Xbox Live Indie-Dome is a weekly feature where we sift through the Xbox Live Indie Games Marketplace to find the best and worst… so you don't have to!
Hello! Hello! Hello!
Wow, sure is cavernous inside this Indie-Dome… thing.
No need to worry, though, I’ll be acting as your trusty guide. Join me, and we’ll explore the dark, unmapped, frightfully new games released this week.
And would you mind holding the flashlight? Great. Onward!
As always, not every release will get more than a few sentences. The games with multiple paragraphs have basically managed to stand-out due to their entertainment value and/or shockingly amazing awesomeness (these will feature the *Must Play* tag) or because they’re so incredibly terrible potential consumers deserve a warning (these feature the *Utter Failure* tag).
Remember, the Indie-Dome (like all reviews) is an opinion piece. The comments (or lack thereof) made throughout convey the reviewer’s thoughts on the overall quality (or lack thereof) of the submissions in a given week. These comments are not directed towards the developers, but rather their games. Seriously, we know most of you folks put a lot of hard work into these things, so please don’t take it personally.
Unless otherwise stated, only the trial versions were played and will be taken at face value. So if features present in the full version of the game are not shown or indicated in the demo, we obviously won’t be able to mention them. You don’t seriously think any of us has the money to buy each and every indie game that comes out each week, do you?
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Pew Pew Pew
(Developer: colossus00 – 80 points)
The title alone is enough to elucidate the coming experience, though not in a particularly great way. Despite its use of the universal onomatopoeia for space shootin’, Pew Pew Pew takes the vertically scrolling shooter formula and manages only to turn the intensity down to a considerably boring level. Your craft fires slow shots at waves of slower enemies — green space globs that seem perfectly content to drift lazily downward without staging any sort of attack. After a struggle through a single group of these non-confrontational beings, a “boss” alien materializes. It actually moves and shoots a bit, though if you can manage the acts of shooting and moving your ship simultaneously, it’s barely more of a challenge than the enemies that precede it.
Unless you’re in a slothful kind of mood, look for something a little livelier.
2010: A New Threat
(Developer: ANormalGuy – 80 points)
This Asteroids clone has a few initially promising additions — a customizable equipment loadout, speed boost, and power weapon — but it’s far too visually busy to effective use most of them. During the course of a game, money is gained from destroying the space junk surrounding your ship. Once you have enough, you can hit one of three face buttons to upgrade a corresponding part of your ship (i.e., engine, weapons, and armor). The trouble is, the screen is filled with violently careening objects, most of which can destroy you (and any cash you might have built up) quite easily.
Holiday Bonus
(Developer: Grey Alien Games – 80 points)
It’s a little late to capitalize on the holiday season, but if you need a Bejeweled stand-in and don’t mind a Christmas theme, you could do a lot worse than this competent match-three game. Aside from its obvious aesthetic trappings (a couple festively-skinned game tiles and puzzle shapes), there’s nothing out of the ordinary here, though the basic gameplay is still enjoyable in bursts.
SkullAttack
(Developer: simiansoup – 80 points)
Whack-A-Mole meets… skulls? It’s not a terribly exciting or original premise, and its pacing is a bit skewed, but SkullAttack at least gets the twitch-based part of things right. Like their mole counterparts, these skulls pop up in random succession for you to hit. The holes they emerge from are placed in patterns that correspond to the four directions on the D-pad and the four main face buttons, which at least makes the act of bopping each skull intuitive and ergonomic.
Cosmic Cab
(Developer: bluuuSKY – 240 points)
*Must Play*
With a soft visual style, calming music, and an emphasis on gettin’ people where they need to go, Cosmic Cab is one-third Viva Pinata, two-thirds Crazy Taxi. Controlling the sensitive thrusters of your rocket-cab hybrid to navigate a pleasant outdoor environment while battling gravity and a waning time limit is surprisingly challenging and rewarding. Delivering passengers to their destinations at remote points of the stage is often an intense task, especially when you have to contend with your ship’s limited fuel supply and general fragility, but precision control of the ship’s thrusters and general direction (along with convenient repair/fueling stations) alleviates frustration and encourages taking more daring paths and maneuvers.
Honor In Vengeance
(Developer: XM – 240 points)
After an extended open that’s eerily similar to that of Mass Effect, the game launches into an all-out space dogfight above Earth. Though the mechanics of combat are rudimentary (steer, accelerate, shoot), it’s the surprisingly ambitious presentation that’s worth noting. The massive, ever-changing cloud of ships you’ll battle is impressive (and a little daunting) to observe as you weave among them in a 360-degree field of motion, high above the looming planet, and the quality of the music and voice samples only add to the polished experience.
Controller Doctor
(Developer: The One Eye – 240 points)
*Utter Failure*
Wanna know if you controller’s still as healthy as the day you brought it home? This diagnostic claims to have the answer. Though it touts 13 different tests, each designed to deliver accurate feedback on the responsiveness of various part of the 360 controller, Controller Doctor doesn’t actually provide any results in the demo; you can mash any combination of buttons for any test and it won’t make a difference. You’re better off trusting your own controller intuition and avoiding this one.
Block Destruction
(Developer: Angel Z – 80 points)
I suppose you could consider this game a success, in the sense that it basically accomplishes what it’s designed to do as an Arkanoid clone. Which is fine, considering singleplayer block breaking is still endlessly fun in most of its forms. There’s nothing overly special about the way Block Destruction plays, but the mechanics are solid, the powerups are varied, and the overall package is clean.
