Welcome back to Indies in Due Time. It been a few months but we’re back. For those new to the format, my boyfriend and I sarcastically comment on upcoming Xbox Live Indie Games. Not really all that complicated. Hard to believe this is the most popular feature on my site ever. We gave up on getting enough people to contribute so we just scoured Youtube for trailers on our own, and we found eight pretty good ones. Let’s roll.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been told by some extremely enthusiastic indie developer “the difference between indie games and mainstream games is indie games are made with passion.” No. It’s just not true. Although I do not deny that indie developers are overflowing with so much passion that they cause all surrounding dust mites to hump like bunnies, it’s not a trait unique to them. Simply put, if you work in the game industry, you probably have a passion for video games.
Yes, even crap like Duke Nukem Forever was made by a crew who have a love of video games. Who would take this job if they didn't have it?
Here’s a story for you. There was this guy named Larry who did an internship at our office. Larry was an accounting major at Stanford. Larry was a really cool guy. Funny, worked hard, and he was really smart. Also, Larry thought accounting was fucking boring as hell and dreaded the tedium his job would no doubt bring him in the future. I’m not the most talkative person, but I had to ask him why he would want to go to a prestigious school like Stanford on his own dime to study for a job he knows he would hate. Larry was intelligent enough that his options were, in my opinion at least, limitless. But Larry chose accounting because it’s a career that pays well and typically has a high degree of security.
Nobody who works in the game industry is like Larry. There’s nobody going to school who has aspirations for a job in game production who dreads the concept of their chosen career path. And that’s before we talk about the wages. Although some people can make exceptionally good salaries in gaming, most jobs in the industry typically pay less than what comparative jobs in different industries make.
Indie game developers are a proud group of people, and they should be. But when it comes time to describe what makes them unique, passion should be left off the table. No matter what anyone believes, I promise you that almost every schmo working at Electronic Arts, Activision, or any other major gaming company has a true passion and love of video games. They have to, because who would choose a career in an industry with below-average salaries, long hours, and job security that is often shaky at best?
So no, you are not special because of your passion. Quit bringing it up every interview. Mainstream writers need to quit using it as their all-encompassing adjective to describe the scene. It’s simply not true. Stop it. Please.
But, indie developers have something amazing that does make them unique. It’s precious enough that it should be the centerpiece of the entire indie development scene. The thing people point to that sells newcomers on why indie gaming is so important. Yet, for whatever reason, I rarely see developers talk about it.
Freedom.
You, the indie game developer, have it. Those people at EA or Activision that are every bit as passionate as you do not. You’re free to experiment. You’re free to get weird. You’re free to make mistakes. You’re free to try something that has never been attempted before. Why is this not the biggest crowing point on the scene?
Stuff like DLC Quest would never get made by a major studio.
When you make an indie game, you’re limited only by your imagination. Well, that and any technical limitations, but my point still stands. You can do anything you want with your game. They can’t. This is why you are special. So take advantage of that, and brag about that, and be proud of that. Go ahead, rub it in. But above all else, use it. One of my biggest disappoints since starting my site is how devoid of originality the indie scene at large seems to be. I’m sure the lure of making an easy couple grand on yet another zombie TwickS or Minecraft clone is tempting, but it won’t get you any attention. You could be the next big thing in gaming. I mean, whose to say you don’t have it in you? But the only way you can get there is by taking advantage of the one thing you have that they don’t. Yea, you’re also free to play Follow the Leader if you so desire. Just remember, there’s only one winner in that game and it already isn’t you. They’ll still get all the attention. All you’ll get is familiarity with the scent of the leader’s ass.
What a month for gaming! How often do you get to play two titles that rank among the best you’ve played in your entire life in a single month? And they came from a couple unexpected sources: PlayStation Network and Xbox Live Indie Games. Also, this was the month that gamers officially proved they are every bit as ignorant as the media makes them out to be, but more on that later.
“Luke, you turned off your targeting system!”
First, the good stuff. We Are Cubes is the new #1 game on the Xbox Live Indie Games All-Time Top 10 here at Indie Gamer Chick. Who saw that coming? Certainly not I. The funny thing is, after a couple of hours, it wasn’t even up for debate. I actually agonized for weeks over whether Escape Goat had dethroned Dead Pixels. It was one of the toughest calls I’ve made since starting my site. We Are Cubes was so amazing that it made the decision easy on me. It truly represents the potential of XBLIG better than any game that has come before it.
Joining it on the list are two crotchety old timers who probably don’t need the attention. But, this isn’t one of those Academy Award type of deals where the old timers win more as a tribute, based in no way on the merit of their latest project. Miner Dig Deep and Cthulhu Saves the World are on because they’re among the ten best games I’ve ever played on the Xbox Live Indie Game platform. It’s that simple. But, if you insist on this being an Oscar-type of deal, just play some sad music for the games that departed from the list this month. Try this on.
Gone is Blocks That Matter, Orbitron: Revolution, and TIC: Part One. TIC wasn’t really due to fall off the list, but it’s been nine months since the game was released and it’s been five months since they updated fans of the first when they can expect part two, or if they can expect it at all. My good buddy and former Dreamcast rival (no joke, small world huh?) Dave Voyles tells me they’re alive and well and shopping TIC around for a publisher. Which is all well and good, but making an episodic game and then leaving fans hanging leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I am sympathetic to the fact that the guys at Red Candy Games are in college and don’t have time to build games, but that means they probably shouldn’t have done an episodic game. That’s how I feel about it. If Part Two hits and is up to the standards of the first, I’ll lump it together with Part One and it will make the leaderboard.
