Paper RPG and The Impossible Dungeon

March 12, 2012 by 17 Comments

Ah, Team Shuriken.  The guys behind the infamous Temple of Dogolrak.  I receive more bitching about their games than I get about Silver Dollar these days.  It all began a few months ago when I released the list of search engine terms that have led people to this very site.  If you need a reminder, here are just the search terms that people have done for Temple of Dogolrak, along with Trailer Park King and Don’t Die Dateless, Dummy.

  • trailer park king 2,043 (#1 search term)
  • temple of dogolrak 2,011 (#2 search term)
  • don’t die dateless dummy 1,059 (#4 search term)
  • trailer park king review 266 (# 6 search term)
  • dont die dateless dummy 247 (#7 search term)
  • trailer park king game 246 (#8 search term)
  • don’t die dateless, dummy! 180 (#10 search term)

And those are just the top 10.  Once you start getting lower than that, you really do get lower.  Some other prime searches include the following:

  • trailer park king nudity 106
  • trailer park king porn 103
  • trailer park king nude 17
  • is there nudity in trailer park king 15
  • temple of dogolrak sex 14
  • trailer park king nudity? 14
  • does trailer park king have nudity 11
  • xbox indie games with nudity 11
  • don’t die dateless dummy porn 7
  • temple of dogolrak porn 7
  • xbox live indie games with nudity 7
  • trailer park king girls boobs 5
  • are there any xbox indie games with nudity 5

And that’s just the stuff that gets multiple searches.  On my most popular day ever at this blog (January 16, 2012), these were some of the random searches.

  • best xbox indie game tits
  • trailer park king has nudity?
  • xbox indie game that has nudity
  • trailer park king girls
  • indie porn games xbox
  • temple of dogolrak hentai pics (Hentai means “Perversion” in Japanese, kinda)
  • can you fuck in temple of dogolrak
  • temple of dogolrak hentai
  • xbox hentai
  • dogolrak nude code
  • how do you see porn in trailer park king

You get the picture.  In short, three out of five searches that land people on this site center around those three games.  Also, damn, I’m embarrassed for you guys.

And while I think Sean Doherty (the Trailer Park King dude) gets a free pass on the hostility because his games actually make an effort to be games, there’s unquestionably resentment towards Team Shuriken.  Although I’ve found them to be fairly nice guys, I admit that I did think their marketplace pictures of Dogolrak were extremely misleading compared to the actual graphics of their game.  Having said that, don’t blame developers for taking advantage of the hopeless pocket-pool crowd.  They sort of have it coming, because about ten seconds of research on Google would let them know that nudity and sexual intercourse are no-nos on XBLIG.  Another ten seconds and they would learn that jerking off too much causes your palm to turn purple.

Over/under on the percentage of readers that just looked at their palm?  What, 30%?

It’s not like Team Shuriken relies completely on boobies.  Over the last month, they’ve released two new games to the marketplace that don’t tease titties at all.

Well, mostly.

Both games still use the same engine and play mechanics as the previous game.  First up is Paper RPG.  It uses sketch drawings to tell a very short story of a knight trying to save the kingdom.  How short?  Oh, about three to five minutes, depending on how many mistakes you make.

Like any “choose your own adventure” game, luck is everything in Paper RPG.  There’s no visual indications of what choices will advance the story and which ones will lead to death.  This is especially problematic in game #2 of this review, The Impossible Dungeon.  Here there is nothing in the way of graphics, aside from a useless map.  Everything is text driven.  In this one, you can lead yourself down certain paths where no matter which of three to four options you choose, none of them will lead to anything but death.  So moving the story forward is 100% luck, based on nothing.

It's like Russian Roulette, only some wisenheimer loaded every chamber.

And if you die, you get to start over again.  Sure, there’s the occasional checkpoint, but that’s not much help.  You still have to read the same fucking dialog again and again.  Who would ever confuse this for entertainment?  Neither game is fun.  Or anything vaguely resembling fun.  If you were terminal with cancer in the middle of a nuclear holocaust having just watched your puppy eat its own leg off and bleed to death all over your mother (thus drowning her) and the only thing that could be offered to you for any comfort was these games, you would think it was a final “fuck you” from God himself.  And you would be right.

