Castle Invasion, Life of Pixel (Second Chance with the Chick), and Super Skull Smash GO!

February 28, 2013 by 3 Comments

I figured it’s time for another kick at the PlayStation Mobile can.  While my previous efforts to didn’t turn up any original games that I could point to and say “see, PlayStation Mobile is off to a decent start”, I figure it’s worth a second look.  At least it would be, if games weren’t priced like this.

PSM Store 2

Or like this.

PSM Store 3

Or this.

PSM Store 1

Okay.  Just to be clear, you guys want people to actually buy your games, right?  And you also realize that you’re on PlayStation Vita, where a PlayStation Plus subscription can net you AAA games for free?  Or where standard discounts can get you some really great games for around that price?  Hell, you’re also competing directly with Android phones, where you can get some of the best games of this generation for $0.99 or less.  You should make some effort to be competitive.  You already have no demos, making your games high-risk to consumers.  Why make them so out-of-bounds high risk that nobody in their right mind would take a chance on them?  I would gladly fork over $3 for what looks like an FMV fishing game, because that sort of quirky weird shit is right up my ally.  $5?  That would be a tough sell for actual fans of FMV fishing games, which is a large and robust fanbase to alienate.

So instead, I grabbed Castle Invasion for a measly 49 cents.  And I definitely got what I paid for.  Simple concept: shoot dudes before they reach the castle wall.  Gallery shooters like this are a bit relicy (that’s a word as of right now), but I figure there’s all kinds of neat twists developers can slap on them.  Not here.  Dudes run at you, and you shoot them.  Stronger dudes run at you.  You shoot them.  Faster dudes run at you.  You shoot them.  Sometimes you use arrows, sometimes you use spears that can penetrate multiple enemies, but otherwise it’s the same shit over and over again and it’s boring.  Not only that, but it had a tendency to crash.  Spring for the extra penny and sink your money in a gumball.  The flavor will last about 90 seconds, which makes that a longer-term investment than Castle Invasion.

Castle Invasion. The most excited thing since buttered toast. Which I don't find to be particularly exciting.

Castle Invasion. The most excited thing since buttered toast. Which I don’t find to be particularly exciting.

Up next was Life of Pixel ($1.99), which has been patched.  I played it last month, and found the graphics to be authentic, but the control was sketchy and the level design focused a little too much on leap-of-faith gameplay.  That’s mostly fixed now.  Controls are silky smooth, double jumping never failed, the frame-rate never dropped, and some of those leaps-of-faith are now a thing of memory.  Some.  There were a few sections of the game where you simply have to leap blindly and hope for the best.  Some call this “trial and error.”  Bullshit.  The “trial” part suggests you have a fighting chance.  Blind luck is not a fighting chance.  It’s fucking blind luck, and there’s still a lot of it in Life of Pixel.  I call this “gotcha gameplay.”  And I’m sick of it.  It pops up too much on the indie scene.  Yea, I know games used to be like this, but that doesn’t mean they still have to be.  And I’ve got a solution.

I’ve arranged for every indie development kit, across all platforms, to come bundled with a man named Roberto.  Now, Roberto will pretty much stay out of your way.  Just leave some bread and something to drink out for him, but otherwise you shouldn’t notice him.  Unless you start to put “GOTCHA!” moments into your game.  Unavoidable deaths, blind leaps, hidden traps that are impossible to see or avoid, etc.  When you attempt this, Roberto will come out of hiding, place a pot on your head, and bang the pot sixteen times with a five-pound, stainless-steel soup ladle.  After this, he’ll remove the pot, look you in your now vacant, concussed eyes, and scream “GOTCHA!”  Then he’ll slink back into the shadows and allow you to undo the mess you just made of your game.  I think this idea is a good one.

I fucking HATED HATED HATED this level of Life of Pixel, which featured more blind jumps than Lighthouse International's annual hurdles race.

I fucking HATED HATED HATED this level of Life of Pixel, which featured more blind jumps than LensCrafter’s annual hurdles race.

Despite Life of Pixel being my inspiration for the Roberto Policy, I have to say that the game is vastly improved.  By that, I mean it’s playable, and hey, even a little fun.  They even included a soundtrack that, gasp, somewhat matches the classic gaming eras that were the inspiration in the first place.  I mean, it was downright boneheaded to not include such soundtracks in the first place, but I’ll let it slide.  I did just give the team at Super Icon  multiple instances of brain damage by testing the Roberto Policy on them.  They deserve a break.  They also deserve an Indie Gamer Chick Seal of Approval.  They took a shitty, broken game and made it fun.  That’s a sign of a developer with true talent, and I salute them for it.

Roberto, pot their head one last time.  Just out of principle for making me eat my words.

Finally, Super Skull Smash GO!  It’s a retro-style puzzle-platformer that was priced at $3.29 last week, but it’s down to $2.79 this week.  Is that a good price for it?  Hmmmmm not really.  I can get better games on my iPhone or on XBLIG that offer more play value at half the price.  Is it a bad game?  Not at all.  You play as a dude who has to hop on skeletons, grab their skulls, and smash them against a giant, golden cross.  Glad to see Yale’s fraternal initiation turn into a full-fledged video game.

Super Skull Smash GO

I would call the graphics fossilized, but considering Super Skull Smash GO! stars a bunch of skeletons, I’m guessing that was the point.

Despite the primitive graphics, Super Skull Smash GO! is a fairly clever puzzler that keeps throwing new twists in until the end.  Having said that, the collision detection is too sensitive, and the jumping physics are a little heavy.  By far the biggest thing I had to struggle with was jumping through narrow corridors and repeatedly fucking up because the spot you can jump from or to is so small and unforgiving.  Plus, lining up a skull to throw at just the right height can also be troublesome.  The game seems to have issues with following parameters.  I’m not going to be too hard on it for that.  I can relate.  I have the ankle monitor to prove it.

I still recommend it, because it’s a fun little game with puzzle design unlike anything I’ve ever played.  And hey, I’ve now found two original PlayStation Mobile games that are priced to afford and worth your time to play.  It’s a step in the right direction.  I do wish developers would be smarter about how they market their games.  That overhead airplane fighter game thing above, Blue Skies.  For all I know, it might be a good game.  It looks like it’s based on some classic games that a lot of people would be interested in.  You know, the type of games you can routinely buy on platforms like PSN, XBLA, and Virtual Console for under $7?  This is one of those “what were they thinking?” moments.  Without the benefit of demos (and hell, most PSM games don’t even bother with trailers on YouTube), all PSM games are a risk to consumers.  How many people will take a $7 for one game risk when the same $7 can net them multiple games, some of which they’re bound to like.  I got two pretty decent games in Super Skull Smash GO! and Life of Pixel for $5.28.  That’s $1.71 less than the risk of buying Blue Skies and hating it.  Fuck that.  That kind of money buys a lot of gumballs.

