People are always asking me what I think of certain indie games that existed before I started Indie Gamer Chick. The two most commonly asked about titles are Fez and Limbo. I couldn’t finish Fez because of my epilepsy, so Limbo is the only one I’m really qualified to speak of. (UPDATE: I did end up reviewing it!) But seriously, it’s like a daily thing. “What did you think of Limbo?” As if Limbo is the be-all, end-all of console-based indies.
I liked Limbo. I really did. I also feel the game is fairly overrated. When you strip out of the visuals and bleakness, it’s just a good, but not great, platformer. A trend I’ve noticed is that a lot of people only played through the early part of the game. When you first enter Limbo, you can be left shell-shocked by the dark tone, spooky visuals, and the fact that one of the first things that happens is an awesome, intense encounter with a giant spider. It perhaps gives the false impression that all those emotions will retain their impact through-out the game. They don’t. At least for me, I found myself desensitized to the whole concept not even half-way in. Once Limbo started focusing more on twitchy-platforming instead of physics-based puzzles, I started finding myself almost bored. It never fully becomes a chore, but once it starts becoming a platforming cliché, it does sort of burn out.
I filled in the blanks by pretending that the game starred Schroeder from The Peanuts. Here he is, learning of Charlie Brown’s final fate.
Also, it was hard to get worked up about the setting when the game was using the all-deflecting “it’s an art game” shield, which pretty much guaranteed an ending “left open to interpretation.” Never been a fan of that. Especially when the game was abstract to begin with. So I guess the idea is the kid, or kids, are dead. How they died or when or where or why is never explained. Theories range from a car wreck to falling out of the tree house to being murdered. I guess from a marketing point of view, it works, because at least people are talking about the game. But I found the ending unsatisfying, because it offered no closure at all. When you invest hours into a game hoping to get some kind of explanation for all the fucked up happenings and the payoff is more questions, it almost feels like the director himself didn’t really know where to go with it. I’ll call this the “Tim Burton’s Planet of the Apes Effect.”
Yea, sometimes the questions are more fun than the answers, but in the case of Limbo, you’re playing characters that have no characterization at all. The boy has no back story, no dialog, no personality, no facial expressions, or anything else going for him. The girl is no different. You’re forced to fill in the blanks yourself, but most of the symbolism is in the background and can be easily missed on account of you playing the game. Because the actual gameplay starts to dull towards the end, Limbo really doesn’t lend itself well to replaying to look for the clues that you missed.
Limbo’s ending. I apologize for comparing it to Burton’s Planet of the Apes. That’s a low-blow.
I don’t mean to be too negative here. Sometimes Limbo is brilliantly designed from a gameplay perspective. The bits with the spider early on are one of my all-time gaming highlights. Unfortunately, Limbo pretty much shot its wad in the first twenty minutes. Nothing that followed the sequence where you’re hopping in the spider’s cocoon came remotely close to the thrills and chills that section offered. All that’s left is solid physics-based platforming that I almost wish was in a more cheerful setting, because too much dark shit can get exhausting. But hey, dark is in right now. Any product that aims to be joyful is setting itself up for failure. If an indie game isn’t so bleak that you want to bury your face in your hands and cry, the developer must be mentally ill. Or possibly not mentally ill enough.
1200 Microsoft Points honest to God can’t believe they just ported this thing to iOS. There is no fucking way this can be played well with fake virtual buttons in the making of this review.
Do you know what the very toughest thing I have to do as Indie Gamer Chick is? Find people to play XBLIGs with or against. It’s my fault. My friends.. well Brian’s friends actually.. have had to deal with nearly two years of complaining. They have bad timing. They never bump into me when I’m playing really awesome games. Oh no, they run into me when I’m playing stuff that would better be used during enhanced interrogation. So when the time comes to say “hey guys, I have a shiny new XBLIG party game” they all seem to have better stuff to do. Wash the car. Run a marathon. Return over-due library books. It’s total bullshit of course. None of my friends read books.
But, sometimes I can wrangle them together. The results aren’t always pretty, but every once in a while a game provides us with a level of entertainment that we can’t get from a movie or, quite frankly, some mainstream games. Take Chompy Chomp Chomp. It was a smash hit last year during a Memorial Day party, and since then, has been on the top ten in my leaderboard. But it wasn’t without issue. The game could spawn players unfairly, and some of the maps were poorly conceived. It’s been a year since I last sat down with it. I know the game got patched, but I never got around to trying it again. Well, on Sunday I had the chance. And guess what? Chompy Chomp Chomp is better than ever. It is, unquestionably, the best party game on Xbox 360, indie or otherwise.
Pictured: absolute multiplayer bliss.
First off, go check out my original review. Nothing has changed with the core gameplay. What’s different is nearly every complaint has been fixed. For starters, spawns are significantly more fair. Before, it wasn’t rare for you to spawn too close to someone that’s designated to eat you. In a couple hours of playtime, that never once happened. Nor did the game ever spawn me or anyone else playing into a live trap. That alone makes Chompy Chomp Chomp so much more fun to play. In our previous play sessions, fits of laughter and general happy chatter would occasionally be interrupted by the random scream of “that’s bullshit!” when the game would screw you with a shitty spawn. Now, it’s all happiness all the time. The only other way that could have been accomplished was with laughing gas, but that wouldn’t have been cost efficient. Fixing it was much easier.
Chompy Chomp Chomp was developed by Utopian World of Sandwiches (80 Microsoft Points admit that the Xbox 360 hasn’t exactly been the best platform for party games, but regardless, this is still the best on it in the making of this review.)
