Indie Games Uprising III Interview: Sententia

August 9, 2012 by 4 Comments

It’s back!  Last year, the ten games of extreme varying quality (somewhere between sublime and subfeces) took part in what was the most promoted event in Xbox Live Indie Game history.  This year, nine new games are ready to show off what the platform is capable of.  It’s called the Indie Games Uprising III.  The man running it, 19-year-old Michael Hicks, has a game of his own in it: artsy platformer Sententia.  I talked with him about his game, the event, and what exactly “art house” gaming means.

Kairi: When I hear the term “art house style game”, I typically throw-up a little bit in my mouth.  What do you think the medical term for that is?

Michael Hicks: Ha! Well, I guess you could say I used that to rebel against “the man” or status quo. It’s kind of a vague term looking back at it now, but this game is extremely personal to me and marked a big change on my outlook towards game design. I wanted to be sure that when going into the game people would know that I attempted to make something more than a game about jumping over blocks and attacking enemies; there’s a ton of reasoning behind all of the design decisions… almost an unhealthy amount! I guess I was just worried people wouldn’t get me, so I decided to go all hippie hipster and call it an art game!

Kairi: When I watched the video for Sententia, it looked to me like a cross between a punisher and Scribblenauts.  What is the actual inspiration for the game?

Michael: You’re the first one to call it a punisher! The game is very challenging and ramps up fast – I don’t think that’s something people typically take away from the trailer. The gameplay wasn’t really inspired by a particular game, but you could say that it was inspired by the themes and messages I wanted to convey. The games that made me open my eyes were “Aether” by Edmund McMillen, “Gravitation” by Jason Rohrer, and “Braid” by Jon Blow. These games are very powerful, but they tell stories through basic gameplay interactions and themes, I wanted to try and experiment with what they pioneered. As I started to get more technical with the platform designs I did reference “Super Meat Boy” quite a bit, as the game is very challenging, but never felt frustrating (at least to me!).

Kairi: Your previous games have been space shooters, and now you’re doing a self-described “art” game.  You’ve started taking drugs, haven’t you?

Michael: No, never! It’s insane how many times I get asked this by people… it’s so weird that when people start to make more expressive things others instantly think they’ve turned to smoking weed or something!

Kairi: I’m actually kind of surprised by the lack of quote-unquote “experimental” games on XBLIG.  Why do you think developers don’t try to get weird when they create their games?

Michael: It’s really easy to just stick with what has already been proven to be successful, it takes some practice to really work the “originality muscle”, and I’m still trying to exercise it myself. It also takes some guts to make something super personal/deep/experimental and release it to a wide audience; I’m very terrified to release my own game, I think the closer it gets to the release date the more I am going to lose my mind.


Kairi: When you made your previous games, was there any off-the-wall weird shit that you thought to include but chickened out of?

Michael: I don’t think I’ve ever censored myself like that, but before “Sententia” I was going to make a game based around this joke rap project that my friend and I do on occasion. We started recording music for it back in High School as a way of making fun of pop culture. In this game you were going to drive around with a police officer collecting donuts while this song of ours played on the radio. Then I remembered that I’m in a position where the games I make can actually affect people’s lives and I wasn’t interested in committing career suicide.

Kairi: You pussy!

Michael: Hey, I thought it was the right thing to do!

Kairi: Okay, so now that you’ve finally manned up and are doing something off the beaten path, are you finding it difficult to implement your vision using the XNA framework?

Michael: Definitely not, I hope I never have to work with anything else. I really don’t care for C++ or any of the hardcore techie languages, even though I can use them. I love to program, and I’m glad I can do it… but I don’t like spending time doing all of the crap that those languages require when I could be doing more game specific type stuff.

Kairi: You’re the man in charge, more or less, of the third Uprising.  Are you fucking insane?

Michael: A lot of people think I am, that’s for sure! It’s really an honor to be involved like this, but it’s a huge responsibility; I want to make sure this is a promotion that people won’t forget.