Super Skull Smash GO! and Life of Pixel are Chick Approved

IGC_Approved

Filed under PlayStation Reviews Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Pester

February 23, 2013 by 2 Comments

I suck at space shooters.  I’ve spent the last two years establishing this fact on this very blog.  While I try to claim neutrality towards all genres, that’s obviously a bit of a stretch.  Some I like more than others, with shmups typically being “the others.”  I’ve just never been able to get into them.  Which kind of sucks for the hard-working XBLIG community, because even ones that earn near universal praise (like Aeternum) don’t do anything for me.  It seems like the best they can hope for out of me is “I wouldn’t rather be dead than play this.”

Am I the only one who thinks that bullet hell screens always look like those abstract painting made by just splattering a blank canvas with paint?

Am I the only one who thinks that bullet hell screens always look like those abstract painting made by just splattering a blank canvas with paint?

On that note, I wouldn’t rather be dead than play Pester.  Congratulations to the team at Flump Studios for doing as good as you could do with this genre in relationship to me.  I was able to get through the full hour Brian forces me to play these games (“out of fairness” he says, the goody two-shoes prick) without wondering if I’ll be locked up in the nuthouse for choosing to hurl myself through a plate-glass window to get out of it.  And, while I wasn’t like wowed by the experience or anything, I wasn’t bored.  It’s nothing new though.  You’re a ship.  There are enemies.  Enemies fire a whole lot of bullets at you, and you fire a whole lot of bullets back.  I’ve always kind of wondered about the economics of bullet hells.  Presumably if enemies are firing plasma rounds at you with projectiles the size of small ships, that stuff has got to cost money.  You would think they would fire a little more accurately.  Conserve ammo, instead of seeing you, going crazy, and firing bullets in every direction including behind them.  Or hell, since we’re dealing futuristic space warfare, you would think an enemy force that can employ thousands of ships to take out one single rinky-dinky little adversary could figure out how to do weapons that instantaneously destroy whatever they’re targeting the moment the fire button is pressed without giving them a chance to dodge out-of-the-way.  What kind of morons do they have running these evil empires?

Anyway, it’s basic space shooter shit with some neat graphic filters added, and not a whole lot more.  I played for a while and realized quickly that I was every bit as shitty at playing Pester as I am at every other game of this godforsaken genre.  But the screen wasn’t so spammed with bullets that it was demoralizing or anything.  Then something funny happened.  At one point, I turned to Brian and said “honestly, I’m not having a blast or anything, but there’s nothing really wrong with this one.”  Within ten seconds of me saying this, the game decided to give me stuff to complain about.   I’m not saying this for comic effect.  This really happened.  First, I was fighting a boss that throws giant swords at you and died.  That’s not the bad part.  The bad part is when I blinked back into existence, the game spawned one of the sword bullets into the same space I respawned into and insta-killed me.  The sword wasn’t there at that moment. It just appeared.  A bizarre glitch I’m guessing, but it’s so weird that it happened right after I told my boyfriend I had nothing to complain about.  As if the game heard me and said “nothing to complain about?  Bitch, I’ll give you something to complain about.”

And Pester kept being a shithead to me after that.  I played three straight rounds where the game never once spawned an upgrade for my ship’s guns.  It spawned plenty of speed-ups and bombs, but no gun upgrades.  It was fucking strange, because they had been plentiful before.  Not that it really mattered.  Gun upgrades or not, I still made it about the same length as I always did, which was between wave 7 and wave 10.  Yea, I really suck at this shit.  So I booted up Tempus mode, where lives are replaced by time.  When you shoot enemies, instead of them dropping coins, they drop clocks that add one second to a timer.  When you die, you lose ten seconds.  The game goes until you run out of time.  Okay, fine.  Question: where the fuck is the timer?  I couldn’t see it.  Otherwise, it’s the same game with the same enemy layouts.  You can also adjust the difficulty, and add extra challenges if you’re a masochist, like controlling two ships at once.  I didn’t try it myself.  I barely have the coordination to tie my shoelaces without breaking my neck in the process.  I don’t need a game to tell me I’m an embarrassment to humanity.  I already know it.

A spaceship that fires globs of space jizz on you. Sure. Why not?

A spaceship that fires globs of space jizz on you. Sure. Why not?

Really, Pester isn’t bad or anything.  And the sword bit I mentioned above was a one-off thing.  I guess I kind of, sort of recommend it.  A little bit.  I’m not sure if that’s because I genuinely enjoyed it based on merit, or if I genuinely enjoyed it because Brian got such amusement out of my pitiful lack of shmup talent.  Either way, I had something vaguely resembling a good time playing it, and had the sense to turn it off before I got bored.  Having said that, it’s not an ambitious title.  This shit has been done before and Pester offers nothing new.  Nothing.  At best, it shows competence in making a functioning, mildly entertaining game that closely resembles about a thousand other games.  I’m not against playing them, but I want to see a different angle on them.  There’s got to be a wealth of unexplored twists for bullet hells.  I mean come on, you guys are indie developers.  You’re supposed to buck the norm.  Be weird for the sake of being weird.  Dance to the beat of a different drummer.  When games like this fill out the cliché checklist with such determination, it’s kind of sad.  Not as sad as watching me play games like this must be, but still pretty sad.

xboxboxartIGC_ApprovedPester was developed by Flump Studios

80 Microsoft Points made a fortune selling ammunition to an evil galactic empire in the making of this review. 

Pester is Chick Approved and ranked on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard.  Barely.  

Filed under XBLIG / Creators Collection Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Developer Interview: James Petruzzi – Developer of Chasm

January 24, 2013 by 6 Comments

James Petruzzi of Discord Games is an Indie Gamer Chick all-star.  He has two games on the Leaderboard, the writer of the most popular Tales from the Dev Side editorial that’s been published here, and now he’s chosen to sponsor the new (and still unfinished due to laziness) XBLIG Developer Index, kicking in a whopping $200 towards Autism Speaks.  He also happens to have a very interesting looking Metroidvania coming later in 2013.  James is here to talk about his new title, called Chasm, and the trials and tribulations of making games for XBLIG.

chasm_logo_big

Cathy: Chasm is not coming to XBLIG.  Et tu, Brute?

