Procrastinating Squirrel (Updated)

February 23, 2013 by 12 Comments

Procrastinating Squirrel put up a fight when I first downloaded it.  From the moment I booted it up, the game started skipping like a DVD that got into a fight with a belt sander.  Thus it was rendered completely unplayable.  I made a video so that others could feel my pain.

After publishing the original piece, I got word from a few players that they didn’t have problems.  Curious, I switched consoles, then switched which storage device I was saving my progress to.  While it didn’t run perfectly, the experience was vastly improved and thus I could write a full and proper review.  Of course, in a way I already did that.  Procrastinating Squirrel is essentially Miner Dig Deep, only not as deep.  Miner Dig Shallow perhaps?  Miner Dig Less Deep?  Miner Scratch the Surface?

Oak Nuts. It's what you call crazy people that live in Oakland.

Oak Nuts. It’s what you call crazy people that live in Oakland.

How about Toddlers Dig Deep?  Because this stripped down version of one of my former Top-10 XBLIGs is pretty much that.  Miner Dig Deep, sans strategy or most dangers.  Fewer upgrades.  Fewer things to mine.  The boulders are still there and can still cause you to scream curse words you forgot you knew, but that’s the only thing that can kill you.  There’s no need to worry about digging too many tunnels that could cave in, because the game is presented from a top-down view.  That’s the one advantage Squirrel has over Miner: you can mine in any direction.  Every other aspect is less than what is already offered in Miner Dig Deep.  There’s no positive outlook on that.  People who haven’t played Miner would be better served skipping this and playing that.  People who have played Miner can only find Squirrel to be an inferior, watered-down clone.  I kept waiting for the game to present some kind of hook to change things up, and finished it still waiting.  While I still was practically hypnotized by the prospect of digging up new materials, those moments are few and far between.  It even ends significantly faster than Miner Dig Deep.  Miner Dig Deep left me wanting more.  Procrastinating Squirrel left me disappointed, and recommending it would be nuts.

Thirty minutes staring at the screen and that’s the best pun I could figure to go out on.  I knew I should have written this sooner, instead of waiting for the Oscars to end.  That’s what I get for procrastinating.

xboxboxartProcrastinating Squirrel was developed by Daivuk

80 Microsoft Points wondered why every single pet squirrel is named “Penny” in the making of this review?

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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.  

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Ascent of Kings

February 21, 2013 by 1 Comment

Ascent of the Kings comes from the developer of Quiet, Please!, the 2D platforming/point-and-click mash-up I played last April.  The fingerprints of the developer are all over this one too.  Same art style, same silliness, and same bite-sized game length.  It took me just over thirty-minutes to beat Quiet, Please!  For Ascent of Kings, which is a Metroidvania type of platformer, it took me about twenty minutes to become king and another twenty-five minutes to find all 12 hidden shrines.  So, forty-five minutes total of gameplay.  At this pace, Nostatic Software’s next game might stretch to a full hour.  Not that it needs to.  I’ve enjoyed games that lasted as little as ten minutes.  It’s crazy how spending 600 days immersed in the indie gaming scene alters your perception on how long a game should be.  I’m fairly certain I’m now in a state of mind where I could approve a game that lasts one minute, as long as it’s the best damn one minute I’ve had since I lost my virginity.

A Boy and his Blob?

A Boy and his Blob?

So the idea is, the king has died, and in order to determine the new king, all possible suitors (which seems to consist of four brothers that live in a small cottage, still better than what England faces sometime in the next twenty years) have to hop around on platforms and reach a small shrine that bestows upon that person the power to rule.  The father of these kids, apparently a bit of a dick, only gives each of the older brothers one special tool that can help them reach the summit and become king.  But their hearts don’t seem quite into it.  They pull such bullshit excuses as “ouch, sprained my wrist” or “twisted my ankle” like they’re trying to get out of jury duty.  The youngest brother, aka you, collects their tools, allowing him to double jump, climb vines, and fire slingshots.  You know, the kind of tools found in a real world monarchy litmus test.  Psssssh, diplomacy?  Economics?  Fuck that shit.  That’s for democracies.

As a game, what can I say?  It’s alright.  The movement physics are a bit loose and the double-jump sometimes didn’t seem to work.  Level design is very basic, no frills, no surprises.  There’s one section that features a timed jumping puzzle, and I hate that if I get to the top and screw up, I have to wait any amount of time before hitting the button to start over.  But, the game is so brief that you can’t really get bored with it, and it ends long before any amount of frustration over the various control foibles can settle in.  I guess what I’m trying to say is I had a decent enough time playing Ascent of Kings to say it’s worth a buck.  It’s not the most enthusiastic recommendation, but hey, it’s not the most ambitious game!  One hand washes the other!

xboxboxartIGC_ApprovedAscent of Kings was developed by Nostatic Software

80 Microsoft Points were joking about the one minute thing.  Brian has way more stamina than that in the making of this review.