Kairi: Some people, who shall remain nameless (ME!) thought the last Uprising was incredibly disappointing.  This year looks much more promising right from the start.  What do you say to those (ME!) that are skeptical about the quality of the games this time around?

Michael: Reception of indie games at this level is kind of a weird thing, you get such mixed reactions. Personally though, I am really excited for the line up this year… a lot of the games are very interesting. I’ve played most of the titles thoroughly, and I would definitely rank a good number of them in my “Favorite XBLIGs Ever” list.

Kairi: I noticed all the Uprising games are single player titles.  Is the irony that we’re doing an event where the community rises up together yet plays games alone lost on you?

Michael: Wow, that never dawned on me before! We tried to get a variety of games, but mainly we wanted to scout out some titles that we thought were great games.

Kairi: In closing, how do you feel the games of this Uprising stack up against the games of the previous two events?

Michael: The selection this year is totally different from last time I think. I would classify those games as more extroverted and these games as more introverted… maybe that makes no sense. Either way, we’ll just have to see what people say when all of this kicks off!

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Face Slapper

August 5, 2012 by 4 Comments

Just by hearing the description of Face Slapper, you’ll know it’s on the wrong platform.  The idea is a bunch of faces will appear on a play field.  Using the analog stick, you line up a cursor over a face and press a button to slap it.  You get points for smacking dude and lose points for hitting chicks or animals.  Yea, this was without question a game designed with a touch-screen interface in mind.  Face Slapper is also out on Windows Phone, which is likely an okay fit.  I would personally prefer a bigger screen like iPad, but WP is easier to program for, even if it has a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the users.

On the Xbox?  Meh.  Face Slapper is actually pretty dumbed down.  The slapper is made to be pretty generous, smacking only the things that give you points, so if a bunch of faces are together, feel free to get button-stabby.  In fact, I theorized that you could chuck effort out the window and just button-mash while wiggling the controller all over the screen.  My previous, “pretend like I give a shit” efforts resulted in scores ranging from like 5,000 points to 8,000 points.  My “don’t give a shit” button-spammer approach netted me over 12,000, and I only stopped because my thumb got tired.  That, my friends, is broken game design.

Oddly enough, I did have an extremely limited amount of fun with Face Slapper, but that was had trying to unlock all the fake achievements in the game, which are pretty clever.  The real challenging one was trying to finish the game with a score of exactly negative one point.  I never actually accomplished it, but for a total of ten minutes I actually did want to.  Then the feeling passed.  It was like a bout of gaming constipation.

I can’t go out and recommend Face Slapper, just because it really is on the wrong platform.  This is a game designed with the precision of a touch screen in mind.  I can’t blame them for at least attempting to port it over the XBLIG, because as lightweight as the platform is, it’s unquestionably more viable than Windows Phone.  But Face Slapper’s problems extend beyond its control scheme.  The graphics aren’t distinctive enough, the background images can be disorienting, and I don’t feel there’s enough variety in gameplay.  If you have a Windows Phone, it might be worth a look at.  Also, ha ha, you own a Windows Phone!

Face Slapper was developed by Highbrow Games

80 Microsoft Points came this close to putting a game on the leaderboard designed by the guys who made Avatar Planking in the making of this review.

 

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Cuddle Bear (Second Chance with the Chick)

August 3, 2012 by 2 Comments

I played Cuddle Bear back in May, and it was an honest and true contender for, at best, the worst game I’ve ever played in my life. Horrible button layout. Terrible level design. Abysmal graphics.  Annoying sound effects.  Thinking of all the games I’ve played this year, I don’t think I can think of a better game that fits the “worst game of the year” description. But, to their credit, the developers read my review and responded with good humor and a vow to do better. On one hand, it’s nice to have one of those rare developers who actually intend to invoke their Second Chance with the Chick. I created the policy figuring I would be doing these types of reviews on a weekly basis, instead of the bi-monthly rate I have going right now. On the other hand, I have to admit that the thought of playing Cuddle Bear again almost drove me to take a razor to my wrists. I almost did it too, but then Brian reminded me that suicide is a mortal sin and if I bled myself out I would go to Hell and get stuck playing Cuddle Bear anyway. Well fuck, he has a point I guess.

