Indie Gamer Chick

Andromium

Update: Andromium is no longer available following the Great XBLIG Purge.

If you’ve ever wondered what it would be like if you crossed a horizontal space shooter with Hot Potato, wonder no more. That’s pretty much what Andromium is, minus the shooting part. I have to admit, when I saw the trailer for this a few weeks back, I thought it looked stupid. And even when playing it, my early impression was not very good. This proves why my decision to never try demos was a good one, because Andromium is a seriously amazing game.

In Andromium you play as a pair of space ships that must continuously pass a ball of energy between them while auto-scrolling through eight stages filled with various traps.  Whether you play alone or with a partner, the game is set up with a split-screen. If you play with a partner, you both dodge obstacles while passing the ball between each other. If you hold onto the ball too long, you die. You have three hearts, and if you lose them all you also die. Losing lives deducts points from your total. The object of each stage is to clear the target number of points set for it.

If you play single player, an AI partner with no bullets or obstacles to dodge fills in and does a suitable job. The funny thing is, whether you play with a partner or not doesn’t really matter. You never really feel like you’re working with someone. There’s just too much to pay attention to that you both forget the other is there. It’s really very bizarre.  Playing with the AI felt more right to me. Don’t get me wrong, playing with someone else works great too. Especially if you’re at a point in your relationship where you feel you don’t ignore each other enough.

There’s eight stages, all of which feature randomly generated layouts. The themes for them range from dollar-store generic to “what the fuck were they on?” inspired. There’s a stage featuring beautiful neon graphics. There’s a stage themed after classic video games, complete with Mario-style coin collecting. There’s a stage where killer whales jump from toilet to toilet. There’s a.. you know what, fuck it. Once you’ve noted that there’s a stage where killer whales hop from toilet to toilet you’ve really said all you need to.

The controls are very smooth and accurate. Passing the ball is super easy too. There’s no aiming it, so you just press the A button and watch it glide gingerly from your side of the screen to your partner’s. The ball has a timer on it that was the most frequent reason I died. And you know what? I chuckled every time I blew myself up doing it. It’s amazing how you can forget such a key component to the game so many times, but I often did hold the ball too long and was always amused when it happened.

I do have a couple of complaints. One is that the ordering of the levels seems wrong. On more than one occasion I had difficulty beating one level, which was then immediately followed by one that was a total breeze. It gives the game a difficulty curve that looks like Bart Simpson’s hair. My second complaint is a little more severe. Sometimes the traps and obstacles are just not very easy to see. This is especially a problem on the final stage, where the gears that you have to avoid are not drawn in a way to stick out, making it easier to lose track of them. Finally, there’s no Xbox Live support. I don’t want to sound like a broken record but this is the second time this month I’ve played a game that would have been #1 on the IndieGamerChick leader board if it had offered online play. Developers, you have got to try harder to include it.

Oh yes, and there’s an extra single-player mode where you use the left and right sticks to control both ships at the same time. I tried it and set a new world record for fastest rage quit in video game history: 13.7 seconds. If you have the God-like dexterity needed to pull this mode off, congratulations. You are officially a freak of such epic scale that they would have burned you at the stake for it 500 years ago.

Gripes aside, Andromium is one of the best games I’ve played on the indie marketplace.  Games that are this experimental are prone to fail. On paper, the concept sounded terrible to me, and the slow start didn’t help. But after only a few minutes it just clicks, and suddenly Andromium really works. In fact, in works so good that I wouldn’t be surprised if a larger studio tried to poach this idea for themselves. It’s unconventional, well presented, and excellently realized. Great soundtrack too. Who would have guessed mixing a stale genre like the space shooter with a childhood game like Hot Potato would have worked so well? Next up I want to see if creator Mike Ventnor can mix a first person shooter with Duck-Duck-Goose.

Andromium was developed by Red Crest Studios

80 Microsoft Points said he can call it “Duck-Duck-BOOM HEADSHOT!” in the making of this review.

Cycloid

Cycloid tries to be one of those artsy-fartsy Arkanoid clones that have sprung up all over every platform since Shatter hit.  It tries, and it fails.  God, how it fails.  It fails so badly that I want to give a tearful hug to its developer’s parents.  Cycloid is such an unmitigated disaster that I feel like this review should have a Red Cross donation box on it.