I’ll give a special shout-out to Bug Ball, which was set to make the leaderboard, but then three other contenders hit and it’s spot was lost. With proper online tweaks, it still has a shot at it.
I don’t have a non-XBLIG top 10, but if I did, Journey on PlayStation Network would have almost certainly rose to the top of the mountain. What a truly wonderful experience that game was. It moved me to tears. What more can I say that I already didn’t?
In closing, to all you people who whined about the Mass Effect 3 ending to the point where you threatened a lawsuit.. A LAWSUIT.. all I can say is this: wow. When did gamers get such an obnoxious sense of entitlement about them? Needless to say, you can’t sue because you find an ending unsatisfactory, unless that ending involves a loved one and medical malpractice. Nor does the FCC give a flying fuck. All you did was provide them with water cooler fodder. Really, what do you think they were going to do? Storm EA’s offices, cuff everyone who works for Bioware, ship their mothers off to Gitmo, and shoot their dogs? No, they don’t care, and they’re laughing at you, because you’re just that funny.
Wait, that’s all I get? Where’s my lawyer’s number at? I have got to call CNN on this one.
If you could successfully sue over a bad ending, don’t you think that would have happened by now? And that extends to other forms of entertainment. Just imagine the dialog.
“Did Darth fucking Vader just scream NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO? Get the lawyers!”
“Wait, so St. Elsewhere was all a dream? NO, IT CAN’T BE! I’LL SUE!!”
“The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen? THAT’S IT? Fuck that, I’ll see you in Court, Jesus!”
“A sled? A FUCKING SLED? They’ll rue the day they thought up that shit!”
Buying anything doesn’t entitle you to satisfaction, unless it specifically says in advertisements or packaging “satisfaction guaranteed.” If some overzealous producer says “we guarantee fans will be happy with this” guess what? That doesn’t count. If you can actually find a judge who will say otherwise, there will be a dozen appellate court judges who can’t stand that mother fucker and will eagerly strike down anything he or she says. So don’t waste the court’s time with this shit. And don’t waste the FCC’s either. One, they don’t care, and two, they’re busy making sure Janet Jackson’s nipple never slips out at the Superbowl again.
I have no interest in making Xbox Live Indie Games myself. But, if I were to hypothetically suffer some kind of brain trauma where side effects included a compulsion to create games that few would try and even fewer would buy, I would start by pulling out what I call the “Checklist of Annoyances.” Everyone has their own personal list of things that are fucking stupid that pop up time and time again in gaming. If I was to develop games, my personal goal would be to eliminate as many instances of these things as possible. I think my homies at Zeboyd Games subscribe to that theory, because their games play like they were built around my personal Checklist of Annoyances: RPG Edition.
As many of you know, Breath of Death VII was the very first Xbox Live Indie Game I ever purchased. I think I caught wind of it through Joystiq and figured “what the hell?” Guess what? I really liked it. A lot. I liked it so much I immediately went back to the Indie channel to see what other treasures I was missing. Then I sawwhat other gameswere on thebest-selling listat the time and decided that my Microsoft Points would be better spent on a baseball cap for my avatar. I didn’t give the XBLIG channel a second thought until I started Indie Gamer Chick. I did wonder if anything would become of the company that gave me the five glorious hours spent with Breath of Death VII. As it turns out, they went on to do Cthulhu Saves the World before being tapped by Penny Arcade to do their next game. They’re a good choice, because like Penny Arcade, Zeboyd is good at creating genuine humor that stops being funny about halfway through whatever media it’s on. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Breath of Death VII features 8-Bit graphics.
Breath of Death VII and Cthulhu Saves the World are essentially the same game with different plots and graphic styles. This is where the Checklist of Annoyance comes into the picture. Imagine every lame RPG mechanic you’ve wished someone would do away with. Most of them are taken care of by Zeboyd. There’s a limited number of random encounters in every dungeon, and even in the over-world. If you wish, you can force a battle by selecting it in the menu, and forced battles do count towards the preset number. You get a full health-restore following every battle, and the battle system features a fun combo-based system that encourages creativity. I especially liked the insanity system that Cthulhu has, where you can render enemies crazy to activate bonuses in your attacks. Both games are pretty short compared to the classics they pay tribute to, and both feature fairly linear stories that are easy to follow and fun to read. There’s no question these are the best RPGs on the XBLIG platform.
But let’s not kid ourselves. Flawless they are not. I really like both games, but the writing in them leaves a lot to be desired. I’ll start with Breath of Death VII. It lampoons the concept of a silent protagonist by starring a skeleton that has no tongue, and thus he has to be silent. Ha, get it? Now just imagine dozens of variations of that joke for about four hours. Otherwise, most of the gags in Breath of Death VII are of the “drop a bad video game quote” variety, resulting in a pile of dead dogs that could rival the meat locker in a Taiwanese steakhouse.
Cthulhu’s running gag is that he has been stripped of all his power and has to become a true hero to get them back. And it’s Cthulhu, so heroism is against his nature. Ha, get it? Now imagine hundreds of variations of that joke for about eight hours. Both of these games suffer from what I like to call the “Blazing Saddles Effect.” Blazing Saddles was 1974 satire of western films where the entire joke was a town full of white people has a black sheriff forced onto them. That’s the entire gag in the movie. Some people consider it a classic. I personally feel the joke did start funny, but got old before the movie was even half-way finished. Breath of Death and Cthulhu are the same way.