“Cuddles, I’m impressed that you pissed the word “Redrum” in blood on my wall. BUT, I don’t think pissing blood is ever a good thing. Have you ever heard of prostate cancer?”

You know what? Happy Sock.. Christ, that sounds like something teenagers jerk off into.. actually did fix the game. They eliminated most of the leap-of-faith gameplay and dick move enemy placement that made Cuddles such a brutal chore of a game to play. Levels can actually be completed without having to trial-and-error your way through them. All other problems are still firmly present, but hey, baby steps!

♫ She’s a Barbie girl, in a shitty world. Crapped and spastic. It’s shitastic! ♫

Did that one change make Cuddle Bear more fun? A little. The problem is the enemies are still fast-moving, annoying sounding bullet sponges that gang bang you if they get close. The enemies tend to “bounce” when they hit you, turning you into one of those ball-on-a-paddle things. If you’re near a ledge when this happens, things really get fun. And getting items is still painfully slow. Yea, the developers stuck cheat codes in, but who outside of those who read the comments on this site would know about those?  I must say, once I had the one shot (or two, but who’s counting?) sniper rifle, the pace of Cuddle Bear quickened and it actually went into consideration for making the leaderboard. Then I got to the fifth stage of the Chinese themed levels, which apparently missed the “don’t do leap-of-faith platforming with enemies dickishly placed on the platforms that cause you to recoil like you just got a whiff of Roseanne Barr’s body odor” memo, and I decided to quit again. Sorry guys, you have a long ways to go. Is it a vastly improved experience? Yes. But, at the end of the day, a polished turd is still a turd.

Cuddle Bear was developed by Happy Sock Entertainment

80 Microsoft Points laughed at Indie Gamer Chick for originally spending 240 points on this piece of shit in the making of this review.

Happy Sock, I saved you the time of cherry-picking my words for the misquoted review blurb. Just copy the words in bold. Hopefully the time I just saved you can be applied towards making your next game suck significantly less. 

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Edgeland

August 3, 2012 by 4 Comments

Edgeland is a punisher starring a cute little blue ball.  This is roughly the one-millionth punisher I’ve played on XBLIG (give or take) and I have to say, the whole juxtaposition between cute graphics and sadistic gameplay has officially become stale.  As have punishers where the only thing that makes them difficult is having horrendous play control.  In that sense, Edgeland is past the point of being stale and has moved onto decomposition.

Pictured to the left in this picture: the fossilized remains of the last truly sublime game from this genre.

Like 99.9% of all platformers (give or take), Edgeland simply asks players to get from point A to point B, which generally means moving right until the game says you win, or if they want to get really ballsy, moving left until the game says you win.  Edgeland really changes things up by hiding the goal from time to time.  Otherwise, gameplay consists of jumping around, dying on spikes, jumping around, and dying some more.  Part of this has to do with the spikes blending in a little too much with the background sometimes.  Most of it has to do with the controls being looser than the village whore.  I think the game was trying for a Super Meat Boy like feel, but Edgeland lacks the mind-numbing dexterity of SMB.  The blue ball thingie can only jump, and the physics of that are purely inertia based.  Thus, when you jump, sticking a landing is overly difficult.  Despite the floatiness, the blue ball feels a little too heavy, whereas if Meat Boy was any lighter on his the feet, Republicans would line up to buy chicken sandwiches in protest of him.

