Ever heard of something called “The Impressive Monkey Test?” Probably not. I invented it just now. But I think the Impressive Monkey Test could be a valuable tool in judging how much raw brainpower a game requires to play. You see, I would be impressed if a monkey could be trained to beat Super Mario Bros. I would be very impressed if a monkey could be trained to play Tetris. Brawlers, on the other hand, I would so not be impressed if a monkey could be trained to play them. They’re games designed for apes, where slapping buttons without finesse is as valid a strategy for winning as mastering combos. Don’t get me wrong: games for apes can be fun. But generally, games that can be played just as well by both humans and primates tend to get boring pretty quickly.
Charlie Murder is a brawler that probably couldn’t be enjoyed by our simian cousins. It has a lot more going for it than just randomly mashing buttons and moving to the right. There’s a fairly complex item system, leveling up, special skills, lots of hidden stuff, and a quirky punk rock story that kept me interested until the end. But what really sets Charlie Murder apart is that it’s a brawler that’s more about the adventure than the fisticuffs. Yea, I know. Some other brawlers have been doing that lately too. Recent XBLIG/PC title Fist Puncher certainly aimed to be more about the story than the action, but after playing just a little bit of Charlie Murder, I felt Fist Puncher was positively antiquated. The funny thing is, I’ve met people who feel the same way about Charlie Murder after playing Dragon’s Crown.
Yea, this was a tough one for me to play, and inspired my most passed around editorial ever. Then again, I Made a Game with Zombies was also pretty bad for me. The only explanation: SKA Studios wants me dead. After this review, I don’t blame them.
Actually, these last two weeks have been eye-opening to say the least. I figured fans of brawlers would be all for things like experience and level-up systems. In fact, a whole lot of them are not. That’s weird, because having a sense of advancement is pretty much the only thing that kept me going once Charlie Murder grew teeth and became difficult to work with. I guess SKA Studios, the guys behind I Made a Game with Zombies In It, are infamous for games that cross the line from enjoyable to infuriating. I would think such a reputation wouldn’t be a badge of honor. Any moron can frustrate people, a fact I demonstrate on a daily basis with my boyfriend and parents. Being able to hold someone’s attention by means other than a sense of obligation? That takes talent. SKA undoubtedly has talent. I just question whether they’re more interested in their poop-stained “we make hard games” badge.
Early on, Charlie Murder is a joy to play. The enemies are well-balanced and the stages are fun to explore. But it doesn’t take too long to realize that there’s going to be some major problems here. Chief amongst them: Charlie Murder is designed with multiplayer in mind. In solo play, the game ramps up in toughness faster than you can level up. I had to replay multiple stages. That didn’t annoy me so much, because I was stockpiling the best clothing and hocking all the rest for cash. But then I would get to bosses that, without hyperbole, I would spend an hour or longer fighting and making no progress. There was one that had a parasite growing out of his head that spawned a full battalion of little worm things. You couldn’t possibly kill the little fuckers fast enough before more would arise to devour you. This forced me to take a smack and run approach with the boss, all the while drip-feeding myself health refills. After a while, I had finally whittled him down to his last tick of health. To beat this boss (and a few others), you have to finish him with a button-mashing quick time event. For the next ten minutes (felt like much longer), every time i went to do the move, one of the minions would grapple on to me, breaking the killing blow and forcing me to mash a different button to shake it off. Of course, when there’s a small army of baddies that can do that attack, you can shake one off and get caught by another. Bosses become such a clusterfuck because of this. One boss has infinitely respawning enemies that can refill its health from across the room. Kill one and another appears within seconds. Just to be clear, Charlie Murder, you want to be enjoyed, right?
No? Only on your terms you say? Those terms being four-players or bust?
Well what if your terms aren’t an option?
No, I don’t particularly feel like going and fucking myself right now.
Grind? That’s your solution? Grind up my stats to have a fighting chance? That’s a shitty deal. I haven’t avoided a single baddie, and I’ve varied my fighting style to try to win over supporters on your in-game Twitter thing (seriously, that’s how leveling up works). Why is the game not progressing with me? Why am I encountering boss fights where I have to practically carry a buffet with me to avoid dying? Why does it take me several minutes to fight normal baddies? Why on earth would you make your end-game such a tedious, boring, repetitive chore?
There’s a few minigames to break up the same old shit, like a few rhythm games. The last of which lagged on me (single player offline play, mind you), got skippy, and cost me a perfect score.
Fine. I’ll jump on Xbox Live and play with friends and ohhhhh right. We tried that and the connection kept lagging out. And it wasn’t just on me. I tried it with different partners, at home and at my office. During certain fights, it just stopped working. I’m sure this will get patched, but it didn’t help my cause here. Instead, I tried to play local. This was fun. In fact, Charlie Murder is always fun with a party, provided that party isn’t lagging out. But this introduced new problems. I had spent time building up my Chick’s stats and I was NOT going to give that up for anyone. Thus, my friends would jump in and out from the ground floor while I walked around like a fucking super hero. They had no remote shot of playing the levels I hadn’t finished. This forced me to go back and start from the beginning with them. Still fun, but significantly less so. I watched them maliciously brawl with the opening baddies, while I could kill any of them with a single punch. I imagine this is how major leaguers must feel when they attend their children’s tee-ball games.
Oh, there was one funny bit in all this. In order to open up the real final level of Charlie Murder and achieve the “good” ending of the game, you have to gather the parts of an evil Dracula thing. His heart, his eye, his finger nail, his.. this really sounds familiar. Anyway, once you do, you have to equip all five parts before entering the final boss fight. Problem: the ability to get this is dependent fully on you picking the right level-up skill upgrades that allow you to equip more buttons. After reaching level 25, I was able to equip four buttons at most. This was the most offered to me, by the way. If it had given me a chance to have a fifth slot, I would have taken it.
So I cheated: I turned on another controller, gave it the eye (which provided the attributes I figured I would need the least for this fight), and opened up a harder boss fight. Then the unused character got killed while I fought the boss. As he laid there waiting for me to come shock him back to life, he leveled up three times (while dead, mind you) as I spent the next thirty minutes fighting this double-boss thing. Okay, so maybe it’s not that funny, but I thought it was hilarious.
I have two pieces of advice for Charlie Murder. #1: Don’t go into it alone, at all. If friends are not going to be available to you, do not buy this game. The frustration of single player outweighs the fun in a huge way. No thought seems to have been given to balance, to pacing, or to scaling the amount of enemies back to accommodate solo play. #2: If you have friends who you’ll be able to play the game with from start to finish, get this game. For all the bitching I did above, Charlie Murder is an extremely satisfying game.
Despite all the whining above, Charlie Murder is my favorite brawler ever. Nothing remotely close.
It’s like the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde of games. Well, I mean, no it’s not. There’s already one of those. But you know what I mean. The contrast between the multiplayer experience and the solo game are startling. Alone, Charlie Murder is a sadistically brutal punisher-brawler with bad pacing, unfair design, and frustration from hour two onwards. The end game especially is anything but fun. With friends, it’s a still-difficult but not quite as frustrating romp with charming characters, fun set pieces, and enough variation to keep anyone from getting bored. A few years ago, I would have hated Charlie Murder. I quite enjoyed it now, flaws and all, on account of having friends. And to think, I used to believe the Care Bears were full of shit. It only took a game chalked full of violence, bloodshed, dismemberment, and cannibalism to show that Tenderheart Bear knew what he was talking about all along.
800 Microsoft Points would make a video of the most horribly violent Charlie Murder four player moments with this song playing in the background if I had such talent in the making of this review.
Review copies of Charlie Murder were provided to Indie Gamer Chick. One was provided to a friend that had no feedback in this review. The other was cashed in by Cathy. At Indie Gamer Chick, we buy our own games. When a game is reviewed before release, a review copy is accepted and a full copy of the game is purchased on release date whether the game is enjoyed or not. For more on this policy, read the FAQ.
If you have epilepsy, do not use this editorial as a baseline for your own ability to play games. Consult with your doctor before attempting to play any video games.
In order to play upcoming Xbox Live Arcade title Charlie Murder, I had to ditch my beautiful Sony 3D LCD television and instead slum it on an old projection TV with a fading image. In addition to that, I had to bring extra lighting into my office, and wear sunglasses. This was in addition to my normal precautions, which include a proper distance from the screen and my medications.
Photosensitive epilepsy is the hand I was dealt at age sixteen. I don’t think I’ve ever experienced anything as terrifying as my first seizure. It’s something I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. But what was really terrifying about it was, I love video games. They weren’t the only thing I was potentially about to lose out on forever, but they were the thing that at age sixteen I felt I couldn’t live without the most. It took over a month before my doctor and various specialists were able to deduce what I had. When I was sat down to have explained to me how my life would unfold from here on out, I remember being too scared to ask if I could play games ever again. I couldn’t even spit it out, and the doctor excused himself to get me literature and my starter pack of medications. Finally, I kind of whimpered to my parents “I don’t think I’ll be able to play games again.” When the doctor walked back into the room, my father was the one who asked. I felt a literal weight lift off my stomach and shoulders when he said “it’s not out of the question, but she’ll have to exercise caution.”
Ever since my Vintage Hero review, I’ve been besieged by endless requests to try another Mega Man-inspired XBLIG. Well, I actually did purchase Rad Raygun way back when it came out. It became one of two XBLIGs that triggered a seizure in me. The developers of Rad Raygun are not responsible for that at all. I am. I took the risk of playing it. They had warned me that they were unsure about sections of the game and that I should show caution. I played it anyway, because I was like “well, it looks like an original Game Boy game, with pale greens, blacks, and whites. I don’t think it could possibly set off a seizure.” I’m not sure where exactly the spell happened, but there was a moment that caused it. I don’t remember most of my experience with it, but according to Brian, I seemed to be enjoying it despite some objections to the controls. I would also like to say that developers TRU FUN Entertainment were super classy and apologetic about the whole thing, despite having done NOTHING wrong. I appreciated their sympathy and I will look forward to their future projects. They’re good dudes. You can read a review by my friend Tim Hurley of TheXBLIG.com right here.
I was advised to wait until my body got used to the medication I was given. In that time, I had exercised extreme caution towards such simple things as turning on lights or watching television. Games require slightly more attention than passively watching TV, but at least I knew gaming would return to my life. Then I was given the go ahead to play games, with the understanding that it could be years before I fully had a handle on what could set off a seizure, so caution and supervision would probably be required. Also, you know how every game has one of those bullshit “remember to take a break every hour” reminders? Yea, those would never be bullshit for me again.
So obviously I did the happy dance of joyful elation and jumped right back into my beloved games, right? Well, no. I remember looking at my Xbox and picturing Russian Roulette in my head. Literally, that’s what I thought. I imagined a bullet being loaded into a chamber, and pushing the power button as pulling the trigger. I didn’t play games that day. I didn’t play them again for nearly two weeks after I had been given to go-ahead. The next time I played a game, it was for my Nintendo DS. With the back-light turned completely off. It was a game called Lost in Blue, which I had previously started and not finished. I knew it wasn’t flashy. It was my ease-back-in game. Eventually, epilepsy became the boogeyman. I dealt with it on a regular basis, but not from gaming. Nearly eight years later, and I’ve probably had seizures as a direct result of playing games maybe five times.