I will say that Cthulhu Saves the World has some pretty strong writing through-out, even if the overall punchline had lost its zing about an hour or two in. I can’t say the same about Breath of Death VII. By the end of the game, the dialog was cringe worthy and the jokes routinely fell flat. Cthulhu actually has some really funny running themes, like encounters with “real heroes” and the hilarious banter between Cthulhu and the narrator. Still, it never shakes that Blazing Saddles “it’s funny because he’s black” feel. It’s funny because it’s Cthulhu. No, it’s not.
Cthulhu Saves the World has 16-bit style graphics.
Having said all that, these are two of the best Xbox Live Indie Games ever made, and Cthulhu Saves the World especially is good enough to land a spot on the leaderboard this Sunday. The overall package of it is perhaps the best value you can get on Xbox Live Indie Games. You get a decent sized RPG, a second quest where Cthulhu takes the role of Charlie from Charlie’s Angels (it’s funny because he’s Cthulhu!) and orders around some chicks to save the world. There’s developer commentary too. I mean, this is an insane amount of content for $1. Despite dialog problems, Breath of Death VII is no slouch either. Both games remain pretty fun through-out, and if you’re into RPGs, it doesn’t get any better. What I like best about them is these are games made by gamers for gamers that don’t try to be “legitimate” games with all inherit flaws. Zeboyd seems to have checked off every convention that has no place in gaming anymore and said “why would we want to include this?” It’s a lesson many XBLIG developers could stand to learn. So many of them set out to make what I like to call “professional-acting” titles that include mechanics that suck on the basis that real games have them. Don’t do that. Focus on fun. If something makes a game less fun by default, don’t include it. You would think “don’t intentionally make your game less fun” would be the type of thing that goes without saying. But then again, your average XBLIG developer is so thick you could blend them and re-purpose them as pothole filler.
80 Microsoft Points apiece said “it’s funny because she’s a chick!” No, it’s not in the making of this review.
You have one week to go to vote for a chance to win 1600 Microso.. ah fuck it, nobody reads past the Microsoft Points line anyway. Way to embrace the democratic process, guys!
Way back in November, I played a game that I called “one of the worst on XBLIG” and implied the developer had his head up his own ass.
Well, this is awkward. Because the developer of that game, Angry Zombie Ninja Cats, has taken me up on my open invite to Xbox Live Indie Game developers to do an editorial here at Indie Gamer Chick. And unlike his game, this isn’t the worst thing since Angry Zombie Ninja Führer. Actually, Mr. Shahed Chowdhuri has become a respected member of the Xbox community, possibly by forcing people to endorse him or he’ll subject them to more play-time with his game. I kid, I kid. Actually, like most XBLIG developers whose games I was, ahem, less than kind too, Mr. Chowdhuri was a good sport about things and vowed to do better next time. He also has some words of encouragement for would-be game developers.
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.
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.
The Cusp is a monthly highlighting of three Xbox Live Indie Games that came up just short of the leaderboard here at Indie Gamer Chick.
Way back in August, the 2011 Indie Summer Uprising launched ten games as part of a promotion to bring more attention to Xbox Live Indie Games. The results were a bit of a mixed bag. Of the ten games, only one landed a spot on my leaderboard. That’s at a time when I was still new to the scene and the leaderboard was primed for the taking. The truth was, I thought some degree of quality control was going to be involved in the selection process. Instead, games were selected on the basis of variety. Bad move. Some of the games were truly horrible, especially the title selected to kick off the event: Raventhorne. A few others were solid in their concept, but deeply flawed in execution, like T.E.C. 3001 and SpeedRunner HD.
Ultimately, despite receiving attention from lots of mainstream gaming outlets, the promotion was a bit of a bust. That’s a shame, because I owe the initial growth of my site in part to my participation in the event. Interviewing developers gave me a crash course on the XBLIG scene. But once the games started hitting, in the words of Cute Things Dying Violently developer Alex Jordan, I started assassinating them one by one. It wasn’t for the sake of being spiteful. I truly felt the quality of the games failed to match the amount of hype the event was given.
Despite that, there were some pretty good games in the mix. Although only one made the leaderboard, three other games were up for consideration. This month, the Cusp honors those games. But first, I’ve got some comments from the two guys who organized the event: Dave Voyles and Kris Steele.
The Summer Uprising may not have had the best games ever featured on the marketplace, but it certainly contained a collection of some of the most diverse. We had something for everyone in there, from a hack-and-slash all the way to a train simulator. The brief organization period which drove rushed development schedules didn’t help the cause either, but I’m confident that we put together a solid package. Some of the developers didn’t put their strongest foot forward, but I believe have since released games which trumped their prior attempts.
Chester was my favorite Uprising title.
I really don’t know if there will ever be another uprising again. I know the community is stronger than ever, but it’s difficult to promote games when they continue to be buried among a poorly organized and support marketplace. I’d like to see the ability to sort by genre, in addition to linking a developer’s other titles when you select their newest one in the marketplace before we begin to organize another one.