James: Right off the bat, I haven’t decided yet.

Cathy: Oh?

James: It runs on my Xbox 360 right now, and I’m planning on keeping it that way.   But whether I release it or not, I’m not sure.

Cathy: Why not?

James: I’m not going to release it for a dollar.

Cathy: Oh.

James: My only option I feel is 400MSP, but whether people on that market would spring for it, I have no clue.

Cathy: So?

James: So?  I hear you boil developers who release games at 400MSP in oil.

Cathy: As a point of order, I did place Bleed, a 400MSP game, in my Top 10.

James: Yea, but you also boiled them in oil after that.  They’re still in bandages.

Cathy: Good game though.

James: Did the Bleed guy ever release numbers?

Cathy: Um yea, actually I just asked him.  He told me it sold 900 units on XBLIG.

James: Those numbers show the problem with XBLIG.

Cathy: Net gross of about $3,150 for the developer. Sad thing is, can’t prove it, but I bet it would have sold a couple thousand copies at 240.

James: Either way it’s still terrible for a game that high quality.

The awesomely fun Take Arms was a critical hit, but about as well received by Xbox owners as a bagpipe simulator.

The awesomely fun Take Arms was a critical hit, but about as well received by Xbox owners as a bagpipe simulator.

Cathy: What about PlayStation Mobile, where developers have huge flexibility on prices?

James: I haven’t really researched it to be honest, and I’m not sure whats all required to even get on there.

Cathy: It’s supposed to be a relatively open platform.  I don’t know.  Sony had said they would get back to me and never did.

James: So I’m just squarely focused on PC for now, I want to launch on Win/Mac/Linux and then go from there.  But if it makes money, I’ll port it to everything under the sun with a D-pad.

Cathy: I’ll look forward to the NES, Master System, and 3DO releases.

James: Hahaha!  Well, I’d consider PlayStation Network, Wii U,  and maybe 3DS or Vita releases.

Cathy: Take Arms was pretty well received by critics, but it kind of flopped in sales. 48 Chambers was good, but again, didn’t really sell well.  Is that why you’re trying to more traditional game with Chasm?

James: No, I’m actually just making it because it’s the game I’ve wanted to make since the beginning.  If you watch the Evolution of Take Arms video we put on YouTube, you’ll see that started as a Castlevania type game.  We were way too inexperienced though to deal with that much content, so we decided to make it a multiplayer game instead.  Obviously something flopped with Take Arms that’s beyond the amount of content or anything.

Cathy: Maybe it was difficult to articulate that it was a multiplayer game. There’s obviously SOME interest for those on XBLIG, as seen in the success of Shark Attack Deathmatch.  Maybe “Take Arms Deathmatch” sells 10,000 units and has a robust user base to keep it going?

James: Yea that’s definitely a possibility, but at the same time, I think you must have the right product at the right time.

Cathy: I think the big sticking point is the amount of people who play it daily. I reviewed Shark Attack Deathmatch in late December. I checked it last night, and there is still a wide variety of people playing. Then I tried Take Arms and found that nobody was playing.

James: If I would have kept up with content updates we probably could have grown a community or something around it.  But that’s the hard part with multiplayer games, and why I will probably never do one again.  With them, the community of people playing it is what gives the game value.  If you take that away, it’s basically worthless.

Cathy: I would rank my play session with Take Arms against the other XBLIG critics as one of the best times I’ve had since starting Indie Gamer Chick. Do you think maybe some form of organized tournaments might have caused it to catch on?

James: We should have focused on organizing community play dates and doing more  with it, but yeah, I guess we were just done after two years.

Chasm looks awesome.

Only the most secure-in-their-manhood blacksmiths dared to use a pink anvil.

Cathy: Okay, onto Chasm. It looks really good.  You originally intended Take Arms to be a Metroidvania, and now you’re finally doing one.  What made you decide that now you’re ready?

James: Well, to be honest, it was a last-ditch effort.  I quit my corporate job last May to focus on my next title full-time, Tim and I were talking again about doing something, which turned into this sci-fi Terraria-like called Solus.  We worked on that through may and part of June, and Tim decided he wasn’t having fun anymore and was done.  So we parted on good terms, but I was left with a big game to do by myself.  In July I basically decided to scrap it, and started working on the original version of Chasm, which was basically going to be a cash in I guess for XBLIG.  It was going to be a mining game like Miner Dig Deep, but with combat, weapons, some bosses and stuff to fight.  I mean don’t get me wrong, I’ve wanted to do a mining game for a while, but I couldn’t really tell you what I liked about them, but I think I somehow managed to cut all the fun out of it.  At some point by like September I had the engine pretty far along, but I was just hating it, I had completely forgotten why I started doing this stuff in the first place.

Cathy: What about the engine was off?

James: The engine was fine, I just couldn’t figure out a good formula for the game.  Nothing ever felt right, like I was battling it constantly.  And at some point I just began to resent it.  All the fun was gone.  That was definitely my lowest point in a long time.  It was nervous-breakdown type levels for a while.  So I scrapped it all.

Cathy: Do you know how many developers I’ve met since starting my site that I honestly feel would scrap something if they weren’t comfortable with it?  Probably not a lot.  I take it the current build you’re much more satisfied with?

James: Oh my God, yes!  It was like the next day I made a new project, started coding shit all over, and man, I was like in love immediately.

They eyes have it!

The eyes have it!

Cathy: So how far along is Chasm now?

James: Very early.  I started fresh October 25 or 26 I think.  I’m shooting to have it done in a year from then.

Cathy: You guys are on Steam Greenlight.  Most developers I’ve talked with who have listed their games on this have been, ahem, humbled by the, ahem, polite discourse on it.  How has the feedback for Chasm been?

James: Well first let me tell you, I put Take Arms and 48 Chambers on there immediately when the service first went up.  It was free for a while if you remember, so I was like why not?  48 chambers did incredibly poorly, as you can imagine.  I finally took it off there last week after being up since launch and it was at like 23% I think.  Almost every comment called it a mobile game and said it would be perfect on iPhone, which is funny since the entire game is designed around a thumb-stick, but okay.

Cathy: I do get their point, but yea, can’t imagine playing it with touch or tilt controls.

