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Xbox LIVE Indie Games - The October 2010 Thread

HadesGigas said:
That's not really a problem, or what the complaint is.

The problem is the list doesn't update at all right now.

the list is updating. there are games released Oct 2nd/3rd which were in the list on Oct 3rd/4th - which shows it's updating. it hasn't actually been an issue this week from what i can tell... it's just not always updating at a regular interval - sometimes it'll wait 2 days, sometimes just one day.. occasionally even 3-4 days will go by without it updating properly - and if a new game is released during that time, it'll lose out.
 

Kafel

Banned
Explosionade will be released in minutes.

http://catalog.xna.com/fr-FR/GameDe...d=00619bce-1b42-48b9-a412-60e43473fcd8&type=2

edit :

it's out

http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-us/games/media/66acd000-77fe-1000-9115-d80258550684

screen1_Web.jpg
 
PepsimanVsJoe said:
Sniper Defense huh?

So now one can expect to see a deluge of Sniper games on the service...

Haven't played the other Sniper games but Military Sniper Sim 3.XX something is great. You actually have to compensate for bullet drop and wind and when you shoot you have to press the trigger with even pressure instead of just pulling it.
 
ExtraKr1spy said:
Haven't played the other Sniper games but Military Sniper Sim 3.XX something is great. You actually have to compensate for bullet drop and wind and when you shoot you have to press the trigger with even pressure instead of just pulling it.
It really is. It's in one of these monthly threads somewhere, I loved it.

Explosionade is great, of course. I highly recommend the first thing you do is to map jump to the left trigger or something though, the default puts it on (A) and with shooting on the right trigger, it's impossible to do both together. Once that's sorted though, it's excellent. It's kind of the gameplay that Comic Jumper has, but instead of being boring and tedious, it's fun and exciting. Levels are short, enemies go down quicker, everything is chunkier and so shooting feels so much more satisfying, and enemies flash when you hit them which is some nice feedback. If you didn't enjoy Comic Jumper for any of those reasons, this is the game for you.

Fruitbash was unexpectedly cool, too. It's basically Jewel Quest, if you've played that. And basically Bejeweled, which I know you know. So you have to match three, and whenever you do so, the squares behind turn gold. Turn all the squares gold to clear a level. I'm not actually sure where the challenge comes in, in Jewel Quest you were working to a time limit but here there's nothing like that, so I've no idea if you can actually lose, but the gameplay is pretty solid aside from that.
 

scitek

Member
Wanted to say I hope everyone tries out Explosionade. I'm looking forward to trying out the co-op tonight with a buddy of mine. Not enough use out of that second controller lately.
 

GDJustin

stuck my tongue deep inside Atlus' cookies
Great thread as always. I'll be checking many of these out after I pry myself away from halo.
 

Teppic

Member
I've never really paid any attention to the indie games section, but now I see there's a lot of interesting games there.

Any good multiplayer ones?
 
Off the top of my head, Kong360 and Tank Battles.

I'm sure there are loads more though.

EDIT: Decimation X too and... D'OH, HYPERSHIP!
 

GDJustin

stuck my tongue deep inside Atlus' cookies
Bought Inferno thanks to this topic. It's great. Easily a game I would have paid $5 for as a proper XBLA release.

I also demo'd Ophidian Wars and Explosionade thanks to these topics. Both are probably worth $1 but I wasn't blown away by either. They felt more like amateur efforts than Inferno.
 
Crossfire is great value for a dollar.

As, unfortunately, are none of these games. They're certainly not worth more than a dollar as some of them want you pay.

Deadly Space is the best of them, but it's not brilliant. It's tower defence set in space, and it should have a great style but for some reason it chooses to only show you the very nearest parts of the grid, so you're constantly scrolling around just to see what's going on. It's really only playable because it plays the most basic game of Tower Defence imaginable, so you can't really do much wrong as far as gameplay goes. So, so many better examples of the genre.

Field Archer is just annoying. It looks nice, in a way, but then covers it with ugly presentation. It's also simply irritating to play. You're basically sniping at animals that don't move and it's impossible to have any fun with because your bow is constantly moving around. I've done archery before and I'm pretty sure I didn't just shake the bow around randomly as if I was looking through a scope on a sniper rifle at a target a mile away, which appears to be this games source. Useless.

EleMental Orbs is some kind of Dr Mario game which has unresponsive controls in that they just don't bother responding at all. You press left and nothing happens. You press leeeeft and nothing happens. You press left left left left left and nothing happens. You press left left left left left left left left left left left left left left left left left left left left left left left left left and move one space to the left. Completely unplayable.

Zombie Academy, also crap. The mode you can play in the trial lets you move left and right and jump over spikes to avoid skulls that are being thrown at you. Except you can't jump over spikes. You just move left and right and hope that the game jumps for you. Completely bizarre idea and somewhat pointless.

Controdazone is an alright idea, but it's not fun to play. There's four players and you score when you're in the zone, which moves around. So you just shoot at the other players and try to get into the zone. It's impossible. You can't follow the fire at all so whenever you're anywhere near the zone you just bounce away and away and you have no idea why. You can use power-ups which make it possible to get some points on the board, but it's not a fun way to play.