Yea, there’s still some really horrible levels where you can get cornered with no hope of escape. The guys at Utopian World of Sandwiches insist that there are people who swear those are the best stages. They’re not. They’re unfair and stupid. Thankfully, they made up for their continued existence by throwing in more stages. These new levels, based on classic gaming themes, are fricking awesome. Finally, some of the dumber traps, such as gaseous time bombs that drain your score away, can outright be turned off. Previously, turning off items was an all or nothing type of deal. Now, you can select which ones you want to use. That’s perfect. The online play was totally hiccup-free as well. I can’t stress how amazing this game is. You simply have to play it, whether you do it locally or online. Make sure you’re playing with real players though. The AI goes from being too easy to too hard. When I was playing with my buddies, it was probably the single best multiplayer experience I’ve had since I’ve known them all. Chompy Chomp Chomp is Fuckity Fuck Fuck excellent.
But, if the whole “no shooting, cutesy characters” stuff is an affront to your heterosexuality (seriously, at least one moron on Twitter said of Chompy Chomp Chomp that it “looked like gay children’s shit”. How this guy is an expert in gay children’s shit is beyond me), you can try Blocks and Tanks instead. In a way, it’s getting a bad shake here, because I’m comparing it directly to Chompy Chomp Chomp. Both are simple party games for XBLIG with online play. But while Chompy’s gameplay reminds me of old school arcade games, Blocks is more like a Nintendo 64 era arena-shooter. Not a whole lot to it. Aim and shoot, one shot kills (with the cannon), most kills wins. The fact that it revels in its simplicity is part of the charm. It’s a shooter stripped down to its purest, most refined fun.
Of course, Blocks and Tanks is also a voxel game. When I announced that this game was on deck and next to be reviewed, people immediately dismissed it as yet another Minecraft clone. It’s not. But, the voxel angle is a neat one, as the environments are destructible and it opens some pretty neat strategies. In addition to the tank shells and machine gun, you can shoot blocks from your turret, which immediately cling to the environment and change colors to fit that. In a way, this crippled one versus one multiplayer, as whoever was able to get the first kill could immediately burrow a hole and fill it in to remain hidden until time ran out. Of course, only a total coward would do that.
Don’t shake your head at me, Brian. You’re only mad because you didn’t think of it first.
Pictured: the developers of games I was less than kind to waiting for my car to get within range. It’s a Honda Fit! Do your worst!
Blocks and Tanks is a lot of fun and does a lot right. The controls are very responsive. There is a bit of a learning curve to aiming, but once you get over it, it does the trick. It also has some very well designed arenas, many of which take after famous locations. It handles eight players online. I was never once able to get into an eight player game, but when I had six players going, it was super fast-paced and very enjoyable. But, the game has more problems than an algebra book.
We’ll start with the spawns. They’re among the most unfair I’ve ever seen. Sometimes the game will respawn you right in front of someone else. You’ll literally die immediately upon respawning. More often than not, you’ll be put back to life in the thick of a battle. There’s no rhyme or reason to it. The game needs to place you away from the action. Movement speed is decent, and maps are not that big, so there’s no reason to have to drop people in the middle of a firefight. It gives the game an unpolished feel.
But the biggest problem, as of this writing, is online stability. The developer is aware of the issues and asked me to go forward with this review, as long as I note that he will continue to improve the game. Duly noted. Over the course of seven play sessions and about three hours of total play, I experienced a magnitude of connectivity problems. Players would be dumped at random. Brian got a rare “code 3” error on his Xbox, while mine simply froze solid. Again, the developers are on top of it, and the current build is easily the most stable yet. The first time I played, we had problems with synchronization, where shots would register as a hit and a kill on my end, but on my opponent’s side of things, they would still be alive and actively fighting. This is no longer a problem. Actually, the weirdest problem is totally out of the hands of the developer. It’s the type of people playing. I kept finding myself in sessions where players were not trying to kill each other, but instead building stuff. When I would go in to attack, they would boot me out. Huh. I mean, sure. It’s not like there are different, more appropriate voxel-based games on XBLIG that cater to that type of gameplay.
We had a ton of fun on stages that had cliffs, trying to blow the ground out from underneath each-other. What would have been really neat is if the game had to rely on structural integrity and you could cause massive cave-ins. Hint hint Maximinus Games.
Blocks and Tanks was developed by Maximinus Games(*NOW DELISTED* 80 Microsoft Points wish the build-gun worked better on water in the making of this review. Yea, that’s not a joke, but I had to squeeze that in somewhere.)
Having said that, if you look around enough, you should be able to find a real game where people have the courtesy to kill each other like civilized people. It’s not as supported as, say, Shark Attack Deathmatch, but Blocks and Tanks does seem to have a growing community. There’s a reason for that. It’s quite good. I feel bad for the guys behind it, that it’s going to be ignored by a lot of people who feel it’s just another generic Minecraft clone. It’s almost unbelievable that such an art style can now be considered a handicap on XBLIG, but that’s what it is now. If Blocks and Tanks had come out three years ago, it would probably be one of the biggest sellers on the platform. Talk about bad timing. It’s a genuinely good game that is worth your time and money. Unless you want to use it to build stuff. It’s not made for that you block heads. Tanks for nothing.
Blocks and Tanks is Chick Approved and Ranked on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard. Chompy Chomp Chomp already was, but hey, it moved up five spots!
Review copies were provided for both games by the developers. The copies played by Cathy were paid for by her with her own money. The review copies were given to a friend to test online play. That person had no feedback in this review. For more on this policy, consult the Indie Gamer Chick FAQ.
I wasn’t very nice to Hop Til You Drop when I briefly covered it a couple of weeks ago. It’s a twitchy single-screen punisher that involves dodging random hazards the game spits at you. I immediately grasped what the game’s schtick would be and thought “this could be addictive.” But then I died and found out that replaying the game meant going through a seemingly endless series of menus. After just a couple more plays, I decided my time would better be spent brow beating the developer for being such a dummy. My hopes were that he would fix his game. He did. Good thing too, because SWAT was closing in on my house. I admit, taking his family hostage might have been going too far, but at Indie Gamer Chick, we like to take that extra step towards improving the game industry.