James: Take Arms did a bit better, but not very. At its highest point it was 52% to top 100, 48% when I pulled it off last week.  Now that, on the other hand, was called a “flash game” in a snobbish way.  Apparently there are a couple of flash games that are similar, so everyone on PC absolutely hated it.  I think Alex Jordan got same kinda criticism about Cute Things Dying Violently.

Cathy: Yea.  In fact, he did a Tales from the Dev Side on it.

James: Yea, so PC gamers are very weary of anything that looks like a flash game that they might have once saw.

Cathy: But then you put up Chasm, and it’s doing well to say the least.

James: I put it up just for the hell of it after we put up the new video on the 11th.  It’s now in the top 100 on Steam Greenlight.

Cathy: Very nice!

James: That’s with no major media support whatsoever, its purely from Greenlighters.

Cathy: I’m not major media?

James: Were you pimping it?

Cathy: That’s what I’m doing now.

James: Too late!  I’m top 100 now.  You get no credit.

Cathy: Awwwwwww.

James: I’m not sure where these votes are coming from, we’ve had 20k unique hits since then.  I didn’t realize that many people even rated Greenlight games for the hell of it.  So it’s a little surprising thinking I’m going to have to work my ass off to push traffic to it, when in reality i did nothing, just put a video on and answered people’s questions.

Cathy: I think now that it cost money to list your game, you’re seeing more dedicated, anxious fans, instead of haters and trolls.

James: Ya think?

Cathy: That’s my best guess.

James: So yea, the response has been overwhelmingly positive.  Which is crazy for something only two months into development.

Cathy: It’s a Metroidvania, but it’s also a Roguelike. Were you beat on as a child?

James: Ha ha, no.

Cathy: Hey, I still remember the original build of 48 Chambers.

James: Before you jump to conclusions, the Roguelike influence is more from Diablo than anything.

Cathy: Oh good, so Roguelike for pussies.  Noted.

James: I didn’t say that.

Cathy: The headline from this shall read “James Petruzzi, developer of upcoming game Chasm, calls all Diablo fans pussies.”

James: Are you trying to get me in trouble?

Cathy: Always.

James: I wouldn’t call it for-pussies! I think permadeath is pretty harsh punishment for failure.

Cathy: So when can we expect Chasm?

James: Hopefully late 2013.

Cathy: Come on, 400MSP XBLIG release?

James: Man I still like XBLIG, it’s a love/hate thing you know?  I love it for being an open marketplace, but I hate it for being an open marketplace.

Seriously, James. You've got to come up with more exciting screens than these. This is your big moment!

Seriously, James. You’ve got to come up with more exciting screens than these. This is your big moment!

Cathy: Hey, some neo-retro games are getting full XBLA releases. Spelunky for example.  Why not try to secure a publisher?

James: Honestly, it’s really nice not having anyone to answer to.  Only problem is always money, you know?

Cathy: Which I hear you’re thinking of solving by going through Kic..kic..kic..

James: Cathy, you okay?

Cathy: Excuse me, you’re thinking of going through Kic..kic..kic..

James: Kickstarter?

Cathy: Yea, that.

James: You seem to have a little bit of blood coming out of your nose.

Cathy: Yea, that happens whenever I hear or say that word.

James: I don’t think that’s healthy.

Cathy: Tell me about it.  After writing that last editorial, my office looked like the Crazy 88s scene from Kill Bill.

James: Yea I’m thinking about Kickst.. that.  I’m thinking about using that.

Cathy: Nice save.  Gives me a chance to clot.

James: I’m also thinking about alpha funding, or even selling out to Microsoft.  I’ve considered it all, and I’m still not sure what the best route is.  We’re going to Game Developers Conference in March to show off Chasm, hopefully get some people interested.

Cathy: Might help to wear a tee-shirt that says “will sell my creative vision for food.”

James: I’m not THAT desperate yet!

Cathy: You’re thinking of using Kickstarter.  You ARE that desperate.

James: Cathy, your nose.

Cathy: Well shit.  Better wrap this up.  I’ve got to go to the hospital again.

Be sure to check out the official Chasm page at DiscordGames.com

Filed under Tales from the Dev Side Editorials Tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

AAH, HALLOWEEN PIE!

December 4, 2012 by 11 Comments

I’m often surprised by an XBLIG that seems like it should be bad, but turns out to be decent or better. Moments like those are what have made Indie Gamer Chick worthwhile. On the flip side of that, there have been plenty of good-looking games that turn out to be pretty bad. Surprisingly, the truly rare moments are those that involve games that look bad, but turn out even worse than I could have anticipated. When I play a game and it seems like the concept of fun has completely drained out of the entire world, leaving an impenetrable void of unhappiness in its wake. When I’m unsure if gaming will ever be the same to me. When I honestly question whether or not I want to keep going with this Indie Gamer Chick stuff, or take up a less painful hobby, like self-mutilation.

Aah, Halloween Pie! is one of those rare games. It looks bad. But it’s even worse when you sit down and play it. It is, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the worst game I’ve ever played in my entire life. Worse than Sententia. It’s not even close.

screen2

I’ve seen Barbies more life-like.

I guess the idea with Ahh, Halloween Pie! was to make a boob version of Ghosts ‘N Goblins. The game starts with a cut scene that lasts over a minute if you don’t mash the A-button.  f you do mash the A button, it will still take you a little over 30 seconds. It’s unskippable, and you have to watch it every time you start a new game. Immediately upon spawning, you’ll take damage from a skeleton that pops up. Once you take damage, your top flies off and you’re reduced to walking around in your underwear.  I’m not sure if this cheap hit was done on purpose to get the motors revving of the horndog squad.  Probably. Although I can’t believe anyone would find the character models here to be erotic. Unless of course you have a wax-museum fetish. I’m sure such a thing exists, but I refuse to Google it, for fear that I would have to bleach my brain again.

So you walk around, shooting projectiles at skeletons and crows. The movement physics are stiff. Probably not as stiff as this game’s target demographic, but pretty stiff.  Enemies are placed in ways designed to cause you to die quickly and cheaply. If you shoot at a skeleton while it rises up from the ground, the bullet passes straight through it. Annoying, but at least you can just wait for it to spawn all the way. Unless, of course, the skeleton is too close to you. At which point, the bullet will pass straight through it.  Grumble. So decent collision detection was not exactly priority #1 during Halloween Pie’s development, but who cares? BOOBS!

