Angry Zombie Ninja Cats

Correction to this review: Shahed Chowdhuri, the developer of this game, does not have a shitty attitude. He is one of the most generous, kindest, and intelligent men I’ve ever met. And now my friend as well. I was so off base about his attitude in this review. He’s one of those developers who wants to improve, and has the drive to see that through. He’ll be a force to be reckoned with some day. Mark my words. I stand by every criticism of Angry Zombie Ninja Cats. But in regards to Shahed, I know no finer man. I’m sorry, Shahed.

Naming your game might be the most important aspect of the creation process. If you give your game a shitty name, it might not sell very well, even if its well made. On the flip side, giving a mediocre game an eye-grabbing name could propel it’s sales into the stratosphere. In that spirit, we have Angry Zombie Ninja Cats, one of the worst games I’ve played on XBLIG coupled with one of the most blatant attempts at a quirky name dreamed up since Tattooed Teenage Alien Fighters from Beverly Hills. Let’s break it down.

Angry: As seen in Angry Birds, a game with five-hundred million downloads to its name. Now obviously the “Birds” part of that title is not what made the game so popular. Birds are simply annoying sky-vermin that terrorize Tippi Hedren and shit on our cars. No, it’s the “Angry” part that caused the green to come rolling in. Anger is trendy right now. What, with all the tea party nonsense and this occupy everywhere hogwash featuring a bunch of idealistically bankrupt people on both sides of the political spectrum that, if pressed for answers, have no fucking clue what it is they are mad at. Indeed, “Anger” is the new “Hope.” I expect more companies to take advantage of this, and look forward to the announcements of such titles at Angry Halo and Pissed Off Pong.

Zombie: It goes without saying that your XBLIG simply has to have “zombie” in the title somewhere. After all, what would the Xbox Live Indie Game scene that touts nonconformity and innovation be if every developer didn’t staple their tongues to the zombie bandwagon and get dragged along for the ride? Not having zombies in your game makes you the square kid in school who tries to make do with his Payless shoes and eMachine desktop while the cool kids walk around in their Nikes and play on their iPads. Nobody wants to be that kid, so get the biggest shoehorn you can find and start cramming those zombies into your game before someone notices what a dork you are.

Ninja: If you fail to possess enough socially repressed chromosomes that you’re not gaga for zombies, well, lucky you. Spending your time talking with girls and driving in cars instead of thinking of ways you’ll survive the Zombie Apocalypse while rubbing yourself and fantasizing about all the now zombified bullies in your life that you will get to legally shotgun in the face. Well, if you’re not a Zombie Groupie you obviously must be a Ninja Devotee. Statistically speaking, you’re one or the other. And although zombies have certainly overtaken ninjas as the gaming flavor of the month, Ninjas in general tend to be more bankable. That’s why the 1990 film Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles made twice as much as the highest grossing zombie film of all time, Zombieland. Putting ninjas with zombies is the best way to hedge your bets and make sure your game is a success.

Cats: Oh come on. At this point, you’re just outright pandering. Introducing cats to the equation is the most transparent attempt at creating weaponized irresistibility in gaming history. First zombies, then ninjas, and now cats? And they’re all angry? Why you sly little cunts.

Put them all together and you have Angry Zombie Ninja Cats. With a name like that, quality doesn’t matter, even if it’s an unparalleled piece of shit. And it is. My God, what a wretchedly awful video game. It’s a platformer with jumping physics so loose it’s as if your controller got raped by a crowbar. It’s thirty minutes worth of processed boredom that is capped off by a final level so poorly designed that the developer had to create a video to explain to all us thickies exactly how to beat it, as if it’s our fault that the game sucks.

I get ragged on occasionally for “making fun of developers.” It’s not something I make a regular habit of doing. I mostly make fun of games, which some people take as a personal attack. I for one think that speaks more about them than me. But sometimes a developer really does deserve a good tongue lashing, especially when their attitude with “this game really has shitty level design” is to treat the players like they’re the idiots and say “wow, don’t you get it? Here, let me show you. How could you not figure this out?” It’s a shitty attitude to have. So remember, children, if you get stuck it a horribly executed XBLIG game, the secret to solving a stage requires you to stop and think to yourself, “well, if I was an egotistical game designer with my head stuck so far up my own ass that I could give myself a colonic using my tongue, what would I have done here?”