Honestly, Edgeland is not a terrible game or anything.  But this is the same shit that gets shoveled out on XBLIG on a weekly basis, and I’m getting bored with the genre.  The give-up point for me was stage thirteen.  By this point, ice was introduced to the game.  Of course it was.  I’m almost convinced that platform developers great and small are forced at gunpoint to sign some kind of pledge guaranteeing at least one section of ice stages and one section of fire stages in each title.  Because nothing says fun like having your character handle like Inspector Gadget got drunk and said “Go Go Gadget Sealegs!”  I’m not exactly sure what that means either, but it seemed funny and I’ve been dying to do an Inspector Gadget joke, so plebbbbbb.  My point was that ice levels are platforming buzzkils.  Name one time, just ONE fucking time, when they were anything but an unfun pain in the ass to play?  (Brian: CHIP’S CHALLENGE!  Me: Not a platformer, doesn’t count)

Let’s pass a law saying that developers can only include ice levels in games if they rest ice cubes on their genitals while coding them. That ought to put a stop to their production.

So in Edgeland, the guy already handled like a walrus bathed in petroleum jelly.  With the ice, they took away what little traction he had.  Not only that, but they also seemed to take away the checkpoints.  I went pretty deep into stage 13 and didn’t hit one.  I was practically tripping over them in all the other stages, and that was the only reason why I hadn’t decided to microwave my controller up to that point.  Without them, my will to press forward was nonexistent.  Maybe Edgeland isn’t as bad as I have it pegged and I’m just suffering from punisher burnout.  Okay, that’s being too nice, because the game is a sloppy handling piece of shit.

But I’m going to put a moratorium on doing any more punishers in the month of August.  I’m not sure why so many get made anyway.  They’re not huge sellers.  Hell, outside of The Impossible Game and its “expansion pack”, they almost never appear on the top 90 daily selling list on XBLIG, or if they do, they fall off fast.  This is not a genre the masses want.  And yet, you guys keep making them like they’re going out of style.  Guys, they’re not going out of style.  They are out of style, and you guys are like the last holdouts in the Garment District still making bell-bottoms and parachute pants.

Edgeland was developed by Galactic Goat Games

80 Microsoft Points said the rule regarding making fire levels will involve a Zippo and a can of hairspray in the making of this review.

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Sunflower Farm

August 1, 2012 by 3 Comments

Sunflower Farm is a voxelish minigame collection where you and up to three buddies can sit down and be bored while slogging through three games that range from dull to clunky to outright abysmal.  First up is Harvest Time, where you walk around a wheat field trying to cut as much of it down as possible.  Real quick thought, guys: if the concept of your game sounds like something that you would rather hire out illegals to do while you sip piña coladas and watch Judge Judy, chances are it won’t make for the most exciting video game.

Something tells me that Sunflower Farm doesn’t fall into the “developer always dreamed of making a game about this subject matter” category.

In single player, you have an absurdly short time limit to accomplish this.  You need to unlock higher difficulties and play those in order to unlock more stages.  I’m adverse to forcing myself to be bored for longer than I have to be and thus I decided to skip effort and go with the “give it two tries and if I fail, fuck it” approach.  Items do rain down from the sky that could help, but they come down at random and not all of them are helpful.  One of them is an airhorn, and I’ll be damned if I can figure out what it is used for.  In the sheep herding game, it has a function.  In this one?  It seems to scare crows off, but I don’t think the crows actually do anything.  The useful stuff, like something that stops the clock or a thing that makes you run fast, don’t seem to spawn as much as that stupid airhorn.

The second game is Sheep Herding.  There’s a field of sheep, and you have to run up behind them and coral them into the center of the screen.  Getting them to move is a slow, plodding, boring experience, probably not unlike real herding is.  The third game is Tractor Racing, which is a fancy way of saying kart racing.  This one is mired by terrible handling controls.  Steering is too loose, and thus driving ends up looking like a series of quick left and right swerves, like you’re watching a teenage girl test her learner’s permit out for the first time.  And she’s slightly intoxicated.  And texting while driving.  And the car is a Dodge.

For what it’s worth, if you can get used to the steering, the courses are only barely terrible.

Whether you play these single-player or with friends, Sunflower Farm is one of the worst Xbox Live Indie Games of the year.  Harvest Time and Sheep Herding sound more like things you would punish a disobedient child with.  As for Tractor Racing, I might not have realized just how bad it was if I hadn’t already played Avatar Grand Prix 2, which was a pretty dang good game.  The tractor stuff is by far the best part of Sunflower Farm, which is like saying free body piercings is the best part of being executed by firing squad.  So I can’t recommend Sunflower Farm.  You would be way better off having your car break down in front of an old farmer’s house and having sex with his virginal daughter.  And you KNOW how those things end.