As a whole, the Summer Uprising games sold a decent number, but nowhere near what I was expecting, in relation to the amount of press coverage we were receiving. I don’t think the $3 price point helped any of the sales out, but all of the Uprising games have dropped to $1 since, and seen increased sales.
The future of XNA is shaky at best, as we have yet to hear word as to how it will be supported in the next generation of consoles, and we know that XNA created applications will not supported in the new Windows 8 app store. Perhaps if we were more informed, or had a means to speak with Microsoft in a more direct manner, either through a controlled forum or community manager, then I believe we could see the XBLIG marketplace receive the attention it deserves.
I’ll illustrate all of this and more next month at GDC, where I’ll be speaking on behalf of everyone involved in the Summer Uprising in a 60 minute speech.
I never expected to receive the kind of attention from developers and the media that we did when we set out to create the Summer Uprising. We quickly had 50+ developers wanting to be included in the promotion and got a ton of press coverage even months before any of the games were released. So much went right in terms of getting developers on board and getting the word out to consumers through the press.
Unfortunately all the press coverage didn’t translate well into downloads of the games themselves. Some out there were critical of the selection of games (like Kairi) and blamed that for the poor downloads but I’ve never believed that to be the case. If it were, you would have seen higher downloads (at least for the first couple games released) and low sales conversion rates. Right from the get-go, downloads were not high. And while not everyone liked all the games, they were all of higher quality that the average XBLIG title.
VolChaos wasn’t finished in time for the Uprising, but it was certainly crappy enough to fit right in. Sorry, Kris, couldn’t resist.
The Microsoft dash promotion was the only aspect of the Summer Uprising that really seemed to drive additional sales but the overall numbers weren’t huge. It was nice to see Microsoft take notice of the Indie Game channel for once. Perhaps too little, too late though.
I certainly learned new things about marketing throughout this process and learned I severally underestimated the time involvement of running a promotion like this. I highly doubt I will be able to devote this kind of time to another promotion nor will I have my own game to include. In terms of Xbox Live Indie Games, it really only reinforced opinions of the service I already had, perhaps the biggest one being that gamers might take interest online but they don’t often make it to the Xbox to try the games themselves. This makes me sad because XBLIG has a lot of quality games but finding the service isn’t always easy and finding the good games within it is even more difficult. I wish this was something I saw improving but XBLIG today is more buried than it was this past summer.
If another Uprising is to ever occur, one or more people need to step up and take charge. It’s easy to talk about ideas that would be cool but there needs to be someone pushing things forward. I worry that developer interest would not be as high as it was last time though. It’s not a big secret the Uprising sales were disappointing and many developers have fled XBLIG for greener pastures. For all the complaints about the quality of the Summer Uprising games, it would be hard to top the recent selection of titles given that so many developers are looking elsewhere now. That’s not a failing of the Uprising itself but rather Microsoft neglecting and burying the XBLIG service to a point where very few serious developers can be financially prosperous.
What went right? Some clever physics-based puzzles were married with over-the-top violence to create the best-selling title of the Uprising.
What went wrong? I’ve always felt that puzzle games are better suiting for smaller gaming sessions on portable devices. Extending playing sessions of any puzzle game on a television usually lead to me getting bored quickly. There were also some issues with aiming that have since been patched up.
If you asked me a year ago, “Will Cute Things Dying Violently become an important touchstone in your life?” I would’ve agreed wholeheartedly. Today, I still agree wholeheartedly. Although CTDV doesn’t mean what I thought it would when I kicked off development back in June 2010, the emerging answer is an order of magnitude more revealing.
Back in 2010, I thought I had XBLIG by the balls. I’d been watching it intently, noting what games succeeded, noting what games failed, and I used that knowledge to formulate a game idea that would be in line with the market’s interests (small, funny, quirky) while also being something that I would enjoy making.On top of that, I had a name in mind that was about as subtle as a frying pan to the face. I thought I was going to kick ass and take names. Realistically: 10,000 copies to be sold, easily. Optimistically: 100,000 copies! Next stop, Newt Gingrich’s moon base!
What happened next is instructive. CTDV took 14 months to develop (10 months longer than I expected), hitched a ride on the Indie Games Summer Uprising, reaped all the good press that the Uprising afforded, and landed with good to great reviews. It sold 10,000 copies in less than a month and hit 21,000 copies sold in less than six. Hell, even Kairi managed to not hate it outright, although that might be because she thought I didn’t have a Fainting Couch nearby and was afraid I’d hurt myself when exposed to her vitriol. (It’s like opening the Ark of the Covenant.)
Soon to be a major motion picture by Pixar.
CTDV wasn’t life-altering moment, of course. It didn’t become the next XBLIG darling… not even close… and I didn’t make enough off of it to quit my day job. Hell, I didn’t even make enough off of it to live in a shack outside of Bumfuckleton, Iowa (founded in 1878). 70 cents per purchase (before taxes) doesn’t get you very far in this world. I never truly thought my moment in the sun would come, but hey, who doesn’t entertain that notion every now and then?
But as I said earlier, the experience was instructive. CTDV was a good game that could’ve been better. It needed and still does need a lot of work, especially its graphics. Sales were great on XBLIG, everything considering, but I can always do better. And that’s why CTDV is so revealing, and why it’s an important touchstone in my life. And, dare I say, a lesson for just about anyone out there: life is a work in progress. You can always do better, there’s always so much more to achieve, and get-rich-quick options are few to nonexistent. Just because you didn’t make your pie-in-the-sky expectations doesn’t mean the journey was wonderful and valuable.