I will admit that I liked the art style in Paper RPG.  The main character has a Spy vs. Spy like charm about it.  If Team Shuriken was willing to put forth some effort, they might be able to use this character in a platforming game and find modest success.  But I’m guessing they’re not willing to put in the effort.  Prove me wrong, guys.  I would love to be able to tell people that you’re not the worst thing that can happen to a gamer.  Right now, you’re neck-and-neck with hand amputation.  Which, ironically you caused, because they also proved that jerking off to anime porn causes cancer of the hands.  It’s distinguishable by yellow freckles on your lower palm.

Make it 40%.

Paper RPG and The Impossible Dungeon were developed by Team Shuriken

80 Microsoft Points apiece always bet on the black spy in the making of this review.

I’m giving away 1600 Microsoft Points as part of a new feature called “Kairi Katch-Up Thursdays” and you buttholes aren’t participating enough.  1600 MSP!  That’s 16 XBLIGs!  Read how you can win it.

Video footage courtesy of Aaron the Splazer

Filed under XBLIG / Creators Collection Tagged with , ,

Journey

March 9, 2012 by 21 Comments

I’m going to try to keep this spoiler free, but obviously that’s going to be difficult. You should probably avoid the comments section until you have played the game. Any plot discussion will be hidden with invisible text.

Going into Journey, I wasn’t exactly a fan of Thatgamecompany. For one thing, I hate their name. It’s not the fact that they call themselves THAT Game Company. Even though that sounds like something gaming snobs say when scoffing about a larger developer. I once heard someone say “Mirror’s Edge? I don’t play anything by that game company.” No, the name sucks because it has that “we’re too cool and/or quirky to put spaces between words” asshole vibe to it.  “Pssh, spaces. Whatever. That’s such a conformist thing.”

But more important towards my firm dislike for them was their previous titles, Flow and Flower. I know both games are critically acclaimed, but I though they were boring, pretentious, self-indulgent pieces of shit. And you know what? I don’t think most people found them entertaining. I think they got a free pass because they could ride the “art house” label. If you actually admit to being bored stiff by them, that puts you firmly in bed with what’s left of Roger Ebert and the rest of the so-called “anti-gaming-as-art” crowd, or something like that.

Well, I was bored stiff by Flow and Flower, and I’m not afraid to admit it. I didn’t get what they were pitching, I didn’t get why people liked them. According to Thatgamecompany, when they begin developing a title they start by choosing which emotion they wish to invoke in a player. I’m not sure what emotion I was supposed to get out of Flow. Is confusion an emotion? How about self-mutilation? Is that an emotion? Because that was about the only thing I could have done while playing Flow that would have stimulated anything other than apathy in me. And as for Flower, the only emotion I felt towards it was anger that I had dropped ten bucks on it. I mean what the fuck, seriously? You use the crappy PlayStation 3 tilt-motion-thingie to clumsily aim some petals at bulbs and bring life back to the world. What the fuck kind of hippie bullshit is that? It’s not that I don’t think gaming can be based around an abstract concept, but it has to make at least some effort to be fun. Flower was just not fun.

Having spewed all that, there was something undeniably different about Journey. You could feel it even before the game was released. Maybe it was because Journey looked like it could be a Team Ico game. Now that it’s becoming obvious that Last Guardian is some sort of elaborate hoax, this is as close as we might get to another entry in that series. And unlike Flower or Flow, the character in Journey looks human, so we might actually be able to relate to it. Plus it still has a minimalist story and no dialog, so the art house crowd can still get all snooty over it.

Not included: soundtrack by Maurice Jarre.

Journey got released this week if you’re a cool PlayStation Plus subscriber, like me. Was it worth the wait? The hype? The $15 without any PS+ discount? Yes, yes, and hang on, and why is my underwear so damp?

Journey gives players no indication of what exactly the plot is. You’re placed alone in a desert, with only some flags on a hill to kind of steer you towards where you should be walking. Eventually, it’s made clear that you should be traveling towards a mountain that is visible in distance. Soon into the game, you get a piece of cloth that extends the scarf the protagonist wears. The longer scarf, the more you are able to fly for short amounts of time. You can’t die in Journey, and there is no time limit, so you’re free to explore. I have to say, normally I am the type to hunt every nook and cranny. That wasn’t the case in Journey. It wasn’t because I was bored, but because I was compelled to move on. The story is revealed in snippets between each “stage” and I was totally enthralled with it.