Angry Zombie Ninja Cats was developed by OnekSoft Games

80 Microsoft Points vaguely remember having a few pending developer challenges in the making of this review.

Growing Pains

UPDATE: Growing Pains is now 80 Microsoft Points.

Confession time: I never played any of Smudged Cat Games’ previous titles.  They must be pretty dang good, because they managed to get a game released on Xbox Live Arcade called The Adventures of Shuggy.  I swear, one of these days I’ll get around to it.  Growing Pains is my first experience the Smudged ones.  It’s a 2D punishment platformer, with the twist being that the main character continuously gets bigger.  Why they named it after a horrible 80s sitcom starring a horrible religious nutcase is beyond me.  Wouldn’t “The Adventures of Bob: The Jovial Malignant Tumor” have been more catchy?

You play as a spiky, hedgehog looking thing that has to jump around a psychedelic wonderland collecting little rainbow pill things.  Okay, so maybe it should have been called Sonic the Cancerous Mole but I’m sure Sega would have sued over that.  Despite it’s gimmick, Growing Pains has fairly straight-forward dexterity based platforming.  There’s no action buttons at all, just the ability to jump, wall-jump, and increase your own rate of growth if the situation calls for it.  There’s nine levels, each with three difficulty settings: Bronze, Impossible, and Fucking Impossible.

I thought Growing Pains was okay as a game, but it’s riddled with problems.  First and foremost, sometimes the main character is so small he’s practically invisible.  I have a television that could comfortably double as an aircraft carrier and I still couldn’t make out my tumorhog thingie sometimes.  Sometimes there’s an arrow indicating where he’s at on the screen, but it’s not very helpful at all because you can’t get any perspective from it.  It also doesn’t help that the character, when he’s small in stature, gets lost easily among the psychedelic backgrounds, and so do the enemies.  In the later stages there are cannons that shoot missiles that explode into four spiked thingies.  Those can be very difficult to spot, like the clitoris of a flea.

The controls aren’t always perfect, either.  Part of the problem comes from how the jumping physics seem to over-scale, depending on the size of your anamorphic lipoma.  There were often times I found the movement too fast and my dude’s jumps too springy to clear a stage.  And mind you, this is all on the bronze difficulty settings.  On silver, the game is maddening.  On gold, I’m not fully convinced the game isn’t the first step in some evil scheme by a super villain.  It’s cruel, as if you’re being shamed by the game.  For the life of me I can’t see how anyone could have fun playing a game this difficult.  But remember, I’m a child of the 21st century.  Games from my era didn’t come prepacked with a box of tissues to cry in and the number for the suicide hotline.

Even with all these problems, I liked Growing Pains because it was just so damn quirky.  It’s a novel idea, one that didn’t always work so well but at least it’s different.  Sure, I couldn’t always see my dude.  Sure, the game’s non-retard difficulties could legally charge you by the hour in Nevada.  Sure, the online leaderboards never even worked when I tried them.  Sure, I think it’s way overpriced at 240MSP when it really should have been 80MSP.  But I still liked it.  Ultimately, it’s fun.  This is exactly the type of game I started IndieGamerChick in search of.  Plus, I can appreciate any game whose protagonist was cast straight out of the pancreas of Steve Jobs.  Too soon?

Growing Pains was developed by Smudged Cat Games

240 Microsoft Points showed me that smile again.  Don’t waste another minute on your crying.  We’re nowhere near the end.  The best is ready to begin.  As long as we got each other, we got the world spinning right in our hands.  Baby you and me, we gotta be the luckiest dreamers who never quit dreaming.  As long as we keep on giving, we can take anything that comes our way.  Baby, rain or shine, all the time, we got each other sharing the laughter and love.

Um, in the making of this review!