The blurb for it reads “Cycloid is original Arkanoid with realistic physics.”  Yea, maybe if you’re in fucking Wonderland.  The paddle isn’t really segmented like the traditional Pong/Breakout/Akranoid one, so when you hit the ball it goes wherever the hell it wants.  And usually it wants to go right past the paddle and into purgatory.  Perhaps it’s trying to escape being in this game.  Can’t blame it.

It doesn't look bad, but trust me, it plays bad. Really bad.

Worst of all is the controls.  Arkanoid clones really kind of need accurate movement.  They didn’t bother that bullshit here.  The analog stick’s only speed is “Speedy Gonzales on meth” while the trigger buttons are set to “Slowpoke Rodriguez on Valium.”  Finding a middle ground between the two is impossible, and thus so is the game.  Analog controls would have helped, but fuck that, who has time to code that when there are reruns of Family Guy on?

Assuming you can actually make a successful volley, the ball might bounce off the paddle and hit some of the blocks.  Whether those blocks register being hit is kind of up to chance.  Sometimes it just doesn’t do it.  Combine that with the fact that blocks can take multiple hits and you better cancel your weekend plans if you want to complete a stage.  Actually I’m just joking with you there.  You’ll be game-overed long before then.  Oh, and the play field is round, so this leads to humorous situations where the balls hugs the wall and the paddle before finally saying “fuck it” and passing right through the paddle and into death.  Perhaps a satirical view of letting go late in life and embracing euthanasia while your family fights to keep you alive, but more likely just a really badly programmed game.

There’s also items that you can pick up.  Kind of.  If an item touches the front of the paddle, it just sits there bouncing up and down like it’s having a pout.  You have to wait for it to reach the outside ring before you can get it.  Naturally!  I mean everything else was poorly conceived so why not fuck up the most no-brainer aspect of the game while you’re at it?  As for the items, there’s one that makes it so you can’t break any blocks for thirty seconds.  There’s no benefit to it, it’s just there to be a dick move.  You didn’t have to bother guys.  This whole game is a colossal dick move without it.

I don’t want to pull a Comic Book Guy and call Cycloid the worst game ever, but it ranks.  It ranks way up there.  Or way down there depending on how you look at it.  It replaces Ace of Dynamites as the worst Xbox Live Indie Game I’ve played thus far, and it does so by a very comfortable margin.  If you wish you can recreate the pain I felt playing it in a safer way by tilting your head backwards and dumping soda down your nostrils.

Cycloid was developed by Jack Spektor

80 Microsoft Points tried to remember the good old days before they were used on Cycloid in the making of this review.

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Robot Platformer

Robot Platformer is pretty much what the name suggests: a tactical strategy RPG where you navigate a platoon of ravenous chipmunks through the aisles of a K-Mart hoping to land a blue light special on some off-brand footwear.  You control Mr. Finkies, the leader of the pack whose family was tragically cut down by nah I’m just fucking with you, it’s an utterly generic platformer made by some Danish twit.  And I find the whole “robot” thing suspect.  It looks more like a masked killer from a slasher movie.  Personally, I liked my plot idea better.  Feel free to steal it.

What makes Robot Platformer stick out is its graphics style.  It looks an awful lot like a sketch book come to life.  In a way, you can picture the entire game taking place between the margins of a text-book.  It’s a fun look that takes a bit of the sting out of what is, at heart, a samey-bland platforming romp.  There’s forty-two levels that have various goals.  Most of the time you simply have to get to the exit.  Sometimes you’ll have to eliminate all the baddies in a stage, and sometimes you’ll have to get to the exit before time runs out.  Sometimes you’ll have to do both.

My biggest complaint is the controls are a tad clunky.  Jumping feels too heavy while shooting feels too slow.  Collision detection seems a bit off as well.  I also don’t like how the entire stage darkens up as you take more damage.  The difficulty curve is really strange too.  You’ll be twenty boards into the game when, out of nowhere, it tosses you a level that feels more like an introductory stage and takes mere seconds to beat.  It’s like taking a quantum physics quiz and being asked at some point which way is up.

Robot Platformer wears the art-house game badge without shame.  It’s got a really awesome jazzy soundtrack that is completely out-of-place, but oddly fitting at the same time.  Although the controls are a bitch at times, it should only take around an hour to finish the game, and I can honestly say that I didn’t dislike the experience.  I guess I’m giving it a mild recommendation.  It’s not an enthusiastic one.  It’s like recommending a meal of Mexican food.  It’ll be palatable enough to eat and you might even get some satisfaction out of finishing it.  Then later you won’t even remember eating it at all while wondering where all this diarrhea came from.