Ascent of Kings is Chick Approved and has ascended the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard.

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Arcadecraft

February 6, 2013 by 9 Comments

Update: Arcadecraft received a Second Chance with the Chick, where many problems talked about in this review were addressed, and new gameplay features discussed. The price is also now only $1 instead of $3. Continue reading this review and then click here for my updated thoughts.

Arcadecraft is brought to you by the guys who did the incredibly awesome Orbitron: Revolution.  What was Orbitron: Revolution?  Why, it was an insanely fast-paced modern take on the classic Defender formula that featured arguably the best graphics in the history of Xbox Live Indie Games.  It will undoubtedly go down as one of the most professional-quality, vastly entertaining games ever on the platform.

Total bust.  Sold fewer copies than an 8-track of Gary Busey belching into a microphone.

What went wrong?  Well, I think the name was way too generic.  Orbitron sounds like an off-brand anime that would air at 4AM on Cartoon Network.  The graphics might have also been too good.  Hear me out on this one.  I’m of the belief that XBLIG consumers are conditioned to associate good graphics with bad gameplay.  Unless those good graphics are of the 8-bit or 16-bit variety, “modern” graphic decency in an Xbox Indie means shitty play control, glitches, and typically rushed game design.  Trust me, I’ve reviewed over 300 of these.  The better the graphics, the shittier the game.  Orbitron is one of the rare exceptions to that.

There are other possible explanations that are beyond my scope of understanding.  Perhaps the demo doesn’t hook players in.  Or maybe the general gaming populace is indifferent to Defender.  Hell, I would actually believe some kind of Gypsy Curse is in play.  Either way, the guys at Firebase took no chances with their follow-up game.  It’s called Arcadecraft.  The presence of the word “craft” in the title alone is probably good for at least 2,500 units sold on XBLIG.  Kraft could put out a game where you build stuff out of macaroni called Kraftcraft and it would probably sell a gillion copies.  But Arcadecraft isn’t a “build stuff out of stuff” game at all.  A more accurate title would have probably been “Sim Arcade” or “Arcade Tycoon.”  But Sim Tycoon isn’t trendy on XBLIG right now and Craft is, and Firebase are capitalists first and foremost.

Face it guys, you're never going to hear people keep asking about if they can play the games. Better get cracking on making it happen.

Face it guys, you’re going to hear people keep asking if they can play the games. Better get cracking on making it happen.

Sadly for me, lots of the things I planned on complaining about Arcadecraft are already being fixed.  Although the patch isn’t live yet, it covers nearly every problem I had.  So I’ll just focus on the gameplay.  Honestly, the shocking thing about Arcadecraft is that nobody has thought to make this game before.  Build your own arcade during the Golden Age of CoinOps?  How is this not already something that exists?  You have to buy games, set the prices, set the difficulty, place them, empty the coin boxes, buy more games, pay off your loan, kick out hooligans, buy more games, sell old games, upgrade the power supply of your building, allow world champion players to attempt to break records on your machines, unjam coin doors, buy more games, survive the gaming crash of ’84, stock soda machines, and buy more games.

So yea, it’s a time sink.

A lot of stuff I disliked about Arcadecraft is being patched out.  The hooligan won’t appear while you’re in menus anymore, and a more satisfying animation will appear when you boot him.  Not too satisfying.  If I owned an arcade and someone started kicking my machines, nothing short of Joe Pesci taking a nail gun to his temple would please me, and it would serve the little fucker right.  It would be totally justified too.  The kid starts kicking machines, somehow teleporting from machine to machine, disabling them before I can clearly identify him and eject him.  A better indicator of where he is would be nice, given the fact that he’s powered by the mystical forces of Satan and all.

And the power goes out a lot.  Like, at least every three game months, or about six minutes .  Where the fuck is my arcade at that the power keeps failing every three months?  There’s no “turn on every game” master switch.  You have to pick up and slam every machine against the ground.  Individually.  When you have 30 machines, this becomes a pain in the ass, especially when you’ll inevitably have the hooligan show up to start shit while this is going on.  I did find it mildly amusing that jammed coined slots are unjammed in the time-tested tradition of banging the machine repeatedly until it works again.  See, who says Armageddon wasn’t factually accurate?

I swear to Christ, every time the dude came by with the premium machines, my arcade was full. The game totally needs to give you the option to make him wait while you hock a machine to make room.

I swear to Christ, every time the dude came by with the premium machines, my arcade was full. The game totally needs to give you the option to make him wait while you hock a machine to make room.