I’m celebrating 50,000 unique page views by giving away 1600 Microsoft Points to one lucky follower of mine on Facebook.  All you have to do is follow me for a chance to win!  Click the link, hit “Like” and you’re in!  The drawing will be held December 1, 2011.  I don’t spam with my Facebook.  I just post article updates and the occasional “thank you” when my site hits a milestone.  So what are you waiting for?  Enter already!

Avatar Panic

Avatar Panic is by Milkstone Studios, creators of Raventhrone AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!  Sorry folks, I’m having traumatic flashbacks to the Indie Summer Uprising over here.  Although a handful of good titles came out of that excursion in digital fecalness, the one game that still sticks out the most to me is Raventhorne.  Perhaps that’s because it was just so fucking awful.  Seriously, if you haven’t played it you can’t comprehend how awful it was.  If Hitler was reincarnated in the body of a Terminator fueled by the souls of aborted fetuses, it would not be as awful as Raventhorne.

But Milkstone obviously has talent.  They wooed me early on in my Indie Gamer Chick career with MotorHEAT, a slick arcade racer.  Now, they’re trying to win me back with Avatar Panic, an 80MSP clone of the arcade classic Buster Bros.  Perhaps shucking originality was a good thing for Milkstone.  They can now once again flaunt their developer chops without making the player question the existence of God or taking a table saw to their own wrists.

For those unfamiliar with Buster Bros, it’s a single-screen action game where you have to pop balls bouncing around by firing a harpoon at them.  When you hit a ball, it splits into two smaller balls.  Hit one of those, you get two more, etc, etc.  Occasionally enemies will drop power-ups that allow you to fire your harpoon faster, shoot more than one at a time, have the harpoon stick to the ceiling, or shoot two at the same time at diagonal angles.  Most of this will be familiar to fans of the Buster Bros formula.

The graphics are very well done and the music is cheerful.  Okay, okay, Avatar Panic is pretty good.  It has smooth play control and it’s so well done that it might be the best version of this format to come along in a while.  Earlier this year I played a PSP Mini called Run Ghost Run that was in the “not so good” category.  Avatar Panic totally slays it, and does so with style.  There are even online leaderboards to be found here.  The one and only problem is there’s no save feature, so you’re expected to beat all 50 levels in a single sitting.   But I’m sure Milkstone can fix it with a patch.  So does Avatar Panic erase the memory of Raventhorne?  Absolutely.  Assuming you play the game while hitting yourself in the head with a mallet and drinking pure grain alcohol.

Avatar Panic was developed by Milkstone Studios

80 Microsoft Points think they should make another clone of Buster Bros with whales instead of balls and then submit the game to PETA for an “endorsement” in the making of this review.

I’m celebrating 50,000 unique page views by giving away 1600 Microsoft Points to one lucky follower of mine on Facebook.  All you have to do is follow me for a chance to win!  Click the link, hit “Like” and you’re in!  The drawing will be held December 1, 2011.  I don’t spam with my Facebook.  I just post article updates and the occasional “thank you” when my site hits a milestone.  So what are you waiting for?  Enter already!

Flowrider

Flowrider is a 2D hydro-racing game and not a water sport designed around constructing sailing vessels out of used sanitary napkins.  I’ve been trying to put out this review for a week now but haven’t yet been successful.  It’s not that Flowrider is a bad game.  Perhaps it has to do with this not exactly being my type of game.  You might as well ask me what I think of baseball or Jersey Shore.

Flowrider actually is a decent game.  You choose from one of four boats and race against various amounts of AI boats across various tracks.  By the way, can you guess what was today’s word of the day on my calendar?  All movement and throttle is done with the left stick, with turbo mapped to the right trigger.  It works well, but takes a while to get used to.  Meanwhile the courses are well designed, if sometimes too short.  Early on, the AI seems too good, but it’s actually very beatable once you get used to using the turbo at the right time.

I do have several complaints.  The game doesn’t always tell you what direction you’re supposed to go at the start, so it’s not uncommon for even seasoned race players to shoot off in the wrong direction.  Also, some races only last about twenty seconds, which is annoying if you’re playing online against other people.  It would be nice to set up multiple races at once rather than be dumped back to the menu after each one.  The camera isn’t always stellar at keeping up with the action, and it’s easy to lose track of which boat belongs to you when they all bunch up.

