Retrocade: DataStream Y2K600

So for the past two and a half years I have been scanning the Xbox live indie games new release tab just about daily. I have my own routine: Click A, Move Thumbstick Right to View Gallery, scan images to determine if game is worth playing.

Screenshots aren't my only metric for making the gameplay determination, I play about 90% of the games that are released, the screenshots cull that ten percent with mechanics that can be completely determined from the screenshots, if I can visualize how your game plays in my head, why would I need to play it? What I am really looking for is something that I haven't seen before,

The above screen is obviously depicting a frogger clone reminiscent of the early 1980's. In other words RETRO. Something that we have all seen before by definition. So why did I instantly download DataStream and play it for upwards of an hour non-continuously? Well, for one thing it's fun.

Indeed, RBG Entertainment has this to say about their own game,

"Pure unadulterated game play that the entire industry was built upon. No fancy graphics, no social media BS, and no silly advertising tie ins; Just rock solid retro fun."

Actually, the textual overlays on the screenshots caused me to lol in real life, and whenever a content description causes this reaction, the content is added to my download queue instantly, no questions asked.

Datastream is at its core an implementation of those classic Atari carts that came loaded with multiple variations upon a single gameplay theme. Frogger is the nucleus as previously mentioned, but I always found the linear nature of frogger to be quite limiting. Luckily RBG entertainment has brought Frogger back to its roots and twisted the mechanic beyond all comprehension. Yes, you control a block of pixels and yes, you will be moving up, down, left, and right avoiding other pixel blocks while attempting to collect others but you will be doing so as a pixel block itself.

The frog has become irrelevant, Datastream is what I refer to as a pure game. One stripped down to its essential elements. I quite enjoy these types of games.

Each variation comes with its own set of rules, each slightly different, each slightly similar. I only enjoy playing one variation though, depicted here,

I am one colorless pixel block amongst many, but I have fallen out of the flow. My only purpose is to collect errant yellow blocks while avoiding my colorless brethren who are sliding past at varying speeds and lengths. Quite fun actually. I do suggest you try it.


Click To Download The Trial of DataStream

Snake Man

Ah Snake, That most classical of the classics. Xbox Live Indie games has not been wanting for its lack of snake clones since its inception back in November of 2008.

Snake360 was released 8 days after the service launched. I know this after a few seconds of use of what I think is a very powerful tool for the Xbox Indie Searcher, the Xboxindies.com filter. In the past I used that official game list over at the MS Apphub but its interface was horrid and it did not allow me to filter how I wanted. The funny thing is that xboxindies.com has always been in the vanguard when it comes to sorting and displaying XBLIG.

Coming to the point of this post,

 SNAKE MAN

Snake Man is in my opinion the cream of the cream when it comes to snake clones on the Xbox Live Indie Marketplace, the filter mentioned above lists 14 games that can be found by using the keyword Snake. One of these is a Silver Dollar abomination that has nothing to do with Snake but is listed due its title "Murder on Snake Road" And two are quite similar, Snake 360 mentioned above and Snake 360 lite. I have strong opinions when it comes to my Indie Channel, I feel that lite releases have no place.

So according to the filter, 12 Snake games. I feel that this number is a bit low.  Undoubtedly there are some snake games that do not list the word Snake in either their title or description. This is no cause for alarm, all that is needed of the filter is the addition of user generated tags, something that I hope will be implemented shortly.

Oh yeah, if you haven't already tried Snake Man I suggest you do, it is surprisingly good. It's retro inspired feel and progression style leads the player towards the do a little better next time mentality, which is the hallmark of the classics.

Cuckoo Crack

"Is this that angry birds for the Xbox?" She asks.

"No." Although the aesthetic is quite similar.

Cuckoo Crack, recently released through the Xbox Indie Marketplace can probably trace its origins to Defender, although in Cuckoo Crack, we are only given two options for control of our bird, The left trigger, which when pressed translates to a flapping of our bird's wings, giving the Cuckoo an upward thrust. And the right trigger which causes our bird to "lay" an egg. Lay enough eggs in the seemingly infinite number of nests and advance to the next round.