Which it was, of course: the best side effect of developing CTDV was how it brought me closer to so many interesting, talented people. Fellow developers, gaming journalists, ardent fans, supportive friends… for me, creating games would be only a fraction as fun as it is without the pleasure of knowing and interacting with these people.
I’m not done yet, not by a long shot. CTDV is on its way to PC, I’m entertaining the idea of porting it to mobile devices (if only to get everyone to shut up for three seconds), and there will almost definitely be a CTDV2. With some elbow grease and a little bit of luck, I’ll do a bit better next time, and a bit better the time after that. Hey, that’s life, right?
It took more than one year for Doom & Destiny to become what it is now and we are proud of every character, map, dialogue line and misspelling in it. We don’t care if it’s not in the top 10 of XBLIG, that’s the place for mincraft clones with busty zombie in it. We don’t really look down on the Marketplace, but it’s clearly rewarding low-level marketing rather than quality.
But most of all, we are proud of our fans! Their support and enthusiasm keep us releasing updates with new content, bug fixes and hopefully less misspellings.
Our dedication to the game was the main reason why we did not lower the price to 80 MSP. We believe in the quality of our product and we don’t want to undervalue it with the minimal price tag, just to lure some cheap consumer.
We are just two joyfull nerds wanting to make videogames we would like to play.
No compromise!
Well maybe a few… given we are just two guys with limited resources.
We dream of making bigger games, we dream of expanding our team with talented artists and musicians, we dream to become famous, rich and conquer the Ultraworld… No wait, that’s the dream of the villain in Doom & Destiny.
Right now we are still working on another Doom & Destiny update, the third big one in a few months.
Fans want a ship, a zeppelin and a new continent to explore and we are gonna give them just that!
The WP7 and PC versions are coming soon and we hope to join all the other indie games on Steam and various indie bundles (and make more Golds).
We are also helping a duo of friends into creating a spy themed inspired puzzle game for XBLIG, WP7 and PC.
Last but not least, we are, drum roll, working on a Doom & Destiny sequel!
We just need a 60 hours day long to accomplish all our goals and we are done!
What went right? An awesome 2D online shooter that features a variety of maps, character types, and objectives. Take Arms came the closest of any game in the Uprising to making my leaderboard. Well, besides Chester, which did make it on.
What went wrong? The game’s fun is so tied to online play that it makes it a risky investment.
Creating our debut title Take Arms was a true labor of love. It was a culmination of almost 5 years of partnership between Tim Dodd and I. We went through failure after failure, with some projects never even getting off the ground. Our ideas were just simply way beyond our reach. We would get a few months into a project, and either reach a challenge we couldn’t achieve technically, or crush ourselves under the weight of a flawed design we just kept throwing more at to make it fun. Our dream games turned out to be just that: dreams. As time wore on, we knew that something had to give. Either we were going to throw in the towel, or figure out some way to actually get a game made.
As a last-ditch effort, we decided to make the “simplest” game we possibly could that still caught our interest and did something different. We started with just the idea of a 2D version of Battlefield for XBLIG, and the design quickly evolved from there. We finally started to learn from our failures, and focused on getting the core gameplay working quickly to make sure it was fun. Simultaneously, we worked on the design and were consistently cutting fluff and keeping it as lean as possible. After getting a playable prototype and finalizing the design document, we spent the next 18 months working tirelessly on just that. We very rarely strayed from the document and only added details, not features. It’s awesome when people take notice of small things such as the camera zooming out when you crouch for increased visibility. If you can nail good core gameplay, everything else is just in the details.
As we wrote in the post-mortem and other places, doing a multiplayer based game for Xbox was very difficult due to a variety of factors. That combined with the incredibly flawed launch, the over-inflated expectations of sales and market size, and the total lack of traction pretty much just devastated us both. Tim decided to call it quits to focus on other stuff and I started looking into mobile development to keep the studio alive. I don’t think either of us found what we were looking for, and after the New Year we slowly began talks of a new game. It started as an idea I had for a mobile game, but it continued to evolve as we threw ideas back and forth. After we were comfortable with the concept, we approached Take Arms artist Jianran Pan and got him back on board. We’ve settled on PC as our primary platform this time, with our eyes dead set on Steam. Hopefully we can take the skills we’ve learned over the past 5 years, and finally go full-time doing what we love. Look for an official announcement of our next game in the coming weeks!
Our esteemed heroine took time out of her busy schedule working on a cure for cancer and rescuing orphans from a fire to play an episodic platform game for Xbox Live Indie Games called Oozi. The graceful and magnanimous Kairi forgave the first installment for being such a generic bore that it caused joy itself, manifested corporeally as a beautiful baby koala, to commit suicide by throwing itself in the path of a steamroller. The villainous Oozi, regretful that it had erased joy from the world (and made a gruesome yet morbidly hilarious mess of a patch of forest in Queensland in the process) reformed itself with episode two. The sequel proved just fun enough to play that the puddle of gore that formerly was the Koala of Joy started to piece itself together. However, the threat of Oozi still existed. Will Episode 3 cause the Koala of Joy to re-liquify itself, or will it spring to life and bring happiness to sad children? We rejoin the mighty Kairi, already in progress.