Honestly though, it doesn’t matter.  Flowrider is just fine as a game, and I even had some fun with it.  Which is weird because I fucking hate water.  I can’t stress that enough.  I don’t know how to swim, I don’t like boats, and if you handed me a teaspoon full of water I’m pretty sure I could easily figure out a way to drown in it.  I don’t know how easy it will be to find other players to play against in Flowrider, but I think the average racing fan will get their dollar’s worth out of this.  Christ, this review fucking sucked.  Maybe I’ve lost my touch.  Alright, that’s it.  I’m going to have to start showing my boobs I guess.

Had you going there for a second, didn’t I?

Flowrider was developed by Triple B Games

80 Microsoft Points thought Flowrider is when you surf the menstrual cycle of Cthulhu in the making of this review.  

A review copy of Flowrider was provided by Triple B Games to IndieGamerChick.com in this review.  The copy played by the Chick was purchased by her with her own Microsoft Points.  The review copy was given to a friend with the sole purpose of helping the Chick test online multiplayer.  That person had no feedback in this article.  For more information on this policy, please read the Developer Support page here. 

I’m celebrating 50,000 unique page views by giving away 1600 Microsoft Points to one lucky follower of mine on Facebook.  All you have to do is follow me for a chance to win!  Click the link, hit “Like” and you’re in!  The drawing will be held December 1, 2011.  I don’t spam with my Facebook.  I just post article updates and the occasional “thank you” when my site hits a milestone.  So what are you waiting for?  Enter already!

Monkey Madness

Who doesn’t love monkeys?  Well besides creationists or Charlton Heston?  Kids love them because they’re funny.  Adults love them because they amuse children.  PETA loves them because they’re a bunch of furries.  Scientists love them because hobos put up too much of a fight.  But I don’t love monkeys.  I hate them.  Damn dirty apes the whole lot of them.  They fling poo.  They make shitty movies with Clint Eastwood and Ronald Reagan.  And they star in crappy video games, like Monkey Madness.

It’s an arcade platformer where you play as the world’s least limber primate who attempts to make his way to the top of the screen.  On the default difficulty, “easy”, the game is fucking impossible to play.  The monkey moves like he’s been sprayed down with liquid nitrogen and thrown into a vat of tapioca pudding.  Such an act is completely immoral.  Well, unless you’re wearing a WPRC lab coat and you have the most wacky hypothesis any egghead has ever had, but I digress.

In order to complete a stage, you have to get to the top of the screen.  The screen is divided into seven sections, each a horizontal line that occasionally has a gap start sliding across it.  Jump through the gap, reach the next floor.  The problem is the gaps appear completely by random.  There’s no patterns so you can’t form a strategy.  If you fall back to the original floor, you lose a life.  This includes jumping up to the second platform and immediately falling through a gap that appears at random.  If you jump up and hit the wall above you, the monkey is knocked out for an insufferable amount of time, and if you fall through a gap that appears under you, the clock starts over.  You can make it to the next-to-last floor, get knocked out by a bad jump or an enemy, and fall all the way to the bottom, completely by chance.

On easy mode, the play control is incredibly stiff and unresponsive.  That’s because the difficulty modes aren’t so much about difficulty, but speed.  At Indie Gamer Chick, I play everything primarily on whatever the default difficulty level is.  So when I played Monkey Madness on the default easy difficulty, after thirty minutes I had no problem declaring it the worst video game I had every played in my entire life.

However, I always at least screw around a little bit on other difficulties when I play games for this site.  Not wanting to waste too much more time with this pile of shit, I skipped straight to hard.  That’s when I discovered that the difficulties actually control the speed of the game, not specifically the difficulty.  So hard mode is actually like playing the game on an acceptable level of speed.  “Well I’ll be a monkey’s aunt, the game is almost playable like this!” I thought.  Oh, it’s still horrible.  The collision detection and even the platform detection is way off.  But it WAS playable on hard.  So welcome to Opposite Land, where hard is easy.  In that spirit, I do declare that Monkey Madness is the best game ever!

