Games, which was always shaky at best, now seems downright bleak.
To clear-up some misconceptions for those non-hardcore XBLIG fans that read me, Xbox Live Indie Games are, to the best of my knowledge, not being removed from the Xbox 360 Marketplace at this time. In fact, it’s a safe bet that they’ll be around for at least another year. If the time comes where membership to the App Hub is stopped, then you can feel free to panic. However, there’s no question that XBLIGs as we know them today will cease to exist sometime in the future. Hopefully some questions will be answered with the next generation Xbox is unveiled in the coming months.
Another reason to stay excited about Xbox Live Indie Games: DLC Quest has a sequel on the way. It’s called Live Freemium or Die and it’s coming “very soon” says creator Ben Kane. Okay, so I’m the one and only person who begged him to NOT do a sequel, but if anyone can prove me wrong, it’s him. Click the picture for the trailer.
The end of XNA is not the end of Xbox Live Indie Games. Indies will factor into the next generation Xbox. Not because Xbox Live Indie Games was a rousing success, because it wasn’t. It’s because the game industry is trending this way. iPhone has become one of the most successful gaming consoles in history. Sony has created its own open-to-anyone platform. This is the direction the industry is heading. Microsoft won’t keep indies around because they’re trendy or because they’re artists. They’ll do so because it’s sound business sense.
In the meantime, my fans on Twitter want to know what this means for Indie Gamer Chick. Well, since Xbox Live Indie Games aren’t going anywhere in the immediate future, I’m not going anywhere either. Yea, I suffered from a bit of burnout earlier this month, but then a couple of games came along that reminded me why I’ve stuck by this platform for the last eighteen months. Of course, I can’t say what the future holds once XBLIGs begin to roll out on the next generation platform. Whether they remain the focus of my site will depend on how open the platform is and the volume of games released on it. If it sees the same amount of games as PlayStation Mobile, I obviously wouldn’t be able to center my site around it. Thankfully, my name is Indie Gamer Chick, and thus I’m not tied down to anything.
Escape Goat 2 might not come to Xbox Live Indie Games, which is exactly why I need to start paying more attention to other avenues of indie gaming. You can head to the developer’s website by clicking the picture and threaten bodily harm if he doesn’t release on XBLIG. Or, you know, ask politely.
I am announcing that I’m going to include more coverage of non-XBLIG platforms. Until recently, reviews of games on Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network, iOS, and Wii U eShop were rare here. That’s going to change. Xbox Live Indie Games will remain the primary focus of my site until Xbox Live Indie Games cease to be. But I’ll also make a good effort to have one non-XBLIG review weekly. Along with this, you can also expect features like Indies in Due Time (returning soon) and Tales from the Dev Side to look outside of Xbox Live Indie Games. In fact, the MonoGame Team will be doing an editorial sometime in the near future. There might also be changes in the Leaderboard in July in time for my second year anniversary, so that it includes iOS and PlayStation Mobile titles. I’ll keep those elitist PlayStation Network and Xbox Live Arcade games off it. Snooty bastards. And don’t even get me started on Wii U’s eShop. It seems to have suffered some kind of gaming version of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.
I hate reviewing local-only multiplayer games. First, you have to round-up players. Then you have to tell them what we’re playing. Then they leave, because they thought they were coming over to play something they’ve heard of, and you have to round-up more players. Writing these reviews makes me sound like a broken record, because there’s only so many ways to say “it’s tough to sell non-indie fanatics on playing these games.” Even when they turn out to be exceptional, like Hidden in Plain Sight, the real challenge is finding interested parties to play. I think I would have an easier time finding people who want to watch a video of me having my appendix removed.
Squadron Scramble ups the ante by offering eight player local support. Uh huh. Excuse me for one second.
Seriously, I even don’t know eight people by name. There’s Brian, Mommy, Daddy, and everyone else is Whatshisface. And this is one of those games where you get eight players by sharing controllers, with one person using the left stick and trigger and the other person using the right one. It’s the gaming version of a three-legged race. Finding three other competent players would be tough enough, but seven more? Tee-hee, right. Plus, I’m quitting smoking right now and nobody wants to be within assault-and-battery distance from me, let alone sitting right next to me, getting their hand-sweat all over MY controller.