My biggest gripe with Arcadecraft is how fucking slow a start it gets off to.  A lot of time sinks are lethargic in the beginning.  Arcadecraft is practically in a fucking coma, sort of like I’ve been over the last four days.  A common theme among players is one itty-bitty mistake forces them to start over.  I never had to myself.  I guess I had as perfect a run as anyone could have, but I still only finished 99th on the Leaderboard (now like 118th or some such shit).  I could see why others would die though.  You’re given too little of seed money and new games cost too much money early on.  In theory, you can set a machine to 50 cents a play, but that causes its popularity to plummet.  Here’s a hint: sink a soda machine pretty much anywhere and set the price to $1 per can.  Occasionally a “hot spot” will appear in the arcade that increases a machine’s popularity, but they’re typically in the least convenient spot.  Like in front of the bathroom door, where you then trap a helpless little shit inside, not to mention the kid that made it.

With all the planned changes, plus future expansions, Arcadecraft feels more like a really good beta than a finished game.  That’s okay, because it’s a really good beta, sort of like Lexiv was.  You can see the potential.  If Firebase plays its cards right, they could probably make this a hit iOS game with microtransactions up the ass for years to come.  Think of all the stuff they didn’t include this time around.  There’s no novelty games, no redemption games, no pinball machines, no skeeball, no air hockey, no cigarette machine in the corner (you know, for the adults, wink), and only a limited supply of larger cockpit games.  Arcadecraft has a chance to be a full-blown franchise, and we’re getting in at the ground floor.

You also don't get enough info on each game. Again, there's lot of patchwork needed here.

You also don’t get enough info on each game. Again, there’s lot of patchwork needed here.

And by the way, in case you’re wondering, it’s fucking awesome as hell.  For all the problems, of which there are numerous, Arcadecraft is one of the best sims on XBLIG.  But, let’s face it, it doesn’t belong on XBLIG.  This should be on PCs, with the convenience of a mouse and keyboard.  This would also allow the expansion packs I mentioned above.  Plus, let’s face it, we all want to play the actual games.  Dead serious when I say that I would pay the full disc-based retail price of $60 for a version of Arcadecraft where you could play the games.  Assuming they didn’t suck.  Which I’m guessing they wouldn’t.  I mean, Firebase did make the coolest modern version of Defender on the market.  This would give them a chance to make the coolest versions of EVERY vintage game.  Which they should be doing right now.  They’re capitalists after all.  Don’t believe me?  Their next game involves making stuff out of feces.  It’s called CrapCraft.  And it will be fucking awesome.

xboxboxartArcadecraft was developed by Firebase Industries

IGC_Approved240 Microsoft Points want the machine kicking kid to be attacked by the game machines, Emilio Estevez  style in the making of this review.

Arcadecraft is Chick Approved and ranked on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard.  And trust me, there’s room for upward mobility. 

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Squadron Scramble

January 29, 2013 by 6 Comments

I hate reviewing local-only multiplayer games.  First, you have to round-up players.  Then you have to tell them what we’re playing.  Then they leave, because they thought they were coming over to play something they’ve heard of, and you have to round-up more players.  Writing these reviews makes me sound like a broken record, because there’s only so many ways to say “it’s tough to sell non-indie fanatics on playing these games.”  Even when they turn out to be exceptional, like Hidden in Plain Sight, the real challenge is finding interested parties to play.  I think I would have an easier time finding people who want to watch a video of me having my appendix removed.

Squadron Scramble ups the ante by offering eight player local support.  Uh huh.  Excuse me for one second.

(Ahahahahahaha!  Eight players?  Wahahahahaha yea right!)

screen1

Seriously, I even don’t know eight people by name.  There’s Brian, Mommy, Daddy, and everyone else is Whatshisface.  And this is one of those games where you get eight players by sharing controllers, with one person using the left stick and trigger and the other person using the right one.  It’s the gaming version of a three-legged race.  Finding three other competent players would be tough enough, but seven more?  Tee-hee, right.  Plus, I’m quitting smoking right now and nobody wants to be within assault-and-battery distance from me, let alone sitting right next to me, getting their hand-sweat all over MY controller.

Thus, I only found three other suckers to play Squadron Scramble with, and surprise, we had a damn good time playing it.  Actually, it’s not that surprising.  As long as the game is fast-paced, user-friendly, and not broken, any four player experience is bound to be jolly-good entertainment.  Such as the case here, where you have 2D dog fights with all actions reduced to one stick and one button.  Anyone can pick it up and play it.  Whether they play it well is really irrelevant to the amount of fun you can have.  That’s the mark of a good multiplayer game.  At first, Squadron Scramble does that.  It just doesn’t last.

The first thing you have to do in Squadron Scramble is move a little dude into a hanger.  Once you enter the hanger, you take off in a fighter jet.  Each player gets a team of four dudes.  You get a point for every plane you shoot down.  If you’re in the sky and get shot, your dude parachutes down.  You have two options from this point: you can return the dude to the hanger, or you can switch him out for another dude.  Since points are tied to dudes that are alive, switching out is meant to add an element of strategy to the game.  Switching out dudes “banks” whatever points are made and protects them, since you lose all points scored with a dude if he dies.  Sounds like a good idea, but actually this was a game crippler for my session.