Two of those seizures were the result of games I was reviewing for Indie Gamer Chick. Do you know whose fault it was that I had those spells?
Mine. And mine alone.
My doctor made it clear to me: gaming will always be a risk, from here on out, for the rest of my life. The fact that I can even play games today is something I’m very grateful for. Epilepsy has limited my life in other ways. I can’t get my driver’s license. Nor should I attempt to get it. I would be a risk to myself and others. I met a fellow who lives with epilepsy who told me it was bullshit that he couldn’t get his license, even as he conceded that he couldn’t predict his spells. I thought, “wow, you’re an incredibly selfish human being, are you not?” Personally, if I had to choose between risking the lives of others on the road or catching the bus, I would think the bus would be a lay-up. I guess not everyone feels that way.
I am absolutely worried sick that I won’t be able to play Rain. I would guess the game will feature lightning effects, which are typically the cause for those bright, screen-wide strobes that set off seizures in me. Will I be heartbroken if Rain turns out to be off-limits? Yes. Is it the end of the world? No way. There are thousands of games that aren’t off-limits to me. In that sense, I’m extremely lucky. Some people can’t play games at all. UPDATE: I could play it. As it turns out, I should have been more worried that the game would be boring.
You know, as a kid, I loved attending Golden State Warriors games. I was obsessed with them. When I was eight-years-old, I loved Latrell Sprewell so much that I convinced myself that P. J. Carlesimo’s neck must have assaulted Spree’s hands. Today? I can’t safely attend Warriors games, because flash bulbs explode for every player introduction, fast-break, dunk, lay-up, or if a visiting star like LeBron James so much as smiles on the bench.
Now imagine if I took my no-Warriors limitation to the extreme and said I would sue the Warriors organization, the city of Oakland, and Oracle Arena if they didn’t ban flash-photography from the building. Not only that, but force them to also eliminate the flashy home-team introductions, and the rally-graphics from the display screens. It would create a boring atmosphere for everyone. Personally, I would hate myself if I caused that. Yet, since my epilepsy became public knowledge, I’ve had many people afflicted with it say we ought to all come together and file a class-action lawsuit against the gaming industry. Ummmm, no. We really shouldn’t. Because we are in fact not the center of the universe.
I’ve had eight years to accept that not every game is playable by me. A few years ago, my father got me an Atari Flashback as novelty gift for Christmas. Oops. As it turns out, in the dark ages of video games, the only special effect developers had at their disposal was to make the game brightly flash strobes like it was trying to signal for a helicopter to land on your TV. You know what? I’m remarkably lucky. I live in an era where there are thousands of games accessible to me without fear of my personal trigger. Not only that, but the more hours I put into gaming, the more I’m able to accurately predict when a scene is coming up that will feature my triggers, and I can simply look away.
When I’m asked if I’ve ever played an old Atari 2600 game, if my answer isn’t “yes, I played it when I was a kid” then chances are the answer will be “I can never play it.” Old Atari games rely heavily on strobe effects, which are my personal trigger. I had a seizure playing the game Haunted House on the Atari Flashback my father gave me a couple of years ago. I did play some Atari games before I developed epilepsy. I even had Activision Anthology for my Game Boy Advance and Atari’s Greatest Hits for my Xbox. Chances are I didn’t like the games too much anyway. What can I say? I’m a whippersnapper with no appreciation for the classics.
Not everyone is as lucky as me, and I do sympathize with those that aren’t. I can’t imagine how my life would have played out if I had to quit gaming at age sixteen. At the same time, not everyone gets to experience everything the world has to offer. I know in America we teach that with hard work and perseverance it isn’t true, but unfortunately it is. If your epilepsy is more severe than mine, maybe gaming is not for you. Making threats against the game industry, or against hard-working developers is not going to make them sympathetic to your cause. Changes to the industry will not be forced by angry lawsuits. Angry lawsuits make people feel like they’re under attack. Which they kind of are. I find that not being a bitch about it makes people want to learn from me. If I berated them for having the nerve to try to be artistic, they might end up not being interested at all in learning how to improve my gaming life.
Do I wish there was a change? Yes. I wish developers would make some of their special effects that have no bearing on gameplay optional. But only if it’s cost efficient to them. That’s not always the case, but if it is, that option could mean the difference between someone like me playing their game and someone like me only hearing about it. A perfect example is Fez. At the time it came out, I had been doing Indie Gamer Chick for less than a year. My readers hadn’t quite got a feel for what was and wasn’t off-limits for me. Today? Hundreds of people have my back, and look out for games that are potentially dangerous for me to play. I have hundreds of guardian angels whose vigilance protects me on a daily basis, and that is cool as hell. But at the time Fez came out, I bought the game after some people had played it and said the flashing wasn’t “too bad.” It took me about an hour to find out that Fez was totally off-limits for me, because I had a minor spell while playing it.
I know Phil Fish is persona non grata today, but actually either he or someone for Polytron Corporation were mortified that Fez posed a risk for me. They couldn’t believe it, because the game had passed Microsoft’s seizure risk certification. What they weren’t aware of was that certification only applies to those without a preexisting condition. If a person already has epilepsy, it means nothing to them. Is that Microsoft’s fault? Absolutely not. Is it Phil Fish or Polytron’s fault I had a seizure while playing Fez? No. It’s my fault. I assumed the risk of playing a game, as my doctor made clear to me. That risk was realized and I had a spell. Fish and Polytron couldn’t have been classier in the aftermath of it. My only regret is I couldn’t play their game more. I was apparently enjoying it.
I wish gaming had a database for people with photosensitive epilepsy. Something as comprehensive as GameFAQs, only it listed potential risks and triggers for games. Who would contribute to this? Well, judging from the fact that I have hundreds of fans who on a daily basis warn me about games, movies, TV, or even random YouTube videos that could be a risk for me, I’m willing to bet gamers of all stripes would be eager to contribute. But, it’s not as easy as just listing the whole flashy, strobe-effect thing for everyone. Epilepsy doesn’t work like that. There are thousands of known triggers across the epilepsy spectrum. Some people are sensitive to flashes, like me. Some people are sensitive to repetitive patterns. Some people are even known to be sensitive towards specific colors. And once you have a feel for what someone’s trigger is, you’re not even taking into account their personal degree of sensitivity. In theory, everyone is vulnerable to epilepsy. That’s why certification like Microsoft’s exists. But for me? My sensitivity is all over the place. Sometimes it takes a lot to set me off. Then you instances like the one time I had a seizure from looking at my desk lamp, looking away for a moment, then looking back at it.
Who knows? Maybe one day, I’ll be able to play Fez. I was sort of counting on a Vita or 3DS port, which I could play with the back-lighting turned off. Alas, it doesn’t seem to be in the cards.
Obviously a database could not include everything. But if we could isolate the statistical top-triggers among the epileptic population and list possible risks of those in each game, we could open up gaming to thousands of people who don’t have the type of support system I’ve built up over the last two years. We could also use it to educate developers. I don’t want to compromise anyone’s artistic vision. I’m not that selfish. But if they can make those effects optional, that would be awesome. In fact, over a dozen XBLIG games have added such switches after the developers met me. I’m proud of what I’ve been able to accomplish as Indie Gamer Chick, but the getting the gift of having a game with a switch that lessens the potential risk for me to play it? It makes me tear up every time. We all have a chance to give this gift to an entire community of potential gamers. I don’t know how we’ll do it, but let’s make this happen.
I support the Epilepsy Foundation, a not-for-profit organization that aims to not only learn possible ways of treating epilepsy, but also strives to improve the quality of living among those who live with it. Their tireless work has been invaluable to my life, and the lives of millions of others. Follow them on Twitter (they only have 9,400 followers. Paris Hilton has eleven million followers. There is no justice) and if you have the means, please donate to them. Every little bit helps.
Let’s open up how we’ll tackle this database thing in the comments. I’m also hearing from my Twitter fans about possibly expanding the idea to include other limitations, such as color blindness, or games that can be played with one hand for those missing limbs. Let’s make this an actual discussion. I’ve said for two years now, I have the best fans in the world. Let’s prove me right on that.
I want to thank my friend Cyril Lachel of DefunctGames.com for being one of the guys who always keeps an eye out for me on the gaming thing, not to mention countless guys and gals on Facebook and Twitter. When I said you’re my guardian angels, I wasn’t being cute. It’s true.
Last week, Indie Royale offered a video game bundle that was named after (and hand-picked by) our very own Cathy Vice, the Indie Gamer Chick. The bundle sold very, very well. I know that fact pleased Cathy a great deal and it definitely put a broad smile on my face as well. We both deeply appreciate the immense support we get from the indie gaming community as a whole. What more can I say than: YOU GUYS ROCK!
So, now it is my turn to play/review the games that are in the bundle. I wanted to have these reviews up while the bundle was “live” but, unfortunately, real life concerns got in the way of that. And since there are 11 games here total (including the bonus titles as well), I’m going to keep my opinions as concise as I possibly can.
So without further ado, here are my uncensored thoughts on the games offered in the Indie Gamer Chick Bundle:
I think I’ve mentioned this previously, but I’ve kind of had it with the whole zombie thing. I mean, really…isn’t this fucking over yet? I just don’t get the gaming community’s fascination with these undead mounds of shambling flesh.
But, I digress…
The game itself is a good deal of fun, if a bit repetitive and you can get past the played-out zombie motif. Basically, what you do in Dead Pixels is run-and-gun in a 2D, pixelated environment and shoot the everlovin’ shit out of wave after wave (well, street after street here) of increasingly difficult zombie bastards. There’s a good deal to collect and a good many weapons to choose from to aid you in your zombie killing ways. My favorite parts though were all the sly references to other games (most notably the Resident Evil series) and films. Good times.
Is that Lionel Ritchie? When did they make a Lionel Ritchie game??
Antipole is a relatively clever platformer with a cool gravity-manipulating mechanic. You play as a lone mercenary who has to infiltrate a robot mothership and take it down to end the mechanized tyranny of the machines.
Although it was fun for a time, I must say that I bored of this title rather quickly, and once I played through four or five levels I had no desire to pick it up again. As I said, the gravity manipulating mechanic is sweet; I just would’ve liked to see it applied in some different and/or more creative ways as the game progressed.
I’m not big on racing games on the whole, but I enjoyed Little Racers Street because it reminded me a great deal of one of my favorite racing games of all time, RC Pro Am. LRS doesn’t have any of the weaponry and gadgets that Pro Am had but it does offer a metric fuckton of upgrades, options and customizability for your mini-cars. It is also a blast to play and offers a pretty damn good challenge, as Pro Am did, as well.