Monkey Madness was developed by Phoebit

80 Microsoft Points are likely to be quoted out of context in the making of this review.

I’m celebrating 50,000 unique page views by giving away 1600 Microsoft Points to one lucky follower of mine on Facebook.  All you have to do is follow me for a chance to win!  Click the link, hit “Like” and you’re in!  The drawing will be held December 1, 2011.  I don’t spam with my Facebook.  I just post article updates and the occasional “thank you” when my site hits a milestone.  So what are you waiting for?  Enter already!

Gameplay footage courtesy of http://Indies.onPause.org

Avatar Chess

Avatar Chess is chess with avatars.  Yea.  I’m really not sure what else to say about it. It’s functional, and it features online play.  There’s multiple viewing options, including one where every piece is represented by various random avatars in a way that is im-fucking-possible to use.  I mean just look at it.

I'm actually not sure if this is Avatar Chess or a local production of West Side Story.

Even with the little icons over their heads, it’s annoying.  To make this in any way good, the game would need some specialized avatar suits.  Otherwise, what’s the point?  Plus, my avatar was the King.  The fucking KING!  My vagina has never been so insulted.

As far as the actual gameplay, it’s chess.  How good of chess is it?  So good that it’s bad, or awful, whatever the case may be.  The AI is fierce, even on easy mode.  I’ve never claimed to be a grandmaster, and that’s a good thing because easy mode ate me up and shit me out multiple times.  It always seems to make the best possible move.  Frustrating for me, but downright soul-crushing if you’re a chess novice like Brian or Bryce.  I figured something was up, so I tried the game on hard mode, and the AI did pretty much the same strategy, only it took longer to move.  Since it was doing the same moves, I figured the extra pause was in there just to mock me.

Once you go online, things are slightly better.  It’s still just chess.  It’s free all over the internet, but here you can play it with your Xbox avatar, along with some nifty added drawbacks.  Once a match ends, you’re dumped back to the main menu, without being given the option for a rematch.  So you have to go through the process of sending out an invite all over again.  That’s kind of annoying.  The game also doesn’t have any display telling you if a move is legal or not, so if you’re a newb the only way to find out is to hear an annoying gameshow-like buzzer go off.  Avatar Chess is basically the least newb-friendly video chess I’ve ever played.  Granted, I don’t play a lot, so maybe there are worst out there.  Overall, chess is a game you can play for free anywhere.  If you’re absolutely desperate to know what it’s like to play it with your Xbox avatar, I suppose this is the way to go.  If that’s you, say hello to my imaginary childhood friend Mr. Cumberdink because I suspect you might be a figment of someone’s imagination as well.

Avatar Chess was developed by Turkey Based Games

80 Microsoft Points suspect Bobby Fischer is being made to watch Fiddler on the Roof while being force-fed kasha varnishkas at this very moment, in hell, in the making of this review.

A review copy of Avatar Chess was provided by Turkey Based Games to IndieGamerChick.com in this review.  The copy played by the Chick was purchased by her with her own Microsoft Points.  The review copy was given to a friend with the sole purpose of helping the Chick test online multiplayer.  That person had no feedback in this article.  For more information on this policy, please read the Developer Support page here. 

I’m celebrating 50,000 unique page views by giving away 1600 Microsoft Points to one lucky follower of mine on Facebook.  All you have to do is follow me for a chance to win!  Click the link, hit “Like” and you’re in!  The drawing will be held December 1, 2011.  I don’t spam with my Facebook.  I just post article updates and the occasional “thank you” when my site hits a milestone.  So what are you waiting for?  Enter already!

Super Kablamo

I hereby make the following irresponsible, mean-spirited blanket statement towards the entire gaming industry, Indie or otherwise: if you make any shooting game that is not done from a 1st or 3rd person perspective and you force the player to wait any amount of time for your gun to “reload”, I, Kairi Vice, accuse you of being intentionally boring.  Especially if that game is a cross between Space Invaders and Centipede where you don’t want to be stuck on one screen waiting for your gun to reload.  Why do you hate fun so much, developers?