Okay, here’s the story discussion.  I’ve spoilerized it. Just highlight it with your mouse.

Allegedly, the story is left up to interpretation. I really don’t see how. It seems pretty cut and dry early on to me: the dude (or dudette, as it could be either/or) is dead, and is progressing through the afterlife. This isn’t something like Shadow of the Colossus (or All the Bad Parts if you’re one of those types that wants me to stick to XBLIGs) where there’s a lot of open-ended questions. I suppose I could come up with one or two more cerebral, artsy-fartsy explanations, although it would feel weird to do so without putting on a beret and using a cigarette holder. I suppose the dude could be an embodiment of human civilization itself. The cut scenes show a progression in technology, which suggests that a significant amount of time has passed throughout the entity’s existence. But I still lean towards the “he’s dead” theory. Perhaps the dude died early in human civilization, and before its soul is reincarnated (which is how the game ends), a significant amount of time passes. And now I feel a little snobbish.  Back to the game.

Despite all the mean things I’m about to say, Journey is a truly fantastic game. It might be the best PlayStation Network title ever. It really does feel like an emotionally driven experience, and although it only takes between 2 to 4 hours to complete, depending on how much fucking about you do, the conclusion is beautiful and satisfying. But the game is hardly flawless. My biggest gripe is the continued hard-on the guys at Thatgamecompany have for using the Sixaxis. There is nothing that couldn’t be done without it, and in Journey it’s especially unnecessary. All it does is control the camera. Mind you, the right analog stick, which was put there in the first place just to move the camera in games, also does that. I think my “Thatgamecompany is full of assholes” theory is spot on, because you can’t turn off the Sixaxis camera control, even though it’s provably useless. And don’t think it doesn’t get in the way. If you pause the game, but then put the controller down in a way that sets off the motion controls, it un-pauses the game. That could (and did for me) make a difference in some of the later stages. So yea, Thatgamecompany is full of more assholes than a Proctology text-book.

Other issues include the fact that you’re utterly dependent on your ability to fly, yet in some areas of the game, the art style renders depth-perception difficult to get the hang of, resulting in some frustrating missed jumps. Also, despite how much fun it is, it’s still a three-hour game with limited replay value and thus I feel $15 is pretty overpriced. UPDATE 2022: I no longer feel this way. In 2012, when I wrote this review, the indie pricing landscape was a LOT different. Now, I fully support pricing flexibility and I regret I ever made comments like this in my reviews.

I also want to point out that I thought the game’s concept for online multiplayer was a dumb idea. Basically, you’re paired up with some random person to play the game with. There’s no method of communication with this person, aside from doing a chirpy call. Microphones are disabled, there’s no texting, no shortcuts, or anything to talk to the person with. You can’t even see the name of the person. To anyone who hasn’t followed the game since it was announced, you wouldn’t even know you’re actually playing with a real person. In fact, it actually surprised many people on my Twitter when they learned it wasn’t an NPC. It’s another move that is artsy for the sake of being artsy.

Shockingly, it does work. Sometimes. Not a whole lot. Quite frankly, not very often. The first time I played Journey with networking turned on, I didn’t even realize I had been paired up with someone. They just sort of snuck up behind me, startling me. But then we actually did work together and did a good job, at least for a little while. When we encountered a stage that had an element of stealth to it, things fell apart. Having played the level before, I knew what to expect and tried to give my partner a heads up. Unfortunately, with only one form of chirping as an option, even slamming the thing as fast as I could wasn’t enough to communicate “shit in this level can fuck you up” to my new buddy. Thus he charged in and got his cock turned inside out. There were several other moments of this type of frustration, almost to the point that I’m not sure the whole thing is worth it.

Well look at that. That dude looks just like my dude. The same thing happened to me when I visited Prague. It was weird.

Even if you are marooned on an island with someone of an entirely differently culture, you can communicate on some level other than whistling. In a video game where you can’t use facial expressions, gestures, other forms of body language, things really are too limited in most of the game’s situations. That so many people are unaware you’re playing with a real person actually isn’t all that surprising. It’s almost as if someone from Thatgamecompany saw the horrible online component for Demon’s Souls and said “you know what? This would be better if it had mimes instead! Mimes with no functioning limbs. Make it so!” When it works, it is unquestionably something special. But those moments are few and far between.