Robot Platformer was developed by Cored

80 Microsoft Points taler Dansk, blandt ni andre sprog i fremstillingen af ​​denne gennemgang.

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Crazy Balloon Lite

Crazy Balloon Lite is a remake of a 1980 arcade game by Taito where you steer a balloon through a maze while trying to avoid the spiky walls.  The balloon constantly sways from left to right so you have to use timing and digital agility to reach the end goal of every level.  It wasn’t exactly the most popular game out there, so it’s a slightly oddball target for a remake.  My father might disagree with that.  He burned away many lunch hours playing this when it was first released in arcades.  So anyone from Palo Alto who remembers a fat, balding Cuban swearing at an obscure arcade game circa the Reagan era, you’ll be glad to know that he’s now a fatter, balder, and thirty-years-older Cuban currently swearing at my Xbox 360.  Circle of life.

I’ve already raged against nostalgia in a few previous reviews, so I’ll drop that whole bit and just talk about the merits of Crazy Balloon Lite.  On its own, it’s a perfectly fine dexterity tester.  As a remake, it’s pretty much what you would expect: the same game with a graphics overhaul.

Having noted all that, remaking a game in a way where it actually has less to offer than the thirty-year-old arcade original is pretty dumb in my opinion.  There’s only six levels in the game, and once you beat them that’s it.  There’s no extra challenges or incentives to keep playing.  The original game looped, so when you beat the last board you would start from the beginning, only the balloon would sway faster.  Here, once you beat stage six the game ends and you go back to the title screen.  The graphics seem nice,  except the background is pretty distracting.  It leads to moments where it’s tough to see where the spikes are.

The biggest complaint for me is this is a game where analog controls would have potentially made a huge difference in improving the original design.  Although the stick is an option, it has no true analog controls, so the slightest nudge will send your balloon on a full-speed path towards failure.  Finally, there are annoying moments where the camera automatically pulls in when the game assumes that you’re turning a tight corner.  It’s a feature designed to make things easier, but it does the opposite.  The transition between camera angles is jarring and led to me dying more than once.

Overall, I can’t recommend Crazy Balloon Lite.  Modern gamers will find it shallow and uninteresting.  I know I wanted it to be over by time I beat the first level.  Thankfully I didn’t have to wait very long.  Fans of the original might get a very limited amount of enjoyment out of it, but if my father is any indication it will only leave them longing to play the 1980 version.  It had more levels and cleaner graphics, plus it’s the actual game they fell for in the first place.  All Lite is going to do is set off one of those annoying “back in my day” speeches.  God I hate those.  You know, back in my day they didn’t develop shitty remakes of games that would cause people to use that phrase.

Crazy Balloon Lite was developed by Backroom Software

80 Microsoft Points had a father who said “they ought to remake Atari’s Fire Truck too” while his daughter face-palmed and begged developers not to in the making of this review. 

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Zombies Ruined My Day

It’s been said that President James Garfield could write Latin with his left hand and Greek with his right hand at the same time. Pretty impressive, assuming that every single guest he performed this for could tell both Greek and Latin apart from random chicken scratches. But if it was true, it’s an amazing trick. Let’s see the smug bastard take a crack at Zombies Ruined My Day, a hoard shooter with a control scheme about as inviting as a radioactive doorbell.

The story here is your typical zombie game clap trap: zombies invade and you are able to conveniently get your hands on enough artillery to wipe out the population of a small country. The game play takes place on a single screen. There are doors that zombies march out of single-file in an orderly manner. They walk in a straight line until they hit a wall, at which point they walk the other direction. You’re a dude at the bottom of the screen who has to kill them before they get you and turn you into a zombie yourself.

By the way, isn’t that the biggest flaw with all these zombie games and films? Let’s say the zombie outbreak takes place. In most cases, it’s only a handful of people who initially start as zombies. Then they bite someone and that person becomes a zombie too. Well wait a second, if zombies are trying to eat the people, how come there’s always enough left of their victims for them to turn into zombies themselves? What, are they only sampling the people like it’s demo day at Costco? Makes no damn sense.