One bad thing I came across in LRS though was that I couldn’t run the game in full-screen mode on my PC. It would crash and burn every time I tried to run it that way, so keep in mind that you may need to run it in “windowed” mode to play. Not that big a deal, but it may piss some people off…like me.
This game is a straight-up Defender clone with current gen visuals slapped on top of it. Now, if you are going to clone an old-school arcade game, you could do much worse than the 1980 Williams Electronics classic, I suppose. Orbitron is pretty fun to play and does offer a few twists (time trials and the like) on the traditional, shmup-styled game.
The player can choose from two ships at the outset, one red and blue, and one piloted by man and the other by a woman. There’s really no difference between the two, so, why? Essentially, what you have to do here is defend (See what I did there? You know you guys missed my scintillating wit…) an orbiting, circuitous space station from nasty alien types who are trying to blow up said space station. And if they succeed, BOOM goes the dynamite and your game is over.
Orbitron has 2D/3D graphics which are well done, but I found it hard to see some enemies at times. Also, the controls are a bit “floaty,” whereas Defender’s were spot on, which they need to be in any twitchy shmup.
Again, this an experience that I had some fun with for a time…but once I put it down that was it.
Chester, I hate to tell you this, but your ass is on fire…
An enjoyable and breezy romp through platformer-land that obviously takes inspiration from the Rayman series and Super Mario Brothers 3, and that is in no way a knock or disparagement.
There’s tons of stuff to collect, discover and unlock in Chester and it’s all tied together with jaunty, humorous tone that’s rather infectious. It also has a cool, elemental based (water, fire and grass) power system that’s well implemented, but it also has some of the “punisher’s” failings in later levels.
And, oh yeah, the soundtrack in Chester is surprisingly rockin’ as well.
To quote Towelie, “I have no idea what’s goin’ on…”
I own three cats and none of them have laser based powers, I’m sad to say, and neither does the cat in this game…but it does glow/pulse in a pretty badass, lasery way.
I think I consciously avoided this game on XBLIG because it reminded me of the SNL Digital Shorts of (almost) the same name, which were funny, but one can only take so much Andy Samberg. The same goes for LaserCat, I’m afraid. I could only take so much of it. It feels like an art project/experiment more than a full-fledged game. But, to its credit, it does have an addicting quality where you want to play until you find just one more key and answer one more trivia question. At the end of the day though, LaserCat is just another platformer…with a super tight, quasi-techno soundtrack.
This is a different experience in that it is an odd hybrid of an espionage/puzzle game and a shmup. 80% of the time you’re a spy (with the overly original name of “Spy”) who is wandering around high security buildings doing spy-type things in a 2D, top-down view. The other 20% of the time, you’re uploading your spy-pal, Julian, into various computer terminals where he does his thing, which is shooting space invadery, computer-virus-things from a vertical (up and down rather than left to right) shmup perspective. Strangely enough, it works in this context and is quite entertaining. I actually laughed out loud when the game switched to this mode for the first time and not because it’s bad or anything; it was more out of total astonishment that the game actually went to shmup-land.
But, be sure to bring your thinking caps when playing SpyLeaks, kiddos, because you’ll really have to use your wits to conquer each area. This game is a challenge from the word go…and that’s a good thing. I’m of the mind that too many of today’s games spoon feed their players, but not SpyLeaks, so check it out when you have a moment; I found it surprisingly engaging.
I saved this game for last because I truthfully have zero interest in a game like this. I’m not a businessman, nor will I ever be a businessman. And on the slight chance I was to ever to become a businessman, I certainly wouldn’t open and operate a fucking call center. I mean, what is fun about owning and operating a fucking call center? Nothing. Nothing is fun about owning and operating a fucking call center. I can’t even imagine a scenario where someone would say, “Hey, you know what I want to play? A game where I open a call center and handle the day-to-day operations. You know, the minutia and all that related shit. That would be sooooo awesome!”
Only out of completeness’ sake did I give Smooth Operators a whirl…and it’s not too bad, actually. It’s clearly well designed and great deal of TLC went into the making of it. I had my business, Assclown Telephony, up and running in no time. I was adding floors to my building, hiring call center stooges and making money like a motherfuckin’ BOSS, yo. And that’s where it’s at.
So, if an easy-breezy business sim is what gets your rocks off, honey, then Smooth Operators is the game for you.
But I’ll never play it again. Fuck call centers and everything about them, man.
Sing it with me now: “I fell in to a burnin’ Ring of Fire…”
Hey, did someone clonk me on the head and switch out my bad ass PC for a Super Nintendo? No? Are you sure? Because I’m pretty sure that’s what happened when I was playing Evil Quest. Beyond the fact that it turns traditional, good vs. evil conventions on their heads, this is a boilerplate action role playing game. Again, not necessarily a bad thing, but it does have a “been there, done that” vibe to it overall.
One other thing that stuck out to me with this game was just how awful the cutscene art is. Je-SUS, it is bad. This really doesn’t take away from the solid, if uninspired, gameplay at all, but it is rather jarring and amateurish.
This is a game my wife would love and excel at…and I think it’s well done too. She digs Zuma, Bejeweled, Candy Crush and most “casual” games of that ilk, and 48 Chambers fits right into that addictive mold. It’s an interesting, little puzzle game where speed and precision are paramount. All you have to do is collect the orbs and keys then exit the chamber in the time allotted, which is easier said than done, of course.
My only real complaint here is that this title would be better suited on mobile and/or touchscreen platform and not a PC or console. If there isn’t a mobile version of 48 Chambers in the works, Discord, then you should get on that shit, pronto!
Blood and random saw blades…just what every game needs.
This game was an interesting hack-and-slash platformer with an Asian motif up until you hit the sixth or seventh level when it falls into the asinine tropes of the punisher, so that’s where I said, “FUCK YOU” and put the controller down.
Also, it has no full screen mode, so that’s a double FUCK YOU.
So, there you have it. My wrap up on the Indie Gamer Chick Bundle – 11 games all told. Six you should definitely check out, and the five I’m not so sure about.
Regardless of my thoughts on each game individually, the main reason I love these bundles, and today’s indie games in general, is that they remind me of swapping freshly copied 5 ¼ inch floppy disks with my buddy in high school homeroom. Once I got home, slapped that bad boy in my C64’s 1541 floppy drive and typed in LOAD “$”, 8, I almost never knew what I was going to get and that excited me. Imagine that: being excited by a listing of game titles on a disk directory.
Now, I get inundated with press releases and review requests for all kinds of dazzling, interactive entertainment experiences on a daily basis and my pulse barely flickers. The problem with the majority of today’s “triple A” video games is that they lack true inspiration; they lack soul. When I pop the latest and greatest game from EA, 2K, Activision or Ubisoft into my Xbox, I pretty much know what I’m going to get. It’ll be big and loud and technically impressive…but what is it beyond that? That’s not the case with the majority of today’s indie games and I dig that. Fuck, I’ll go as far as to say that I need that. I need that sense of awe, surprise and giddy enjoyment in my life and indie games (typically) provide that. Indie games have soul in spades.
So, to all you indie devs out there: you keep on doing the interesting things you do and I’ll be here, waiting for you to blow my mind…
Team 2Bit stands up and takes a bow. Tsutomu Yamaguchi rips up his program and walks out of the auditorium in disgust.
You see, I think Fist Puncher is probably better than your run of the mill brawler. Think of it as Castle Crashers without having to equip weapons. You level up. There are a variety of special moves and combos you can pull off, and you can earn more as you make progress. Levels aren’t always about smacking some twats around, walking ten feet to the right, then smacking more twats. Sometimes you’re in a poisoned subway. Sometimes you’re riding motorcycles. This is all set in a decidedly mature world with adult themes and occasional voice-over narration.
Sadly, it’s hard for me to get excited about this when I started playing upcoming Xbox Live Arcade brawler Charlie Murder about an hour before trying this. I haven’t yet formed an option on that game, but playing it undoubtedly soured me on Fist Puncher. Both games intend to take brawlers in a more progressive, modern direction. It’s as if they’re both in a race, and Fist Puncher is running at a pretty decent pace. Unfortunately, that doesn’t matter because Charlie Murder is using quantum time displacement magic to have already finished the race, give Fist Puncher a wedgie, and sleep with its wife.
Oh shit, it’s Scientologists!
All games should stand on their own. I still believe that. But, I really am having trouble separating these two games from the same genre which released this close together. One of which is extremely modernized and the other of which is still has some firm roots in tradition. If I hadn’t just played Charlie Murder, I think I would have liked Fist Puncher a whole lot more. Not too much more. I hate brawlers and I can’t hide my contempt for them. One of the worst times I’ve had as Indie Gamer Chick was playing the Simpsons Arcade Game with my boyfriend. It wasn’t even an indie, but I had never played it and figured I could get a decent review out of it. Then I dragged Brian along for the ride. I hated every moment of it, but I thought Brian was enjoying it. Then after we finished, he said “well, that sucked.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“When was I supposed to say something? You haven’t stopped complaining this entire time. I’m actually surprised you could complain that much without stopping to breathe.”
The thing with 2D brawlers is, most feel like the same game with different skins. Even popular ones. Look, I played Streets of Rage and its sequels when they were in Ultimate Genesis Collection. I played Final Fight on Capcom Classics Collection. I’m happy you old school gamers still enjoy them, but I don’t get it. It’s just button mashing the same guys, walking to the right a few feet, then button mashing more of the same guys. Repeat this until you run into a boss with an unfair attack pattern and button mash him. Then maybe you watch a static cut scene before repeating the whole process for seven to eight levels. It’s boring. Having a variety of fighting styles doesn’t take the edge off either, because usually there’s one attack that just plain works better than everything else, of which you’ll use it so much that you’ll wear out the buttons you have to hit to activate it.
Fist Puncher, God bless it, does its very best to break up the monotony by including different objectives, branching paths, and fairly short levels. There’s also an upgrade system that, in the tradition of Indie Gamer Chick, I attempted to abuse by simply putting all my stats into strength. Didn’t work, because enemies become downright cheap. I encountered a boss that has a murder of crows surround you. If you’re unable to run away, those damn crows will stun lock you and utterly drain your health. At this point, I had maybe two points spent on defense and I didn’t last too long. Of course, that’s my fault and not the developer’s, but I was still pretty peeved at the cheapness of it. Not to mention that some of the levels are clearly designed with four players in mind, like a subway that fills with poison. You have 90 seconds to clear a few waves of bad guys and a boss. Now, by the time I played this stage, I had nearly filled my strength meter to the brim. It didn’t matter. Enemies were spongy as hell, and there was only one of me to finish a stage meant to be played with friends. The amount of enemies probably should have been scaled back a bit to accommodate solo play.
Since I missed the narration due to a glitch in the sound, I filled in the blanks myself. in my version of the story, the guy in the yellow is attempting to sell multi-colored toilet seat covers shaped like giant assholes. Someone off-screen claimed to match his low prices and he pulled a gun on them, because thems fightin’ words!