None of these screens will make sense. Just look at Aaron the Splazer’s video at the end of this review.
A lot of developers seem to take my advice on aspects of game design, which I have to say is more fucking cool than you can imagine. But a lot of the advice I give them is stuff that they should have come up with on their own. In that spirit, I’m going to offer makers of punishers the biggest no-brainer advice you’ll ever get.
Make your game addictive.
Sure, addictive gameplay varies from person to person. But there are steps you can take to maximum the potency of a game’s addictive potential. It all boils down to the speed and downtime. If you’re making a game where players will die a lot, keep the time between death and rebirth at a minimum. Look at some of the most successful punishers in recent years. In Super Meat Boy, when you die, BAM, you’re back to life. It’s a game that could offer a lot of frustration, but because the game skips theatrics and bullshit in favor of gameplay, you don’t notice it. Who has time to be frustrated when that giant saw you’ve been trying to jump over for the last ten minutes is right fucking there? Spelunky did this too. When you die in it, restarting the game is done with a single button press. The lack of downtime is what gives those games their hypnotic “just one more try” quality.
Now imagine if Super Meat Boy’s failures resulted in theatrical death animations followed by a menu. It would have been relegated to gaming purgatory. Nobody would remember it today. Super Meat Boy is famous for many things. It’s art style, historical gaming references, and challenge. But its success probably hinged on how accessible it was. It’s a game that wanted to be played, and so it cut the bullshit out. Gameplay was continuous with minimal interruptions. This is something all punishers should have. And yet it’s among the most common things bad punishers have wrong with them. I know you guys have all played these games. So how do you miss such an obvious thing? It’s not about the insane challenge. It never was. Those games succeeded because they were addictive. When a person can lose time to a game and not realize it, that’s a game that is more likely to spread by word-of-mouth.
In a way, it sucks that I won’t have Hop Til You Drop to point to as the poster child for that particular problem. But I’m happy this simple problem was fixed. Now, the game is genuinely fun. Controls might be a bit too loose, and sometimes the random traps are just plain not fair. The biggest problem by far with Hop Til You Drop is that it’s on the wrong platform. It’s the perfect micro-session game, suited more for playing on Vita via PlayStation Mobile. Because it requires precision movement, I wouldn’t want to play it on a touch device like iPhone. But on Vita? This would be the perfect game to bust out on a break. It doesn’t lend itself well to extended play sessions, which is what a platform like XBLIG is better suited for.
But fun is fun, and Hop Til You Drop is fun. There’s even a couple nifty new additions like bullet-time effects that kick in when you have a close call with an enemy. Or a moderately amusing time attack mode. So I do recommend Hop Til You Drop. It won’t have a lasting effect on you. Without online leaderboards, there won’t be a lot to keep you coming back. But it’s a worthy waste of a dollar and probably fifteen to thirty minutes on your Xbox. Congratulations go out to Chris Outen for saving his game. By the way, your mother’s pinky finger should arrive by Fed-Ex tomorrow.
80 Microsoft Points said this game was one “S” away from being a video game version of a gameshow I watched as a kid in the making of this review. Though I usually only watched it because I was too lazy to change the channel after Supermarket Sweep.
Hop Til You Drop is Chick Approved and Ranked on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard. On July 1, the Leaderboard will go multi-platform to include indies from all consoles and handhelds.
I’m always skeptical of a game that tries to mix multiple genres. I picture they’re the product of a development meeting full of passive-aggressive types with no alpha-male to make the final decision. “Let’s do a RTS!” “No, a brawler!” “No, shooter!” “Tower defense!” And then whoever is in charge just sheepishly says “whatever, just do them all.” Often, those games turn out to be fairly mediocre. Jack of all trades, master of jack shit, or something like that. And thus with CastleStorm skepticism bells were ringing in my ears like someone had strapped me to a gong and smacked it with a wrecking ball.
Can you blame me? It’s part tower defense, but you simultaneously call people to defend your castle while actively shooting the opposing enemies and their castle with a ballista, thus turning it into a gallery shooter. But, sometimes you’ll have to take on enemy troops directly by calling your hero into play in a pseudo platformer-brawler. Huh. Plus, with the whole “knock over the enemy’s castle by flinging shit at it” angle, there’s a hint of Angry Birds in it as well. And all this from a studio whose claim to fame is a few video pinball games? I mean, I fucking adore pinball like you can’t imagine. But pinball is about as relevant to gaming today as bloodletting is to modern medicine. Not only that, but I had people on Twitter telling me they had played the demo and came away about as unimpressed from it as anyone could possibly be. Thus I mentally prepared myself for a weekend of boredom.
Which happened. When I watched Cloud Atlas.
Not when I played CastleStorm. It was very fun.
Full disclosure: early Saturday morning, I suffered a moderately severe seizure that pretty much put me out of commission for the entire day. It almost certainly had some influence on the rotten time I had playing CastleStorm online, which I’ll be getting to later. But the seizure also means I “lost” about two full hours worth of play time that I simply can’t remember. I am told I was having a good time during it though.
We downloaded our copies of CastleStorm on Friday night. The first thing that impressed me was how a game with so many play styles could actually tie everything together in a quick-to-learn package. It never feels like there’s too much to juggle. That’s the most common problem with these smörgåsbord games. So without falling into that trap, it should be clear sailing, right?