(Almost) Total Mayhem
(Developer: Peanut Gallery – 80 points)
*Must Play*
Imagine Fat Princess, but faster paced, with a hand-drawn art style, and only two players per team. That’s the closest parallel I can draw to the chaotic, pseudo-cooperative nature of this game. You and an AI partner battle two AI opponents on a battlefield drawn upon notebook paper; the first team to successful destroy the other’s castle (a feat accomplished by repeatedly lobbing a single, highly-contested bomb) wins. It’s an addictive, seamless melding of capture the flag and death match that’s hard to pull away from.
Distant Galaxies
(Developer: LEM – 80 points)
The second vertically scrolling space shooter in this week’s Dome is more energetic than the first, but only just. There’s a greater emphasis on item collection, which leads to more movement around the structure of the stage, but there’s little reward aside from a slight life bar increase. The enemies display the same sort of unfortunate lackadaisical quality, which slows things way down and kind of negates the better qualities.
Extreme Skill
(Developer: DUALHAZE – 80 points)
The core concept of this “extreme” platformer isn’t awful, but the mechanics and presentation certainly are. Jumping is woefully imprecise, which leads to many undeserved deaths, restarts, and instances of exposure to a horrible, looping song. It’s incredibly frustrating, but not in a controllable, fun, Super Meat Boy way.
Junk Fields
(Developer: Jey en – 240 points)
*Must Play*
At times, I can’t tell whether Junk Fields is an intentional parody of a mech-combat game, or the genuine product. It doesn’t matter, though, because it’s surprisingly competent and fun either way you choose to look at it. The music is over the top, the HUD and mechanics are a bit hard to parse, and the grammar is atrocious, but just about everything else — shooting, flanking, customizing — is far better (and more fun) than what I’d expect from most indie games.
Lethal Judgment Origins
(Developer: frigiere – 80 points)
This Gradius-style shooter has a few simple, promising features which are largely negated once you actually start playing. Both ships available at the outset come equipped with standard shooting and bomb attacks. You can upgrade these weapons by collecting the remains of destroyed enemies, but the screen floods with ships so quickly and fully that getting to that point is a rarity.
Alpha Squad
(Developer: DragonDivide – 240 points)
This twin stick shooter/adventure game looks to have both more gore and more depth than most indie games. If you like either, look for our review soon.
Mazeoto
(Developer: 10K31 – 80 points)
Though the concept of first-person shooting crossed with maze solving still doesn’t hold much appeal, this game at least takes a step in an interesting direction. If everything moved a little faster, if the act of shooting was more impactful, and if the frequent encounters with the immobile robot guards that line the corridors had real intensity and consequence, Mazeoto could actually be a fairly addictive game.
Onager!
(Developer: RustI games – 80 points)
Capitalizing on the success of Angry Birds probably doesn’t require an exorbitant amount of effort. At the very least, Onager! seems to make a fairly concerted effort to play well, which it does for the most part. The physics of bird monster killing are spot-on, and the handful of puzzles were decent, but I experienced some odd discrepancies with aiming and launching.
Hyper Button
(Developer: MikeVentron – 80 points)
If you have enough inner-child left to enjoy some more mini games, you might enjoy this slew of them centered around the Xbox 360 controller (which you also have, hopefully). Watch for our review!
Paper Sky
(Developer: CrimsinRaven – 80 points)
This papercraft shmup is as easy on the eyes as it is to play and enjoy. Destroying hordes of helicopters, spaceships, and parachuting army men is whimsically fun and not at all frustrating (a first for this week). Factoring in the complementary auto-collecting XP and a stable of worthwhile power-ups, Paper Sky is good, solid fun.
Star Dash
(Developer: RVG Rascal – 80 points)
Advancing frantically up a platform-filled shaft while racing the clock and collecting stars is about as fun as it sounds, which is to say momentarily. Unless the lure of a high score is enough incentive for you to overlook a floaty jump mechanic and a repetitive structure, Star Dash probably isn’t worth your time.
Pixelbit Snooker & Pool
(Developer: Game Group – 240 points)
I’ve never understood the appeal of virtual pool, but that’s probably because there’s no way to move the balls when the other person isn’t looking. Regardless, keep an eye open for our upcoming review.
Super Sequence
(Developer: DandySoft – 80 points)
I can enjoy a memory game every now and then, which means it’s not the conceptual basis of Super Sequence that bores me to the core. Even with its optional tiers of difficulty, the game lacks the whimsical pull that makes something like Simon fun for more than a couple minutes.
The Charge
(Developer: ZebraGames – 80 points)
The Charge is light on actual input, but heavy on visual feedback. Navigating a ship through scattered rings while hurtling down a claustrophobic tunnel from a first-person perspective is endlessly fun. The frustration of restarting due to a crash is eliminated by a “lock in” system, which checkpoints your progress as you attain certain speeds, and makes The Charge surprisingly easy to slip into.
TwinStick: This Ain’t No Picnic
(Developer: Broke Trophy Games – 80 points)
Though shooting insects off a picnic blanket hardly sounds like typical twin stick shooter material, this aptly-named game takes some clever steps to ensure it is. While the lower difficulties revolve around the most basic of TSS controls and concepts (single character, simple attack, etc.), the highest difficulty maps direct control of a single “stick man” to each stick. If you can build yourself up to that point, it’s wonderfully chaotic.
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*Must Plays*
- Cosmic Cab (240 points)
- (Almost) Total Mayhem (80 points)
- Junk Fields (240 points)
*Utter Failures*
- Controller Doctor (240 points)