When you play with friends, it does take the edge off. But while the fighting style consists of more than punches and kicks, Fist Puncher still has a relatively low ceiling before combat gets too repetitive. And while occasional minigames (such as a batting cage where I swear to Christ I could not line up to hit the fucking balls correctly) or hidden keys do try to make this something more, I just found Fist Puncher to be the type of generic brawler that has been done hundreds of times before and will continue to be done until the end of time. Plus, the XBLIG port of the PC title is loaded with some awful glitches. I died during one section of play and had to be brought back to life by being given CPR, which is done by hitting button prompts. Once I was brought back to life, Brian was still bent over in the CPR position, unable to stand up. This was not by design. Weirdly, he eventually stood up, but none of the action buttons would work. He had to intentionally let an enemy knock him down before anything would work again. In addition to all of this, the sound effects (including the voice over narration after the first stage) would cut in and out, sometimes leading to playing whole stages without the satisfaction of hearing your fist smack against some asshole’s face.
I’m not scoring against the glitches (unacceptable as they are), because I didn’t like Fist Puncher regardless. Indie Gamer Guy did, and it would seem many long-term fans of the genre disagree with me as well. Having played through it, I do admit that Fist Puncher is a well crafted tribute to one of the industry’s most revered game types that does try to do a little bit more than they did. But I never liked brawlers to begin with, so I was not who this game was aimed at, and Fist Puncher does absolutely nothing to try to convince people like me that we have it all wrong. Its only ambition was to satisfy fans of games like Streets of Rage or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and it seems to do that well. I’ll never understand why games like this are still popular when gaming has come so very far since the mid 90s. If anything, brawlers are having a revival, and not one of those ironic ones like people watching movies on VHS or pretending to like My Little Pony. I’m talking honest-to-God elation. I don’t get it. A lot of people my age don’t get it. Then again, people of their age don’t get how we could convince our parents to murder each-other on Black Friday to score the last booster pack of Pokemon cards for Christmas. It’s a generational thing.
400 Microsoft Points have no opinion of Charlie Murder yet, except that it does try to do more with brawlers, and that’s a step in the right direction in the making of this review.
Sony just started its annual Play event, where some of the top indies (and one random licensed title) get put on PlayStation Network, complete with PlayStation Plus discounts and a special bonus if you buy all the games in the event. DO NOT FALL is not one of those games. It just happened to come out the day the event started, alongside actual participant Stealth Inc. It’s also not really an indie, per se. It’s by developers XPEC Entertainment. I get it. Heh. XPEC. That’s like expect. They’re saying “expect entertainment, like, from the games we’re making.” As opposed to what? I expect every game to be entertaining. It’s only when they don’t that I get pissy about it.
I didn’t do the five seconds of research on Google that would have alerted me to these guys’ non-indie status. They’ve handled such franchises as Shrek, Hello Kitty, and Kung-Fu Panda. That got me briefly excited, because I thought Kung Fu Panda was a pretty underrated little game. Then I got unexcited when I found out they only developed the Wii and PS2 version, not the pretty decent Xbox 360 port. Okay, so I totally screwed the pooch in selecting this game for review. Unless it doesn’t suck. Shockingly, it doesn’t. DO NOT FALL is not bad at all. It’s not much better than decent either, but at least I found a game that nobody is talking about to review. Still counts.
Behold: the least controversial screenshot any game I’ve reviewed will ever have. That’s what I get for accidentally reviewing a non-indie.
So the basic idea is DO NOT FALL is a maze-like platformer, with the hook being the ground crumbles beneath you as you run along it. Most of the time it eventually respawns. Occasionally it doesn’t. Neat hook. Original. The crumbling floor thing is a common theme in games, but never has a game outright centered around it. At first, I didn’t really care all that much. DO NOT FALL gets off to a horribly sluggish start. The opening tutorial stages show off the cutesy animal themes and cheerful music that just beat you over the head with adorableness so much that I wanted to kill myself.
But, it does get better. In fact, once the game grows some teeth and the difficult ramps up, DO NOT FALL is actually a bit exciting. Because of the crumbling block hook, you’ll sometimes go long stretches of a level without having a moment to pause, set yourself, and plan out your next move. Thinking on your feet is the focus here. Once you reach the third world, level design really takes off. Worlds become more sprawling, keys get spread further apart, and having to lure enemies to their deaths by crumbling the floors underneath them while still having room to get where you need to go is actually a lot of fun. When DO NOT FALL does right by its own idea, good times are had.
Unfortunately, numerous problems hold it back. My biggest issue was perception. When levels go from being flat to having height and depth, I had trouble lining up jumps, because it really looked like the blocks I was leaping towards were straight across from the one I was on. Or at least they did when I had about a second to glance over at them while plotting the course I was taking. This issue comes up a lot from the third world onwards, and it never failed to frustrate. It also doesn’t help that you can’t rotate the camera. You can move it slightly left or slightly right, and you can zoom it out, but you can’t rotate it. This was apparently done so that they could occasionally hide hidden trinkets behind objects. I’m fine with that, if the amount of fun from that concept outweighs the amount of frustration not having a better camera option causes. Not only is that not the case here, but the stuff hidden behind scenery glows so that you can’t possibly miss it. I hate it when games screw up their concept and are condescending about it.
Controls are an issue too. DO NOT FALL uses a full 3D game engine, but all the action should hypothetically take place one block at a time. Because of that, I would think the D-Pad would be the preferable control option. It’s not an option at all. Thus, movement is imprecise and too loose to fully be comfortable while maneuvering the stages. Often, the platforms you’re running across only have a width of one block. This left me a frequent victim of simply walking off a ledge. I can’t help but wonder if it would have played better if movement is was handled one full block at a time. I honestly don’t know if it would have worked better or not, but the current scheme is problematic. It was never a deal breaker, mind you. Once you get over the learning curve of the physics (could take a while) and get a feel for distance, you’ll be zipping through levels with the only fusses being those there by design.
I can’t help but think this was designed more with the phone market, or possibly Nintendo 3DS, in mind. Not that phones would have been suitable for DO NOT FALL. I’m pretty sure this game combined with fake touch-screen buttons would have been a complete disaster. 3DS, on the other hand, would have probably been a better fit. It might have helped with the depth-perception problems.
There’s a lot not to like about DO NOT FALL, and I focused on the negatives perhaps a little too strongly here. Trust me, there’s a lot more I left out, like the generic setting, the shop where items are far too expensive, and the difficulty going absolutely bonkers about two-thirds of the way through. So I would like to close out by saying, DO NOT FALL is worth your money, because it does a lot right. Level design isn’t always perfect, but when it’s at its most inspired, DO NOT FALL is a lot fun. Plus, I really dug the concept here. It took something that is so common a hazard in platformers that it’s practically a cliché and successfully built an entire game around it. You don’t see that very often at all. To make a mechanic that has existed and been stale since before I was born fresh and exciting is something to be admired.
Really, what DO NOT FALL could have used was polish. Instead of fine tuning the campaign, the developers seemed to have spent their free time making an utterly boring series of online-enabled, multiplayer minigames. None of them are fun. All of them feel like rejected Mario Party fare with no connection to the main game. That’s a shame. If they insisted on including multiplayer support, a co-op mode with levels tailored for that would have been much more preferable. I guess. I mean, going off the family-friendly characters and environments, you would forgive me for assuming that DO NOT FALL is designed with the kiddie set in mind. I’m thinking children will like this more than I did. Considering that I did like DO NOT FALL, that might be significant. So if you have kids, this might be a good purchase for them that you won’t get bored with yourself. And if I’m wrong and they don’t like it at all, do me a solid and tell your kids the guys at PSNStores.com gave you the idea and not me.
$9.99 thinks this is an almost certain nominee for the First Annual Indie Gamer Chick Award for Mediocrity in the Field of Generic Character Design in the making of this review.
DO NOT FALL is Chick Approved but not Leaderboard-eligible (non-Indie)
A review copy of DO NOT FALL was provided to Indie Gamer Chick to test online multiplayer. If I had known what the online multiplayer would be like, I would have turned it down. Another thing I didn’t research properly. Anyway, the review copy was provided to a friend who had no input in this review. The copy played by me was paid for by me with my own money. For more on this policy, check my FAQ.
In November 2008, the same month Xbox Live Community Games launched, I organized a geek dinner. I wanted to make sure there was some real geekery involved, so two days before the dinner I downloaded Microsoft’s XNA Game Studio. Until that weekend I had never developed a game.
This is not to say I never thought about it. I have been reading about game development since the early 90’s. My favorite topic is implementation of artificial intelligence. By 2008 I had read at least 10 books on game programming and installed the DirectX SDK on three separate occasions. Generally the process was install DirectX, follow some basic tutorials, see the effort required to make an actual game, loose interest.
XNA was different. In two days I went from knowing nothing to having a fully working Atari 2600 Combat clone. I went to the geek dinner with more than just some example code, I had a working game. I never got to share much code though. Some people brought kids and the kids wanted to play the game non-stop. They fully enjoyed this crude little game and got too loud shouting exclamations of fun for the other patrons. A game that I made! Granted I stole 100% of the gameplay but seeing the kids faces I was hooked. This is the drug that makes indie game developers, aka people willing to starve making something that will make them no money.
Around this time I remember looking at the games in Xbox Live Community Games (now Xbox Live Indie Games). There was some weird junk like In The Pit (a game with no graphics) and sin(Surfing) (more tech demo than game). There was also fun games like Weapon of Choice (Contra inspired shooter) and Blow (artistic physics puzzle game by yes, that David Flook). It was a bizarre freak show of gaming that welcomed everyone to join it. That has always been best thing about XBLIG, anyone can share their game. To paraphrase the mis-attributed Voltaire quote, “I think your game is shit, but I’ll defend to the death your right to publish it.”
It would be a year before I could focus on game development again. I had just launched CodeStock, and had CodeStock 2009 to plan. I wasn’t completely passive however, in the between time I talked Dylan Wolf into forming FuncWorks with me. Dylan is by far one of the best programmers I’ve known (also, not found of me linking that post). We work well together, never clashing on egos. Probably because he accommodates my ego and I don’t notice. Shorty there after, acknowledging we need a graphic artist, we add my then girlfriend now wife Cicelie.
As CodeStock 2009 wrapped, we focused on game development (after a brief attempt at a t-shirt site for Cicelie). With the experience of hosting the Chainsaw Buffett podcast I launched the Feel the Func podcast. This turned out to be the smartest thing I did, though it was just a side project at the time. I also did a really dumb thing, common among new game developers. I made a teaser video for a game that four years later still is nowhere near done.
It doesn’t look like much, but as a developer I had created a model, animated that model (which is why the walk cycle sucks), rendered it in game, moved it with a controller, and blended the animation with user input (turning the torso). I wish I had a video of Cicelie’s model moving (the mech screenshot at the end) because she did a much better job than I.