Avatar Kung-Fu is boring. You move left pressing X to kill ennemi [sic] and that's it. Everything's a one hit kill and it's dull. Does not feel like much of a game.

Dungeon Tales is some kind of RPG thing but doesn't make any sense. You bounce around using attacks to destroy bits of wood with symbols representing those attacks on, and then you kill some chickens, heal some chickens, and then do something to your brother because the chickens are dead, or something. Then it just puts you in some huge fight completely out of nowhere.
 
So Microsoft probably heard mommy's best complaint (and probably other countless emails about it) about top downloads being broken. Seems like Microsoft responded with removing top downloads AND top rated (at least on the new dashboard).
 
jam86 said:
So Microsoft probably heard mommy's best complaint (and probably other countless emails about it) about top downloads being broken. Seems like Microsoft responded with removing top downloads AND top rated (at least on the new dashboard).

And new releases.
 

OnPoint

Member
Just finished the 10th wave of Hypership Out Of Control today. That game was fantastic. If anyone is on the fence about it, well, get off and buy it. It's only a dollar and totally worth it for the song alone.
 

SapientWolf

Trucker Sexologist
OnPoint said:
Just finished the 10th wave of Hypership Out Of Control today. That game was fantastic. If anyone is on the fence about it, well, get off and buy it. It's only a dollar and totally worth it for the song alone.
I got an error trying to download the demo the first time but I'll try again. I wonder if MS temporarily throttled demo downloads or something.

jam86 said:
So Microsoft probably heard mommy's best complaint (and probably other countless emails about it) about top downloads being broken. Seems like Microsoft responded with removing top downloads AND top rated (at least on the new dashboard).
Is that dashboard wide or only for XBLIG games?
 
SapientWolf said:
I got an error trying to download the demo the first time but I'll try again. I wonder if MS temporarily throttled demo downloads or something.


Is that dashboard wide or only for XBLIG games?


Think it's dashboard wide for now. And Indie Games are totally buried in a new "Specialty Shop" which is in turn buried in the Game Marketplace with no option to sort via newest. Not sure if that's final or not, if it is, it's basically killing Indie Games except for the hardcore fans.

EDIT: Yeah, it's so screwed up, I didn't even know Explosionade was out. Guess I'll have to rely on this thread more from now on.
 
Score Rush revealed, a 1-4 player shmup, based on the award-winning Duality ZF engine, for Xbox LIVE Indie Games and a launch title for Windows Phone 7 (single player only). Amazing stuff. Score Rush features a hard-rocking guitar soundtrack courtesy Nick Dragonas of Dragon Music Productions. (P.S. Decimation X2 is also a Windows Phone 7 launch title. Don't miss out.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWybAqrSJMI
 

Spike

Member
Just want to thank you for these threads. I don't really get into the Indie section of XBL too much, so when you highlight these gems it really helps.

Thanks.
 
Out now, JForce Games's controversial Zombie Avatar Massage Online!



Also out... a very weird voice acted text adventure full of drugs, sex, and internet memes, Get Rich or Die Gaming:


Maybe it's good that the game marketplace is broken for a lot of people right now...
 
LocoMrPollock said:
Think it's dashboard wide for now. And Indie Games are totally buried in a new "Specialty Shop" which is in turn buried in the Game Marketplace with no option to sort via newest. Not sure if that's final or not, if it is, it's basically killing Indie Games except for the hardcore fans.

EDIT: Yeah, it's so screwed up, I didn't even know Explosionade was out. Guess I'll have to rely on this thread more from now on.

Well that seriously sucks, there's so much good content hidden away on there now, and yet Microsoft continually seems to shit upon the service.
 
toythatkills said:
Snailien Invasion is Worms, I s'pose, but without the turn-based aspect of it. Two big issues here. The controls I couldn't get on with at all. You have to aim with the right stick and then fire with the right trigger, all the while aiming with the right stick to use your ninja rope(tm) with the left trigger, and it's just too much to deal with at once, to say nothing of all the other controls. Then there's the ninja rope. In the trailer, this looks awesome, swinging around firing on stuff. In the game, you're zoomed in so much that you can't actually see anything at all to grapple on to, and you just have to keep firing the rope off-screen in the hope that you connect with something. I just didn't enjoy a single second of playing it.

Re-reading the thread, I completely disagree with this post, I realize this is your topic but Snailien invasion does not deserve to be in a category of the worst games (there's plenty out there, take your pick of something else). The game is a solid effort, great graphics/animation (I would say better than the majority of the picks in gold/silver/bronze) and unique game play mechanics. Yes, there's a learning curve on the controls and they won't win control of the year but they are manageable. I will say this, it's not worth the 240pts, at least not for me. The trial suffers from bad choices (trial maps are pretty bad), and you're right the game could do with a better camera system. It has the potential to be a great game, unfortunately the demo doesn't sell the game very well (strong multiplayer focus game but the trial defaults to a half-ass "survive the waves" mode), but even then it's far from being a bad game.
 