The game goes by rounds, with the person who has the most points winning each round.  You need three rounds to win.  Here’s the problem: points carry over between rounds.  So if one player builds an insurmountable lead, they can spend the next couple rounds stalling, with their highest-scoring guys grounded, and never worry about losing.  It’s an utterly brain-dead decision and it ruined more than one session of Squadron Scramble, because it was too easy to protect a lead.

screen2

This is one of those times where the developers lost track of the fact that not everyone who plays their game will be as highly knowledgeable or skilled as they are.  They forget that they, you know, made the fucking thing and thus know how to play it best.  It’s not exactly the same as making a punisher too hard and losing track of that, but it’s a common theme in multiplayer games.  I’ve had five developers who make such games send me detailed instructions on how to best play their games to ensure maximum entertainment.  The developers of Squadron Scramble did this too.  Nice guys, mind you.  And very patient, considering that I’ve delayed and delayed this review.  I like their game.  I’m putting it on the Leaderboard.  But it’s time for a reality check, fellas: unless you’re going to personally contact every person who purchases your game and give them the same instructions, which obviously you can’t do, you should recognize that maybe your game has a problem.  If you need to explain to people the best ways to make your game fun, you’ve screwed up somewhere along the line.  The best multiplayer games are self-explanatory.  Choppy Chomp-Chomp, the only multiplayer game to reach the top 10 on this site, requires no hand-holding.  Squadron Scramble shouldn’t need to, but the developers wanted to hold my hand anyway.  Personal space, guys.  Don’t make me break out the pepper spray.

It’s still fun though.  Very fun, in fact.  It’s hugely satisfying to shoot down a guy on a scoring-streak, watch them parachute to the ground, and then Kamikaze your plane into them before they can duck into the hanger.  The controls have only a slight learning curve.  The action is incredibly fast-paced.  I wouldn’t at all recommend trying eight players though.  We played with four players and four AI planes, and the game became an unmanageable clusterfuck that nobody could follow.  Also, there’s not a ton of depth here.  While games like Hidden in Plain Sight might be dusted off from time to time, you’ll get one, maybe two, sessions out of Squadron Scramble and then mothball it for good.  Not because it’s bad, but because it wears thin after an hour or two.  Once a player emerges from the group as the unquestioned God of the session, the rules skew too much in their favor.  This either leads to everyone ganging up on them, or the leader stalling, none of which produce exciting gameplay for anyone involved.  Squadron Scramble’s first hour will be the best, and then it will all fall apart after that.  That’s fine.  That’s how every Will Smith movie plays out, and people still watch them.

xboxboxartSquadron Scramble was developed by DepthCharge Software

80 Microsoft Points stabbed their boyfriend in the ribs for humming Ride of the Valkyries in the making of this review.

IGC_ApprovedSquadron Scramble is Chick Approved and ranked on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard.  With online play, it might have been a top-10 contender.

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Scribendus

January 22, 2013 by 1 Comment

Did you know that when they tested the first atomic bomb, those involved took bets on what they thought might happen?  Mostly it was about the amount of kilotons the explosion would be, but there were also side bets such as whether or not it would kill all present, cause the fault line to collapse, knock the Earth off its axis, or blow up the entire planet.  I’m not sure how the winner would have collected if the last option had won out, but it’s true and well documented, and only some of those bets were tongue-in-cheek.  Smart guys who, truth be told, had no fucking clue what would happen.  With some experiments, you can’t know until you push the button.

screen4

Scribendus attempts to combine Scrabble and Tetris.  I’m sure this has been attempted before (someone steered me in the direction of a Tetris-craze era title called Wordtris) but I’ve never played one.  It’s a concept that seems like it should work, but in this case, it doesn’t.  The idea is two letters at a time drop from the ceiling and you have to stack them in a way that forms a word.  You can build a word (minimum four letters) diagonally, horizontally, or vertically.   The problem of course, is being given two random letters at a time doesn’t leave you a whole lot of room for strategy or versatility.  I consider myself pretty dang good at word games, but I couldn’t make Scribendus work for me.  The only strategy that seemed to work was trying to build one decent sized (six letter or so) word across the bottom and stacking all other blocks on the side, but even this didn’t work.  I got my best score by completely ignoring the letters all together and just stacking the blocks randomly, spacing the vowels apart from each other.  Using this technique, I scored big points and multiple combos.  And I don’t even know what words I made.