In the next few months we began to realize the size of scope required for ROCS. My oldest daughter wanted a game she had been playing at school for her birthday called Rumis. I suggested we pause on ROCS and create a game based on Rumis called IncaBlocks. I also decided I was not under enough stress and signed a publishing contract for my first (and only) eBook the XNA 3D Primer. Both were completed in the next three months.
I learned a lot in those three months. First, I have no desire to be an author even though I enjoy writing. Second, I suck at game design.
IncaBlocks flopped, and flopped hard. Not even a dead cat bounce. The best thing I can say about IncaBlocks is it wasn’t ROCS. If I had taken my dream game and killed it with the mistakes I made on IncaBlocks I don’t think I could have recovered. I had little emotional investment in IncaBlocks and it was easy to do a cold, clinical autopsy. Final verdict? The game is not fun and there is no awareness of XBLIG even within the Xbox community.
I wasn’t sure what to do about the first problem, but I had an idea on the second and GameMarx was born. The idea was to create an XBLIG review site that treated indies as AAA games were treated. This mean not just reviews and news, but also podcasts and videos plus a database of games. Websites and podcasts I knew, but I had a lot to learn about video production. One of these days I’ll dig out the very first episode of “The Show” that was scrapped and reshot, but man is it rough.
Reviews were serious business at GameMarx. We create a set of standards and guidelines and followed it religiously. The biggest rules we didn’t write down: the price of a game is never a factor, avoid the “angry reviewer” style, and a review is the personal view of the author, nothing more. These rules required a lot of time and effort from a reviewer, but we still ended up writing a combined 99 reviews in the year we spent on written reviews.
There were only a handful of video reviews done. I wish we had done more of these, but they took a lot of time to edit (I still need to finish editing Dylan’s video review of Aesop’s Garden). Instead we created a segment on The Show to talk about new releases and recent reviews while playing the games. This concept lead to GameMarx Trials where we played a game’s trial mode site unseen. Far from a review (each episode starts off with “this is not a review” title card) these were much easier to produce quickly and get out while the games were still on the new release list.
As GameMarx grew it became clear that XBLIG websites had the same problem as the games – no awareness. We were far from the only site covering XBLIG, and I decided to build a website of websites that would link us all together (webrings for those old like me). I contacted all the sites I knew of, got permission, and also contacted Nick Gravelyn and Andy Dunn (aka the ZMan) about taking over the domain XboxIndies. The site keeps a database of XBLIG, sales and chart performance, and also aggregates news and reviews from the participating sites. We even made a small API for mobile app developers (check out XBLIG Companion).
None of these articles got much mainstream attention. So in 2011 when the XBLIG section was again buried, I took my growing video editing skills and created a video using Major Nelson’s own words against him. This is GameMarx most popular non-boob video to date:
Didn’t make the cut, but there was a bit for the video where I tried to voice search for “Cthulhu Saves the World” and “Zeboyd Games” with no success. (If you want to know the most viewed video including boobs you’ll have to find it yourself.)
At the end of 2011 we decided to step away from covering the games. The site was growing, but it was clear to us the effort required was going to mean that’s all we did. In 2011 we played every game released on XBLIG so before hanging it up we did the GameMarx 2011 XBLIG Game Awards.
What made it easy to leave was XboxIndies had a steady flow of content from other sites, and Indie Gamer Chick was here to stay. While Cathy has a different style, and is dead wrong about review scores (no I’m not), she is getting attention for XBLIG developers and games. I’m also 37 and she’s still in high school I think with the I-don’t-have-three-daughters kind of free time I don’t. This means not only can she review many more games, but also has time to put together a project like the Indie Royale Indie Gamer Chick Bundle.
Leaving the review world meant we had a bunch of game codes we no longer had a right to use. So we created the GameMarx Indie Mega-Pack Giveaway to unload the extra codes (with permission of course). Several XBLIG developers contributed more codes and we ended up over 50 games to giveaway. Voice actress Rina-chan lent her talents to the promo video. We also ran a survey of the entries and collected some data on what gamers think about XBLIGs.
Getting back to development was a wonderful feeling. I took an idea I had for a game called Captain Dubstep and made a goal of submitting it to Dream Build Play 2012. At this point most of us XNA developers admitted XNA was dead from Microsoft’s point of view, so I created a site called “XNA’s Last Dance” and extended an invite to XNA developers to add their blogs and commit to entering what was the last Dream Build Play competition for XNA. This site wasn’t a success in terms of traffic, but it had a since of community behind it and I’ll probably bring over the idea of the site into GameMarx later this year.
What happened to Captain Dubstep? Well, the game wasn’t fun but we did manage to make the deadline. We did a whole postmortem at GMX 2012 if you care about the gritty details, but let’s just say we had no scope defined so it was a train wreck of direction changes.
I looked at the screenshots and was like “What is he talking about? It doesn’t look bad at all!” Then I watched the trailer, and was like “um, this looks like the worst thing ever created by man. Way worse than Ouya.”
I wish I could say the rest of 2012 was as productive. We did launch a few open source XNA based projects including XTiled and XSpriter. Most of the time though we spent in limbo, not sure of where to go after XNA. We changed the podcast to “mike only” and tried our hands at Let’s Play videos. I thought exploiting my daughters by making them play NES games on camera would be internet gold, but creating a viral video is harder than it looks. It also has become clear that making Let’s Play videos takes more time than anything else we’ve done, and would kill any time for game dev.
In May of 2013 I participated in the Ludum Dare, and in a weekend created the game Quest. For the first time I used Unity and I loved it (after a brief period of projecting my old XNA girlfriend on it). Unity is not like XNA in that you will do more scripting than programming, but once you get the hang of the IDE you can be much faster. The asset store is also a huge plus for a Unity developer – tons of art is a few bucks away.
Ludum Dare has a since of community I haven’t felt since the “good ol’e days” of XNA. If you’re a game developer, go now and mark your calendar for the next completion date. There are three full competitions a year and mini-LD competitions just about every month. I cannot recommend this more.
So what’s next for GameMarx and the FuncWorks crew? I’ve had plenty of time to think on this while recovering from having all teeth extracted due to extended radiotherapy I received ten years ago (fun FuncWorks fact: both Dylan and I are cancer survivors). The podcast will return shortly and will stay developer focused (probably with more Unity talk). If the content is useful to other developers I cannot say but hosting it has forced me to study deeper into game design that I would have on my own.
I want to continue Let’s Plays, but with a focus on Indies. The indier the better. I’d like to get to a point where I can regularly cover indies in GreenLight or Kickstater. Yes, that means betas and prototypes. I have no interest in the review side of things, I’ll leave that to Cathy and her growing staff (besides, she isn’t a fan of Kickstarter so I won’t have to worry about her page views crushing mine). This doesn’t mean I will play anything, I’m only going to play a game if I find it interesting at some level. And this doesn’t mean only positive comments – sending me your baby’s prototype means I can comment on how ugly it is even if it’s really smart. Also it has been eating paint chips so you might wanna check on that.
I’m still kicking around game ideas for FuncWorks. I want to get out another game or two in Unity before attempting anything like ROCS.
What about Microsoft? Well Unity means I won’t be making any XBLIGs for the Xbox360. The Xbox One? Who knows, even Microsoft can’t figure out what the Xbox One will be for Indies and with no plans for Indies at launch I see no reason to make any plans myself. If they get their act together and create a viable program I’ll look into it. Keep in mind while they announced/reversed their self publishing stance this week the XBLIG dashboard was frozen. Microsoft has yet to put indies on an equal playing field with publisher backed games in any of their stores. Call me jaded, but I just spent the last five years waiting for them to deliver on the promise of “democratize game distribution” and will need to see proof before believing this time is real.
Last, a big thank you to the fans and community who have shared in our journey. I’m still surprised and smile every time someone sends us an email!
I should preface this review by noting that Mega Man’s classic NES games have no nostalgic value for me, and the franchise as a whole I consider to be of little relevance to modern gaming. I thought Mega Man 9 was alright. I thought Mega Man 10 was alright, albeit slightly less so. I tried and failed to get into the Battle Network series as a kid. And if the amount of shit that I gave when Mega Man was announced for Smash Bros was any smaller, it would only be able to be studied at the Hadron Collider. I’m not saying the series is a bad or that the games aren’t worth playing. I’m saying Mega Man probably means a lot more to you (assuming you’re my average reader) than it does for me.
With that being said, Vintage Hero does Mega Man very well. Mimicry can’t be as easy as people think. If it were, there wouldn’t be so many classic gaming tributes on XBLIG or other platforms that completely miss the point of what the originals were about. With platformers, it gets especially difficult. Typically, even a game that comes really close to the original still has something off about it. And once you latch onto what that one not-quite-right thing is, it’s all you notice. Vintage Hero doesn’t have that. It is so close to Mega Man in terms of gameplay and physics that it’s almost creepy. Like one of those stories you hear where a famous actress meets an adoring fan who has built a life-sized statue of her made out of mayonnaise and caulking, and she has to smile through her teeth while waving to her agent to start filing for the restraining order.
Lloyd is a janitor. Mega Man was a lab assistant. I’m not sure who wins on points there.
Vintage Hero’s controls are perfect Mega Man mimicry, and it makes this title a joy to play. Of course, the spooky doppelgänger stuff comes in other forms. The hero (with decidedly unheroic sounding name Floyd) has an arm cannon, just like Mega Man. It fires bullets that look just like Mega Man’s bullets. His running, jumping, and climbing animations look just like Mega Man’s. When he dies, he explodes into smaller dots of energy, just like Mega Man. Seriously, King Louie wants to know his secret. If Vintage Hero had left it there, doing a very convincing Mega Man impersonation, that would have been enough to satisfy gamers.
But developer Frog the Door Games didn’t stop there. Instead of phoning in the level design, he took it in original directions not seen in Mega Man titles. Instead of leaving the basic gameplay mechanics intact, he added in a modern RPG-like upgrade system. As a result, Vintage Hero stays fresh through-out. Of course, it’s about half the length of a Mega Man title. There are four standard bosses (and yes, you acquire a new weapon after killing them), then two finale stages, one of which includes a boss-rush. Is it too short? Perhaps. It’s sort of hard to complain when everything before the end credits is about as perfectly handled as any game designed like this could be. If the developer ran out of time or money or patience, at least he had the good sense to stop before the game started to stagnate. Me? I always prefer ninety minutes where I can’t stop smiling to three hours where my mind occasionally wanders, if not outright gets bored.
Vintage Hero isn’t flawless. I think the biggest issue it has (besides length if that matters to you), is that the game does the copy-cat thing so well that it fails to have a personality of its own. I guess I’m in the minority on this, but I didn’t enjoy the characters, the enemy design, or especially the bosses. It all felt a bit generic. The story told between missions I found to be predictable, especially the big twist reveal. It was so poorly handled that I questioned whether it was just dead-panning parody. Then the bleak ending made it clear that this was all meant to be serious, and I just sort of shrugged. Of course, they couldn’t just rip off the charm of Mega Man’s absurd enemy design. Vintage Hero already straddles the line between loving tribute and lawsuit waiting to happen. But you simply can’t replace the lunacy of “why did Wily make such impractical things like Robo-rabbits that shoot robo-carrots to kill Mega Man?” with doodles of red tentacles growing out of the ground, or things that look like hastily-drawn fetuses.