Well, not quiet. But the single player game is hugely satisfying with a wide variety of objectives and really snappy writing. There’s also a huge assortment of weapons, spells, and bonus rooms for your customizable castle that can be upgraded. Oh, did you say upgrade system? You mean that thing I’m known to abuse? Did I abuse it? You bet your sweet ass I did. One level involves “a frenzy” in which weapons don’t have a cool down time. Here, I set the difficulty to hard, upgraded my Sheep (which acts like the yellow bird in Angry Birds) to its max level, and ended up clearing out the level in six-seconds a turn. I just replayed it doing this for about an hour. By time I was done, every weapon, spell, soldier, and room was fully upgraded. Yea for abuse! I then steamrolled the remaining game. Well, until it forced me to switch over from knights to vikings.
D’oh.
In retrospect I probably should have seen that coming.
It doesn’t matter. I still had a great time. I haven’t actually finished the Vikings section yet. I got my $10 worth just from the first half of the game. Oh, I will totally finish the Vikings stuff at some point. But I plan on saving it for a time when I have nothing to do and I need an activity I know I’ll have fun with. That would be CastleStorm.
Graphically, the game looks pretty good, but I do have some complaints. The backgrounds are pretty noisy, with lots of stuff to distract you. Mind you, the game is beautiful, but I found this stuff to sometimes annoy. Now, that pesky epilepsy thing normally means I can’t touch stuff in 3D, but I figured those noisy backgrounds were so noisy because of the 3D stuff. Things that look like they could be in the foreground probably look further back if you play in 3D mode. But that’s not something I should risk. So I enlisted Bryce (who received the review code so that he could help me test online stuff) and Brian (who mostly just sat and gave Bryce advice, even when he was playing *me*. What an asshole, am I right?) to throw on the 3D glasses. They were both immediately blown away, declaring it the best use of 3D they had seen ever, movies or games. They raved about it so much that I threw the glasses on myself for a quick gander. They were right. It was absolutely stunning. More so than, say, Life of Pi or Avatar on 3D Blu-ray. Granted, because of my condition, I haven’t been privileged to experiment too much with my fancy-schmancy 3D television. I only had the glasses on for about two minutes and I wish I could have done more.
It looks a little Angry Birdsish, but the structures in CastleStorm take more than a couple shots to take down.
Onto the multiplayer stuff. This is where the seizure bit comes in. We didn’t play too much of the single-player stuff before we got into the multiplayer. Bryce and I played a few rounds against each-other and had a swell time. Your stats and upgrades from single player don’t carry over to online play. You get a starting budget that you can use to immediately upgrade some of your stuff. It probably wasn’t a good idea to spend that budget before I knew what I was doing, because once you spend it, as best as I can tell there’s no option to start over from square one. So I was committed to using shitty upgrades that can’t possibly help me beat people. That mistake was on me, but the horrible online setup is entirely on the developer.
And then the seizure happened. Completely unrelated to CastleStorm or any other game. I just have them every few days or so. This was a particularly nasty one that put me out of commission for basically the rest of the day. By the time I was able to play again, Bryce had put upwards of 15 hours into CastleStorm and I couldn’t hope to be competitive with him again. But finding online matches against people of my experience level wasn’t smooth either. I was a level one. The game mostly saw fit to pair me against someone who was a level 155. That’s not a typo. I’m not even sure how he got up that high. The game just came out on Wednesday for fuck’s sake. As it turns out, many people who were attempting to play on Live (including Bryce) would get stuck with this guy all weekend long. It felt like that World of Warcraft episode of South Park. The dude absolutely demolished me in, on average, 20 seconds or less. Fun? No. Annoying? Oh yea. Even worse, I never had a chance to make a single coin during these battles, which meant I couldn’t upgrade my stats. And even when it wasn’t pairing me up with Jenkins, I was way more likely to get paired up against guys thirty or more ranks higher than me than someone on my level. That meant quick losses and little if any earned coins to upgrade my stuff. It’s a terrible online system. Borderline broken.
There’s also a cooperative survival mode, which is a little more promising. The problem here is one person gets to have all the fun by being in control of the ballista. The other person assumes the role of the hero. In the main game and during the online battles, the hero is a spell you can cast that puts you directly onto the battlefield to hack and slash enemies for thirty seconds or so. It’s fun. For thirty seconds. But Survival mode lasts longer than that, and the hero has a limited moveset. He can swing his sword. He can jump. He can use a bow and arrow, though it’s slow to use and tough to aim with. Or, if you want to be fancy, he has a charge move. That’s it. It’s simply not a play style that lends itself well to extended sessions. Of course, Bryce was having a good time. Of course he was. He got to shoot things. And trust me, no matter what mode you’re playing with, the ballista is hugely entertaining to use, and scoring headshots with it is extremely satisfying. So he had all the fun while I got his sloppy seconds.
The game zooms in when you play as the hero. For what its worth, the controls of this mode are solid. It’s just not very fun past the usual thirty seconds you normally use it.
I wish CastleStorm had some kind of casual online mode where two people can have the same attribute points. Just have every weapon, character, room, and spell set to level 5 (out of 10). I would play the shit out of that. When the playing field is level, CastleStorm can be a great competitive game. The problem is it’s next to impossible to find someone who isn’t going to throttle you in seconds. As a result, games play out like a highlight reel of the Harlem Globetrotters versus Washington Generals, and you’re the Generals.
Regardless, CastleStorm is one of the most pleasant surprises I’ve had at Indie Gamer Chick in a while. It doesn’t really do any one thing exceptionally well, but the sum of all parts is undeniably engrossing. The online stuff isn’t so hot, but it wouldn’t take too much tinkering to get that right. But really, the reason to own CastleStorm is the single player stuff. It’s a fun quest, with a robust upgrade system. If you’re into building things, the castle customization stuff is apparently well done and easy to handle. I’m not into that kind of shit myself, but Brian took over for it and said it was intuitive and enjoyable. I don’t know if I would have had more fun if I hadn’t lost my entire Saturday and thus my preferred playing partner, but I still highly recommend CastleStorm. I went into it with my expectations set to “cautiously optimistic” and came away knowing that Zen Studios will never be known as just those pinball guys again.