I can’t really slam Scribendus too much.  It looks good, sounds good, and controls good.  It feels to me like a worthy experiment that failed.  That will happen in the land of indies.  While my enthusiastic fans might want to me to shred every game that isn’t good, now might be a good time to remind readers that it’s okay to try something new and not have it succeed.  Sometimes you can’t know if something will work until you create it and market it.  Look at Lexiv, the Scrabble-meets-Sim City game.  That could have just as well been a disaster too.  I admire creator Dave Turka for giving it a try.  His particular Manhattan Project simply failed to detonate, and now he become derp, destroyer of words.

xboxboxartScribendus was developed by Pygmalion’s Box

80 Microsoft Points noted that a man named Isidor Isaac Rabi won the Trinity test betting pool with a guess of 18 kilotons (actual explosion was 18.6 kilotons) in the making of this review.  His opponents overbid, allowing him to take both showcases. 

 

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Platformer from Hell and Little Acorns Deluxe

January 20, 2013 by 9 Comments

Platformer from Hell comes from Hoosier Games, a group of academics from Indiana.  I know, I know.  Academics?  In Indiana?  I went “Hah!” too, but upon further research, they do have institutes of higher learning there.  I’m not sure what is considered higher learning in Indiana.  “Cow Tipping 101” or “Why you can’t pork your sister” I would imagine are on the agenda.  I’m kidding of course.  Actually, I’m quite friendly with project manager Derrick Fuchs (I hope that’s pronounced the way I think it is) and I ranked their previous effort, Warp Shooter, on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard.  It was flawed but functional and fun.  I applauded their efforts and looked forward to their next game.  Which is here.  And it sucks.  A lot.

Where's Waldo? causes less squinting.

Where’s Waldo? causes less squinting.

It’s a punisher, of course.  But it’s one of those tedious, excruciating punishers where dying and restarting levels is more of a chore than an acceptable part of the gameplay.  This is partially because levels are overly large and pathways to victory are sprawling, convoluted nightmares.  A good punisher, if there is such a thing (there is) should be fast paced and frequent deaths need to be handled in a way that doesn’t make them feel like a chore.  Well, Platformer from Hell feels like a chore, with me cast in the role of Cinderella and bad jumping physics and boring level design co-starring as the wicked step-sisters.

And then there’s the graphics.  The characters and some of the traps in Platformer from Hell are practically microscopic.  I have a TV large enough to double as King Kong’s monocle, and yet the star of the game is a teeny-tiny little spec of pixels that vaguely resembles a person.  Although this does allow you to see more of the stage and plan out which routes you’ll take faster, the drawback is you’ll suffer eye-strain and end up needing a monocle yourself.  Another problem with the graphics is sometimes the background is overly bloomy and it drowns out the ability to properly see the hazards, especially spikes.  Ultimately, it’s a game that’s intent is to frustrate and anger players, not entertain.  Derrick noted to me that any faults with the game are his fault, not his team of students.  Duly noted.  That’s why I’m teaching the next lesson, which will be “how to tar and feather a fellow human being.”  Alright guys, we’ll need 5 old feather pillows and some tar, or honey if no tar can be found.  Trust me, this will be fun.

Actually, a better lesson could probably be learned from Little Acorns Deluxe by Team Pesky.  It’s a platformer that does ramp up in challenge, but in a natural way that gives players room to grow instead of throwing them straight into the deep end on their first day of swimming lessons.  Here you play as the patriarch of a family of chipmunks.  No, not Dave Seville.  An actual chipmunk, who must go through stages collecting acorns for winter stock-up.  At first, Little Acorns might seem a tad bit on the easy side.  Enemies don’t really kill you.  They just turn you green and slow you down.  The only way to die is to drown in water, but that doesn’t show up too often.  The real challenge is the time limit in each stage, but it’s fairly generous.  As you go along, you’re given new abilities like a rope to swing on special platforms or crash through bricks with.  It’s alright.  I guess.

It’s never really too difficult.  I never had to repeat a stage more than once.  Part of that is Little Acorns got its start as a Windows Phone game.  You can’t really ramp up difficulty too much in a phone game, where players have to spend the majority of the time fighting the crappy digital-controls.  With a proper controller, the game plays relatively smoothly.  I found the rope physics to be somewhat goofy, but not a deal breaker.

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Why I’m having a hard time getting excited is Little Acorns is a little on the dull side.  Whether you’re gathering acorns or rounding up your children, the game never really feels original or engaging.  There’s no real original hook to sink you into the experience, and no storyline or big twists in the gameplay to keep you going once you’ve started.  Not that games need such devices, but they go a long way on the indie scene.  Little Acorns is not outstanding on the grounds that it does not stand out.  It is a decent, solid game that will give you four to six hours of platforming that you’ll be satisfied with once it’s over and forget all about in a day or two.  The reason I reviewed it here is because the contrast between it and Platformer from Hell couldn’t be more jarring.  One game gathers up all the nuts and isolates them in a cold, hollow place.  The other is a game about chipmunks.

xboxboxart1IGC_ApprovedPlatformer from Hell was developed by Hoosier Games

Little Acorns Deluxe was developed by Team Pesky

80 Microsoft Points each can’t tell their squirrels from their chipmunks in the making of this review.

Little Acorns Deluxe is Chick Approved and ranked on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard.  If I was a rodent, I would be a Chickmunk. 