As you can see, Oozi: Episode 3 brings us to a science lab. Ooooh, that’s bold innovation, fellas. What’s next? A castle? A desert? A sewer? I bet it’s a sewer. It can’t be an action video game if there isn’t a sewer level. It’s a sewer, right?
Okay, so originality was never what Oozi was about. I’ve actually had people explain this to me like I’m some kind of idiot. “You know, I think it’s actually supposed to be completely devoid of a personality of its own. That’s the point. I think.” Even if that’s so, let me pose this question: does anyone really think back fondly on the time they played Prehistorik Man? Gex? Spanky’s Quest? Plok? Of course they don’t. They remember playing Mario, Crash, and yes, even Sonic. Paying tribute to the also-rans of gaming sounds more like a skit from Family Guy than a potentially lucrative XBLIG concept.
All bullshit gaming philosophy aside, not a whole lot has changed for Oozi. The graphics are still far above the standards of a typical Xbox Live Indie Game. In fact, they’re so good that you can’t help but notice how many corners they’ve managed to cut. Back when I reviewed Episode 1, I noted that there’s no unique drowning animation, or gurgling sound effect that accompanies it. Episode 3 has so many situations where a comical death scene could be used for effect, yet Oozi simply disintegrates into a pile of ash or just flops up in the air. Having a larger variety of animations might have given the game some kind of personality, which is what the series desperately needs.
Really though, any complaint that I could make about Oozi has pretty much been made by me here on this site. And also through a bullhorn in front of the police station, but they asked me to quit doing that. Episode 3 doesn’t bring anything new to the table. It does try to, but it fails miserably at it. The feature that stands out the most are these annoying parts in one stage where you have to avoid security lights. If you set one off, a gate shuts and you have to walk out of the security zone and start over again. Don’t mistake this for stealth. It’s not. In fact, the security lights operate under the same principles as various traps and enemies do. The only difference is instead of taking damage, you have to just wander backwards and then start over. Some might argue that’s actually worse than death.
Oh, and there’s a boss, just like the last two times. And, like the last two times, it’s fucking boring as hell to fight. Oozi boss encounters always operate like the telephone game. They do one series of attacks at you, then open themselves up to be hit. Then they repeat the same cycle of moves as last time, adding one new twist before opening themselves up for attack again. Finally, they repeat all the previous steps, add one final twist, and then leave themselves open for the killing blow. It’s so fucking tedious, and the opening attacks (the ones that get repeated the most) are so insultingly easy to avoid that I wonder what they were thinking making you go through over a dozen rounds of them. A lobotomized blind wino would brush them off. It’s just busy work. Meanwhile, the later attacks are so cheap that you’ll inevitably die a couple of times, forcing you to go through the same lazy attacks again and again.
Snore.
You know what? I really am bitching too much here. I did have fun with Oozi’s third chapter. I can’t even say I think the game got off to a slow start, like Chapter 2 did. It actually got my interest right from the start and held on until the boss fight bored me out of the mood. The level design is so much better than the previous two games, and difficulty is much sharper, if a bit inconsistent. It looks like the next chapter will be a wrap on Oozi’s tales, and by golly gee wiz, I’m actually looking forward to it. Mostly because I actually believe it will see the light of day sometime before I start collecting Social Security. Hey, Red Candy Games, we all like Valve and everything, but you don’t have to follow their lead and treat episodic gaming like you’re operating a bizarre nerd version of a time-share scam.
80 Microsoft Points believe Half Life 2 episode 3 is currently being playtested by Santa Claus, Batman, and the Koala of Joy in the making of this review.
Cell: emergence costs $5 on Xbox Live Indie Games. That’s 400 Microsoft Points. That’s the cost of some pretty good Xbox Live Arcade Games. What does it get you here? An obviously unfinished piece of shit with horrible graphics, busted play control, and antiquated gameplay. What a bargain.
"What did I tell you about licking toads?"
The story revolves around a child being infected with some kind of mystery illness. Instead of doing the sensible thing, IE calling Dr. House, you inject the kid with some kind of computerized yellow beam shooting thingie to fight off the disease. At this point, the game starts and things go downhill faster than a soapbox derby racer powered by a jet engine. The first level starts with a screen of purple voxel gunk. You’re not given any real instructions other than A shoots and Y zooms in. I wasn’t sure if the purple stuff was good or bad, and the game doesn’t explain this. Or anything, really.
Well, the purple stuff started multiplying fast, which clued me in that it might be a bad thing. So, I started shooting. However, waiting a couple of seconds proved to be too long, as the purple stuff quickly overran the screen and the child died. That’s Obamacare for you. Once I was able to restart the stage, I started firing right away and cleared it in approximately three seconds. The second stage was basically more of the same “shoot the gunk” type of stuff, and this time I earned my medical degree in Voxelgunkology and cleared everything in about five seconds. I was starting to think Cell: emergence was trying to be a Wario Ware clone, only instead of a new game loading up every second, it loaded up every three minutes.
That all changed on the third stage. A purplish ball that I guessed was a tumor was present in a white cylindrical shaft. The only instruction given was “Shoot membrane to assist antibody diffusion (projectiles coat membranes with prion gel).” What the fuck does that mean? The game doesn’t tell you what exactly the membrane is, or what the antibodys look like, or what prion gel does. It took me several rounds of failure before I realized that it meant shooting the walls, ignoring the tumor-thingie, and watching some little flickery spark thingies dance around. I guess those were the gel. After a few minutes, I actually thought I failed the level, seeings how most of the stage had still been obliterated. Instead, I had won and was moved to the next stage. Sure, the kid would have been bleeding internally, but I’m a glass is half-full type of gal. That vein wasn’t 96% dead. It was 4% functional!
