Arkedo Series

Overview

The Arkedo Series franchise is essentially an experiment from French development studio, Arkedo (developers of Big Bang Mini and Nervous Brickdown). Arkedo decided to attempt to develop one game per month, and have since released three games (as well as announced an upcoming game). These games all share similar humor, faux-retro style, and colorful graphics. Having been released on the Xbox Live Indie Game Marketplace, each game has sold for 240 Microsoft Points (or $3.00) apiece.

Games

Arkedo Series - 01 JUMP!

 
The first game in Arkedo's experiment, JUMP! is a retro-style platformer starring Jumpman, a Pitfall Harry lookalike. The player must guide Jumpman through 30 increasingly difficult levels by jumping (naturally), picking up items, throwing knives, and collecting bombs. The key concept in JUMP! is that each level has a certain amount of ticking bombs that must be collected before the timer runs out. Sometimes, these bombs will have certain requirements before they can be collected, such as gathering a set amount of money.

Arkedo Series - 02 SWAP!

Arkedo's second Indie Game is SWAP!, a puzzle game similar to Tetris Attack and Pokémon Puzzle League. Described as a "dual stick puzzle game," SWAP! allows players to flip blocks horizontally and vertically as they constantly rise higher on the playing field. Matching up blocks at least four in a row vertically or horizontally is the key to keeping these blocks from reaching the top. The game also has a short story mode of five levels, starring King Kat.

Arkedo Series - 03 PIXEL!

Starring Pixel the Cat, PIXEL! is a side-scrolling action-adventure game. Players take control of Pixel and must traverse six levels (although these levels are much longer than JUMP!'s levels). Pixel can jump on enemies' heads, killing them and building up a meow-meter, which (upon being filled) allows Pixel to unleash a devastating meow.

PIXEL!'s key gameplay twist is that, at many points in the game the player will be required to "zoom in" to the individual pixels by holding the left trigger, and then examining them in order to perform a task (e.g. chopping down a tree, killing a guard dog). In addition to these required areas, there are three collectibles per level that the player can unlock by zooming in on specially marked blocks.

Arkedo Series - 04 SLASH!

The fourth game in the Arkedo Series has been announced, although there is little information regarding it. One of the developers mentioned in an interview that the game is planned to be "a mix between the Legend of Zelda and Geometry Wars." In addition, a post on NeoGAF by an employee of Arkedo indicates that work on SLASH! was put on hold due to another project, but they plan to resume working on SLASH! soon.