Gameplay footage courtesy of Aaron the Splazer.

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Light Fighters

January 10, 2013 by 21 Comments

I admit, I haven’t been very productive as of late.  I think I’m suffering from some sort of XBLIG-related malaise.  Part of that comes from getting so many review requests for games that just don’t seem that interesting.  I’m not talking about games that look bad or play bad, but just the type of stuff anyone (besides those that made it) would have a tough time getting excited over.

Take Light Fighters by Deviant Spark for example.  It’s not an awful game by any means.  It’s not really good either, but what’s wrong with it is so insubstantial that trying to get a full review that’s also entertaining to read is like trying to dig a canal using a plastic spoon.  The main focus of the game is local-only multiplayer combat.  This is almost never a good idea on XBLIG.  Even really great party titles on the platform, like Chompy Chomp Chomp or Hidden in Plain Sight, are tough sells for non-indie-loving nerds.  You developers really need to meditate on this fact.  Close your eyes and try to picture someone like me pitching a game like Light Fighters to my friends.

“We’re spaceships.  We try to shoot at each-other’s spaceship.  This goes on until one of us dies.  Here, look at the trailer.”

“Uhhh………huh.  And you think we should play this over Borderlands 2, why?

“Because, um, because I’m Indie Gamer Chick?”

“That’s cool.  We’re not though.”

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By the way, this doesn’t include Brian, who is really supportive of this whole Indie Gamer Chick thing that I’ve fallen into.  But his support has limits.  Especially when he’s listened to me whine about how bad the single-player modes of the game are for hours.  The AI in the tournament mode is just too good at shielding shots, which can make matches drag on for ten, fifteen minutes with no progress being made.  And the meteor mode is awful too because it’s slow, your bullets get used up too fast and take too long to reload, power-ups are too slow to arrive, and yet it’s somehow still too easy.  By time it’s his turn to jump in, he knows better.

“Okay Brian, let’s try this multiplayer.”

“Is that the game you’ve been having a chick-boner over?”

“No, that’s Genix.  I’m writing that review tomorrow.  This is for Light Fighters.”

“The one you’ve been complaining about?”

“Yea.”

“I think I’ll pass.”

“But, I need to try this multiplayer.”

“Your dad is home, get him.”

“Oh come on, please?”

“No.  Cathy, if you’re not liking it at all, why would you attempt to subject your friends to it?”

“Because, um, I’m Indie Gamer Chick!”

“And I’m Nippy Nuts the Car Guy.  What’s your point?”

“Um, misery loves company?”

“I’m not really feeling like being in the company of misery today.”

“It probably won’t be THAT bad!”

“But you think it will be bad.”

“I love you.”

“I love you too, but no.”

“Please?”

“No.”

“I’ll give you a back rub!”

“Your hands are too tiny for it.”

“I’ll take you out for a rib dinner!”

“See, now that you’ve said that, you’ll be craving a rib dinner and I’ll get it anyway.”

“I’ll blow you.”

“I’ll get that anyway too.”

Okay, so such a conversation didn’t really take place.  I wouldn’t offer to blow Nippy Nuts just to get him to play a game with me, and he actually would step up if I pressed the matter.  But do I really want to?  A game’s goal is to grab you from the get-go with an interesting hook and fun gameplay, and the two hours I spent with it were, while not outright painful, pretty damn dull.

I did end up having a bit of a go with multiplayer and it was just as bland and exhausting as I suspected it would be.  Mind you, this is a perfectly functional game that features decent (if somewhat primitive) graphics and solid play control.  It’s just not fun.  It wasn’t fun to play, it wasn’t fun to explain to my friends so that I could squeeze in some multiplayer rounds, and it wasn’t fun to write about.  It took me a few weeks to get to this review, in part because Brian was on vacation, but also in part because I promised the developer I would review it and immediately had buyer’s remorse.

I would like to say that the developer of Light Fighters has been nothing short of classy, and quite patient considering that I had to put his review on hold for a couple of weeks.  So hopefully he takes the news that I didn’t enjoy his game at all with good grace, instead of accusing me of being a lying crackwhore who has failed to comprehend the genius of his game.  I’m guessing he won’t be a poo thrower though.  He actually has talent and class.  Typically it’s only the completely talentless that resort to flinging poo and making themselves a total clown for the bemusement of the community.