Although I should probably mention that I absolutely LOATHED this level. See that big, mushroom-shaped mountain-thing? Yea. It actually blocks your shots. At first, I couldn’t even tell it was in the foreground. I constantly vomited curse words that my father didn’t even know I knew when stuck here, which is where most multiplayer matches seemed to be set in.
Oh, and one last thing: CastleStorm? Really? That’s the best you guys could come up with? CastleStorm sounds like something a sitcom writer would come up with on five seconds notice when they need the name of a fictional video game for the characters to be shopping for during the holiday episode. The actual game is oozing personality, but the name screams generic and forgettable. If it bombs in sales, it will be because of the name. Then again, the studio is called Zen Studios. Given how the frustrations of being paired with a guy 154 ranks higher than me induced a state of being in me that was anything but Zen like, I’m guessing their name is purely ironic.
800 Microsoft Points thought all the banter in the game actually sounded very pinball-like in the making of this review.
CastleStorm is Chick-Approved. In the near future, all indie games on all platforms I review will be ranked on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard. If you must know, CastleStorm would fall somewhere in the 20s.
A review copy of CastleStorm was provided to Indie Gamer Chick to test online features. The copy played by Cathy was paid for with her own money. The review copy was given to a friend who had minimal feedback in this review. For more on this policy, read this site’s FAQ.
From the studio that brought you the Oozi games comes an utterly generic, avatar-based punisher with bad level design. Can’t get enough of those. This is also one of those annoying auto-scrollers. Hate those in general. Especially hate them when they’re done vertically. I probably should have researched my game selection better, because there was almost no way I would have enjoyed Deadly Tomb from the get-go. Yea, it was a bit of a dick move for me to pick it. And if you’re expecting some Planet of the Apes style “it was a good game all along!” twist, think again. I played Avatar and the Deadly Tomb on the easy difficulty, because I’m shamefully bad at punishers and blunt in my admission of this. Even then, I found it to be beyond frustrating.
So boring I can’t even muster the humor to make a funny caption.
But, I think I must stress the difference between a fair challenge and an unfair challenge. I feel a fair challenge means you have a realistic (if far-fetched) shot at getting past an obstacle on your first attempt, using nothing but your reflexes and gaming acumen. When a player of any skill level has no remote shot of clearing some spots on their first try, that’s when a game crosses the line for me. It’s the difference between “smart-difficult” and “asshole-difficult.” Auto-scrolling punishers almost always fall into the asshole-difficult category, and Tomb is no exception. Things like timed-trap platforms combined with vertical auto-scrolling are just cruel, since your vertical field of vision isn’t as large as your horizontal vision. Not only that, but some sections of the game require you to clear timed sections, then drop down to a lower platform before climbing up. This is while a column of fire continuously rises. Unless you are 90% flawless in your run (which you probably won’t be), you have no reasonable chance of clearing these sections on your first attempt. By time you drop to those lower levels, the fire is probably already there and you’re doing your best impression of Frollo.
I’ve had this review sit unfinished for nearly a week now. I’ve made several attempts to finish it, but as of yet have been unsuccessful. Part of that has to do with the utterly generic theme. Whether or not I thought the Oozi games were ambitious, at least they aspired to look good. Avatar and the Deadly Tomb features a bland theme and boring graphics. It doesn’t exactly control that well either. The biggest problem is the wall-jump is handled the same way as the ledge-cling. Sometimes for those timed puzzles you’ll need to cling from a ledge. But most of the time you’ll just want to do wall jumps, but the clinging will get in the way of that. Screw it. I give up. There’s no way to describe my experience with Avatar and the Deadly Tomb in a stimulating way. The game was dull as a book on cooking with tofu, although I would recommend reading that over playing Deadly Tomb. At least you’ll get something to eat out of it.
80 Microsoft Points noted their avatar would never actually have the guts to explore a deadly tomb so the game made no sense from a story perspective either in the making of this review. Then again, my avatar wouldn’t snowboard, do parkour, or run across the top of a moving train either. It’s kind of a coward.
H.i.v.e. is a digital version of a moderately popular, award-winning tabletop game. It’s also one of those rare Xbox Live Indie Games that is officially licensed. You can think of H.i… you know what, fuck it, I’m not using the periods. Think of Hive as a cross between chess and dominoes. You’re given a collection of hexagonal tiles, each with its own movement properties. One of the tiles is a queen bee. You have to place the queen on the board within your first four turns. Gameplay continues until one queen bee has been completely surrounded on all sides, whether the titles belong to you or your opponent. In addition to the bee, there’s also ants, grasshoppers, spiders, and beetles. Ants can move to any free space as long as there is a path to get to it. Spiders must move three spaces at a time. Beetles can walk over and cover other tiles. And grasshoppers can only move by jumping over pieces. If you want to read the full rules, you can click here. You probably should too. Our first game didn’t involve any rule reading, because Bryce thinks rules are for squares. We didn’t know fuck all what we were doing, which explains why I lost to.. sorry Bryce.. a FUCKING MORON!
Of course, that doesn’t explain why I lost eight straight games to Brian immediately following that, but you shouldn’t dwell on that. I certainly haven’t. Sniffle.
Because there is no board, the camera sometimes has to pull pretty far back. But, worry not, because all the tiles are easy to see and distinctive from each-other.
H.i.v.e. is a lot of fun. I’ve never played the board game that it’s based on, but the interface created by BlueLine Games is well handled. I’ve always questioned the existence of video-board games that only strive to recreate the exact experience of the corporeal version. But actually, I think in the case of games like H.i.v.e., they serve a purpose of making complex games easier to learn. It lays out for you exactly what moves are legal, what pieces can be moved, where they can be moved, etc. It takes the edge off the learning curve to a huge degree. But, it still is a no-frills video game version of a board game. I firmly believe that the best video board game do things that only can be done in the realm of games, and that doesn’t apply to Hive.