Thus, I only found three other suckers to play Squadron Scramble with, and surprise, we had a damn good time playing it. Actually, it’s not that surprising. As long as the game is fast-paced, user-friendly, and not broken, any four player experience is bound to be jolly-good entertainment. Such as the case here, where you have 2D dog fights with all actions reduced to one stick and one button. Anyone can pick it up and play it. Whether they play it well is really irrelevant to the amount of fun you can have. That’s the mark of a good multiplayer game. At first, Squadron Scramble does that. It just doesn’t last.
The first thing you have to do in Squadron Scramble is move a little dude into a hanger. Once you enter the hanger, you take off in a fighter jet. Each player gets a team of four dudes. You get a point for every plane you shoot down. If you’re in the sky and get shot, your dude parachutes down. You have two options from this point: you can return the dude to the hanger, or you can switch him out for another dude. Since points are tied to dudes that are alive, switching out is meant to add an element of strategy to the game. Switching out dudes “banks” whatever points are made and protects them, since you lose all points scored with a dude if he dies. Sounds like a good idea, but actually this was a game crippler for my session.
The game goes by rounds, with the person who has the most points winning each round. You need three rounds to win. Here’s the problem: points carry over between rounds. So if one player builds an insurmountable lead, they can spend the next couple rounds stalling, with their highest-scoring guys grounded, and never worry about losing. It’s an utterly brain-dead decision and it ruined more than one session of Squadron Scramble, because it was too easy to protect a lead.
This is one of those times where the developers lost track of the fact that not everyone who plays their game will be as highly knowledgeable or skilled as they are. They forget that they, you know, made the fucking thing and thus know how to play it best. It’s not exactly the same as making a punisher too hard and losing track of that, but it’s a common theme in multiplayer games. I’ve had five developers who make such games send me detailed instructions on how to best play their games to ensure maximum entertainment. The developers of Squadron Scramble did this too. Nice guys, mind you. And very patient, considering that I’ve delayed and delayed this review. I like their game. I’m putting it on the Leaderboard. But it’s time for a reality check, fellas: unless you’re going to personally contact every person who purchases your game and give them the same instructions, which obviously you can’t do, you should recognize that maybe your game has a problem. If you need to explain to people the best ways to make your game fun, you’ve screwed up somewhere along the line. The best multiplayer games are self-explanatory. Choppy Chomp-Chomp, the only multiplayer game to reach the top 10 on this site, requires no hand-holding. Squadron Scramble shouldn’t need to, but the developers wanted to hold my hand anyway. Personal space, guys. Don’t make me break out the pepper spray.
It’s still fun though. Very fun, in fact. It’s hugely satisfying to shoot down a guy on a scoring-streak, watch them parachute to the ground, and then Kamikaze your plane into them before they can duck into the hanger. The controls have only a slight learning curve. The action is incredibly fast-paced. I wouldn’t at all recommend trying eight players though. We played with four players and four AI planes, and the game became an unmanageable clusterfuck that nobody could follow. Also, there’s not a ton of depth here. While games like Hidden in Plain Sight might be dusted off from time to time, you’ll get one, maybe two, sessions out of Squadron Scramble and then mothball it for good. Not because it’s bad, but because it wears thin after an hour or two. Once a player emerges from the group as the unquestioned God of the session, the rules skew too much in their favor. This either leads to everyone ganging up on them, or the leader stalling, none of which produce exciting gameplay for anyone involved. Squadron Scramble’s first hour will be the best, and then it will all fall apart after that. That’s fine. That’s how every Will Smith movie plays out, and people still watch them.
Alright, so this is awkward, but I didn’t like escapeVektor on the Vita. Apparently I’m the only person in the entire world who didn’t, so I guess I should explain myself. Often, when I dislike a popular game, I’m asked “what did you expect?” As if I hold every game to such unreasonably high standards that nothing can possibly please me. My honest answer is “all I expect is to have fun.” If I don’t get that, I don’t give a game a pass because it looks good, plays well, and has a nifty concept. If a game bores me, I say so. And escapeVektor bored me to fucking tears.