Cutouts! is out now. 2D platformer with neat construction paper art style. Though the trial is painfully easy. Finished the 2 levels (out of 9 in the full game) without getting hit and with plenty of time left in the trial. Also no d-pad support. Hate 2D games that don't even give that as an option for people who own controllers with decent d-pads. Oh, and the spiky goomba-likes are apparently not spiky. I spent half the first level thinking you couldn't touch them cause spikes + feet = hurt in every other platformer.

Trailer
 
I watched the trailer of that earlier, it looks nice. I got a kind of Apple Jack-y kind of vibe when he was bouncing on the enemies head to get over the spikes.

People (slowly) look like they're catching on to Hypership Out of Control. Loads of people talking about it on podcasts and stuff. GOOD PEOPLE! re: the other thread, I dunno how many people heard about it via me/here/that, but Drunken Gamers certainly did <3

So anyone that heard it from there and told people... etc. Man, we really could've done good.

Word's spreading though. Needs to spread more. Does anyone know what its ratings/chart position is in Japan? Hypership is pretty perfect for that market, I'd have thought.
 
toythatkills said:
Hypership Out of Control - Does anyone know what its ratings/chart position is in Japan? Hypership is pretty perfect for that market, I'd have thought.

I thought wrong. Bad Japan! :lol

Ratings/chart positions for Hypership worldwide. Indie Games are in a lot of markets that don't give a shit about Indie Games, it seems. Unless you just can't rate stuff in Singapore, or something.

Link also confirms that the UK has the best taste in games :p
 

Ventron

Member
toythatkills said:
Link also confirms that the UK has the best taste in games :p

Does the UK like turn-based RPGs? :lol I'm hoping there's a market for those on XBLIG still...

2637io6.png


I'll likely finish Bonded Realities after the dashboard update, there's conflicting reports as to whether it will help or hurt the channel.
 
Dr Zhivago said:
Kotaku article about the JForce debacle:
http://kotaku.com/5646905/the-controversial-saga-of-the-zombie-massage-makers

Sadly, yet predictably, said massage 'game' is in the top downloads list.
Probably helped in no small part by Kotaku drawing attention to it. If they covered proper games instead of just writing shit lolling at the crapps, maybe some proper games would sell more. An article on Kotaku really boosts a game's sales, but they ignore Indies as much as everyone else, unless it's just to say how rubbish a massage app is or how the service is full of them.
 
toythatkills said:
Probably helped in no small part by Kotaku drawing attention to it. If they covered proper games instead of just writing shit lolling at the crapps, maybe some proper games would sell more. An article on Kotaku really boosts a game's sales, but they ignore Indies as much as everyone else, unless it's just to say how rubbish a massage app is or how the service is full of them.

This.

But is true that those games dosn't need Kotaku attention, they just sell, how anyone would pay one dollar/euro for such stupid apps, I don't know.
 

sciplore

Member
LEUCISTIC WYVERN is a japanese game that was recently put up and I kinda like it. The controls are weird to get use to but I imagine its suppose to be like Panzer Dragoon (never played the series though so I could be wrong) or some of the early 3d graphic games.

Gameplay Trailer
 

acm2000

Member
sciplore said:
LEUCISTIC WYVERN is a japanese game that was recently put up and I kinda like it. The controls are weird to get use to but I imagine its suppose to be like Panzer Dragoon (never played the series though so I could be wrong) or some of the early 3d graphic games.

Gameplay Trailer

its nothing like panzer, its just an after burner clone
 

SAB CA

Sketchbook Picasso
acm2000 said:
its nothing like panzer, its just an after burner clone

Actually, I'd say it's more like an attempt at Panzer's Dragon flight/character, crossed almost EXACTLY with Space Harrier. The bosses mimic Space Harrier, some of the enemy types and formations, sound effects, and even stage structure.

It's not too bad a clone, though! Especially for a dollar. At first I found myself not liking the controls and explosions taking up too much screen space, but after a while, I started to feel almost as agile and on-point as I do when playing Space Harrier.
 
They fixed the indie game section. It's back like it was where you can sort by newest, top downloaded and rated, IGN picks and also you can now sort by 6 or 7 different genres, which is pretty handy.

It's still buried in the new specialty shop, though.

Picked up Explosionaid. Game is really awesome, especially for a buck!
 

Ventron

Member
I just peer reviewed Radiangames' Fluid. It's my favourite of the bunch because it isn't actually a shoot-em-up, you just need to collect lots of things while avoiding...other things. Like a modern Pacman set in your bowels with hundreds of red ghosts to avoid. It should come out soon.
 
Ventron said:
I just peer reviewed Radiangames' Fluid. It's my favourite of the bunch because it isn't actually a shoot-em-up, you just need to collect lots of things while avoiding...other things. Like a modern Pacman set in your bowels with hundreds of red ghosts to avoid. It should come out soon.

Yeah, it passed peer review and should be out any minute. Start the hype machine! The poor guy deserves to break even or make a profit for the first time ever on his 4th game in 6 months.

What other developer can you think of that has made that many games that close together that are all at a good quality level?

http://radiangames.com/
 

quickwhips

Member
I don't know if its mentions but decay on xbox live indie games is amazing part 2 is out and part 3 comes in november. Ive had alot of fun with the game.
 
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