And yes, I’m aware that Indie Gamer Chick blowjob recipient Dead Pixels involves reloading.  Fuck you, Brian, at least that game was fun.  Super Kablamo is Mirror Universe fun, where the object is to be so bored that you’ll submerge your own head in liquid nitrogen just because it’s more stimulating.  I complained in the OTO review that the game had no direction.  Compared to Kablamo, OTO is fucking Magellan.  I could tell what was just a wall, what was to be avoided, and everything was distinctive looking.  In Kablamo, I had no clue what anything was.  The entire screen is spammed with so many things that picking apart what is an enemy and what isn’t is akin to finding a needle in a haystack.  Only here, the haystack is coated in piss and the needle is a retarded octopus.

Nope, you can't possibly make sense of this mess.

Hey, I’m a sucker for this type of game, but it does so many things wrong.  Pretty much the only thing it got right was the blade weapon.  That actually was fun to use.  Otherwise, there is nothing of value here.  There’s little to no information provided on how to actually play the game.  No screens identifying enemies, or explaining what the flowers are for, or why there’s giant-sized red blood cells all over the board.  I have the ability to suck things up.  Why?  I DON’T FUCKING KNOW!!  It doesn’t seem to do anything anyway so maybe it’s there as a distraction.  There is a screen that explains how the power-ups work, but it’s done in micro-text that you need a telescope to decipher.  As far as the actual game goes, you can move anywhere on the screen but you can only shoot one direction.  Enemies chase you along the bottom, then crawl up underneath you and you have zero defense.  Wouldn’t this style of enemy lend itself better to a TwickS?

And then there’s the ammo thing.  First off, I’m not even sure why sometimes there is an ammo gauge and sometimes there isn’t.  The game does not explain it either.  It seems to come about randomly.  Regardless, I want to pose a question for you: how good would classic 2D shooters be if you had to pause to reload your gun?  Imagine Space Invaders with it.  Or Contra.  Or Centipede.  Or Gradius.  Or Smash TV.  Those games would be ruined.

Sometimes it might work.  Dead Pixels for example, or.. um.. Dead Pixels!  But Dead Pixels was a zombie game that catered specifically to tension and conservation.  This is just a generic shooter, like Final Failure.  The game has enough trouble managing to be fun without this feature.  This is something that people should have warned the developer about ahead of time.

And just to be clear, since this was felt by some to be a glaring omission in my OTO review, no I didn’t play it with four player local-only multiplayer.  However, I did manage to briefly play two player.  And you might be surprised to hear that it didn’t get any better.  I don’t know why people assume everything is better with more people.  It might be true of dying aboard the Titanic, but that’s supposed to be horrible experience.  With or without more people, Super Kablamo is an incomprehensible clusterfuck and I would sooner recommend shoving a vacuum hose up your ass and giving yourself a Hoover Colonic.

Super Kablamo was developed by Meh Games

80 Microsoft Points feel naming yourself “Meh Games” is likely not the best way to start your development career in the making of this review. 

I’m celebrating 50,000 unique page views by giving away 1600 Microsoft Points to one lucky follower of mine on Facebook.  All you have to do is follow me for a chance to win!  Click the link, hit “Like” and you’re in!  The drawing will be held December 1, 2011.  I don’t spam with my Facebook.  I just post article updates and the occasional “thank you” when my site hits a milestone.  So what are you waiting for?  Enter already!

Gameplay footage courtesy of http://Indies.onPause.org

Escape Goat

UPDATE: Escape Goat is coming to Nintendo Switch on September 29, 2022. This review is valid for it.

Escape Goat is a 2D puzzle-platformer in an 8-bit suit of armor. By Christ, I haven’t played enough of those since starting Indie Gamer Chick. No, I mean that. I really haven’t. Sorry if that sounded sarcastic. Maybe I’m just lucky, but when I play those kind of games, they tend to be good. So I actually looked forward to Escape Goat, because it looked like my kind of game. Did it live up to expectations, or was it pulling the wool over my eyes?