This is one of those rare times I wish I had bought the 3DS version of a game. I bet it would have looked pretty cool in 3D.
Going off screenshots, I figured it would be similar to Qix. Watching it in motion, I figured it would be a little like Pac-Man. Once I started playing, I wished it had been closer to those games. At least they were fun. Here the idea is you have to guide an exceptionally slow-moving ship around a grid, filling in all the lines, opening up either an exit or more lines, which open up different exits. Along the way, a variety of enemies tries to kill you. There’s a storyline involved, but with any game like this, I wonder why they bother. Even with the admittedly pretty visuals, this is an old school maze game, straight out of the Pac-Man craze of the early 80s. It needed a story about as much as quail need bulls-eyes on their wings.
Oh, but it does have a storyline. One that pops up between levels and utterly refuses to shut up. You’ll get past a difficult stage, all full of enthusiasm for a job well done, anxious to kick the ass of the next stage, and then the story rears its ugly head. Some tripe about a guy stuck in a CPU. It’s not intriguing in the slightest, and its presence was about as well received by myself as a bout of standing-quadriplegia that hits the moment you answer the door to Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Seriously, please stop talking. I’m trying to play a game here.
After a while, the game does get faster. You get boosters that allow you to zip around stages and avoid enemies. And the game throws a few more twists at you, like tailgating enemies, electrified gateways, and more power-ups to fight back. But, for me at least, it never stopped being boring. Part of that is due to a moderately large design flaw. You know how pretty much every maze game ever made does this thing where if you die, you don’t have to start the level over from scratch? Like in Pac-Man, if you die with only two dots left in the stage, you get to replay the stage, with the board exactly how you left it? Probably so as to avoid tedium? Yeah, well escapeVektor doesn’t do that. Imagine going through a sprawling level, heel-toeing your way through a gauntlet of enemies, only to run out of bombs with five feet to go from the exit and getting caught by a random enemy, or a bullet from a turret. Guess what? You get to replay the whole level over again. I didn’t find Vektor’s breed of gameplay all that exciting to begin with. In some later levels, turning the game off entirely seemed like a better option towards rehabilitating my dull day.
There probably should be more reasons why I disliked escapeVektor, but I honestly can’t think of anything. I have to admit, as a critic, it’s kind of tough to say “I didn’t like a game and I’m not totally sure why.” I mean, I like these type of games. I liked the art style. I thought it controlled pretty smoothly. I guess I should like it. Everybody else does. It’s being thrown 8s out of 10s, 9s out of 10s, or 4s out of 5s by pretty much every other rinky dinky critic alive. I told a friend “I seem to be the only person who doesn’t like it.” He said “that doesn’t surprise me.” Typically, when I’m the one voice that says “meh” in a crowd of cheers, I get accused of trolling. I try to avoid trolling indies. It’s bad for the soul. In the case of escapeVektor, I genuinely thought it was boring. You might.. hell, likely will, disagree with me on that. But I assure you, my “meh” here is my authentic opinion. When I troll, I go after the easiest targets, like any self-respecting troll does. Like ancient Sega properties that actually do suck but their fans don’t realize it. Speaking of which, NiGHTS was $2.50 on PSN this week. Yep, that’ll do. That’s what I love about Sega. It’s like having the barreled fish hand you the gun.
escapeVektor was developed by Nnooo. Which is ironic, because that’s the sound I made every time the story crept up again.
$7.99 (normal price $9.99) wants neo-retro developers to seriously ponder whether or not Golden-Age coin-ops would be considered classics if players were interrupted between each stage by unskippable text or cut scenes in the making of this review.
James Petruzzi of Discord Games is an Indie Gamer Chick all-star. He has two games on the Leaderboard, the writer of the most popular Tales from the Dev Side editorial that’s been published here, and now he’s chosen to sponsor the new (and still unfinished due to laziness) XBLIG Developer Index, kicking in a whopping $200 towards Autism Speaks. He also happens to have a very interesting looking Metroidvania coming later in 2013. James is here to talk about his new title, called Chasm, and the trials and tribulations of making games for XBLIG.