So back to the game.  You have zombies and you have guns. You move with the left stick and aim with the right one, with the right trigger to shoot. That’s assuming you have a gun. If you’re using a grenade or putting a barrier down, you use the right trigger to increase throwing strength and the left trigger to decrease it. You press up on the D pad to throw. You cycle through your various weapons using the bumpers. And while you juggle through all that, there are dozens of zombies on-screen, all of whom will kill you in one hit. You have very limited room to move and a very limited jump button. You can never leave the bottom level of a stage, so the jumping only works to hop over zombies. The problem there is most of the time there’s a string of them coming at you with no space in-between to safely leap.

I tried playing on normal difficulty but chickened out on the second world. I switched over to easy mode and found that the game still was frustratingly hard. I thought zombie canon was well established: one shot to the head, pffph, dead. Not here. The baddies simply take way too many shots to kill. Your starter pistol might as well be shooting snap ‘n’ pops for all the good it does. Even with a shotgun you’re looking at a minimum of two shots for even basic zombies.   Later in the game you do get other shooting game standbys like a rocket launcher or a minigun.  Of course if you actually make it that far you’ll have lost your will to live. At some point in the game survivors are introduced and you have to protect them from being eaten as well, while juggling everything else. Yea, fuck that with an unlubricated, razor-encrusted dildo.

Even if the controls were more accessible, I don’t think it would matter much. Zombies Ruined My Day is just plain boring. The graphics are very nice, but that’s all it has going for it.  The game play is repetitive, redundant, and repetitive. Oddly enough, Zombies Ruined My Day seems like it was built with co-op in mind, but that feature is nowhere to be found. Having some help might have taken the sting out a little. Not likely. Suckering someone into playing a game this dull is a quick way to lose friends. The only use I could think of for it would be a drug-free alternative for medically induced comas.

Zombies Ruined My Day was developed by Mancebo Games

80 Microsoft Points felt “Yawn of the Dead” would have been a better title in the making of this review.

I Made a Game with Zombies in It!

Apparently I have to shake the “newb” vibe off my indie credentials.  In order to do that, I have to review games that are considered the cat’s meow of the marketplace.  And no pussy furiously roars quite like I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MB1ES!!!1.  I likely didn’t mean it to sound that way, but I have an aversion to using the delete button so itt wil half too stand .

Obviously this review is only to see if I Made a Game with Zombies in It! belongs on the Indie Gamer Chick Top 10.  Considering it’s the only Xbox indie title to go mainstream and get included at real places like Hot Topic and Rock Band, I think trying to sway anyone’s opinion would be shouting into the wind.  Besides, after replaying it, I do admit it’s pretty good in a Smash TV-on-acid sort of way.  You move with one stick and shoot with the other.  You pick up assorted guns that appear at random.  There’s a decent amount of enemies in it, most of which aren’t really zombies at all.  There’s a really bizarre song playing the whole time.  That’s pretty much it.

It’s easy to figure out why I Made a Game with Zombies in It! is the top-selling XBLIG of all time.  The name is one of the chief reasons.  It just sticks out, practically daring you to try it.  And the game itself is functional, simple, and well-developed.  I think it’s sort of weird that the game just stops after the song finishes, but otherwise I have no complaints.

So is it going to make my top 10?  Nah.  It’s really good, but I don’t think its one of the ten best Indie games ever.  And you know what?  I don’t think the guys at Ska Studios would call it one of the best ever either.  It serves it’s function as the poster child of the scene very well.  But there are so many more games that are complete experiences rather than a quick and dirty shooter that doesn’t last as long as the average string of movie trailers at the theater.  Yea, everyone should likely own it and show it off to their non-indie-playing friends.  It’s a good way to expose them to the marketplace.  It’s also a good way to find out who’s the douchebag that hordes all the guns so that you can eliminate him before the real zombie apocalypse breaks out.  That’s right Brian, I have my eye on you.  Hording all the rocket launchers like you’re Noriega or something.  A pox on thee.

I Made a Game with Zombies in It! was developed by Ska Studios

80 Microsoft Points got thrown onto the pile in James Silva’s living room in the making of this review.

Repixland

I’m kind of ashamed to admit this, but for a while there I was hopelessly addicted to Bejeweled Blitz.  It got to the point where “just one more game” was replaced by “the fire on my clothes can wait a second.”  Repixland is more akin to the Jewel Quest series of match-three puzzlers in that you’re trying to match squares on specific parts of the game board to win.  So it’s a clone of a clone.  And as anyone who watched Multiplicity knows, clones of clones are born with Down Syndrome.