Sunflower Farm was developed by Tomlin Games

80 Microsoft Points wonder why so many cars break down in front of farms in the making of this review.  Then again, I wonder why so many strange people walk into bars as well.  Or why we’re so concerned with the amount of people required to screw in light bulbs. 

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Tales from the Dev Side: Hooray for Us by Steve Smith

July 27, 2012 by 6 Comments

Forgive me guys.

 

♫ Yo they’re Smith Bros.

Collecting Disorder’s their game.

Landed on my leaderboard

with minimal pain.

They were lended a hand,

when they got to XBLIG land.

Even if punishers are for fuckers,

I respect those limey Brothers!

UHHH!♫

Oh God, I’m so sorry.  Here, read Mr. Steve Smith’s Tales from the Dead Side.  I’m going to go flog myself.

Read more of this post

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Murder for Dinner

July 26, 2012 by 6 Comments

When I heard the name “Murder for Dinner” I thought “Oh great, PETA made a game about McDonalds.  Just what we needed.”  But no, it’s actually a first-person murder mystery game.  First-person, 3D XBLIGs are a rare beast, so I had to ignore the fact that it was a point-and-click adventure and give it a try.  Even if said graphics looked like early first-generation PlayStation stuff.  Again, I am starting to understand where you old farts are coming from on this whole nostalgia thing, but how can anyone in their right mind be nostalgic for PlayStation 1 era graphics?  That’s my generation and I don’t understand why someone would remind people of that horrible shit.  It would be like reminding someone about the time that they had to sit and watch while the Blair Witch drowned their mother.  At least Daddy said it was the Blair Witch.

Note: My Father, who shall henceforth be known as Indie Gamer Killjoy, would like me to state my mother is alive and happy and was not murdered by the Blair Witch, or anyone.   I choose to remain skeptical until the DNA tests come back showing that really IS my mom.  Nobody who watches The View can possibly be related to me.

Of course someone would get killed in a place that looks like that! The only other thing that could possibly happen there is Dracula would come back from the dead and we’d have to send the Belmonts in.

The idea is an old crone calls a dinner party where everyone present is worried that their deep dark pasts will be revealed.  Yea, I’ve seen the movie Clue too.  Unlike Clue, Murder of Dinner is unfortunately played straight, without the slightest tinge of humor.  Ironically, this makes the game cornier than all of Iowa.  The writing in this game is all kinds of fucked up, like one character who outright confesses to you that they murdered someone, but it’s not the actual victim, and that’s good enough for you to clear them as a suspect.  I love that logic, and now I’ll spend the rest of my days wondering why more murders don’t use the “Oh I’ve totally killed people for sport and/or profit, but I just didn’t kill THIS guy” defense.  It’s fucking genius in its insanity.

Actually, it’s funny that the logic of that confession-slash-alibi is so demented, because the actual puzzle logic of the game is somewhat grounded in reality.  This was done by eliminating puzzles all together, but that still counts.  Instead, Murder for Dinner relies on hide-and-seek gameplay.  First, you talk to all the house guests.  Then you walk around the house looking for places that allow you to search for stuff.  If you find something, you take it around and show it to the house guests.  This will typically eliminate a suspect or two.  Then you search the grounds for more stuff, find it, and show it off.  Just keep repeating this until you reach the credits an hour later.  If this all sounds dull, it is.

Alright, I believe you when you say you didn’t bump off the old lady. Now let me ask you this: where were you the night Mr. Body got killed? Why, is that a candlestick in your hand? You’re coming downtown with me.