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There is nothing really wrong with Light Fighters besides not being fun.  The game didn’t crash.  There weren’t physics glitches.  Everything wrong with it can be boiled down to “this game probably had no chance of being entertaining from the onset and the developer should have recognized that and tried something else.”  Even if the ships were more interesting, or the bullets they fired more exotic, or the AI less unfair, or the reload-rates less painfully slow, or if multiplayer matches didn’t all boil down to glorified button mashers that leave little to no room for strategy, or if it had something to keep track of what your best times are in meteor mode, or if the meteors weren’t so fucking spongy, or all of the above, Light Fighters still would have been boring.  Don’t forget to ask play testers “is this fun?”  Because that’s just as important as whether the game is functional or broken.  Don’t just ask if it’s fun, but ask follow-up questions too.  “Why is it fun?”  “Why isn’t it fun?”  “What could make it more fun?”  Which, I’ll admit, will put your fellow developers in an awkward position.  It’s the equivalent of your girlfriend asking if this dress makes her look fat.  And it does.

xboxboxartLight Fighters was developed by Deviant Spark

80 Microsoft Points would be interested in playing a game called Deviant Spark in the making of this review.  I bet it would be about a Transformer who enjoys streaking and showing people his collection of nude playing cards. 

“Ha, good one Cathy!  Hey, isn’t that.. is that Michael Bay taking notes?”

“Huh?  What?  Oh fuck, hey, NO!  DO NOT PUT THAT IN THE NEXT MOVIE!  DIDN’T YOU LEARN ANYTHING FROM MUDFLAP AND SKIDS?!!”

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Trivia or Die, Trivia or Die: Movie Edition, Avatar Trivia Party 2, and What The?!

January 8, 2013 by 3 Comments

I’m into trivia, and I would like to think I’m pretty good at trivia.  How good?  I’m banned from playing any and all trivia with friends and family.  The last attempt at doing so was playing Trivial Pursuit 5 on 1, with me being by myself, plus I was banned from getting to continue my turn if I got a question right.  I still won three games to zero, and suddenly people were more interested in playing Sorry! or Uno instead.  I was also asked politely to abstain from participating in trivia night at our country club.  They said I was single-handedly responsible for a drop off in attendance, and since trivia night was one of their most profitable events, I would be doing them a big favor by not showing up.  Then they advertised that trivia night was Cathy-free.  I’m kind of proud of that.

So reviewing some trivia-based XBLIGs would be a chore, but thankfully, all of today’s games could be played single-player as well.  I then simply observed my parents play a round of each game to make sure they functioned as multiplayer efforts.  Of course, a little piece of me died every time they missed a lay-up like “how many colors are on France’s national flag?”  Sigh.  I must have been adopted.

Trivia Or Die

Like all the games featured today, Trivia or Die is pretty basic.  The only real hook is if you miss a question, the host of the game insults you.  Not only is the insult kind of poor as far as insults go, but it’s done by what I think is meant to be a stereotypical Japanese game show host.  It’s as bad as it sounds.  The other gimmick is once a game ends, the losing players are killed by being dropped into a pit of fire.  Not as cool as it sounds.

The first one of you to say "TOASTY!" is getting bayonetted right in the fucking eyeball.

The first one of you to say “TOASTY!” is getting bayonetted right in the fucking eyeball.

As far as the game goes, everything you need to know about Trivia or Die can be summed up with saying the first answer to the first question of the game was wrong.  What kills the most people: lightning strikes, earthquakes, or hurricanes?  The game says lightning strikes.  Sounded wrong to me, and a quick check on Google finds numbers for all three scenarios to be all over the board.  There doesn’t seem to be a definitive answer that has statistics and shit to back it up.  So it probably should have been left out of a multiple-choice trivia game.  It wasn’t, so I can’t recommend it.  Though if someone can find multiple sources to back up the lightning strike claim, I’ll change this to a mild recommendation.

Trivia or Die: Movie Edition

This is the exact same game as Trivia or Die, only it features movie-themed questions.  And it’s better on account of having no answers be inaccurate.  However, I should point out that there’s still some writing mistakes.  A quick example that gave me a chuckle: Goodfellas is called “Goodfellows.”  Somehow, Goodfellows is not such an interesting sounding movie.  Goodfellows sounds like it would star Woody Allen as a carpet salesman or something.  Oh, and there are issues with how questions are worded.  “What was the first animated film to be nominated for an Oscar?”  Well, that would be the Flowers and the Trees from 1932.  But, that’s not an answer, so I’m guessing they meant “What was the first animated film to be nominated for a Best Picture Oscar.”  That would be Beauty and the Beast.  Yea, I knew what they meant, but it’s still lazy.  And now I’m just being nit-picky.  Trivia or Die Movie Edition will serve as a semi-competent time waster that might barely be worth $1 if you have three friends of equal skill.

What kind of fucking moron would answer Y to tha.. DADDY HOW COULD YOU??

What kind of fucking moron would answer Y to.. DADDY HOW COULD YOU??