A game such as this is made or broken on the strength of its artistic sensibilities and sound effects. Cuckoo Crack delivers on both fronts. I must admit that pulling off a triple lay in the same tree, results in a most pleasant, "ping, ping, ping" to eminate from my speakers. To me, the most satisfying feedback in the game. The looping background music, although not too grating is easily muted by a simple press of the Left Shoulder Button.(note to devs: If you find yourself with an unused button when your game is nearing completion, consider turning it into a volume control. Your gamers will thank you for the option.)

Once I got the hang of the physics involved,  internalizing the rate of egg drop calculated against the speed of horizontal velocity, I found myself completing the game's 5 levels in about 15 minutes. The game then asked me if I would like to play again, I did click yes but did not notice any change in the difficulty or speed for this Challenge round level 2 so I simply quit the game. It's probably a good thing that I did.

Cuckoo Crack makes use of multiple scrolling backgrounds, all scrolling at various speeds. When this scrolling stopped, the room began to scroll. The motion aftereffect from Cuckoo Crack is intense. If you're sensitive to this affect, you might want to give Cuckoo Crack a try just to experience it.

As I mentioned there are 5 levels in Cuckoo crack, but only two types of challenges, a score challenge where you are asked to rack up a score by laying eggs, and an egg laying challenge, which requires a certain number of eggs to be laid in a certain amount of time. Both types of challenges come with a timer of 3 minutes.

In the later levels, the game speeds up about every minute or so, It might actually speed up based on score or by number of eggs laid, either way, the fact that the game scrolling speed does speed up is what's important here. If the developer had an easy to find weblisting, I would have asked why an infinite mode was not added to Cuckoo Crack, where the player can simply play for as long as they would like, as long as their reflexes could keep up with the increases in game speed of course.The after effect might be interesting as well.

And I have now spent quite a bit more time on this review than I actually spent playing the game, so I must stop.

Epic Dungeon

The best roguelike on the indiechannel so far.

Click To Download the Trial

I'm a gambler and my favorite stat is luck. It's all about the gold and I was stockpiling it. But my supply of health potions was dwindling. Fortunately I found a store around Depth 3 but the trader's prices were steep. I left everything behind for a few precious potions. What use is gold if you're dead?

At around Depth 6 I picked up this odd looking quarterstaff. It would certainly be better than the simple dagger I was using to fend off those pesky spiders and bats. If nothing else the weapon had some reach.

Once I touched the weapon though a strange weakness passed over my body and I could barely lift the staff off the floor. I tried dropping the cursed thing but my hand refused to obey my mind's command. This didn't bode well. I spent some time on Depth 7, circling the corridors, practicing with my feeble weapon in the hopes I would gain some semblance of skill with it.

It was to prove futile, as a pack of wild dogs finally got the best of me on Depth 10.

Epic Dungeon is the first game to be released as part of the Xbox Indie Games Winter Uprising. A response to treatment the Xbox Indie Channel has received from gamers, developers, and Microsoft themselves. What will this uprising lead to?

But more importantly how does Epic Dungeon play?

Quite good actually. Even though a few seconds into the game, I was about to fly into a rage concerning the lack of diagonal movement. My thumbs felt constrained, attempting to translate my mind into a mode of action that the game did not allow. After a few minutes however my thumbs were properly trained and I understood the game's need for a strict four way movement pattern. (Apparently you can move diagonally, maybe I wasn't pushing hard enough.)

The game is simple to pick up and play. At least for someone familiar with the Roguelike ;) My practice of skipping the instructions screen before the first play did not prove detrimental to my experience of the game. At intervals throughout the game, friendly little popups appeared at the top of my screen telling me what all the buttons on the controller do. After my first playthrough I did check out the help system and found it to be simple but informative, very nice.

Throughout the dungeon you might meet fellow crawlers and perhaps even some locals. They are represented symbolically by a question mark on the map, the standard quest depictor. Press the button and,

Short textual quests, with the possibility of a reward if you answer correctly? But what is correctly? I chose the way of the gambler and it worked out most of the time. These mini quests are a nice break from the action of the dungeon crawl which can get a little frenetic at times, especially when you are surrounded by multiple monsters and the screen starts flashing red, urging you to drink a health potion.