I’m not a big fan of point-and-click games, but that had nothing to do with why I dislike Murder for Dinner.  The characters, dialog, and setting are all just so boring.  I’m way into murder-mysteries.  I want to do one of those cheeseball “Murder Mystery Weekend” thingies at some point before I die or grow senile.  But this was just lifeless and bland, with a cast of unlikable characters and an ending I figured out thanks to one way over-played line of dialog about three-quarters of the way through.  The ending didn’t even make any sense!  And do you know what I have to say about that?  Red ties make great zebra traps, Joey!

Murder for Dinner was developed by Detroit Game Studio

240 Microsoft Points tilted the camera downwards and then shook the stick around as I descended down the staircase, to make it look like I had tripped on it and was falling to my death, because by golly, sometimes you have to figure out ways to amuse yourself in the making of this review.

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Slick

July 25, 2012 by 17 Comments

Slick received a Second Chance with the Chick. Both reviews should be taken together.  Read my updated thoughts here.

Slick has graphics and sound that try to mimic the look and feel of the original Game Boy.  This is sort of weird to me, because I truly don’t get how anyone could want their game to look like that.  This isn’t the Atari or the NES we’re talking about here, where the delusional say “gaming was never better than back in those days” and we all have a laugh.  I thought everyone was in agreement that gaming has done better than the Game Boy.  So I find it strange, in the same way that I do when I hear that senior citizens in Russia pine for the old days when Stalin was in charge.

For what it’s worth, Slick does a pretty dang good job of looking like a Game Boy game.  It even has a mono midi soundtrack.  I guess if you’re going to do something, it’s worth doing right, even if it’s recreating garbage.  But gameplay is all that matters to me, and Slick is one of the biggest offenders of being a gleefully evil fuck that I’ve come across on Indie Gamer Chick.  It’s a punisher, which isn’t exactly my favorite genre, but this one at least had some promise to it.  I made it past the first sixteen levels and was pretty impressed by the clever level design.

And then, I got to stage 1-17.  And that’s where I quit.  I’ve never done this, but I want to do a step-by-step breakdown of where this game failed.

1. You have to start the stage by bonking your head on the ceiling in the spot where there is no spike., and then land on the floor to the right.  Then you have to hop up to platform.  Trust me, this is all a lot harder than it sounds.

2. You have to jump up, turn mid-air, and land on this block.  Slick controls fairly decent, but the one thing it doesn’t do well is handle mid-air turns, so this seemingly easy bit is a lot harder than it should be.  But this isn’t even the worst offender of this problem on this stage, or even the second worst.

3. These spiked turtle things had popped up in previous levels, but I never noticed how off the collision detection on them was until here.  It is WAY the fuck off.  See the blue box I drew around the turtle to the left?  That’s a rough approximation of the enemy’s collision detection box.  If your dude enters anywhere into that field, you die.  You’ll also notice there are blocks above them, which prevent you from getting adequate clearance when you attempt to jump them.  This causes the difficulty of this section alone to spike to unnecessarily brutal levels, never mind the frustration a player experiences when they are killed by a creature that they didn’t come remotely close to touching.  Perhaps that’s not just a spike on its back.  Perhaps it’s a mound of polonium and you’re actually dying from acute radiation poisoning.  That’s hardly fighting fair at all.

4. Once you hop across those blocks, you have to fall down this chute, swerving right-to-left to avoid fireballs.  As I previously stated, the controls do everything BUT mid-air movement to varying degrees of decency.  So naturally the main challenge of this stage tests just that.  Well, there’s an added bonus to the assholery of this section: you actually accelerate while you fall.  So the game wants you to do something it is barely capable of doing in the first place, and it wants you to do so at a multiple of the normal speed you jump.  Oh, and there’s an enemy at the bottom of the jump, but don’t worry about it.  Like Butch Cassidy said to the Sundance Kid, the fall will probably kill you.  Or, more accurately, the third fireball.

5. Was #4 fun for you?  Well now, you get to do it again, only in reverse!  Oh, and you start off with the fast acceleration here.  Oh, and there’s a twist to this part..