Hive is also not without faults. As of this writing, online play is unstable. In thirty attempts at playing online, only eight games successfully connected. If both players are able to make an opening move, the connection won’t drop, but that barely happens a quarter of the time. The developers are aware of this issue, but I’m actually not grading against it. I preferred playing locally against human opponents sitting right next to me. You can play against the AI, which actually isn’t that bad as far as video game AI from a first-time developer goes. Early on at this site, I played Avatar Chess, which had genius-level AI even on the easiest settings. While the AI in Hive can lean towards the fierce side on medium, the easy setting is a good way to break into the game, but not so dumb that you’re embarrassed to play it. I can’t tell you how good the hard mode is, because I didn’t really try it. I had enough difficulty beating Brian, who isn’t exactly a rocket scientist. Not that I’m obsessed with the fact that I couldn’t beat such a simpleton. I’m not. Really. DAMN YOUR ACCUSING EYES, STOP LOOKING AT ME!!
So let it be said that Hive, a simple adaption of a cult board game, is the game that ended the Leaderboard’s losing streak. Despite having no apparent talent for it, I had a great time playing it. I even played a few rounds against my father, and it was very fun to bond over. I mean, he wiped the floor with me too, but I still had fun in my failure. I liked H.i.v.e. so much that I ordered the actual game off Amazon. So while it doesn’t really need to exist as a video game, I’m happy it does. And by the way, Brian can’t even remotely come close to beating me at chess, so obviously I’m better than him. I think that’s how it works.
A review copy of H.i.v.e. was provided to Indie Gamer Chick by BlueLine Game Studios. The version played by Cathy was paid for by her with her own money. The review copy was provided to a friend just to help test online functions. That person had no feedback in this review. Consult the Indie Gamer Chick FAQ for how this policy works.
After fumbling around with what might be the worst point-and-click interface I’ve ever encountered, my patience was stretched to the limit during one sequence in Life in the Dorms. While on a scavenger hunt, I accidentally clicked one of the beds in my room. What followed was an interaction system so comically awful that I was convinced that I had broken the game. Upon clicking the bed, the dude you control (named Dack, poor kid) walked over to the door. Then back in front of the bed. Then back to the door. Then back to the bed. Then the door. Bed. Door. Bed. Door. Bed. I couldn’t stop it. Door. Bed. Door. Bed. Door. Bed. No interrupt button. Door. Bed. Door. Bed. Door. Bed. Door. Bed. WHY IS IT DOING THIS? Door. Bed. Door. Bed. Door. Bed. A minute straight of walking back and forth. Door. Bed. Door. Bed.
Finally, Dack sat down on the bed, and sputtered out a one-liner bitching about how hard the mattress was. I turned to my boyfriend and said,
“Brian?”
“Yes, sweetie?”
“Please turn off my Xbox before I murder it.”
Despite the clunky interface, the puzzles of Life in the Dorms seem about as logical as your average point-and-click game. Such as “Use lightsaber to get toilet paper down from shelf.”
I’m sure the above CPU brain fart was due to a criminally horrible design choice that required the lead character to physically touch every object you point-and-click on. Though for the life of me, I can’t bring myself to the mindset where anyone could believe this was a good idea. Point-and-clickers are slow enough without having to watch your character lock into the appropriate place. The above example with the bed actually happened, and it kept going because the character couldn’t properly line up in the spot that triggered the “sit down” animation. That’s the only explanation I could come up with for why he staggered back and forth like a flash bang had gone off next to his face. But it wasn’t the only time I had problems.
I didn’t make it out of the first chapter of Life in the Dorms before my patience wore thin. I wouldn’t have even bothered going as long as I did if the writing didn’t at least hold the promise of being good. Unfortunately, the awful interface negates whatever potential the dialog had. Like going through a box of DVDs. Instead of being able to collect every DVD, the game plays out like this.
Step one: click on the box. Make sure you click the eye, which means you want to look at the contents of the box.
Step two: wait for the camera to hover over the box.
Step three: select one of the DVDs in the box.
Step four: Slowly pull the DVD out of the box and put it in your inventory.
Step five: Click another DVD in the box.
Step six: Dack will address the camera directly saying how he better put one of the DVDs back.
Step seven: you watch Dack put the DVD back, then the camera pulls back, then zooms in again when Dack grabs the next DVD you selected and puts it in his inventory. The length between steps five and seven is fucking atrocious.
It’s even worse because the dude who addresses the camera (and occasionally has awkward hugs with various NPCs) has no expression on his face except “I will steal your immortal soul.” Shit will haunt my nightmares.
This is one of the most clunky, cumbersome, awful interfaces I’ve ever seen. It’s like Life in the Dorms is overdosing from that slow-motion drug from Dredd. I just want to move the plot forward with as little resistance as possible. Yet every rinky dinky action requires Dack to turn and face the camera to address the situation, in what I can only guess is an attempt to break down the fourth wall. I’m actually embarrassed that I gave up on a game this quickly, even though I was an hour in and had made almost no progress. The only thing I could think about was “this is a point-and-click game. Those typically require lots of insane logical-leaps and guesswork. That means I’ll be seeing a whole lot of wrong guesses where the punishment is more slow movement from Dack as he turns to address the camera. Fuck that.” I think what happened is the developers forgot they had made a story driven game. Imagine if the only way you could watch a DVD was to fumble with the controller and push a random sequence of buttons, then wait for the next portion of the movie to slowly load up. So slowly that you see five minutes worth of story over the course of your first hour in. Nobody would find it unreasonable if you just moved on to something else. With that in mind, I’ll move onto something more exciting. Like sleeping.