You can see what I mean about the enemy design. This yellow fellow here looks like a reject from Aaahh!!! Real Monsters.
Because of that, Vintage Hero would need to have exceptionally sharp and rewarding gameplay to really stand out. And it does. It’s been over a year since I’ve had the privilege of saying this about a new game, but Vintage Hero is the best Xbox Live Indie Game ever made. Here’s a game so married to an established franchise that it by all rights ought to have been saddled with the label of a well-meaning tribute, and nothing more. Instead, it serves as an honorable homage, and a game that can fully stand on its own. Its gameplay is fine-tuned. Its levels inspired. It actually pays tribute to vintage Mega Man better than Mega Man 9 or 10 did. But most important, it’s a game that anyone can enjoy. By the time I was on the gaming scene, Mega Man’s time as an icon had pretty much passed. Nostalgia didn’t factor into this review. Pure, unbridled love of gaming did. And from that point of view, no XBLIG has ever been as well made as Vintage Hero.
(spits out Vintage Hero spunk, pops a breath mint)
80 Microsoft Points actively wonder why Lloyd doesn’t change colors when he equips a new item in the making of this review. Well I take it all back, this is a shitty Mega Man ripoff. It was all about the color swapping.
Back in April, as the gaming landscape was preparing for a next-gen level shakeup, I was only thinking about one thing: XBLIG is almost done. I mean, there would be indies on Xbox One of course, but the community that I’ve come to know and love would change. It might be better. It might be worse. But it would certainly not be the same. I’ve thought about how my previous reviews would lose their relevance once those games were no longer available. I’ve thought about the types of games the hundreds of developers I’ve come to know and befriend will create in the future. Change is scary. I’ve spent two years trying to be the best (if not, the loudest) advocate for Xbox Live Indie Games.
Tough Sell
Has my blog actually done anything? Maybe, but not as much as I would have liked. Some developers have credited positive reviews from me for causing a brief sales spike, but nothing significant. On the flip side, I’ve had developers of games I absolutely cremated credit me with a bump in demo downloads.
LaserCat
But then I get down to the sad truth of the matter. There are games on my Leaderboard that have sold under 1,000 copies. Hell, there are games on it that have sold under 500 copies. There are games on XBLIG where I am literally the only person that bought it. I’ve played amazing games that sold so poorly that the developers became demoralized and quit. Being Indie Gamer Chick has been the privilege of my life, but sometimes the tales of woe from developers can be downright heartbreaking.
With the sun setting on this generation, I wanted to try to make one last big push for Xbox Live Indie Games. The community has come together in the past and done their best to promote the platform. There has been three promotions called the Indie Games Uprising that tried to showcase the best new XBLIGs. Unfortunately, the quality of those games was a mixed bag of some genuine gems to go with some unpolished, unfinished turds. The last Uprising was particularly devastating. Microsoft didn’t promote it until long after it had already ended, and when they finally did, the main game featured was Sententia. A well-meaning title that was almost universally recognized as being one of the most abysmal games the platform had seen. To have a game of its quality be the focus of an event designed to promote the best of XBLIGs only served to cement the unfair reputation XBLIG has of being nothing but low quality games that aren’t worth the average one dollar price tag.
I believed the reputation myself before I stated my blog. From the time XBLIG launched until the time that I started Indie Gamer Chick, I bought two games for it. Breath of Death VII was the first. I Made a Game with Zombies in It was the second. I enjoyed both, but attempts at finding more titles of their quality didn’t seem worth the effort. Mostly, I found a lot of demos of stuff that felt like they were developed over the course of a week, devoid of passion, and aimed at entertaining nobody. When I finally started my blog, it didn’t take me too long to find out that there are some really good games on the platform. But the sheer number of awful games drowns out the good.
Beyond that, XBLIG also got a reputation of being nothing but clones of popular games, particularly Minecraft. I’ve played the two most famous of those, Castleminer Z and FortressCraft. I didn’t like them, but I wasn’t really interested in Minecraft either. After playing them, I will say that they are quality games, if you’re into that sort of thing. But there are also a lot of similar games on the platform that weren’t as well produced as those two. At the same time, people would say things like “the top two Minecraft clones weren’t as good as Minecraft was.” Well, of course not (though I’ve heard from some Minecraft fans that actually prefer the XBLIG clones). But their popularity was directly tied to the fact that Minecraft wasn’t available on Xbox. Unfortunately, having clones top the sales charts unfairly painted the platform to look like it was only good for clones. Or if not clones, games featuring Avatars. Regardless of the quality of those games (admittedly, most games centered around Avatars are horrid, but not all of them), most regular gamers don’t like Avatars to begin with, and that turned them off the platform. Then you have non-gaming apps such as Rumble Massage, which is actually the #29 best-selling XBLIG of all-time as of this writing. When there are thousands of titles on the platform and an app that turns your controller into a vibrating dildo has sold better than 99.999% of them, people are just not going to associate that platform with quality video games.
Smooth Operators
So that is the handicap that myself, along with dozens of other advocates of XBLIG, have dealt with. I certainly wasn’t the first critic to focus on XBLIG. I’m just the most successful. But that success is only in comparison to other sites with an XBLIG focus. Your average moderately popular indie gaming site does multiples of what I do on my best day. It’s just plain hard to get gamers excited about good titles on Xbox Live Indie Games. It carries too much baggage. It’s also hard to get someone to take another look at something they’ve long since dismissed. That’s just human nature. In the case of XBLIG, most of what was wrong with it before is still problematic today, so anyone glancing would be likely to assume that nothing has changed. And they’re right, because nothing really has changed. That’s because there were very good games on the service all along. You just had to look closely to find them.
I had two ideas for trying to get a new audience exposed to XBLIG before the new consoles launched. The first was to do a bundle of PC ports for XBLIG. The problem with that was the odds on being able to get one off the ground were probably slim. Even good XBLIGs are a tough sell because of the stigma the brand carries. The other option was to do a massive giveaway of the best XBLIGs over the course of a single day. Well, you know how it played out.
Surprise! We Like Your Idea!
I sent an email off to the guys at Indie Royale sheepishly explaining my idea for a bundle centered around Xbox Live Indie Games. I couldn’t pitch them on the merits of sales potential, because there is no denying that the whole idea was a long shot at best. Thus, I did exactly what I advise people not to do when seeking investments from venture capitalists, or crowd funding, or angel investors: I pitched to them from the heart. I explained to them how the XBLIG/XNA community “adopted” me and what they’ve meant to my life. I was frank about why XBLIG’s reputation was fair, but the fogging effect it created caused the majority of gamers to miss out on some of the best indies of this generation. Finally, I basically said that these developers deserve a break, and that exposure on Indie Royale would not just benefit those with games in the bundle, but could open up the doors for greater recognition for the hundreds of talented developers whose games have sat unloved on XBLIG.
Little Racers STREET
Graeme, one of the main guys at Indie Royale, did respond to me. Which is awesome considering that I’m ultimately small potatoes on the indie scene. Not only did he respond, but I had caught his interest. We discussed the types of games I would include, and how we could set this apart from other bundles. Then, things went quiet for a while. So quiet that I was sure I got the blow off. So, I turned my attention to my alternative plan: a huge giveaway of the best PC ports for XBLIG. The idea was, the developers would have their games free for one day only: July 1, for Indie Gamer Chick’s Second Anniversary. After lining up over a dozen top-notch games, many of which I had planned to include in the bundle (plus other games that would be discounted), I thought I had organized a pretty good little event.
Then I heard back from Graeme. The Indie Gamer Chick Bundle was officially on. I just had to round up the games.
I changed my underwear and started contacting developers.
Rounding up Games
Your typical bundle usually has five games. The Indie Gamer Chick Bundle has eight. The reason for that is simple: I wanted gamers to get the best value for their money as possible. Many of these games sell for between $1 to $3 on Xbox Live right now, not to mention that some would have been featured on previous bundles. But most importantly, I wanted people to see that there is a huge variety of very good games on the platform that they had been missing out on.
If I could have, I would have included every single developer who wanted in. But that wasn’t an option. I’ve made tons of friends who develop XBLIGs since starting my site. I wish I could have included those I was closest with. But the concept of the bundle was that it was supposed to represent the tippy-top of XBLIG quality. After coming up with several variations, I ultimately decided to go off my leaderboard and pick the first eight games that were available in sequential order.
For those new to Indie Gamer Chick, the Leaderboard is a concept I adapted from BBC’s automotive show Top Gear. The idea I had was I would rank every game that I enjoyed in the exact order I would prefer to play them. The method is actually very simple. Whenever a new game receives my Seal of Approval, I start at the bottom of my list and ask myself if I would rather play the new game or the old one. If it’s the new one I prefer, I go up to the next game on the list. I do this until I reach an old game that I prefer over the new one. The new game is then placed below that title on the board. It’s been a fun idea that works really well. It’s interactive. My readers get to debate placement. It also gives developers something to aim for. Just having it made the selection process for this bundle pretty easy. Or so I thought.
Right off the bat, the #3 game on my site, We Are Cubes, was eliminated. It has no PC port, and there wasn’t enough time to get one up and running. The #2 ranked game, Gateways, was not available because the developer already had plans to be in an upcoming bundle. #9, Bleed, was only recently listed on Steam and the timing wasn’t right, but I have no doubt they’ll be in a future bundle. Games like Miner Dig Deep (#11) and Star Ninja (#13) also have no PC ports, while Cthulhu Saves the World (#12) has been in more bundles than I can count. That was cool, because everything in my Top-25 I would proudly stand by as the cream of the XBLIG crop.
But this was a bundle that was about the XBLIGs. So I considered putting some games that were well received by everyone but me in the bundle, with Apple Jack being the game that I felt would probably be the most well received. The problem there was Apple Jack isn’t out on PC yet. It will be soon, and for fans of punishers, you’ll probably like it a hell of a lot more than I did. I thought about including the most popular game on XBLIG that I’m incapable of playing due to my epilepsy: Score Rush by Xona Games. That wasn’t an option because they already had a bundle planned out. Finally, I almost went completely nepotism corrupt and including Aeternum by Brooks Bishop, who is one of my better friends I’ve made through Indie Gamer Chick, not to mention the man who designed my mascot. But that just plain wouldn’t have been right. His game was well received by fans of Bullet Hells, but I absolutely hated it. I get along with bullet hells about as well as I imagine Michael Vick will get along with Cerberus.