There’s no actual objective to Halloween Pie until you enter the house of a witch. She asks you to fetch five pumpkins from which she will build a pie. Upon exiting her house, you are almost guaranteed to take damage from a skeleton, since two skeletons spawn on both sides of you. Since entering her house is necessary towards making progress, this was quite the dick move. If you enter the house while just in your underoos, you’re pretty much dead. Lose three lives, and you get to start over, watching that unskippable cut-scene again.

Assuming you get out of the witch’s house alive, you have to go gather five pumpkins that are scattered around a stage. If you get these and return them to the witch, she fucks up the pie and you get to start over. Only this time, you need to find seven pumpkins.  You leave her house again (another near-guaranteed hit against you), and now you have to deal with skeletons that throw bones at you. Find these seven and.. honestly I don’t know.  By this point, I had dealt with numerous cheap deaths, unskippable cut-scenes, shoddy collision detection, and overall shoddiness. After a while, you get sick of taking damage from enemies that are a full length away from you, neither touching you nor facing you. Like in Ghosts ‘N Goblins, you can find clothes to put back on. Except here, when you put it on, you’re frozen in place so the chick can get whistled at. Stay classy, game.

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Anyone unfortunate enough to have played the NES game Barbie will find the movement physics familiar. This is not a good thing.

I guess in theory you could finish this, if you wanted to take the time to get good at it. But who in their right mind would? This game is a pile of shit. And not even good shit, the kind you use to plant fields and feed people. This is the kind that turns white, petrified, and makes you dry-heave when you attempt to clean it up. And what makes it really shameful is it not only looks bad, plays bad, and sounds bad, but it’s also one of those games whose sole purpose is to lure in the horny loser demographic that thrives on XBLIG. It’s as if the developer knew that no effort would be needed. As long the game had a pair of tits on the cover art, and screenshots of a woman walking around in underwear, the bruised-pecker brigade would show up in droves. Proof that when it comes to digital knockers, if you build it, they will come.

xboxboxartAAH, HALLOWEEN PIE! was developed by Ingenious Fun

80 Microsoft Points noted that judging by the top selling charts, it would seem that Ingenious Fun should reconsider whether there’s a market for horrible games with ugly, waxy looking women in the making of this review.

Please note: the developer requested I do this review.  I wouldn’t have touched this shit with a ten-foot pole otherwise.

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Developer Interview: Aeternum

December 2, 2012 by 1 Comment

Aeternum.  I didn’t love it.  Couldn’t even beat the first stage.  So why am I talking to the developers?  Well, because they’re my friends.  And, let’s face it, in this crazy modern world, cronyism is the glue that holds everything together.  Besides, it was late Friday night and after having a nuclear-level seizure, I figured games would be semi-off limits for the weekend.  I needed something to post, and my friends were in to lend me a hand.  It’s enough to make you cry tears of blood, is it not?

aeternum-logo Read more of this post

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Null Battles

November 26, 2012 by Leave a comment

In sports, Knicks beat the Warriors 103 to 95.  Or possibly 99 to 93.  In fact, we’re not even sure if the Knicks won.  Carmelo Anthony had 31 points off 27 for 27 shooting from the field.  That statistic is actually impossible, but we can only report on the numbers as they are given to us.

Thankfully, real life sports statistics tend to be fairly accurate, unlike the post-game stats that Null Battles spits out.  Talking about the type of game it is (arena shooter), how it plays (kind of fun, kind of sloppy), and what makes it unique (strange gravity effects) is, quite frankly, irrelevant. I find that knowing who wins or loses arena shooters is a pretty big deal to most gamers.  I’m the type of person who meticulously studies my post-game stats when I play Halo or Gears of War or Call of Duty.   If those games reported different scores and stats to each player, who would want to play them?  I wouldn’t.

I tried reviewing Null Battles back in early September and this problem came up.  When I took on my amigo Bryce online, this is the score that showed on their screen.

And this is what showed up on mine.

Same game, vastly different stats.  My policy with online games is to give developers a chance to fix the problems before I post the proper review.  I got notice that the game was finally ready a few weeks ago, but I got caught up in the latest batch of new releases and forgot to go back to Null Battles.  As it turns out, there was no reason to rush.  Again, here are the results from Bryce’s side of things.

And here are the results from mine.

Again, same game.  We’re in agreement of the following things: #1, Bryce did NOT have 100% headshot percentage, and I didn’t have anywhere close to 70%.  #2, none of the scores seemed to lineup with what was happening in the game, except the fact that I lost.  #3, not knowing does negate the amount of fun you have leading up to it.  Sorry, it just plain does.  Maybe not for some (Brian for example) as much as it did so for me.  But this is my blog and I have to say this problem renders Null Battles appeal null and void.

Null Battles was developed by Techno Hermit Games

80 Microsoft Points have absolutely no interest in playing split-screen multiplayer in this day and age in the making of this review.

A review copy was provided by Techno Hermit Games for this review.  The copy played by Indie Gamer Chick was purchased by her with her own Microsoft Points.  The opinions of this review are her’s alone. 

They still have a Second Chance with the Chick.  If the scores were accurate, this game would have made the Leaderboard.

Yea, this was a waste of my 300th XBLIG review. 

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Three Dead Zed Review & Developer Interview

November 24, 2012 by 14 Comments

Update: Three Dead Zed received a Second Chance with the Chick. Click here for my continued thoughts on the game.

Well, this has never been done before.  A review of a game done while simultaneously interviewing the developer.  I almost didn’t review Three Dead Zed, which sponsors my review index.  Sponsorship on my site is done by donating to charities (either Autism Speaks or the Epilepsy Foundation), so I don’t personally gain anything from it.  Well, unless the $50 minimum that is contributed to the Epilepsy Foundation is exactly what they need at that very moment to cure epilepsy forever.  And you never know, that might happen!  Still, I didn’t want to be accused of a conflict of interest.  If the game sucked, that’s fine.  Nobody would accuse me of slamming a game because it sponsored my site.  But, what if the game was good?  What if it was the best XBLIG I’ve ever played?  People would question whether it was legitimate or not.

Thankfully for me (and not so thankfully for the guys at Gentleman Squid), I don’t have to worry about it.  Three Dead Zed is atrocious.  The idea is you control three zombies, switching between them to make your way across platforms, shoving boxes, avoiding lasers, and killing people.  The game looks great, but the controls are never responsive.  The standard, default zombie feels sluggish and slow, and the jumping physics feel too heavy.  This is the only zombie that can climb ladders or hit switches.  On the flip side of this, there’s a quadrupedal that moves way too fast, jumps way too high, too far, and is a nightmare to control.  It can’t climb ladders, operate switches, or do anything but jumping and wall jumping.  Finally, there’s a giant, angry she-zombie that you use to break down walls and move heavy objects.  This one is slower than death by starvation, can’t jump, and its attacks don’t feel like they have any oomph to them.