After a few short playthroughs as a gambler I decided to switch to the Shaman. Epic Dungeons Wizard archetype (and the type I usually play). The Shaman has a freezing AOE attack that allowed me to make it out of Depth 50. This was only my third playthrough of the game and it took me about an hour and a half. So I've beaten the game, not something I expect to do with a roguelike on the first day of playing. But Epic Dungeon isn't your typical roguelike.

For one thing it's not quite turnbased, the dungeon's monsters move on their own terms and if you need a few moments to think about your situation you will need to pause the game. Or just open up your inventory and use a teleport scroll to port to the nearest shop, and load up on health potions.

Combat in the game is pretty standard, simply walk in the direction that you wish to attack and if there's an enemy in your way you will swing your weapon. Besides the standard attack, there are four unique special attacks. Each one mapped to a button. As you level you can increase the number of times you can use these attacks in sequence, up to a maximum of ten. I've only used two special attacks in a playthrough, managing to chain all four together would probably be pretty difficult but I'm sure it can be done.

You probably already know that the game's art direction is influenced by the 8-bit. This style influences the modern gamer greatly, its visuals and sounds having been deeply imprinted into our minds at an early age, and connotated by many emotive aspects.  It's obvious that Mark, the sole developer behind the game had fun with the art. There are a lot of nice details here, animated traps, and scroll effects among other things. I really enjoyed the detail put into weapon and armor types.

I just wish the game lasted longer, maybe for Epic Dungeon 2?

Epic Dungeon

Click To Download the Trial

Sketchy Tower Defense

Normally I don't review games based on my impressions with the trial but I haven't made contact with the developer of Sketchy Tower Defense, Pixel Troll Games And as such I have no review token to redeem :(

But I have loaded the game multiple times and played through the first level to extreme satisfaction. The game is currently high on the top downloads list on the XBOX and if the rest of the game is as good as the trial, I think it could climb even further up the list.

Click To Download The Trial To Your XBOX

Above is an image from Homestead, the first level of the game. I've made it to Wave 27 so far and will try later to beat this mark. The game is obviously named for its visual style, there is something pleasing about the handdrawn aesthetic isn't there?

The appearance of paper on an electronic medium makes any game that uses this aesthetic stand out instantly and draw the user in. There are quite a few sketched games currently available on the XBOX Indie Channel, and even another handdrawn? tower defense game. Sketchy Tower Defense is definitely my favorite thus far.

Sketchy Tower Defense allows me to play not against the game but against myself, even now I am considering strategies to allow me to progress past Wave 27 on the first level.  It's possible that there is an end to each level that I have yet to reach. This would slightly disappoint me. But given the nature of Tower Defense, limited enemy types, limited weapons. At some point the game would just have to increase enemy speed and toughness ad infinitum until the tower is inevitably destroyed. But this is what leaderboards are for, if you're into that sort of thing and I think we might be.

The limitations listed above are not set in stone however, allowing the user to draw their own enemies and weapons would infinitely expand this game. Allowing the user to share their enemies, weapons, and levels would be nice :)

Indeed there is a game on the XBOX Marketplace that allows for a bit of this sketchy goodness,

Below is an image from Border Wars which allows for user drawn content,

But if handdrawn games are really your thing, perhaps you need to stray a bit from the XBOX and venture into enemy territory, namely the iPhone and SketchNation,



The developers of Sketch Nation are working on allowing users to sell their games created with Sketch Nation as individual games through the Appstore. An impressive feat to accomplish. And one that the gatekeepers of our indie channel could definitely learn from.

Back to the topic at hand,

The game features single player, co-op, and a pvp style. In Co-op each player controls a sketcher and can build whatever they like, provided they have the coin to do so. Coins collected by one sketcher are equally distributed between each sketcher. In the PVP style the game board is divided into two sections, one for each sketcher and the game is played through normally. Last sketcher standing style. Perhaps in an update the PixelTroll could include a Ramparts style PVP game.

I have a few minor quibbles with the game of course. There are no explanations for what the various weapons you buy actually do. Did PixelTroll expect us to use trial and error to discover the game's meaning? I'm still not sure what Air does even after using it, and finding out that the pit traps are one time use was a bit disappointing but I'm sure over time I will figure out the best strategies for all the different objects we can place.


The future definitely looks good for Sketchy Tower Defense and the hand drawn genre.