Good news: these next two games made the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard.
Bad news: they were already on it.
Good news: both games moved up the board!
Bad news: Actually, there’s nothing but good news left!
Still not completely sold on Magnetic By Nature’s art-style, but it has gotten critical acclaim elsewhere. Guess I’ll hop on the band wagon and give them a quote for their next crowd-funding effort. Ahem. “Magnetic By Nature is Art-Decoriffic!” I’m such a sell-out.
Last month, I checked out student project Magnetic By Nature and enjoyed it well enough, even though the game had severe frame-rate issues. I just played through it once again, and the skipping is almost completely eliminated. Without it, you get to appreciate this smooth, very well conceived physics-platformer. Sure, I do wish it had more emphasis on physics-based puzzles. And sure, the controls still never become fully intuitive, but that’s the nature of the magnetic-based physics. They’re magnetic-by-nature if you will. Yuk yuk.
Like many twin stick shooters, you can’t tell what’s going on in Sherbet Thieves just from screen shots.
Okay, so Magnetic By Nature didn’t have a whole lot to improve upon. I can’t say the same for Sherbet Thieves, which just broke the record for longest gap between my original review and my Second Chance, at nearly twenty months. In that time, the game’s been overhauled with new levels, better balanced difficulty, smarter stage design, and a well-implemented unlimited mode. So what was already a pretty decent (if not memorable) title is now one of the better twin-stick shooters on the XBLIG platform. If you forgot it before, don’t forget it now. It’s a keeper.
I’m really puzzled as to why more developers don’t take me up on Second Chances with the Chick. Almost every game sees improved standings over their previous review. The best part about being an XBLIG critic is seeing so many developers hone their craft and improve upon the skills they’ve built. Really, there is no better way to witness evolution in action. Well, except by watching nature videos of the mudskipper.
Oh look. Tee hee, there is goes, thumbing its nose at creationists.
80 Microsoft Points each will be posting a special feature on the five games most in need of a Second Chance with the Chick in the making of this review.
Here are two games that seem like good ideas, but the execution is just a bit off, resulting in the losing streak the Leaderboard has been on continuing. First off is Bug Zapper, which comes from the developer of previous Leaderboard title Zomp 3 (#84 as of this writing). This time, instead of a Lolo-esq puzzler, Chris Skelly went for the good-old-boy pasttime of bug zapping, with the idea being you’re the one insect who is immune to the hypnotic glow of electric death device. Thus, you have to prevent your fellow pests from going towards the light. This is hilariously done by beating them to a bloody pulp. As far as solutions to potential problems go, that’s pretty fucking awesome. It would be like helping a coke head stay sober by breaking his nose.
Bug Zapper gives you a lot to keep up with, and in its present form, it really is too much.
As far as game concepts go, it’s actually pretty good. Bug Zapper also features upgradable stats and a wide variety of bugs to smack down. So what’s the problem? Well, I had two major problems. The first was I couldn’t get the hang of the throw controls. Bug Zapper heavily relies on throwing bugs into each other in order to rack up combos that build your special moves meter, but even with lots of practice, I had just as good a chance of throwing a rescued bug into the zapper as I did into another bug. This is because the swarms of bugs heading for the zapper is utterly relentless and you have to keep moving nonstop to have a chance to prevent them from dying. More control over what directions the bug could be thrown would help, because throwing at angles was imprecise.
A more troubling problem is the fact that the player can completely ruin the ability to throw bugs by picking the wrong upgrades. You can upgrade the strength of your punching and of your throwing. In order to throw a bug, you must weaken their health past a certain point, depending on how many times you’ve upgraded your throw. However, it is possible for you to have a punch so powerful that bugs are knocked out before being weak enough to throw. Since many of the stages later in the game rely on this ability, the result is you have to grind upgrade points to strengthen your throw. It really saps the fun out of it, because grinding doesn’t really fit well with this style of game. There’s a few other smaller issues dealing with the difficulty levels (consider “Medium” to be hard and “Easy” to be medium) and collision detection (it’s too easy to accidentally get zapped by the zapper), but there’s a real game here. It just needs a tiny amount of work to fix the pacing issues.
Screen from Hop Til You Drop. Not a fan of the background changing colors here either, but I didn’t play the game long enough to grow what was certain to be a hatred for it.
Speaking of pacing problems, I didn’t get very far into Hop Til You Drop at all. Why? Well, the concept is decent enough, I guess. You’re a dude who has to hop around a room collecting coins. The hook is, when you hop, the gravity switches and you end up walking on the ceiling, then back on the floor, etc, etc. Meanwhile, the game randomly spawns a huge number of traps that try to kill you. Just get as many coins as you can before dying. Simple enough. Hey, I’m into games based on high scores, even if they tend to suffer without online leaderboards, which I don’t believe Hop Til You Drop has. No, here’s my problem: rounds in Hop Til You Drop can be very, very short. That’s fine, if it’s done right. However, once you die, you have to first view a screen that gives you your stats for this last game. Then you have to go to main menu. Then you have to select your character again. There is no quick-load to start playing again, so you’ll spend as much or more time in menus then you will playing the game. Fuck. That. Jesus Farting Christ, hasn’t the developer ever played a fucking good punisher before? In the good ones, you die and BAM you’re playing again. There is no break. That’s how they become addictive, because they cater to that “just one more try” mentality. Hop Til You Drop openly fights it, and that’s why it sucks. The game itself is probably good enough to make the board, but I would rather give myself a swirly then play it again in its present state.
80 Microsoft Points said guys named Chris must have problems getting proper playtesters in the making of this review. It’s because guys named Chris are too sweet for their own good. Think about it. Do you know a Chris in your life? I bet you can walk all over him.