Basically, I didn’t like Three Dead Zed at all.  Since I was due to interview developer Fabian Florez, I figured I would kill two birds with one stone and do the interview at the same time, and see what he had to say about some of the issues I had.  All things considered, he was a good sport about it!

Cathy: Before I get to brow-beating you for the ungodly piece of shit that is the game you made, can you give me a little background on your team and how you guys came together?

Fabian Florez: Heh. Well we all work in the same main company. We normally make interactive training for things like online courses for schools or other technical related subjects. Well, the main business was getting slow, and rather than let us all go, I proposed that we take a crack at making games. We had all the primary people needed for a team right there: Artists, programmers, lover of games. So they took a chance on us. Now, with my review coming up, I think “Why would you make this piece of shit” might hurt my chances of a good review.

Cathy: If your job security was depended upon how likely your supervisor is able to hit one of the light switches in the game, would you just immediately start packing your desk?

Fabian: NEXT QUESTION PLEASE!

Cathy: Do you know pink slips typically aren’t pink?  The ones I use are white.  Even the rubber stamp isn’t pink.  More like a crimson.

Fabian: I don’t even think they give slips at all. They just coral you into a room and just say, “Yea it’s been nice but you got to go.”

Cathy: Okay, okay, in all seriousness, why are the controls in Three Dead Zed so all over the place?

Fabian: We drink a lot.  OK,  *I* drink a lot.  It seemed to make sense to me when I was playtesting…that one night…before release. Can you help clarify a specific point?

Cathy: I’ll start with the speedy dude that runs on all fours.  It’s too easy to overshoot everything.  He moves too fast, he jumps too far, and it’s too loose so it’s easy to over jump stuff.  But the controls are also so loose that if you try self-correct mid-air, you’re just as likely to under-jump.

Fabian: He’s very debatable. Some people don’t mind him and adapt quickly. Others hate him outright. I do think it’s a bit of a failure on our part for tutorials and stage layout. For example, on the second tutorial stage after you unlock him, some people don’t just jump straight up. I’ve seen people play this on YouTube, streams, and in person. They always want to jump in a direction first. He jumps higher and you can have a control fall if you do that first. Or jump higher to stick to a higher part of the wall. Sometimes I’ve seen people always want to jump with him everywhere.  Some of the jumping puzzles were meant to be played with the classic zombie, not the jumper, but it’s not obvious enough. That’s just a failure on us.

I could go more into it, but ultimately, a game should just be played without a “guide” so I think that’s why we get hot/cold responses.

Cathy: I get a lot of developers who want to send me a detailed analysis of how to play their game when they request a review.  Always pisses me off and gets things off on the wrong foot.  Doesn’t mean I am certain to hate a game (Hidden in Plain Sight’s developer did it and I ranked it), but it feels like developers know from the get-go there are problems and still release anyway.  Do you think if you had held off on release you could have addressed these issues, or did the game pass the point of no return for salvation?

Fabian: That’s a great question. We initially released the game earlier in the year for Windows and we though we addressed a lot of those initial issues. Our tutorial section for example is longer and added things to what we though might be “second nature” had to be added. Like the area showing you how to drop down from floors. So unfortunately, it’s just that developer trap of “I think we got everything! Release it. OH NO not again!” Tried to touch all bases, but I think it’s really difficult.

But, I think there was also some confusion on our part because a lot of those comments did come from people playing with a keyboard. We did get feedback from people saying switching to a controller made things easier. So, porting to Xbox seemed like it would alleviate that since you can only play with a controller.

Cathy:  There’s a lot of niggling control issues.  Jumping off ladders with the default zombie, hitting switches, and some problems with collision detection.  We’ll start with the switches first.  I’m personally having problems lining up and pushing them correctly.  Brian isn’t.  His IQ is about 50 points lower than mine, so if your target audience is dumbass pseudo-gingers, mission accomplished, but wouldn’t larger area-detections be a no-brainer?

Fabian: Switches: It’s a pretty sizable hit detection. It was increased from the Windows to the Xbox build. The reason why it’s not even bigger, if I remember correctly, is because we didn’t want you activating things behind a wall on the other side on some scenarios. We’ll take a look at it again though.

Ladders is the new one that I did witness in our Peer Review.   Never heard that until we ported it. It’s another one of those, “Probably include it in the tutorials?” Push left or right and jump. I saw Ryan (aka MasterBlud of VVGTV) playing the game and he was stating how he hated the ladders also. The problem there is we have areas where you are going to want to jump from ladder to ladder. If you just push left or right and he drops, you wont be able to jump to the ladder. Minus the actual jumping from ladder to ladder, this is very similar to Mega Man’s approach. Except once you push jump, Mega Man would drop.

Cathy: I get that you guys were trying to go for a Trine feel, but one of the other problems was the game couldn’t seem to decide what it should focus on: platforming or puzzling.  Some games comfortably blend both, but this one seemed to jump from one to the other and it was jarring and killed the pace.  I don’t really know how to word that into a question for you.  First off, I assume Trine was inspiration for Three Dead Zed?

Fabian: We get Trine a lot and I swear, that was not our intent!  It was one of those things that just happened that way. Although I owned it, I still haven’t played it. 3DZ was inspired by a mix of the C64 game Goonies and NES Batman (hence the wall cling). If you never played The Goonies, you controlled two people who need to do something to unlock a door. Tough as nails. Anyway, along the way, we dropped that because, hey, we’re new devs and that was biting off more than we can chew. So we combined them all together to be one “super zombie” and made it more of a traditional puzzle platformer. Nothing too crazy in the way of puzzles though simple things for the most part.  The NES Batman was also a heavy influence on why the fast zombie sprints forward so quickly.  Some like it.  Some hate it. It was meant more for moving from wall to wall and that was it. “You are going this direction!”

(While this interview is going on, Bryce and my boyfriend Brian are playing through Three Dead Zed, enjoying it way more than I did, and start busting up laughing from chasing an old lady into a saw blade).

Cathy: Brian and Bryce just chased an old lady into a saw blade.

Fabian: Brian and Bryce, you are AWESOME. We wanted people to scare “innocents” into the hazards. We think it’s funny too. We almost had an award for scaring old ladies into buzz-saws but then pulled it.