6. You can’t see it, but there’s an indestructible turtle enemy thingie that is walking along the spikes, and after you successfully (HA! As if!) reach the top of this chute, you have to land on it and bounce across the top of it to the goal.  I can’t really tell you if the fireball at the top of the screen is a problem because I never made it this far.  In fact, I tried over 100 times to beat this level, and made it past section #4 a whopping three times.

There are those that saw the picture above and will say to themselves “sign me up!”  But to those of you that haven’t gone off your meds today, Slick is not worth the effort.  What it offers isn’t really any more of a challenge than trying to thread a needle on the other side of the room.  You could do it, in theory, but aren’t there better uses of your time?  If you absolutely need something that plays like a punisher to justify your existence, you’re better off picking a game that gives you the proper tools needed to complete it.  It’s such a shame, because I actually liked Slick up until that point.  It was still challenging, but the level design was fun and had a lot of neat twists in it.  And then the game just went all emo and wanted you to know no joy ever again.   That’s only 17 of 100 levels in, mind you.  I’m almost afraid of how depressingly impossible this game might get.  Abraham Lincoln was famously afraid to carry a knife on him, for fear he might turn it on himself.  I used to wonder how a person gets like that, but after playing Slick, I think I know.  Which is why I just carved “bullet goes here” in the back of my head with an X-Acto Knife.

Slick was developed by Halcyon Softworks

80 Microsoft Points tried to search for videos on Slick and found Rainslick instead in the making of this review.  Cue the sirens. 

Thank you @Hamcha

Gameplay courtesy of Aaron The Splazer.

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Dead Sea (2012 Xbox Live Indie Game Review)

July 24, 2012 by 4 Comments

Dead Sea isn’t a game that was half-assed. That doesn’t necessarily mean it was good, but actual effort was put into it. So here’s my question: why the hell did the developer choose not to capitalize the letter “S” in the word “sea”?

See what I mean about sea? Si?

It doesn’t seem like it was done for style reasons. It just seems like some kind of oversight on the developer’s part. I see stuff like this a lot on XBLIG, and every time it happens I think the same thing: sloppy. Like the developer simply did not give a shit while entering in the game’s information for the marketplace. It really starts things off on the wrong foot, because if the developer put no effort into simply typing their game’s name, why should I believe they made an effort building the game? Come on, Brave Men Games. You made it this far.  Could you really not spare that extra fraction of a second it would take you to hold down the shift key before hitting S?

I actually tweeted about Dead Sea before I played it. It looked bad, and people were anxious for me to sock it to it. Sorry to disappoint my fans, but I don’t really have a lot of bad things to say about Dead Sea. It’s not a good game or anything. It won’t be making the leaderboard. But it’s not horrible. The idea is you’re a chick who is on a boat when your boyfriend whips out a ring and proposes OH SWEET JESUS LORD HAVE MERCY!!

.. or do I have to devour your immortal soul?

Yea, that fucking thing will be giving me nightmares for a while.

Anyway, no sooner do you agree to marry whatever the fuck that’s supposed to be when a shark knocks him out of the boat and gobbles him up. She gets knocked into the water too, but the Sharks seem kind of picky and leaves her to swim for it. What “it” is or where “it” is at is never explained. There is a compass, but it doesn’t tell you what direction to go. The first time I played, I just swam in an arbitrary direction and ended up drowning. As it turns out, you are supposed to swim north. How I was supposed to know this, I’m not quite sure. Maybe I wasn’t thinking straight. I had just encountered what looked to be a love-struck zombie pimple cream ad. To put this in perspective, I’ve walked in on my parents having sex. There was chocolate syrup and whipped cream involved. At least I hope it was chocolate syrup and whipped cream. Either way, that was less traumatic than Mr. Undead Acne Man.

The concept behind Dead Sea is not bad at all. But the gameplay is just so boring. All you do is point yourself north and then alternate the trigger buttons at a slow and steady pace. If you go too fast, you attract the attention of the sharks. If this happens, you have to survive a quick-time event. After that, you reposition yourself north and start alternating L and R again. After a couple of minutes of this, you reach a buoy. You tap a button to climb up it, and then survive a couple more quick time events. Then you swim some more, reach a boat, watch the sharks do their best Free Willy imitation while doing more QTEs. After a couple of those, a shark rams the bottom of the boat, splitting it in two. Do they eat her when she’s in the water? No. Granted, I’m the same way with curry. Seems good to smell and look at, but I’m always intimidated to taste it.