There were two reasons I’ve avoided the whole Minecraft craze and most of the clones that have followed in its wake. I figured I would either not get into them, or I would get too into them. I decided temperance was the best solution. Then again, I wasn’t expecting hundreds of requests for these reviews. Requests that come from people who already own and are fans of these games. I’m not sure why they want to know what I think, especially if they already like them. I guess my opinion is just that cool.
Well, while I certainly won’t argue that they’re badly made games (they’re not), I now have the verification I need that this genre isn’t for me. Probably. I mean, I couldn’t get as deep as I wanted in either of them due to my epilepsy, but I think I played enough to get the gist of it. I’ll start with FortressCraft.
You know how there are people who will get a set of Legos and come up with the craziest contraptions on their own? Yea, I’m not one of those people. When I was a kid, I would get a set of Legos, whip out the instructions, follow them to the T, and once completed, never touch that set again. I just don’t have the imagination to take a set designed for, say, Indiana Jones, and create my own Starship Enterprise from it. I’m just as bad at playing sandbox games. I need a specific goal when I play. FortressCraft has no goal. If you’re the creative type, hell, it’s probably exactly what you’re after. I tried to set a project for myself: a giant version of my Sweetie character. The little angry yellow-faced monster thing in my logo. But the monument never quite came out looking the way I envisioned.
Give me the world to mess around with and I couldn’t come up with anything to do.
I also had issues with the speed of building. This won’t be typical for most people. Unfortunately, the little ray-gun building thing that allows for faster construction is also what nearly triggered my epilepsy. So I was stuck using the slow-as-constipated-shit pick-axe. I don’t think it would have mattered either way. If you like to build voxel-style and want a clean slate to do it with, FortressCraft might be for you. For me? Not so much. This is a Lego set without my instructions. It leaves me like a flock of sheep without a border collie: utterly useless.
CastleMinerZ has more of a point. There’s zombies. I mean, hey, zombies! Who doesn’t love zombies? I’m fucking shocked that General Mills hasn’t added a zombie to their Monster Cereal lineup. Probably something that would taste like a blander version of Cap’n Crunch, only with stale marshmallows. Yea, I’m stalling. The truth is, whereas I could avoid having a seizure by not firing the build gun in FortressCraft, there was no way to avoid my personal epilepsy trigger in CastleMinerZ. There’s a lightning effect that seems to go off fairly regularly in the background. Thus, I was limited to smaller, shorter sessions. But even without the lightning stuff, I wouldn’t have been able to get into this. I’m not into the concept of zombies or voxel building. Getting into something that centered around both would probably be a sort of miracle.
I did almost get into a game mode that requires you to run as far away from your spawning point as possible. Unfortunately, in order to play this successfully, you typically have to be able to look up, so as to see and shoot the zombies. Looking up wasn’t really an option for me, unless I wanted to do my best impression of someone holding onto an electric fence. What would have helped was some kind of radar, so that I could tell where the zombies were spawning in at. However, what little I did monkey around with in the zombie shooting department slightly disappointed me, as it felt like there was no “oomph” to capping the undead. There’s so many games that involve shooting zombies, I’m really to the point where the act of killing them has to be satisfying in and of itself. Otherwise, it’s just as stimulating as shooting those mechanical ducks at the carnival.
I saw more dragons in five minutes of CastleMinerZ than eleven hours (at least that’s what it felt like) of watching The Hobbit.
If you’re into building stuff, you can do that too in CastleMinerZ. I couldn’t. Again, I tried to create Sweetie, and again it came across looking like a smiley face with two pink horns sticking out of its head. Then again, my logo isn’t exactly the most complex thing in the world and I can’t draw it on paper either. I think games like this or FortressCraft or Minecraft are probably designed with artistic types in mind. I’m certainly not that. Even in Terraria, I did NONE of the building when I played our main world with Brian. When I made my own world, the building were really just boxes with doors that took minimal effort to make. If you’re a into building stuff, you might like these games. They seem to play pretty well from a technical standpoint. I can’t compare them to Minecraft, but the graphics were crisp, the framerate was consistent (though CastleMiner had the occasional hiccup), and the controls are accurate. I guess. But I’m certainly not among this game’s target demographic, and my opinion shouldn’t factor into your purchase of either of these titles. I’m not really great at building things. Except animosity among Shenmue fans.
FortressCraft was developed by Projector Games (240 Microsoft Points asked if the whole “world is cooking” thing is what Al Gore warned us about).
CastleMiner Z was developed by DigitalDNA Games (80 Microsoft Points have a boyfriend who is PISSED about the Hobbit joke)
Please note: I know that for some people, the whole epilepsy and games thing is a sensitive subject and they get very vocal about how games don’t cater to their needs. For me, my doctor has made it perfectly clear to me: playing games is a risk, period. I can alleviate some of those risks through proper lighting, distance, and medication, yes. But, if a game gives me a seizure, it’s my fault, not the developer’s. If you have a preexisting condition such as me, I sympathize with you, but I also ask you to assume personal responsibility. I don’t expect developers to cater to my relatively rare condition, and you certainly shouldn’t DEMAND it like I’ve seen some people do. I’ve found that in my nearly two years of being Indie Gamer Chick, developers want to learn about my condition. I’m guessing they do that because I’m cool about it, and assume all the risk myself. So while I couldn’t fully play a game like CastleMinerZ, that’s my circumstance. If you’re an asshole to developers, you’re not helping. They’re eager to be educated, not yelled at. I generally start by pointing them in the direction of the Epilepsy Foundation. But seriously, just be cool and you’ll find they’re receptive. Indies especially.
Limbo was developed by Playdead 
1200 Microsoft Points honest to God can’t believe they just ported this thing to iOS. There is no fucking way this can be played well with fake virtual buttons in the making of this review.
Indie Gamer Chick 
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