The next level is where I gave up. It was another “shoot the wall” level, only this time there were germs flying in. Once again, the only instructions given were vague. “NEW ENEMY: Germ is invulnerable to all known weaponry. Defend membrane and observe.” What. The. Filth. Well, I decided I’m obviously supposed to lube up my membrane, so I started firing on it. And then the biggest problem suddenly became apparent: there is no visual indication of what wall has been “protected” and what one has not. The “membrane” doesn’t change colors. A orange-red streak does go through it, but it fades out, and the game doesn’t give off any indication of whether it’s a positive thing or not. Red is usually a sign that something has gone wrong, and the enemies, or germs, are in fact represented by simple red dots. I spent about a dozen rounds firing on the surface, adjusting the angle I shot from, and it still didn’t matter. I continuously died, or rather the little kid did. You know what, fuck you kid. It’s your mom’s fault for letting some strange “doctor” (for all she knows it’s drug dealer trying to hook the boy on smack) inject you with a needle full of God knows what instead of taking you to the emergency room.
If you think this screenshot is baffling, just wait until you actually play the fucking thing.
In case you couldn’t tell, I fucking hated Cell: emergence, so much so that I can pull out the not-at-all-hyperbolic “new worst game I’ve played on Xbox Live Indie Games” title for it. It’s that bad. The graphics are horrible. The camera is unmanageable. It’s not so much a game as it is a proof-of-concept demo for 3D gaming. Which would be fine, if this was 1992. I’ve played games on XBLIG that felt this way before. UnBound for example. But at least they had the decency to only charge a buck for them. Cell: emergence costs five bucks. 400MSP that can get you five extremely awesome titles, and the guys behind Cell: emergence expect you to instead spend it on their obviously unfinished game. That takes a lot of nerve. The hubris on display here is sickening.
Cell would be boring even if you knew what was going on. It’s a glorified gallery shooter, only the graphics are indistinguishable blobs of digital vomit. Hell, the shit you shot at in Space Invaders, a game that is thirty-four years old, actually look like things. Nothing looks like anything in Cell. The lack of direction given to a player is irrelevant. The way things were going, the child is just as likely to get bored to death. The syringe might as well have been full of air for all the good it does him, and that would have been way more humane.
Nope. The name doesn’t work. It doesn’t sound like a video game. It sounds like a breakfast cereal, and a bland one at that. The type that you would need to add copious amounts of sugar to just to choke down. When you can name your game anything that your imagination can come up with and Brand is the best you can do, what does that say about the developer? It’s not one of those catchy one-word names that you can get away with, like Halo or Infamous. Brand. Seriously, the name of the game is Brand. What were they thinking?
“Brand thought Braid” says Brian. Excuse me while I untie my tongue.
Brand is a hack-and-slash platformer where you try to upgrade your starting sword to make it “fit for a king.” Once you’ve done this fifteen times (or sixteen, whatever) you move on to a final battle. There are nine ways to upgrade the sword, and you can do each upgrade up to five times. To get an upgrade, you select what one you’re going for, and then you’re sent off on a fetch-quest in one of three locations. Once you’ve met the terms of the quest, you open up an exit portal and wait five seconds, then return to the shop and activate it.
It sounds like a solid idea, and if it worked it would have been fun. But it doesn’t work. I put eight hours into Brand yesterday and I can honestly say it’s one of the worst games I’ve played on Xbox Live Indie Games. Wholly and entirely without any redeeming value whatsoever.
Let’s start with the first thing people talk about with Brand: the graphics. They seem really good. Certainly a couple notches above what people expect from an XBLIG. But really, what do those good graphics get you? In Brand, there’s only four enemy types. Those four creatures are the same in every one of the three levels. Nine Dots Studio didn’t even bother re-skinning the enemies to match the theme of each stage. Variety is achieved through palette-swapping, with the stronger enemies usually signified by darker colors, resulting in the characters lacking distinguishing features. The spitting frog-monster thingies are particularly pitiful in design. It looks like someone just vomited out a puddle of sprites on a screen and said “good enough!” If it seems petty of me to call out one creature type, I’ll remind you that creature represents 25% of the monsters you fight. Great graphics? Not when the character design is that bad.
Oooh, pretty! I can't make out anything, but damn!
Ironically, it’s the backgrounds that stand out the most. They’re rendered beautifully and would work at setting the mood for the title. They would, if they didn’t come with a tradeoff in performance. The game has major issues with lag. Especially the Castle, which scrolls very jerkily, like a first-generation Playstation 1 game. These also are probably the contributing factor in the brutal load times throughout the game. I actually used a stopwatch to time them. It takes 52.2 seconds for the Mine stage to load. If you die in the level and want to restart, the total time it will take is a 1 minute, 16 seconds. For a 2D side-scrolling indie game. The other two levels are worse, both taking over a minute to load, and about a minute and-a-half to reload if you die. It’s not unlikely you’ll spend over an hour waiting for stuff to load up, in a game that should only take a couple of hours to beat. It’s outrageous.