It has finally happened: Xbox Live Indie Games have sharked the jump.

After one final swim, you reach another boat. All you have to do is button mash to throw a barrel and then do a three-sequence quick-time event to detonate it. You win, game over. Total time: ten minutes. Fifteen tops. Which is fine. I don’t think I could have taken another fifteen minutes of Dead Sea. Is the game terrible? Not at all. The gameplay mechanics work, and despite the literally cringe-inducing graphics, this is a fully functioning game. The concept of an open-world game where you’re stranded in water trying to avoid sharks sounds great. I just don’t know how it can be executed in an entertaining way. Dead Sea certainly doesn’t do that.  I’m not sure how they could have done better, or if it’s even possible. Points to Brave Men Games for trying, minus several more points for actual execution. Also, I’m deducting 185,962 points for the opening cut scene. Mind you, these are the guys who made Hell’s House, a game that was about as scary as a kitten. But that dude? He’ll scare the enamel off teeth.

Fuck this, I’m taking my chances with the sharks.

Dead Sea was developed by Brave Men Games

80 Microsoft Points wonder what would happen if you fired the land shark gun from Armed & Dangerous at the sharks in Dead Sea in the making of this review. Shark on shark violence rules!

Gameplay courtesy of Aaron The Splazer. He’s been providing these videos for the community for a while now. Go follow him on Youtube. He’s earned it.

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About To Blow Up Part 1

July 20, 2012 by 11 Comments

When I hear the term “Point & Click Adventure” it typically stimulates in me the same response as the term “Urinary Tract Infection.”  And when I hear the term “Hip-Hop” it usually causes my own stomach to digest and barf itself up.  So a game that purports to combine hip-hop culture with point & click adventures ranks right up there on the “things I’ve feared” list with “AIDS going airborne” or “Joel Schumacher is doing another Batman film.”  But it suckered me into buying it because the art style reminded me of a John Kricfalusi cartoon, and I’m a sucker for that kind of stuff.

Yea, I’ve been to Oakland.

As it turns out, About To Blow Up is about as good as a point & click on XBLIG is capable of being, and the hip-hop crap doesn’t factor into the gameplay at all.  The story is actually kind of cute.  You play as a lovable loser who aspires to manage a hip-hop act.  However, the music scene (and the city as a whole) is dominated by a megalomaniacal bastard named Mr. Sleez.  It’s fun, almost to the point that you forget how tired this genre is.  The logic is as bullshit insane as any clicker is, and those times where you’re generally lost without direction can be draining.  There are a handful of puzzles, but they’re pretty simple and can generally be solved just by randomly clicking buttons until something happens.  Which is ironic because most of the item puzzles are solved by total random guesswork.  “So you put the wig on the rat.  Well duh, why didn’t I think of that?”

I don’t really have a lot to say about About To Blow Up, other than the fact that it’s a dick move on the developer’s part to start the game’s name with “about.”  Which led to the awkwardly worded sentence above that contained the word “about” twice in a row and is totally screwing with my grammar check.  Otherwise, About To Blow Up has the best story of any Plicker on the XBLIG, along with the best graphics and characters.  I’ll look forward to future installments.  I can’t say I’ll actually review them.  It took me all day to come up with the shit I wrote for this one, and I’m only 381 words in.  383 now.  384.  Oh fuck off.  387.  Sigh.  388.  I’m done.

390.

About To Blow Up Part 1 was developed by Facepuncher Worldwide LLC

IGC_Approved80 Microsoft Points said that all questions related to how to solve a section of this game that don’t begin with the phrase “I’m a surrender monkey” will go unanswered in the making of this review.

About To Blow Up Part 1  is ranked on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard.  Click here to see where it landed.

461

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