Cathy:  I guess this moves us into the art.  It’s pretty good.  It reminded me of the stuff by Behemoth (Castle Crashers, Alien Hominid).  I find a lot of games on XBLIG that put a premium on audio-visuals tend to be mediocre or worse.  You just became the poster child for that.  Yay?

Fabian: *laughing*  Well we tried!  We thought, “Man if we could just make something so beautiful, it’ll be like a Greek Siren to Indie Gamer Chick and she’ll give us glowing reviews!”

Cathy: Good graphics do get my attention when it comes time to review a game, but once I start playing, gameplay is all that matters.  However, your game does have appeal in other areas.  The voice overs are great.  Who did them?

Fabian: Awesome to hear! Get it?!  Hear?

Cathy: ..

Fabian: Ahem.. Actually our star voice actor would love to read that. The two main voices you hear the most (intercom and shadowy figure) are actually the same guy. The intercom is inspired by Rick Moranis/Bill Murray in Ghostbusters. The Shadowy voice is…shadowy? The other voices are various people including the team. He also does the voice in the cut scene changing from zombie to zombie.  He actually does professional voice over work, and he offered to help us out for free.

Cathy: Do you have any future plans for game development?

Fabian: After your review? No. Closing shop. Taking our ball home and doing lots of crying.

Cathy: Hang on one second, I need to add another check mark to my gun.

Fabian: Actually, yes.  We’re working on another game.   It’ll be our first multiplayer game. You can put the chisel down.

Cathy: Awwww.

Fabian: Hey, you killed our joy.  Only fair we kill yours.

Cathy: Touché.  What lessons did you learn from making Three Dead Zed that you’re going to apply to the development of.. what the fuck is it called anyway?

Fabian: It’s called 2012.  Better late than never?  Actually we have no name yet. Basically: Playtest, playtest, and playtest. You really can’t do enough. We did quite a bit for Three Dead Zed (Both online and in person) but you just really need to do more than you think. A BIG sample definitely helps you find trouble areas.

Cathy: Have anything to say in closing?

Fabian: I do thank you for trying out our game regardless! You’re tough as nails, we’ll hopefully win you over with the next game.

I hope so too.  I would like to thank Fabian for being cool about this admittedly awkward situation.  He’s a good guy, and he should be proud of his efforts.  I still can’t recommend Three Dead Zed though.  Great graphics, great concept, and its heart was in the right place.  It’s just not beating.

Three Dead Zed was developed by Gentleman Squid Studio

240 Microsoft Points wondered if Gentleman Squid is any relationship to Armless Octopus in the making of this review. 

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Demon House: FPS

November 21, 2012 by 9 Comments

Writing about a really bad game is easy.  Writing about a really good game is easy.  When a game is middling, neither that good nor that bad, I struggle with my goal to write an entertaining review.  I’ve done a few first-person shooters on XBLIG.  Of them, two are on my leaderboard: Send in Jimmy and Devil Blood.  As of this writing, they occupy the very bottom two spots.  I’ll fully admit, those games are both atrocious and could (some would argue “should”) be exorcised from the board.  But at least they were playable and fun in a train-wreck sort of way.  Others have either been glitchy, poorly conceived, or just plain boring.  I previously noted that I was surprised at how few FPSs are on XBLIG, considering that the Xbox 360 is pretty much a dedicated shooter console for many of its owners.  Sadly, every XBLIG FPS plays like it arrived to the party about fifteen years too late to be enjoyable.  Demon House is not really different.  It’s not horrible, but it’s not exceptional enough to make this a fun review to write.  This will probably not be one of my better ones, so here’s a preemptive apology.  For what it’s worth, I’m doing Trailer Park King 3 next!

Weapon design in Demon House ranges from inspired to predictable, and getting the really fun stuff takes too long for such a short game.

First off, yea, Demon House looks relatively good.  I mean, it still looks archaic.  It would have been just fine in 2000 as a Nintendo 64 or PlayStation title.  In 2012?  It falls into the dreaded “it looks good for an XBLIG” category.  And that’s where it also falls in other areas.  It’s designed well.  You know, for a FPS on XBLIG.  The controls are pretty good, at least for an FPS on XBLIG.  I accept that a first-person shooter is an incredibly hard game to design and the guys behind Demon House should be commended for creating one of the better ones on the platform.  But all I care about is how much fun I can have with a game, and fun is a fleeting commodity here.

It started good.  Really good in fact.  The game opens inside a haunted house.  This is your stereotypical amusement-park style ghost mansion, with all the clichés.    Piano playing itself?  Check.  Spooky shadows?  Check.  Lightning custom-designed to give me a seizure?  Grumble, check.  Baby carriage that rocks itself?  Check, and fucking creepy.  I wasn’t kidding about the amusement park feel of Demon House.  Considering that the enemies are all robotic devices, I kind of figured the concept here was supposed to be something like Westworld, where the animatronics had simply started to run amok.  That would be an interesting plot, but instead you’re dealing with a mad alchemist.  That’s lame, but at least the haunted house setting is.. oh.  Never mind, that’s only for the first half of the game.  The second half takes place in an utterly generic cathedral/catacombs place thingie that looks like it was lifted from Quake and/or any of a trillion Quake mods out there.  Good move Photonic Games.  I was almost interested for a bit.

The only thing Demon House: FPS had going for it that made it stand out was the legitimately creepy haunted house setting.  Once you’re removed from that and instead inserted into the boring, sterile, lifeless second act, the game becomes a chore.  Oddly enough, after about thirty minutes in that section, I was hoping the game would just end.  And then it did.  That was very kind of it.

It’s not THAT complex. I’m pretty sure enemies that stand back and shoot at you instead of charging at you has been around since I was at least old enough to ride the Haunted Mansion ride.

Let’s be clear here: I had fun with Demon House and it is going on the leaderboard.  I liked the opening act that much.  While playing it, I figured it could be a top-fifty game.  Despite dated gameplay, the shooting mechanics are fun, the enemy design is neat, and the floor layout with the multiple hidden nooks made this enjoyable.  And then you leave the house and suddenly you’re transported back to 1996, which is not where I wanted to be.  The placement of the game started to sink.  Not like a rock, which would have been quick and relatively painless.  It sinks more like a boat.  You know that scene in Titanic where they watch as the ship breaks apart and the lifeboats (some filled to half-capacity) look on in horror?  Yea, Demon House is the Titanic and you’re Kathy Bates watching on in horror.  Not me though.  I’m more like Kathy Bates from Misery, taking a sledge-hammer to the feet of Photonic Games.  Out of love of course.  🙂

Demon House: FPS was developed by Photonic Games

80 Microsoft Points DIDN’T GET OUT OF THE COCK-A-DOODIE CAR!!! in the making of this review.

Demon House is Chick Approved and ranked on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard, although I’m sure that will be of little consolation to its now crippled developers.  


