So, this week I decided to spend a little of my spare time trialling a few Xbox LIVE Indie Games and noting down my impressions of them. I’ve never wished to discredit the work of aspiring, young developers out there, especially not as I’m currently studying video games programming myself, but I’ve felt like on the whole the quality of the stuff on Xbox LIVE Indie hasn’t been all that... Well, good. On my venture through the depths of the Xbox LIVE Marketplace I hoped that some of the games I found would help prove me wrong. The rules I set myself were that I could only play the trial of each game once, up until the trial time for it expired. I also tried to pick a fairly random handful of Indie games for the sake of fairness. So, without further ado, here’s my quick review of the first four of the eight games I tried out.
Zombie Accountant
I didn’t feel like there was much incentive to keep moving at high speed as you only lose lives when you run into an office worker. If you stay slow it’s easier to collect documents, dodge office workers, and there’s no easily discernible penalty for doing it. Overall I feel like Zombie Accountant is a solid game though; it has fairly competent graphics, it keeps itself simple, and the levelling component genuinely made me consider jumping back into the trial for more.
Ubergridder
Ubergridder is a top-down action game where you control a vehicle which can only move along the lines of a fixed grid. As your vehicle moves along the lines it leaves a trail behind it, and should you be able to paint your trail around the entire border of the various rectangles on the grid, those rectangles will be filled in. The goal in each level is to fill in all the rectangles on the grid while avoiding the enemies, although enemies can be stopped temporarily through the use of traps you can drop on the track. In fact this game is pretty much Amidar.The game has a rather sci-fi art style and in general looks good. I felt a bit restricted by only being able to move along the lines, and holding the control stick in one direction, in anticipation of reaching a point on the grid where you could change your direction felt somewhat janky, but perhaps these are more personal gripes than anything. Unfortunately I encountered somewhat of a game-breaking bug multiple times while playing. Occasionally I’d appear to highlight all the way around the sides of a rectangle but it wouldn’t be filled in until I moved back over one of the corners of it. For the price it’s sold for some might be able to get a certain amount of enjoyment out of Ubergridder, but I’d rather just download Game Room and buy myself a copy of Amidar.
Break Limit
I felt like Break Limit had a lot of potential and I really wanted to like it, but I felt there were also a lot of issues that added up to mean that Break Limit couldn’t be everything it should’ve been. Firstly, the shooting mechanic felt rather uncomfortable. The ship will not only shoot straight ahead but will also shoot at a very slight angle, however it feels just plain awkward tilting the control stick very slightly right or very slightly left to be able to shoot at the angle I’d sometimes want. Secondly, warnings, information about upcoming paths etc. are usually spelled out in pick-ups. Not only does this seem like a very lazy way of giving the player feedback but it leads to situations where the game just plain slows down so you can focus on the “text”.
I also generally didn’t like the attitude of the game. It’s a minor detail but meaningless pictures of the developer’s dog and throwing in phrases like “EPIC FAIL” for no particular reason turned me off of the game a little. Enemy variety was another problem, with the only enemies I encountered being asteroids and moving walls that would damage me if I bumped into them. In fact encountering the moving walls was a bit of a low point for me; it seemed like I’d been bumbling through the game with a fair amount of ease and then all of a sudden the game threw a series of obstacles at me which seemed very difficult to work my way through without using the limit meter.
I’d encourage people to try out Break Limit but until they can tighten up some aspects of the game and smooth out its various issues it’s not going to be a game I want.
Alpha Blasters
Alpha Blasters is the most easily describable of these games yet. It’s basically Geometry Wars, but less frantic and using faux pixel art instead of faux vector graphics. I loved Geometry Wars, and I’ve made a couple of top-down shooters myself, but I didn’t enjoy this. The best part of the game by far was the pixel art, but with the game being so close to Geometry Wars I couldn’t help draw comparison between the two, and when I did it just made Alpha Blasters feel slow and sluggish. The only real surprise within the game was the difficulty suddenly jumping up when certain enemies I destroyed released enemies that were much smaller, much faster, and much harder to see than everything else on the screen (partly due to being masked by the explosion of the dying enemy they spawned from). This led to the game inappropriately gaining a slightly heightened sense of urgency and then slowing back down painfully fast once I’d defeated the enemies. In the end I decided I was done with the Alpha Blasters trial when one of the enemies spawned on top of me, ridding me of my last life.Overall the game is far too much like Geometry Wars, but lacks originality and excitement.
Pause Screen
So, that’s the lot for this week. I’ll be back next week with my thoughts on the other four games I tried out but I warn you, it gets worse before it gets better. Good luck, have Batman.-Gamer_152
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