You know what? Despite all that muck I just dredged up, Journey is one of the best games I’ve ever played. Yes, ever played. It does strike an emotional chord with the player. You feel a connection with your on-screen avatar, and legitimate concern for their ultimate fate. The world created seems barren, and yet you get a feeling that it is living being, a character in and of itself. Intimate objects have that same quality, although in the case of the scarf pieces, it is anything but subtle. Perhaps Journey is too manipulative in getting players to draw the conclusion that the developers had in mind. But even if that’s true, it’s not as if they’re the only ones guilty of that in one of these “minimalist” games. Look at Shadow of the Colossus. As you progress in that, your hero’s body becomes warped and monstrous, his voice deepens, and I swear your horse seems to approach you with increasing apprehension (although I’ve had people argue otherwise on that). Journey never takes it that far.

Do I recommend Journey? Yes. For my money, it’s the best game PlayStation Network has put out, and actually it might just be the best overall exclusive on the entire system. What limited time it gives you is breathtaking from start to finish, and ending sequence actually made me cry. Me. The chick who has caused three confirmed panic attacks in developers just by mentioning that I had started to review their games. Have I gone soft? Let me answer that by saying this: the next one of you mother fuckers that makes a “Don’t Stop Believing” joke in reference to this game is getting stabbed in the fucking heart.

SealedJourney was developed by Thatgamecompany

$14.99 are your judge, Journey, and executioner in the making of this review.

Filed under PlayStation Reviews Tagged with

Introducing “Kairi Katch-Up Thursdays”

March 8, 2012 by 28 Comments

Today I noticed that my Xbox’s hard drive was filling up.  Given my tendency to not replay games, I decided it was time to purge some digital shit.  So I began the process of clearing stuff when I realized that I had more Xbox Live Indie Games than I have reviews.  Like, a lot more.  I’ve done 168 XBLIG reviews, but I’ve got around 260 games on my hard drive.  How did this happen?

Then my loving boyfriend reminded me that I bought around $100 worth of XBLIG games when I started IndieGamerChick in July.  We spent a few days just watching trailers for XBLIGs on Youtube and purchasing the games.  The thing is, I figured nobody would read me, so I wouldn’t have to worry about sticking to new releases.  I mean, who knew that anyone would actually read this shit?  Besides, I’ve gotten bored with every other would-be hobby I’ve been trying to find since I turned 18.  Why would this be any different?  A week or two tops and I would be looking into something else, like Etch-a-Sketch, or paragliding.  Or Etch-a-Gliding, which I invented just now and it totally fucking rocks.

Well, obviously I’m here to stay.  And that’s all well and good, but I’m also a penny-pinching tightwad, and the thought that I downloaded nearly 100 games that I haven’t played made me sick to my stomach.  So what do I do with them?  Well, I’ll review them, exactly the same as I’ve done with 168 other games.  But I’ll let YOU guys decide what order I review them in, and include YOUR comments in the reviews.  Who knows, if the feature works, I’ll probably add some other games to the queue.

Below is a list of the games that I have that I haven’t reviewed.  Now, I have played some of the games, and I’ll make a note if that’s the case.  It doesn’t mean I won’t review them.  It just means the game isn’t fresh for me.  Others might be off-limits due to my epilepsy.  Again, I’ll note it if that’s the case.  The selection of the game will not be based on total votes, but rather which game receives the most convincing endorsement.  Voting will take place on Twitter all week, every week, with the selection taking place on Wednesdays and the review going up on Thursday.  Or possibly on Fridays if I’m lazy.

And to celebrate the launch of this feature, I’ll be giving away a 1600 Microsoft Points code on April 5 to one lucky person who participates via voting.  Vote early and vote often, but you’re limited to one entry per week.  The code is only valid in the United States.  If you’re not an American, you can still participate, but I can’t provide you with a replacement prize.  Make sure you follow me on Twitter so that I can provide you with the winning prize code.  Ah, see what I did there?  This is also a way to get new followers on Twitter.  Sneaky.  I should work in a way to get you to follow me on Facebook too.

Here are the games.  This page will be updated as games are reviewed, or new games added.  Kairi Katch-Up Thursdays officially starts on March 15.  So start voting now!