Avatar Trivia Party 2

It’s exactly the same game as the first one, only there’s different questions and a different board.  It’s like Mario Party, only with trivia.  Of course, actual trivia skills are not required to win.  In the original game, I lost a match to Brian where I never missed a single question and he missed significantly more than a single question.  What followed I think is legally classified as domestic assault.  Either way, I like the board in this one better than the original, and it is fun.  You can read my original review for more detailed thoughts on it.

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What The?!

And I close out with the worst of the four games, which really sucks because it also had the most effort put into it.  It has full voice acting, which would be cool.  It would be, if the actors didn’t totally half-ass the whole thing.  There’s two guys: a host, and an announcer.  The announcer is actually the guy who reads the questions, and he at least seems to put some effort into his work.  It’s still awful, and the guy sounds like he’s so bored that he might fall asleep.  But he has the right voice for an announcer, so we’ll give them a half-point on it.  And then I’ll subtract a billion points for the host, who sounds like he would rather be dead than participate in this shit.  I’m not joking.  He sounds like he’s either coming out of a coma or going into one.  I’m sure some people will say they deserve props for having voice acting at all, but if it’s worth doing, is it not worth doing right?  Or with enthusiasm?

Otherwise, it’s just another bare-bones trivia game.  It’s set up to look like a 70s game show, but it doesn’t take advantage of this.  The hook here is you can occasionally “win prizes.”  They’re all gag prizes, but the weird part is, there’s no gag to go with them.  You can win the Moon as a prize, but there’s no joke or punchline to go with it.  Again, it’s another effort to give the game some personality that fails miserably.  And the bare-bones setup with the actual questions and answers, the lack of punchlines for the gag-products, and the ultra-slow pace really cripples What The?!  It has what should be the best feature of any of the games: a system in place that prevents you from being read the same questions more than once.  But that’s completely negated by how boring the overall experience is.  It would be like listening to Harry Potter’s book-on-tape and finding out the reader is Ben Stein.

Ho ho ho ho, this is so funny. After we're done with this episode, I'm going to go sit in my garage with the car motor running and the door shut.

The host has that “I’m going to sit in my garage with the engine running and the door shut” look on his face.

So I’ve tallied it as follows: Avatar Trivia Party 2 is the best of the bunch, but if you’ve already played Avatar Trivia Party, it offers nothing new besides a new board.  Trivia or Die: Movie Edition is competent but quite bland.  The original Trivia or Die is also bland but lacking in competence so you can feel free to pass on it.  Finally, approach What The?! only as a drug-free alternative to NyQuil.

xboxboxartTrivia or Die and Trivia or Die: Movie Edition were developed by Fun Infused Games

Avatar Trivia Party 2 was developed by Red Crest Studios

What The?! was developed by Social Loner Studios

80 Microsoft Points each dug a hole in the armrest of my couch with my fingernails while watching my parents miss question after question.  I tell you, it was worse than torture in the making of this review.

xboxboxart1IGC_ApprovedTrivia or Die: Movie Edition and Avatar Trivia Party 2 are Chick Approved and ranked on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard.  The other two games probably couldn’t tell you who is buried in Grant’s Tomb.

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Awesome Pirates

December 31, 2012 by 2 Comments

Awesome Pirates seems to be designed primarily with multiplayer in mind.  I had intended to use our holiday office party as an excuse to try it.  Forgot that people go to that party to like, drink and open presents and shit, so the game got passed over.   Well, a couple of days ago I had a chance to play it with three other people.  Those people were ages 5 to 8 too, which is fine.  It’s not the most complex title in the world.  You’re a pirate ship.  You shoot other pirate ships.

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The kiddies grasped this just fine, and after a small learning curve with the controls, we had some nice sea battles.  We put nearly an hour into this, and at one point I asked them what they thought.  The reply probably should have been expected.

“Can we play your Wii U instead?”

Hmph.

“But this is an Indie game!  You kids don’t understand!  You’re supposed to appreciate the pluck and devil-may-care attitude of this whole new generation of game developers!”

“Oh.  Hey, do you have Nintendo Land?”

At this point, I figured I had lost them.  I was fine with that myself.  Awesome Pirates isn’t really technically flawed, but it’s kind of boring.  This type of game has been done so many times now that unless you have a really good twist on the formula, it won’t hold anyone’s attention for long.  I did put an extra hour into single player, which is especially dull.  Decent graphics, good play control, and again, nothing really wrong here.  The game just isn’t fun.  The kids didn’t like it either, and that’s only partially because there was a Wii U staring them down.  The action is kind of slow, the power-ups pretty dull, and there’s just not a whole lot to this one.  Props to the developers for making a fully functional game that’s only sin is being boring, but now you guys have to make something that anyone can enjoy.

Oh, and I totally kicked the shit out of those little kids in Mario Chase.  Ha, yea, serves you little pricks right for making fun of me for not being able to throw a dragon punch!

xboxboxartAwesome Pirates was developed by Cheeky Mammoth

80 Pieces of Microsoft Eight walked the plank in t’ makin’ o’ this review

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