Repixland is technically playable.  The controls work, the graphics are mostly clean, and the sound doesn’t offend.  Yet there’s something very off about it.  Maybe it’s the fact that this genre has been beaten into the ground so much that it’s toes are now sticking out of the other end of the Earth.  Maybe it’s the fact that there’s so many better options out there, some of which are free.  Maybe it’s the generic themes Flan Games chose for the game.  Maybe it’s a combination of all of the above.

It’s not well designed either.  I experienced a full system crash while playing through the alien level.  It only happened once and I was later able to complete the game, but it’s still there.  And in the “really, what the fuck?” department, you can pause the game but it doesn’t stop the timer.  So it’s a pause button that doesn’t do a damn thing.  More over, the timer continues to run even after you beat a level.  I finished one board and went to check on my lunch.  When I came back, I had game-overed because of it.

So Repixland sucks, right?  Does the Pope shit in the woods?  Well of course he doesn’t.  He shits in the bathroom like everyone else.  But yes, Repixland does indeed suck.  Throw a rock in any direction and you’re likely to hit a better Bejeweled clone.  That or you’ll break a window.  If you do that, just claim you’re crusading for social reform, then help yourself to a couple of mink coats and an iPad.

Repixland was developed by Flan Games

80 Microsoft Points think Pope John XII likely did shit in the woods, among other places, in the making of this review.

Blocks That Matter

UPDATE: Blocks that Matter is now 80 Microsoft Points.

Blocks That Matter is a logic-puzzle game where you control a robot that looks like a washing machine mated with Grounder from The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog.  Christ, that’s an obscure reference.  Using the robot you must drill up blocks which are added to your inventory.  You then use those blocks by pausing the game and placing them in grids of four onto the screen.  You hop along on them until you reach the exit for a stage.

Combining a platformer with a puzzler is always a huge risk.  An element belonging to either genre being off-tune can sink the entire experience.  In the case of Blocks That Matter, everything is finely tuned and well implemented.  The controls are very tight and the jumping physics are near flawless.  The puzzle elements are clever and brainy but not impossible or frustrating.  The end result is one of the best games on the indie marketplace.

It took me about three hours to finish Blocks That Matter and it was one of the more pleasant experiences I’ve had with Xbox Live Indie Games.  Key to that was the bat shit insane storyline about two game developers.  Sure, it was a little bit “inside” but the dialog and characters were so sickeningly charming that I had to press on to see what crazy dribble they would spit out next.  And it was totally worth it.  The funny thing is I could see these two guys starring in more games, Harold & Kumar style.

Another reason to keep playing is the unlockable content.  Every stage has a treasure chest in it, and drilling it gifts you with a block from a classic video game.  I admit, I wanted those chests to see what game they would pay tribute to next.  But the developers of Blocks That Matter should beware.  One of the block awards that you unlock is the question mark block from Super Mario Bros.  And I mean it is the block.  It’s even identified as being from Super Mario Bros on the NES.  It seems like shaking the hornet’s nest to me.  Nintendo is a company that has sued people over fan art.  They’ve sued people for listing their products as hobbies in porn website profiles.  How do you think they will react to having one of their trademarks appear in a game on the Xbox 360?  This could end badly.  I’m talking locked in a closet and forced to play Urban Champion for months on end badly.

I only have a one nit-picky complaint towards Blocks That Matter:  I found the music to be really annoying.  It’s clicky and chirpy, like listening to a school of dolphins.  Very grating, like getting your ears cleaned out by a rusty SOS pad.  I should note that my boyfriend didn’t mind it at all, so maybe it’s just me.  But that’s just a really minor quibble.  Blocks That Matter is one of the best things you can do with 240MSP.  It’s endearing, smart, well designed, and genuinely a lot of fun.

I wonder what is next for this studio?  Maybe a shooting game.  They could call it “Glocks That Matter.”  Or how about a herding game called “Flocks That Matter.”  Or a game starring a giant watch called “Clocks That Matter.”  I’ll stop now.

Blocks That Matter was dev..

Wait!  I got another one.  A game about an obsessive security guard called “Locks That Matter.”  Okay now I’m done.

Blocks That Matter was developed by Swing Swing Submarine

240 Microsoft Points were accused of being slanderous towards Swing Swing Submarine in the making of this review.  Not by Swing Swing Submarine themselves, mind you.  I wish someone would slander me like this.