Cathy: Chasm is not coming to XBLIG. Et tu, Brute?
James: Right off the bat, I haven’t decided yet.
Cathy: Oh?
James: It runs on my Xbox 360 right now, and I’m planning on keeping it that way. But whether I release it or not, I’m not sure.
Cathy: Why not?
James: I’m not going to release it for a dollar.
Cathy: Oh.
James: My only option I feel is 400MSP, but whether people on that market would spring for it, I have no clue.
Cathy: So?
James: So? I hear you boil developers who release games at 400MSP in oil.
Cathy: As a point of order, I did place Bleed, a 400MSP game, in my Top 10.
James: Yea, but you also boiled them in oil after that. They’re still in bandages.
Cathy: Good game though.
James: Did the Bleed guy ever release numbers?
Cathy: Um yea, actually I just asked him. He told me it sold 900 units on XBLIG.
James: Those numbers show the problem with XBLIG.
Cathy: Net gross of about $3,150 for the developer. Sad thing is, can’t prove it, but I bet it would have sold a couple thousand copies at 240.
James: Either way it’s still terrible for a game that high quality.
The awesomely fun Take Arms was a critical hit, but about as well received by Xbox owners as a bagpipe simulator.
Cathy: What about PlayStation Mobile, where developers have huge flexibility on prices?
James: I haven’t really researched it to be honest, and I’m not sure whats all required to even get on there.
Cathy: It’s supposed to be a relatively open platform. I don’t know. Sony had said they would get back to me and never did.
James: So I’m just squarely focused on PC for now, I want to launch on Win/Mac/Linux and then go from there. But if it makes money, I’ll port it to everything under the sun with a D-pad.
Cathy: I’ll look forward to the NES, Master System, and 3DO releases.
James: Hahaha! Well, I’d consider PlayStation Network, Wii U, and maybe 3DS or Vita releases.
Cathy: Take Arms was pretty well received by critics, but it kind of flopped in sales. 48 Chambers was good, but again, didn’t really sell well. Is that why you’re trying to more traditional game with Chasm?
James: No, I’m actually just making it because it’s the game I’ve wanted to make since the beginning. If you watch the Evolution of Take Arms video we put on YouTube, you’ll see that started as a Castlevania type game. We were way too inexperienced though to deal with that much content, so we decided to make it a multiplayer game instead. Obviously something flopped with Take Arms that’s beyond the amount of content or anything.
Cathy: Maybe it was difficult to articulate that it was a multiplayer game. There’s obviously SOME interest for those on XBLIG, as seen in the success of Shark Attack Deathmatch. Maybe “Take Arms Deathmatch” sells 10,000 units and has a robust user base to keep it going?
James: Yea that’s definitely a possibility, but at the same time, I think you must have the right product at the right time.
Cathy: I think the big sticking point is the amount of people who play it daily. I reviewed Shark Attack Deathmatch in late December. I checked it last night, and there is still a wide variety of people playing. Then I tried Take Arms and found that nobody was playing.
James: If I would have kept up with content updates we probably could have grown a community or something around it. But that’s the hard part with multiplayer games, and why I will probably never do one again. With them, the community of people playing it is what gives the game value. If you take that away, it’s basically worthless.
Cathy: I would rank my play session with Take Arms against the other XBLIG critics as one of the best times I’ve had since starting Indie Gamer Chick. Do you think maybe some form of organized tournaments might have caused it to catch on?
James: We should have focused on organizing community play dates and doing more with it, but yeah, I guess we were just done after two years.
Only the most secure-in-their-manhood blacksmiths dared to use a pink anvil.
Cathy: Okay, onto Chasm. It looks really good. You originally intended Take Arms to be a Metroidvania, and now you’re finally doing one. What made you decide that now you’re ready?