So my lineup was set. And then I lost Escape Goat. Unfortunately, the timing was wrong. He wanted in, but he had already committed to other bundles and deals and had to pull out. This was pretty devastating, because Escape Goat is the #1 ranked game on the Leaderboard. I consider it to be the best Xbox Live Indie Game ever made, and I’ve reviewed nearly 400 of them. I also lost Chompy Chomp Chomp, the #5 game on my board, which I consider to be the best party game of this entire gaming generation, indie or otherwise. I was counting on its inclusion because pure party games are quite rare in these kind of bundles, and I wanted it to set this bundle apart from the rest. The developers at Utopian World of Sandwiches were besides themselves when they had to drop out. They wanted in, but a miscommunication forced them out. That sucks. I still get a knot in my stomach thinking about it. Chompy Chomp Chomp is a game that didn’t sell extremely well on XBLIG, but it’s worth your time. Gather up your friends, because you’ll never have a better party for $1, I promise you.
So I went back to the list. Again, many games were just not options based on being too recently featured in other bundles. Penny Arcade Part 3 was out. DLC Quest was out. A couple of my favorite puzzlers, Pixel Blocked! and Aesop’s Garden had no PC ports. Thankfully, the vastly overlooked SpyLeaks was available. Finally, I went to Orbitron, one of my personal favorite games on XBLIG that, I admit, got a mixed-reception elsewhere. Though to be frank, I’m disappointed that ArcadeCraft, which was created by Orbitron developers Firebase Industries, had no PC port. This is thanks to its use of avatars as characters. Yea, ArcadeCraft ranks two spots below Orbitron on the Leaderboard, but there’s no questioning that is has a larger appeal. Seriously guys, get cracking on that PC port. No XBLIG screams “this would be a PC megahit” quite like ArcadeCraft does.
Orbitron: Revolution
The eight games confirmed for real, I had one last thing to do. I really did want to include as many developers as I could, but the problem was, the more games, the smaller the piece of the pie each would get. Indie Royale had never had a bundle with eight separate developers. The Indie Gamer Chick Bundle isn’t the largest in terms of total games, but it is the largest in terms of total developers. It also complicates things more from legal and logistical points of view. But I really wanted everyone who had earned my Seal of Approval and genuinely wanted in to have a shot at being in. The only way to do that was to ask if they wanted to simply donate their games to the bundle. A shit deal for them perhaps, but it was all I could do.
Guess what? As always, the XBLIG community stepped up, and I had volunteers. That mystery game? I’m not even sure what it is, but it will come from one of those games, and it will be a game off my Leaderboard. Incredible. Those who did step up are artists. They also have future projects that are coming very soon to both XBLIG and to PC, and they wanted to show that they’re here, they have talent, and you can trust that they can make good games.
Naming Your Bundle of Joy
When I started Indie Gamer Chick, it was totally on a whim. My boyfriend (along with my parents, coworkers, and the ghost of Jacob Marley) all said I needed a hobby. We were going through my Xbox hard drive and stumbled upon Breath of Death VII and I Made a Game With Zombies, the two XBLIGs I owned before starting my blog. Brian, like many gamers, had honestly never heard of XBLIGs. I had previously considered doing a movie related blog, but Brian suggested that I should do XBLIG reviews instead, since gaming was basically all I did with my free time. The name came about after just a couple of minutes of brain storming. I’m a fan of online movie reviews from sources like Red Letter Media and That Guy with the Glasses. TGWTG included the Nostalgia Chick, whose reviews I had come to enjoy quite a bit. So I thought, hey, Indie Gamer Chick. Done and done.
The name is good and catchy, but I didn’t stop to think about the negative aspects of it. Namely, the whole GURL GAMER thing. Besides the very rare joke, I’ve never played up the girl card here. It takes about five minutes worth of reading my blog to see that I’m not playing the “I’m quirky because I’m a girl and I play games” tit-shaking stereotype. So while the name might land curiosity seekers, I would hope my writing and coverage of games that don’t typically get a lot of attention would be the draw of my site. And for the most part, it is. In two years, the amount of times someone ripped me for having “Chick” in my site’s name was minimum. It was a non-factor, and I’m proud of that.
Chester
And then I attached a teaser to the bundle at the end of my review for Penny Arcade 4, and the response was overwhelmingly negative, but in silly ways. Maybe a bit mean-spirited, but mostly the jokes you would expect. Menstruation jokes. Boob jokes. Jokes about casual games that girls play, or games starring girls. That didn’t bother me so much. I mean, if I can’t take that shit (and obviously some people can’t, hence some recent controversies) I should crawl under my bed and never come out because that’s just how people talk. It’s dumb. It’s juvenile. But I’m a critic who liberally uses dick and fart jokes, so I can’t say anything against low brow humor.
The problem is, for the name of a gaming blog, Indie Gamer Chick is perfect. For the name of a bundle? I’ll admit, it’s not so perfect. First off, people unfamiliar with my site (which includes the whole world, give or take a couple thousand people) have no point of reference to why the bundle was called that. None of the games feature girls as the protagonist. Thus, the bundle might seem like Indie Royale was marketing directly to girls in a way that could be considered sexist. This at a time when gender-related tensions in gaming are at an all-time high. Granted, their site and their press release make it clear who Indie Gamer Chick is (raises hand) and that I hand-selected the games. Which is fine, if everyone reads it. They didn’t. The name “Indie Gamer Chick Bundle” appeared on Twitter and across message boards and people lost their shit over it. For most of those people, their anger/outrage was defused when they found out the context of the name. Others moved on to being pissed that my blog had the name “Chick” in it. The rule I guess being that girls that play games are not allowed to say they are girls. I’m not sure if the rule applies to other forms of entertainment. I’ll ask Lady Gaga is she gets shit for her stage name.
The second part is the whole girl gamer thing carries with it the jokes that are such layups that even Kwame Brown couldn’t blow it. “It’s Indie Gamer Chick so of course Bleed will be in the bundle.” Not only does that not bother me, but I laughed. I mean, they’re easy jokes for a reason. Because more than one person thinks of it. Not clever, but hey, funny. And there was no actual malice behind them. Yea, there were a few douchey comments, but the internet has a few douchey people. You know what? The internet is not made up mostly of assholes and misogynists. I know this because I spent two years working with the XBLIG community, which is made up almost entirely of men and they treated me amazing. By the way: making a random girl gamer joke doesn’t make a guy a misogynist or an asshole. Not every joke has malice behind it, and those with malice only seem more represented because they never.. shut.. up!
Should the bundle have been called something else? Maybe. My friend Matt played the devil’s advocate role as we tossed around the merits and detriments of having the bundle carry my name. He floated the idea that calling it the Indie Gamer Chick Bundle would take the attention away from the XBLIG concept. He wasn’t totally wrong about that. Of course, there was no name available that could hammer home that this was an XBLIG themed bundle. Legally, we couldn’t even call it the Xbox Live Indie Game Bundle. The alternative name considered was the XNA Showcase Bundle. XNA is the free gaming development tool set provided by Microsoft upon which all XBLIGs (and some spectacular Xbox Live Arcade games such as Bastion) were built with. XNA was recently discontinued by Microsoft, so having that name for the bundle as a final tribute made sense. Better sense than my friend George Clingerman, who got XNA tattooed on his arm. Though I believe he was merely pining to be Peter Moore’s heir at Microsoft when he did that. Probably while drunk.
Of course, XNA doesn’t mean a whole lot to people outside the development community. And, unlike indies, which will have some future on Xbox as a platform, XNA is done. People will still continue to use it to create PC games, and tools such as MonoGame could potentially lead to some games for next-gen platforms being started on XNA. But it won’t ever again be a major factor in indie development.
The Indie Gamer Chick Bundle was the name to go with. I know it works at catching attention. If I had to go back to July of 2011, the day I started the site, would I have called it something else? Perhaps CathyPlaysIndies.com or something like that? Again, maybe. If I had known I would eventually end up doing one of these bundles, I probably would have come up with something less controversial. I mean, who knew? I figured nobody would read me. But, I’m not ashamed of the name. I’m proud that Indie Gamer Chick has caught on. I’m proud that I am Indie Gamer Chick. I never thought I would catch on enough to be the recipient of backlash.
And it’s not just me, but the guys at Indie Royale who are getting it. Again, they’ve done everything they could to make it clear that the bundle was handpicked by me, but the name is all most people see, and they find the name sexist. I’m getting a small minority of gamers upset by being yet another female gamer who has to call attention to her gender. That was never my intention. I just thought the name sounded cool. It had a ring to it. Now the name is getting me labeled as an anti-feminist. It’s true that I don’t give a flying fuck about feminism. It’s 2013, and despite the best efforts of some politicians, I don’t feel like a second class citizen, nor have I ever. And yet, based purely on gender, I’m supposed to automatically side on every single point made by professional feminists like Anita Sarkeesian. Isn’t the whole idea that I must side with a professional feminist actually sexist in and of itself? So yea, I do regret that the name in the sense that it brings the gender debate (and all accompanying jokes) onto the table. It’s totally fair, because it’s the name I chose.
SpyLeaks
I’ve always thought what most set me apart from other bloggers and critics was my age and inexperience. I was about two weeks away from turning 22 when I started Indie Gamer Chick. I didn’t grow up with an Atari 2600 or an NES or even the 16-bit platforms. My first console was the original PlayStation. My average reader tends to be about ten years older than me. It’s having that totally different perspective that sets me apart. This is the first time I’ve really talked about the gender issue, but I sort of have to. Would I have gotten it regardless if I had named my blog Random Game Crap, which was seriously what I almost called it? Probably a little, but not as much. Thankfully, some of the people who were like “what the fuck is an Indie Gamer Chick” took the time to read my blog and realize that I’m not a stereotype.
And, of course, my review style sets me apart. I’m certainly not the only critic who is known for being harsh. It’s just that indies are typically spared from scorn. I admit. I knew almost nothing about the indie scene before starting Indie Gamer Chick. I had played indie games, mostly through promotions like Xbox’s Summer of Arcade, or various random PSN releases. But, when I went to check on reviews for Xbox Live Indie Games, there were slim pickings. And what little reviews I could find seemed like they were written by cheerleaders. Absolutely nothing negative discussed about the game. Just praise and positivity, as if the developer were a delicate flower who would wilt and die if anything resembling constructive feedback was spoken. Yea, fuck that. If I was going to do this thing, I would just say exactly what I thought. And that’s what I did.
It’s exactly what quality developers want. I mean, they want to get positive reviews, but they want to earn them. They’re meaningless if they’re handed out like candy to trick-or-treaters. Indie developers desire to improve, and the only way they can do that is through honest feedback. And honest feedback is something they couldn’t count on from friends or family or fellow developers. They should have been able to count on it from critics, but the critics failed to actually criticize anything. When the XBLIG community finally discovered my blog, they were briefly mortified by my review style. But community leaders embraced me and my style. Now, developers use my reviews to help them improve. They aspire to be better. To be what they use as a guidepost for improvement is pretty much the greatest thing I’ve ever accomplished. It’s especially touching because they’re the ones with the real talent. I’m just someone who plays games. But they treat me special, and that feels amazing.