Once you’re actually playing the game, things go downhill quickly. Combat is relatively simple: X is weak attack, Y is strong attack, B you’ll never ever ever ever ever ever use (it’s a useless dash attack) and A jumps. Allegedly there are combos, but you’re not told what they are and I couldn’t figure out how to activate any. The one or two times I thought I had done one, they didn’t really do any damage so I didn’t bother experimenting further.
Not doing any damage to baddies was a recurring theme throughout Brand. Of the fifteen (or sixteen, whatever) upgrades you have to do, I “refined” my sword four times and strengthened it three times. I also gave it the ability to poison, I made it so a magical light sword thingie would poke out my back allowing me to fight creatures behind me, and I added a fire wave to it and upgraded that a couple of times. The end result? The starter enemies might die in one hit, but everything else remained damage sponges. Mind you, the entire game is about upgrading your offense. There’s no defensive upgrades at all. Yet, even once I had done the fifteen (or sixteen, whatever) upgrades and was dumped into the final stage, I felt like I had made no progress. My dude was still a total pussy and my sword couldn’t cut butter.
Part of it seems to be a result of the game just ignoring your actions. Direct combat seems to work best, in that about half of your attacks will result in damage. On the other hand, the upgraded effects do not want to work at all and will fight you every step of the way. As I noted, I got the fire sword thingie and then upgraded it once. I then watched as I would send a colossal wave of fire at an enemy and have it pass right through him, doing no damage at all. I know it didn’t because the enemy didn’t do it’s damage-indication flash. I wish I could say this was an uncommon occurrence, but actually it got so bad that I started keeping count of how many attacks a single enemy could fail to take. Around three seemed about average. Ten wasn’t all that rare. The most was this one mid-level wasp that was all alone in a normal room with no walls, barriers, or anything else in the way. I was swinging the sword close enough that in theory the sword itself would do damage, but if that failed the fire would get it as the wasp was dead center in the wave. Total swings before it registered damage for the first time? Twenty-fucking-two times.
In order: useless, useless, useless, useless, useless, useless, useless, useless, and useless.
Again, there’s no defensive upgrades in the game. Well, there is one. It makes it so you damage a creature you block. Sounds great! Sure, the block doesn’t even work on anything past entry-level enemies, but at least you’ll be dealing them damage back! Yea, about that. If you get this upgrade and use it too much, it kills you. No really, you die from it. And once you have it, you can’t turn it off. Thus, you’ll be unable to defend yourself throughout levels for the rest of the game. Given the fact that harder enemies attack faster, cause more damage, and gang up on you, you’re already screwed without the block “upgrade.” With it, you might as well take your sword and commit Seppuku. Although if you could actually do that, it would probably take the game five or six tries before registering it. You can’t increase your lifebar, armor, speed, or jumping ability. I guess Brand wanted to prove that a good defense is a strong offense. It’s too bad a strong offense is not an option.
Once you’ve made the last upgrades to your character, you enter the final stage. Hopefully your sword will be strong enough -snicker- because you’re entering the arena. You know those stages in Zelda games where you fall down a hole and then you have to fight every single enemy in the game? Yea, that’s what this is. You fight a wave of ten or so guys off, all attacking your literally defenseless ass all at once. If you kill them, a door unlocks, you fall down a hole, and you repeat the process. There’s no situational health refills. It seems like one random enemy in each stage will restore a sliver of your bar, so naturally it was always the first enemy I killed each time. Hell, I can’t say with 100% certainty that there is a random enemy giving away a teeny tiny scrap of health each floor. I cleared whole rooms out and was always left with a micro-fraction of health left. I tried beating this for an hour yesterday and another thirty minutes today, never actually making it past the fourth wave. Perhaps I didn’t upgrade my sword correctly.
Yes, Brand has avatar support. No, I have no fucking clue why this was added instead of fixing the game.
Apparently there is some kind of boss monster at the end of it. I never found out for myself. The thing is, I’m guessing that the giant scorpion-dog thingies that were scattered throughout the normal stages are in the Arena and I just hadn’t reached them yet. If they are, I want to go on the record of saying the game is probably impossible. I encountered several of those fucking things throughout the game and I only managed to kill one. They have four attacks, three of which are maybe-unblockable quick strikes that drain your health faster than smoking the exhaust pipe of a bus. If you manage to get close enough to start swinging, they take dozens of shots before they die. The mere threat of them was enough to make me realize playing the arena wasn’t worth it, because unless the game ends with you shoving the sword through the throat of the king, then deleting Brand from your hard drive and replacing it with a better game, it’s just not worth the effort.
I could go on about the play control (meh) or the jumping (bleech) or the fact that the price of Brand is going to be raised to 240MSP in 90 days (a proclamation so fucking arrogant the developer ought to be flogged just for thinking about it) but I think I’ve said enough. If anything I’ve said about this game sounds like something you want to play, have at it, you fucking weirdo. I’ll close by going back to the graphics, because once again the usual gang of idiots are saying “it’s worth it just for the graphics!” Quite frankly, I don’t think the graphics are that good. But let’s say they were. I think saying gameplay doesn’t matter if the art is good is kind of a hypocritical stance from a community that complains about everything done by guys like Silver Dollar who phone-in nearly every title they release. How come it’s not okay for them to release busted, broken games with limited play mechanics, but a game like Brand can be nearly unplayable and still get you XBLIGers to stock up on tissues and baby lotion? I don’t get it. It would be like only being able to enter the Louvre if the curator gets to cockslap you across the face while the janitor shoves his mop up your ass.
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