James: Well, to be honest, it was a last-ditch effort. I quit my corporate job last May to focus on my next title full-time, Tim and I were talking again about doing something, which turned into this sci-fi Terraria-like called Solus. We worked on that through may and part of June, and Tim decided he wasn’t having fun anymore and was done. So we parted on good terms, but I was left with a big game to do by myself. In July I basically decided to scrap it, and started working on the original version of Chasm, which was basically going to be a cash in I guess for XBLIG. It was going to be a mining game like Miner Dig Deep, but with combat, weapons, some bosses and stuff to fight. I mean don’t get me wrong, I’ve wanted to do a mining game for a while, but I couldn’t really tell you what I liked about them, but I think I somehow managed to cut all the fun out of it. At some point by like September I had the engine pretty far along, but I was just hating it, I had completely forgotten why I started doing this stuff in the first place.
Cathy: What about the engine was off?
James: The engine was fine, I just couldn’t figure out a good formula for the game. Nothing ever felt right, like I was battling it constantly. And at some point I just began to resent it. All the fun was gone. That was definitely my lowest point in a long time. It was nervous-breakdown type levels for a while. So I scrapped it all.
Cathy: Do you know how many developers I’ve met since starting my site that I honestly feel would scrap something if they weren’t comfortable with it? Probably not a lot. I take it the current build you’re much more satisfied with?
James: Oh my God, yes! It was like the next day I made a new project, started coding shit all over, and man, I was like in love immediately.
The eyes have it!
Cathy: So how far along is Chasm now?
James: Very early. I started fresh October 25 or 26 I think. I’m shooting to have it done in a year from then.
Cathy: You guys are on Steam Greenlight. Most developers I’ve talked with who have listed their games on this have been, ahem, humbled by the, ahem, polite discourse on it. How has the feedback for Chasm been?
James: Well first let me tell you, I put Take Arms and 48 Chambers on there immediately when the service first went up. It was free for a while if you remember, so I was like why not? 48 chambers did incredibly poorly, as you can imagine. I finally took it off there last week after being up since launch and it was at like 23% I think. Almost every comment called it a mobile game and said it would be perfect on iPhone, which is funny since the entire game is designed around a thumb-stick, but okay.
Cathy: I do get their point, but yea, can’t imagine playing it with touch or tilt controls.
James: Take Arms did a bit better, but not very. At its highest point it was 52% to top 100, 48% when I pulled it off last week. Now that, on the other hand, was called a “flash game” in a snobbish way. Apparently there are a couple of flash games that are similar, so everyone on PC absolutely hated it. I think Alex Jordan got same kinda criticism about Cute Things Dying Violently.
James: Yea, so PC gamers are very weary of anything that looks like a flash game that they might have once saw.
Cathy: But then you put up Chasm, and it’s doing well to say the least.
James: I put it up just for the hell of it after we put up the new video on the 11th. It’s now in the top 100 on Steam Greenlight.
Cathy: Very nice!
James: That’s with no major media support whatsoever, its purely from Greenlighters.
Cathy: I’m not major media?
James: Were you pimping it?
Cathy: That’s what I’m doing now.
James: Too late! I’m top 100 now. You get no credit.
Cathy: Awwwwwww.
James: I’m not sure where these votes are coming from, we’ve had 20k unique hits since then. I didn’t realize that many people even rated Greenlight games for the hell of it. So it’s a little surprising thinking I’m going to have to work my ass off to push traffic to it, when in reality i did nothing, just put a video on and answered people’s questions.
Cathy: I think now that it cost money to list your game, you’re seeing more dedicated, anxious fans, instead of haters and trolls.
James: Ya think?
Cathy: That’s my best guess.
James: So yea, the response has been overwhelmingly positive. Which is crazy for something only two months into development.
Cathy: It’s a Metroidvania, but it’s also a Roguelike. Were you beat on as a child?
James: Before you jump to conclusions, the Roguelike influence is more from Diablo than anything.
Cathy: Oh good, so Roguelike for pussies. Noted.
James: I didn’t say that.
Cathy: The headline from this shall read “James Petruzzi, developer of upcoming game Chasm, calls all Diablo fans pussies.”
James: Are you trying to get me in trouble?