Escape Goat features 64 single-screen levels where you must get the goat to the door. Often the door is locked, so you have to fetch one or more keys scattered throughout the screen. Early on, you pick up a helper mouse that you launch to help activate switches. If you pick up a magic hat, you can switch places with the mouse in a cool “travel by a comet that breaks every brick in its path” method. As the goat, you can double jump and use a dash that can break some bricks, goats being known for their gravity-defying leaping and ability to befriend mice.

The controls are tight and very responsive, so I’ll focus on the puzzles. I don’t know why I’m constantly amazed at how creatively designed puzzles can be on this platform. I mean, one person comes up with this stuff? For reals? To see stages with this level of inspiration is impressive. I don’t even think I could do a crossword puzzle correctly even if someone goated me into it.

Three hours and that’s the best I could come up with.

Levels typically involve hitting switches that rearrange blocks to open up passages. You’ll have to fling your mouse buddy through narrow passages, or make him rest on a switch while you hop around collecting stuff.  Time playing the game is usually spent experimenting with a board for a minute or two before the “eureka!” moment happens and you figure out how to solve the stage. Sometimes this boils down to trial and error, but never in a frustrating or tedious way. Of course, there’s also moments where I’m 90% sure that I’ve beaten a level in a way the developer did not intend, but that’s par for the course in pretty much any puzzle game.

There’s a few things that I didn’t care for in Escape Goat. The game uses a Mega Man style “pick whichever level you want” system. Having this in place meant there was little to no progression in puzzle difficulty. I was able to breeze through some entire sections in under ten minutes.  Sometimes this could be chalked up to the types of puzzles used. The game is at it’s best when it uses Rube-Goldberg style logic puzzles. When it relies on digital dexterity, the challenge becomes almost non-existent. Sometimes stages use a mixture of both, and that’s where it really shines. The variety is much appreciated, and at no point over the course of the game was it ever boring. If only I could say the same thing about this review, but like a goat farmed in South Africa this review is a bit of a Boer.

Oh, and there’s a level editor too. I never use those, because I’m about as creatively bankrupt as Hollywood these days. Still, I figured I should bring it up before people come to my house with pitchforks and torches. I guess I should be used to Rubing people the wrong way, but still, you people need a nanny.

Overall, Escape Goat was pretty damn good. A leaderboard contender for sure. It’s clever, punchy, and controls absolutely flawlessly. It hits all the right notes for what a puzzle-platformer should be. I’m not sure what exactly a goat did to land itself in the pokey, but games don’t have to make sense. No, seriously, what did it do? I have to know. Mountain climbing without a permit? Butt-heads with a cop? Fall asleep in a busy intersection? I bet that’s it. I hear the courts are pretty strict on kid napping.

Escape Goat was developed by Magical Time Bean

240 Microsoft Points ran out of goat-related puns before this line in the making of this review.

OTO

It’s rare that I get a game to review and honestly have no clue what to make of it, even after plenty of playtime.  Usually it doesn’t take too long to establish exactly what the developers were aiming for.  And then it shouldn’t take too long after that to figure out if they succeeded.  So congratulations are in order to Media Bandits Studio, because their game OTO has left me completely clueless.  I’ve been putting off this review for a week because every play session I had with it ended with me completely befuddled.

OTO is a physics based dexterity tester.  Of sorts.  The idea is you’re playing as some balloon thing that you must steer through a series of 99 gates.  The game has an art style that has reminded myself and others of Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet.  Unfortunately, looks are as far as this game will get to being compared to a good game.  OTO‘s biggest problem is having an unresponsive control scheme.  The balloon-circle-thingie that you control uses a realistic thruster similar to that found in the arcade classic Lunar Lander.  That system works fine for outer space fare, but for an auto-scrolling dexterity game, it’s beyond stupid.  When you use the thrust, you have to fight with gravity for a short bit before gaining any semblance of control over whatever the fuck it is you’re supposed to be controlling.  However, even on easy settings the game scrolls fast enough that you’re bound to miss some of the gates because you don’t control your whatever as much as you aim it and hope for the best.