Let’s Do Launch
The Indie Gamer Chick Bundle launched yesterday. The response across message boards was generally negative, I admit. But, aside from a handful of people who just plain loath the idea of my name, most of the feedback is centered around game selection. It’s not that the games are bad. The consensus seems to be that these are good games. It’s that there’s too many repeats from previous bundles, or that only one of the games (Dead Pixels) has Steam keys as an option. These criticisms are absolutely fair and anyone who says otherwise is just plain wrong.
Centering a bundle around XBLIGs doesn’t exactly give one the widest range of game selection. There are a lot of solid titles, but stuff I felt worked as a proper showcase for the platform that was available and not completely over-bundled limited my choices. Do I regret not getting Escape Goat? Sure. Am I ashamed that my bundle instead has SpyLeaks? Absolutely not. It’s a wonderful game. I wouldn’t have settled for a selection that wasn’t representative of the best of what XBLIG has to offer. I’m proud that I got to present these eight games to a community that might have overlooked them.
I do admit, not having Steam be an option for seven out of the eight games does suck. Not having Mac as an option for any of the games sucks too. Part of that is that games developed on XNA are tougher to transition to Mac, not to mention costly. You have to remember, with the exception of Dead Pixels (which would qualify as a modest hit), none of these titles were best sellers, and getting the games on Mac could very well have been cost prohibitive. As far as Steam, it again comes down to these games not having the biggest following, and the Greenlight process being slow. Four of the games are going through Greenlight now, and if you enjoyed playing them, give them your vote please. They’ve earned it.
Antipole
So who was this bundle aimed at? I really wanted this to reach gamers who ignored XBLIG, or long since dismissed it. I wanted to show that this is what XBLIG was capable of. One gentlemen offered the following feedback: “I haven’t heard of any of these games.” He meant that as a negative. I was thinking “wait, if you’ve never heard of them, isn’t this exactly the kind of bundle you should be looking at Indie Royale for?” Most XBLIGs have no name recognition. That doesn’t mean they have no value to you as a gamer. If ever there was a platform that should have thrived on sleeper hits, it would be Xbox Live Indie Games.
I think the bundle is probably being better received in terms of sales than people expected from an XBLIG-themed bundle selected by a nobody critic. Is it going to break sales records? Probably not. But is it succeeding at exposing a new group of gamers to XBLIG? Thankfully, the answer to that is yes. People are using my Leaderboard to discover some great games that flew under the radar. That a wonderful market full of hidden gems was right there on their Xbox all along. Even if it only creates a handful of new XBLIG fans, it’s still totally worth it.
It’s ironic that Microsoft announced their plans for self-publishing on Xbox One the same day that my bundle launched. The same bundle I wanted to use to create new fans for my beloved XBLIG. The term “better late than never” comes to mind. That applies to new customers for XBLIG as well. And even for those who think the Indie Gamer Chick Bundle stinks, I hope you will at least tip your hat to this development community, because they will factor into your future in gaming. With their amount of talent, crossing paths with them will be unavoidable. If you have an Xbox and you haven’t checked out the indie channel in quite some time, if not ever, I truly hope you fire it up. You have no idea what you’ve been missing. It’s not perfect, and many of its games downright suck. But the good stuff? The really good stuff? It’s there, and when you find it, it will make your day.
Hey, you! The indie game connoisseur reading this. You’ve been missing out, and you don’t even know it. I was missing out too, until I became Indie Gamer Chick. You see, there’s a platform on the Xbox Live Marketplace called Xbox Live Indie Games. XBLIG should be cherished as a landmark in gaming history, because it represents the first self-publishing platform on a major game console. Instead, XBLIG has a reputation of being full of less-than-quality games. It’s not an entirely unearned reputation. But XBLIG isn’t just about avatar games and Minecraft clones and text-adventures featuring anime boobs so impractically large that the Surgeon General would declare them cancerous. Since November of 2008, XBLIG has played host to some of the most creative and innovative game developers on the indie scene. In fact, if you’re a regular patron of Indie Royale, you’ve already encountered many developers and games that got their start on XBLIG.
And that’s why I’m here today, to present you with eight PC ports of the best Xbox Live Indie Games ever made. Two years ago, I started reviewing XBLIGs at my blog, Indie Gamer Chick. This community has been amazing to me, and I owe them a debt that I can never pay back. I’m not always nice to their games, but this community has shown a commitment to creativity and a desire to improve. They are indie gaming’s future superstars. As the sun sets on this current generation, and the community goes their separate ways, this is one last chance to show that they were here and they were important to the indie scene. This is what you’ve been missing out on. These are my boys. I’m Indie Gamer Chick, and this is my bundle.
And for those of you who are curious why (insert name of well-known XBLIG) isn’t part of this bundle, it probably comes down to two words that I’ve come to hate: scheduling conflict. I’m now more fearful of those words than I am of my doctor telling me I have 24 hours to live. He would have to work in scheduling conflict for it to register with me. “Cathy, I know you have plans tomorrow, but they’re causing a scheduling conflict. With the coroner.”
What are you waiting for? Go get it. Like, right now. It’s live at IndieRoyale.com!
Let’s get something straight here: you’re not going to survive an actual zombie apocalypse. You will die. Quickly. It will be embarrassing, quite frankly. And no, playing Dead Rising or Dead Island or Walking Dead or any other game with “Dead” in the title hasn’t given you a leg up on the rest of humanity. Dead Pixels won’t help you, either. But at least when the zombies are chowing down on your spine, you can remember the good times you had playing one of the most clever survival-oriented zombie shooters to hit the indie scene in a long while. You have to properly manage equipment, take advantage of a robust shopping system, and conserve ammunition as you take on thousands of brainless, slobbering ghouls. I’m talking about zombies, not Justin Bieber fans.
Take an old-school 2D platformer, dress it up in John Kricfalusi-like visuals, and then stick so much stuff to collect in it that your family will hold an intervention if you attempt to get it all. That’s Chester, and it’s one of the best pure-platformers of the decade. As you play, you’ll gather different characters and graphic skins that alter the way the game is played. You’ll have to mix and match backgrounds with characters that Chester is a game with style that creates substance, like a guy in a meth lab wearing an Armani suit. Although this is preferable and much more legal.
There are a lot of games out there that let you walk on the ceiling and do all kinds of wacky gravity effects, but Antipole stuck out to me. A clever, twitchy platformer starring, and let’s be frank about this, a guy who looks like Michael Jackson wearing Carmen Sandiego’s trench-coat. With well designed levels and the aforementioned gravity mechanic that you can use to clear gaps or drop enemies into a pool of spikes, I think you’ll really enjoy Antipole’s fast-paced breed of platforming.
Imagine a Metroidvania starring a radioactive feline with no method of attack that must save his girlfriend by retrieving keys obtained by answering trivia questions. Did you imagine it? LIAR! You did not! Nobody in their right mind would envision such a silly concept. Well, the guys at MonsterJail games are not in a right state of mind, and thank God for that. LaserCat isn’t particularly challenging, but it’s just a fun, enjoyable little old-school romp. Besides, radioactive cats are cool. Anyone who disagrees with that is provably wrong. Especially dogs.
Smooth Operators is a call-center simulation game. NO, STOP! Do not bail on this bundle and head over to Humble or Indie Gala. It doesn’t sound like a winning concept, but Smooth Operators can and will take over your life, and you’ll love every moment of it. You have to secure clients, staff a building, get the right equipment.. and everyone has already closed the description and gone off to check out what other games are in this bundle. Well, joke’s on them. They won’t be able to resist the temptation of trying Smooth Operators. Once they do, there’s no escape. It’s a time sink of the most potently fun variety. Protip: if you want to unlock all the items, type IndieGamerChick in the cheat menu. That’s right, I’m a cheat code. Highlight of my life.
Little Racers STREET (which you will accidentally call Little Street Racers, it’s unavoidable) combines RPG-style upgrading with online twelve-player action. You don’t have to be deeply into racers to enjoy what STREET has to offer. I’m certainly not. But the wide variety of tracks, cars, upgrades, and camera options kept me playing and experimenting for days. The mix of old-school arcade racing with modern design sensibilities works. Also, if you have a loved one and you want to see how far you can push them before they stop talking to you, there’s no better way to find out where that line is by intentionally crashing into them when you’re losing a race. In the case of my boyfriend, it was four times. After the fifth time, he didn’t speak to me for a week. And it was totally worth it.
SpyLeaks has a lot in common with the NES puzzle series Adventure of Lolo. But, like the best tributes to classic gaming franchises, SpyLeaks improves upon the original concept and comes up with ideas of its own. Here, an element of stealth is added to the Lolo formula, along with timed gauntlets that are among the most inventive puzzles I’ve come across in my gaming lifetime. There’s also a little bit of space-shooter mixed in, if for no other reason, to assure the minimum quota of aloofness a true indie requires. But the puzzles take center stage, and the puzzles in SpyLeaks are so smart that they’re getting an honorary doctorate from MIT. It’s also a lot of fun too, and fun is all that matters.
Imagine the arcade classic Defender if they remade it the same way Namco did for Pac-Man with Pac-Man Championship Edition. That’s basically what Orbitron does, and it does it very well. A fast paced shooter based around achieving high scores within a tight time limit. Developer Firebase Industries seems to have classic gaming on the mind. They went on to create XBLIG sleeper hit ArcadeCraft, either proving there’s still a market for golden age of gaming nostalgia, or that you can shoehorn “Craft” into any game and make it sell ten times as much as it would otherwise. Maybe Indie Royale should consider calling this the BundleCraft Bundle.. of Craft.
If I pulled out a gun and shot myself right now, then reincarnated, I’m pretty sure I would be running in my new body faster than I would as my Xbox Avatar if I just stayed alive and kept trying at Avatar Physics: Running. Based on the popular (and free, and slightly less impossible) flash-based game QWOP, Running is a simple 100 meter dash, only you have to manually work the legs of your avatar to get there. Of course, doing so is complicated in a way that makes the Impossible Game look like a preschool admission test. After over thirty minutes of playing, the furthest I had made it was a little over two meters past the starting line. Mostly, my character just stiffened up and fell down, like she had simultaneously suffered a stroke while catching a glimpse of Medusa. Take a look at this video from my amigo Splazer Productions.
Splazer did better than I did. Hell, I typically ran further backwards than I did forwards. The only value Avatar Physics: Running has is bemusement at your own failures. This is obviously meant to be the primary draw of the game, as evidenced by the one and only marketplace picture featuring an avatar that has cocked things up about as bad as you can. The problem is, laughing at how hard this game is only lasts about, oh, two minutes. After that, it’s just frustration and tedium. I’m certain someone out there can finish the full 100 meters. I’m also certain someone out there knows where Jimmy Hoffa is buried. It doesn’t make him any less dead.
Charlie Murder was developed SKA Studios
800 Microsoft Points would make a video of the most horribly violent Charlie Murder four player moments with this song playing in the background if I had such talent in the making of this review.
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