Cathy: Always.
James: I wouldn’t call it for-pussies! I think permadeath is pretty harsh punishment for failure.
Cathy: So when can we expect Chasm?
James: Hopefully late 2013.
Cathy: Come on, 400MSP XBLIG release?
James: Man I still like XBLIG, it’s a love/hate thing you know? I love it for being an open marketplace, but I hate it for being an open marketplace.
Seriously, James. You’ve got to come up with more exciting screens than these. This is your big moment!
Cathy: Hey, some neo-retro games are getting full XBLA releases. Spelunky for example. Why not try to secure a publisher?
James: Honestly, it’s really nice not having anyone to answer to. Only problem is always money, you know?
Cathy: Which I hear you’re thinking of solving by going through Kic..kic..kic..
James: Cathy, you okay?
Cathy: Excuse me, you’re thinking of going through Kic..kic..kic..
James: Kickstarter?
Cathy: Yea, that.
James: You seem to have a little bit of blood coming out of your nose.
Cathy: Yea, that happens whenever I hear or say that word.
James: I don’t think that’s healthy.
Cathy: Tell me about it. After writing that last editorial, my office looked like the Crazy 88s scene from Kill Bill.
James: Yea I’m thinking about Kickst.. that. I’m thinking about using that.
Cathy: Nice save. Gives me a chance to clot.
James: I’m also thinking about alpha funding, or even selling out to Microsoft. I’ve considered it all, and I’m still not sure what the best route is. We’re going to Game Developers Conference in March to show off Chasm, hopefully get some people interested.
Cathy: Might help to wear a tee-shirt that says “will sell my creative vision for food.”
James: I’m not THAT desperate yet!
Cathy: You’re thinking of using Kickstarter. You ARE that desperate.
James: Cathy, your nose.
Cathy: Well shit. Better wrap this up. I’ve got to go to the hospital again.
Did you know that when they tested the first atomic bomb, those involved took bets on what they thought might happen? Mostly it was about the amount of kilotons the explosion would be, but there were also side bets such as whether or not it would kill all present, cause the fault line to collapse, knock the Earth off its axis, or blow up the entire planet. I’m not sure how the winner would have collected if the last option had won out, but it’s true and well documented, and only some of those bets were tongue-in-cheek. Smart guys who, truth be told, had no fucking clue what would happen. With some experiments, you can’t know until you push the button.
Scribendus attempts to combine Scrabble and Tetris. I’m sure this has been attempted before (someone steered me in the direction of a Tetris-craze era title called Wordtris) but I’ve never played one. It’s a concept that seems like it should work, but in this case, it doesn’t. The idea is two letters at a time drop from the ceiling and you have to stack them in a way that forms a word. You can build a word (minimum four letters) diagonally, horizontally, or vertically. The problem of course, is being given two random letters at a time doesn’t leave you a whole lot of room for strategy or versatility. I consider myself pretty dang good at word games, but I couldn’t make Scribendus work for me. The only strategy that seemed to work was trying to build one decent sized (six letter or so) word across the bottom and stacking all other blocks on the side, but even this didn’t work. I got my best score by completely ignoring the letters all together and just stacking the blocks randomly, spacing the vowels apart from each other. Using this technique, I scored big points and multiple combos. And I don’t even know what words I made.
I can’t really slam Scribendus too much. It looks good, sounds good, and controls good. It feels to me like a worthy experiment that failed. That will happen in the land of indies. While my enthusiastic fans might want to me to shred every game that isn’t good, now might be a good time to remind readers that it’s okay to try something new and not have it succeed. Sometimes you can’t know if something will work until you create it and market it. Look at Lexiv, the Scrabble-meets-Sim City game. That could have just as well been a disaster too. I admire creator Dave Turka for giving it a try. His particular Manhattan Project simply failed to detonate, and now he become derp, destroyer of words.
80 Microsoft Points noted that a man named Isidor Isaac Rabi won the Trinity test betting pool with a guess of 18 kilotons (actual explosion was 18.6 kilotons) in the making of this review. His opponents overbid, allowing him to take both showcases.