Not that there’s any penalty for missing the gates.  At least I don’t think there is.  I’m sure it’s supposed to be more of an honor thing that you can clear the game hitting all 99 gates.  I didn’t.  Not even close.  And I don’t care.  This is not a compelling game in the slightest bit.  It’s so fucking abstract that I couldn’t give two shits less about it.  Abstract concepts can work in gaming.  Tetris for example.  Here, the game takes the minimalistic approach too far.  As a result, OTO doesn’t even feel like a game, or an experience, or even art.  It feels like a mess of ideas thrown together without any rhyme or reason.  I understand that this is a title created by honest to goodness gaming professionals who wanted to do something other than conventional games, but come on guys!  You have to give people some reason to want to play.  Like two teenagers looking for the make-out spot on Abstinence Mountain, I must declare that there’s no fucking point here.

I do appreciate attempts at originality, but taking a control scheme from one genre and shoehorning it into another is suicide.  Any rational person would tell you that.  You can’t play Super Mario Bros. with a steering wheel and you can’t play Call of Duty with a Rock Band guitar.  If the developers wanted Lunar Lander style physics, they should have tailored a game that fits it.  Lunar Lander is a game that requires patience, calculations, and a desire to be bored out of your fucking skull.  OTO only got the skull fucking right.  Well, you know what I mean.

OTO was developed by Media Bandits Studios

80 Microsoft Points still aren’t sure OTO wasn’t some kind of elaborate hoax against me in the making of this review.

I’m celebrating 50,000 unique page views by giving away 1600 Microsoft Points to one lucky follower of mine on Facebook.  All you have to do is follow me for a chance to win!  Click the link, hit “Like” and you’re in!  The drawing will be held December 1, 2011.  I don’t spam with my Facebook.  I just post article updates and the occasional “thank you” when my site hits a milestone.  So what are you waiting for?  Enter already!

DLC Quest

DLC Quest comes to us from Going Loud Studios, developer of former IndieGamerChick leaderboard member Lair of the Evildoer.  And boy am I pissed at them right now.  You see, they made this incredibly witty, at times laugh-out-loud funny game that I can’t review in-depth because I don’t want to spoil anything.  So this review is really going to be truncated.

What I can tell you is that DLC Quest is a 2D platformer where the gimmick is everything in the game needs to be acquired via DLC.  And I mean EVERYTHING, from the pause menu to animation and you know what fuck it, I’ve already said too much.  Now obviously you’re not paying for the DLC via Microsoft Points.  The currency comes in the form of coins that you gather, Mario style.  As a game, DLC Quest is very basic in design, but the humor of being nickle-and-dimed for everything is something any gamer in this day and age can relate to.  The actual game physics are well done, and there’s nothing in it that can cause you to die, so you can play it at your leisure.  The whole experience will take about 45 minutes to complete, give or take, and once you’ve finished the game you’ll likely never play it again.  And that’s fine.  It’s going to be a solid, entertaining hour that doesn’t overstay it’s welcome

If my word as a gaming critic means anything to you, go grab DLC Quest for 80MSP.  Don’t demo it, don’t continue Googling it, STOP!  Just get it.  I’m not even putting the trailer up here for it.  I don’t want to spoil anything for you.  This is the best example of gaming as a forum for humor I’ve seen on Xbox Live Indie Games thus far.  More often than not, games on the marketplace try to pass off gutter gags or references to other games as comedy.  DLC Quest is referential in a more broad sense, not having to quote anything directly because it’s developer trusts that you’re in on the joke already.  The gameplay isn’t going to blow your mind, but the humor is genuine and worth the price.  I know this wasn’t your typical Indie Gamer Chick review, but I wanted to keep it real for this one.  It’s not going to be the type of game that contends for the leaderboard.  It’s an experience, and it’s one you should take in.

DLC Quest was developed by Going Loud Studios

80 Microsoft Points charged you an additional 80 Microsoft Points to snark up this review in proper Indie Gamer Chick fashion in the making of this review.

Geoff, whom I hear cries when he sees the ending to Romy & Michelle’s High School Reunion, also reviewed this for Two Fedoras.  I think the article is a bit spoilerish (at least in the pictures) so be warned.

Dcon, whom I hear sniffs armpits, also reviewed this as well.