Remaining Games

360 Mega Pack HD Remix

A Madman’s Guide to Happiness

a Voxel Action (I did start playing it but its likely an epilepsy risk)

Adventures of Captain Becky

Aesop’s Garden

Alawishus Pixel

Along Came a Spider

Arkedo Series 01: JUMP! (I started playing it and just never got back to it.  If I do this series it will be a 3 in 1)

Arkedo Series 02: SWAP!

Arkedo Series 03: PIXEL!

Attanck!

Avatar Crate Crusaders

Avatar Pinball

Baby Maker Extreme

Being

Bigger And/Or Better

Block Jump

Bloody Checkers

Bloom*Block

Bloop!

Bonded Realities

CarneyVale Showtime

Cave In – Miner Rescue Team

Choc-a-riffic (I’m saving this one for Easter so it’s off-limits)

Crazy Wizard in Creepy Castle

Curse of the Crescent Isle

Cursed Loot

Cutouts!

Dark (By far, by far, the worst offender of the “Google Rule” I’ve seen so far)

End of Days: Infected vs Mercs

Escape From Robot Doom (Played it for about 10 minutes, maybe the worst game I’ve ever played in my life, not an exaggeration, couldn’t get past first stage, worst controls ever)

FortressCraft

Fruit Bash

Gerbil Physics

Gerbil Physics 2

Googly Eyed Splitters

GrappleBoy

Green Island

GreenTech+

Hack This Game 2

Halfbrick Echoes

Hoardzz

Inertia!

Jump’n Bounce

Kaleidoscope

Lil’ Demons: Splatter (This was recommended to me when I bitched about lack of good first-person shooters on XBLIG.  Played it for 10 minutes, hated it, forgot about it)

Mirror

Monsters (Probably) Stole My Princess

Ninja vs. Zombie

Old School Adventure

Ophidian Wars: Opac’s Journey

Penga’s Peril

radiangames JoyJoy (probably a huge epilepsy risk)

Refractor

Skwug

Snake Death

Sol Intelligence

Solar

Solar 2

Solve It: Pack 1

Soul

Techno Kitten Adventure (almost certain seizure risk)

The Fall of the Gods (I started playing it, put a couple of hours into it, and got bored stiff.  Terrible game)

The Impossible Game

The Impossible Game Level Pack (I would do this as a two-in-one, and maybe do the iOS version as well)

This is Hard

TransSubversion (Brian picked this one out, I found the controls unworkable and quit)

Trapped

Treasure Treasure: FFEE

Ultraviolet

Ura Kaiten Patissier

Vexis

What The?!

Your Doodles Are Bugged!

Zombie Slaughter Is Fun (Played it, hated it, just another I Made a Game with Zombies wanna be)

まもって騎士 (Protect Me Knight, which I played but not multiplayer, never got around to writing the review)

コロンでジャンプ (Jump in the Colon, odd name, but it’s the Japanese so what do you expect?)

Reviewed

Week One: Lumi

Week Two: Decay Parts 1 – 4

Week Three: Breath of Death VII and Cthulhu Saves the World

Filed under Editorials

Miner Dig Deep

March 6, 2012 by 13 Comments

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

And screen shots that looked like this.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Duhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

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

What?

No.

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

I had been dumped.

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

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

Miner Dig Deep was developed by Substance Games

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

Gameplay footage courtesy of this guy.

 

 

Filed under XBLIG / Creators Collection Tagged with

Bug Ball

March 4, 2012 by 7 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bug Ball was developed by Edible Entertainment

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

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

 

Filed under XBLIG / Creators Collection Tagged with ,

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

March 2, 2012 by 5 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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NYAN-TECH

February 29, 2012 by 3 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

NYAN-TECH was developed by Dot Zo Games

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

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

Filed under XBLIG / Creators Collection

The Lost Indies in Due Time

February 28, 2012 by 3 Comments

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

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

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

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

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EvilQuest

February 27, 2012 by 21 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

EvilQuest was developed by Chaosoft

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

Filed under XBLIG / Creators Collection

Octogenarian VIP

February 25, 2012 by 2 Comments

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

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

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

Grandma needs a toupee.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Octogenarian VIP was developed by Enraged Ginger

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

Video footage courtesy of Aaron the Splazer

Filed under XBLIG / Creators Collection

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