Platformer from Hell comes from Hoosier Games, a group of academics from Indiana. I know, I know. Academics? In Indiana? I went “Hah!” too, but upon further research, they do have institutes of higher learning there. I’m not sure what is considered higher learning in Indiana. “Cow Tipping 101” or “Why you can’t pork your sister” I would imagine are on the agenda. I’m kidding of course. Actually, I’m quite friendly with project manager Derrick Fuchs (I hope that’s pronounced the way I think it is) and I ranked their previous effort, Warp Shooter, on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard. It was flawed but functional and fun. I applauded their efforts and looked forward to their next game. Which is here. And it sucks. A lot.
Where’s Waldo? causes less squinting.
It’s a punisher, of course. But it’s one of those tedious, excruciating punishers where dying and restarting levels is more of a chore than an acceptable part of the gameplay. This is partially because levels are overly large and pathways to victory are sprawling, convoluted nightmares. A good punisher, if there is such a thing (there is) should be fast paced and frequent deaths need to be handled in a way that doesn’t make them feel like a chore. Well, Platformer from Hell feels like a chore, with me cast in the role of Cinderella and bad jumping physics and boring level design co-starring as the wicked step-sisters.
And then there’s the graphics. The characters and some of the traps in Platformer from Hell are practically microscopic. I have a TV large enough to double as King Kong’s monocle, and yet the star of the game is a teeny-tiny little spec of pixels that vaguely resembles a person. Although this does allow you to see more of the stage and plan out which routes you’ll take faster, the drawback is you’ll suffer eye-strain and end up needing a monocle yourself. Another problem with the graphics is sometimes the background is overly bloomy and it drowns out the ability to properly see the hazards, especially spikes. Ultimately, it’s a game that’s intent is to frustrate and anger players, not entertain. Derrick noted to me that any faults with the game are his fault, not his team of students. Duly noted. That’s why I’m teaching the next lesson, which will be “how to tar and feather a fellow human being.” Alright guys, we’ll need 5 old feather pillows and some tar, or honey if no tar can be found. Trust me, this will be fun.
Actually, a better lesson could probably be learned from Little Acorns Deluxe by Team Pesky. It’s a platformer that does ramp up in challenge, but in a natural way that gives players room to grow instead of throwing them straight into the deep end on their first day of swimming lessons. Here you play as the patriarch of a family of chipmunks. No, not Dave Seville. An actual chipmunk, who must go through stages collecting acorns for winter stock-up. At first, Little Acorns might seem a tad bit on the easy side. Enemies don’t really kill you. They just turn you green and slow you down. The only way to die is to drown in water, but that doesn’t show up too often. The real challenge is the time limit in each stage, but it’s fairly generous. As you go along, you’re given new abilities like a rope to swing on special platforms or crash through bricks with. It’s alright. I guess.
It’s never really too difficult. I never had to repeat a stage more than once. Part of that is Little Acorns got its start as a Windows Phone game. You can’t really ramp up difficulty too much in a phone game, where players have to spend the majority of the time fighting the crappy digital-controls. With a proper controller, the game plays relatively smoothly. I found the rope physics to be somewhat goofy, but not a deal breaker.
Why I’m having a hard time getting excited is Little Acorns is a little on the dull side. Whether you’re gathering acorns or rounding up your children, the game never really feels original or engaging. There’s no real original hook to sink you into the experience, and no storyline or big twists in the gameplay to keep you going once you’ve started. Not that games need such devices, but they go a long way on the indie scene. Little Acorns is not outstanding on the grounds that it does not stand out. It is a decent, solid game that will give you four to six hours of platforming that you’ll be satisfied with once it’s over and forget all about in a day or two. The reason I reviewed it here is because the contrast between it and Platformer from Hell couldn’t be more jarring. One game gathers up all the nuts and isolates them in a cold, hollow place. The other is a game about chipmunks.
Clear Vision and Clear Vision 2 were developed by DPFlashes Studios
$0.99 each widowed and orphaned more stick figures than drunks running over street signs in the making of this review. 
Indie Gamer Chick 
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