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Alien Siege

November 8, 2012 by 2 Comments

Alien Siege is a clone of the 1980 Atari classic Missile Command, a game that predates my birth by almost a decade.  Yet, it’s one of those rare games from that time frame that I can actually enjoy today.  It’s frantic, scoring driven, and a lot of fun.  And that’s coming from someone who never has had the privilege of playing a proper game of it using the trackball.  I’ve played lots of clones of iconic arcade classics on XBLIG, and most of them are honestly not that good.  Alien Siege is one of those rare exceptions.  It’s a lot of fun!  No, really!  What, I can’t enjoy knock-offs of ancient games just because I’m me?  Hey, I can if they don’t suck.

My latest XBLIG review or the Republican reaction to the recent election?

So what can you do with a modern take on a classic game that appeals to fans of the original while appeasing people of my generation that don’t give two squirts about nostalgia?  Well, improving the formula is a good place to start.  Alien Siege does that, by giving you upgrade points you can spend to improve the launch speed of your rockets, the firing rate of them, or to improve your gun.  Instead of just intercepting missiles, you also have to fire on UFOs and meteors.  Missiles don’t work on them, so you have to split your time between intercepting enemy missiles with one button and fighting everything else with another button.  It sounds like it would be too much to juggle, and it is.  But in a good, old-time arcadey way.

There’s even a co-op mode, and I had enough fun playing it by myself that I actually wanted to play it as more than an afterthought.  Now sure, I could use Brian.  He’s 29 and thus the right age to have played something similar to this as a kid.  But Brian was one of those odd kids who never owned a console and played outside like a savage.  What I need to test this thing is someone old enough to have played the original but decrepit enough that they’ll barely remember it.

Ohhhhh Dadddddddyyyyyyy!!

Thirty Minutes Later

Ugh, so here’s where things like my killjoy label come from.  Daddy thought it was okay, but liked the original better because of the trackball.  Seems to be a common theme.  I showed this to the oldest, most GET OFF MY LAWNish gamer I know, and he responded with “no shoes, no shirt, no track ball, no service.”  Exact quote, which I think was a joke, but it also shows that games like this start with more ground to make up.  It seems almost unfair that something that’s mostly well made, like Alien Siege, could be the victim of its own legacy.  But it happens.  For the record, it controls better than any console version of Missile Command I’ve seen, but that won’t be enough to win over your average geriatric gamer.

And I’m not giving Alien Siege a free pass either.  No online scoreboards, bad sound design, mediocre graphics, and backgrounds that often unintentionally hide missiles.  Check out this screen:

Notice how the color of the missiles matches the color of the mountains.  Annoying?  Oh yea.  But that’s the only major complaint that have, because all the other stuff takes a backseat to gameplay.  Alien Siege is a lot of fun, and worth your time and money.  It’s a great example of taking something old and making it new and fresh again.  Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go hit Craigslist and find a vintage Missile Command coin-op for my Daddy.  It’s either that or super glue his mouth shut.

Alien Siege was developed by Lost World Creations

80 Microsoft Points want to know why aliens were firing ICBMs at cities.  They’re fucking ALIENS!!  Shouldn’t they have better technology?  I know they had to stick with the theme, but the guys at Lost World Creations should have come up with something else and I’ll shut up now in the making of this review. 

Alien Siege is Chick Approved and ranks pretty high on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard.  Perhaps the developers should cue up some Myra before checking it.

No trailer, no game footage.  Sorry 😦

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Halloween Scream

October 30, 2012 by 4 Comments

Halloween Scream is a text-based adventure where you play as a young man who inherits a haunted house. Yea, these things always end well. I’ve done text-based games before on here and they usually leave me wanting to lop off my wrists and replace my hands with sabres to stab myself with. But, every game I play starts off with a clean slate, so I plugged my nose and dove in. Then I forgot that being a text-based adventure, this would be a bit shallow and I brained myself on the cement bottom. Smooth, Cathy.

So many options, I don’t know what to do with myself.

There’s no play control to talk about, or graphics, or sound, or level design, or anything remotely resembling a game. That leaves me to just talk about the writing, which I have a major problem with. It’s the tone. It’s all over the place. The game sets a dark and somber mood, but then will randomly spit out lines or gags that break the atmosphere with more ease than NASA. For example, you’ll be examining the servant’s quarters and come across a magazine titled “Repressed Servants Monthly.” Huh, well that’s both not funny and grossly against the tone I thought they were going for here. There are lots of moments like that, but the overall story never goes the humor route. Then again, it doesn’t go the scary route, or the Halloween route either. I kind of figured a game named “Halloween Scream” would either be scary, be themed around Halloween activities, or both. Here you get a story involving vampires and it takes place on Halloween, but otherwise, nothing. What’s the scary thing? “They brought an awful, long forgotten genre back from the dead!! AHHHHHHHHH!”

Writing isn’t the only problem. The game has another consistency problem, this time involving back-tracking. Being an adventure game, you’ll occasionally pick up trinkets that you’ll need to use along the way. Sometimes, the game lets you pick up stuff that you have no idea what you’ll be using it for. Other times, the game will have a “wait, didn’t you see something like this earlier? Maybe you should go back and get it” moment. It’s saddest attempt at padding I’ve seen since I stuffed my bra with water balloons at age 12.

My maps were way better. Sure, they were practically illegible, but.. never mind.

Halloween Scream has its moments, like a couple of maze-sections that required me to draw my own maps. I wish the game had stuck to these, because the writing and exploration are dull, and the false-ending only aggravated me because at that point I was ready for the game to be over with. Shockingly, I didn’t outright hate Halloween Scream, but I didn’t like it either. What would be really cool is if someone could do a Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark type of game along the lines of this. Something genuinely spooky, with morbid artwork and a haunting soundtrack. Otherwise, this genre remains dead. I’m not sure if that technically makes this a zombie game or not.

Halloween Scream was developed by Bandana Games

80 Microsoft Points forgot to fill the balloons with water in the making of this review. I told you it was sad.

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