-Ben

BlurBalls

In case you've been asleep for the past 50 years, the image above is from Tennis for Two. An early variant of what would later come to be known as Pong. Below is a screen from BlurBalls, Pong circa late 2010 developed by BlazingForge Games and now available for download from the Xbox 360 Marketplace.

There have been a number of Pong variants released to the Indie Channel, most of them first attempts by new and usually solitary gamemakers. BlurBalls is a bit different. According to the developer's website 

Blazing Forge Games, seven people had a hand in the game's creation which is definitely a deviation from the norm.

Getting more people involved in a project is definitely a good thing, indeed it is the only thing,

 "The salvation of mankind lies only in making everything the concern of all."

But I digress, did this localization of multiple minds/bodies produce a new and interesting gaming experience? This is what we are after are we not?

BlurBalls is definitely aesthetically pleasing, the visual and auditory components of the game are solid. The bright style of the game reminds me of Geometry Wars, perhaps the devs were trying to capture some of that retro evolved magic that made Geometry Wars so succesful.

In the screenshot above and below you can see the game supports multiple balls on screen at once and multiple paddles, up to 24 paddles actually. Most of those would be controlled by the game's AI as the game only supports up to 4 players each needing a separate controller. Setting up 20 additional AI paddles is a bit time consuming, the game forces you to manually select each AI paddle position and type of which there are many.  

It doesn't appear as though the game allows a single controller to control two paddles either. Given the dual nature of the thumbsticks this could definitely be implemented. Although in most dual control games I find myself having trouble splitting my mind to accomodate the style. But I think Blurballs could do with a foosball/table soccer kind of setup. There's a table soccer game on the marketplace that uses this style but again, my thumbs have trouble separating themselves into two unique individuals.

In classic Pong, I enjoy visualizing the angle of return, the vector that the ball will take as it bounces off of my paddle and heads back to my opponents side of the court. This is the sole strategy of Pong. BlurBalls destroys this singular version of the game instead forcing you into a stream of instant decisions and a lock of vision to your home court.

When I first tried the game,  I thought that those swaths the balls cut through the court were actually having an impact on the mechanics of the game, or that the walls of the court were transmutable, able to be demolished after obtaining a powerup. Alas, there does not seem to be any powerups in the game and most everything you see in the screens above is simply eyecandy to use the local vernacular.

The game can get quite chaotic and on the larger screens with multiple AI Paddles, you might find yourself not really in the action at all, instead you simply watch the AI play out this futuristic ball game. But I think on a simple court with 4 controllers and 3 friends, you could set up a nice game of doubles.

-Ben

Moonshine

Travel back in time to the prohibition era and use old timey spreadsheets to manage your liquor empire.

Click To Download

Moonshine is an implementation of the turn based stock simulator, one of the oldest and possibly most satisfying types of games. Who doesn't like to accrue ridiculous amounts of virtual currency, all while reclining comfortably on your couch?

In Moonshine, currently available via the Xbox Live Indie Games Channel, the stocks are replaced with various forms of liquor, the manufacture of which was illegal back in the 1920's. The boxart above depicts a remote shack where a few enterprising individuals would come together and produce Moonshine, or the hard stuff.

Indeed, Moonshine starts you off in a simple shack, represented on the screen by a wrinkled page with scrawlings depicting the rise and fall of liqour prices,

If you buy a storehouse, you can afford decent paper

Buy low and sell high, the trader's mantra. I quite enjoy these types of games, even though in real life I tend to give everything away. Go figure.

Every day you can check the local paper for anything that might affect the day's liqour prices,

  

I pity the fool that plays this on a SDTV

Then you click over to your spreadsheet and buy and sell. Although I don't know why the developer felt an extra screen was needed to actually purchase the liqour, why not enable this from within the spreadsheet? After that there's another screen where you can upgrade your storage facilites, and a few other things. Then you end your day and do it again. Pretty basic stuff.

The news items are pretty interesting, a mix of the real and the surreal. The game features a collection of music that obviously took some thought to put together, and the game has quite possibly the greatest credits screen on the indie channel so far, but I feel as though there is something lacking here.

Perhaps it is the lack of variation at the game's core, On the first day buy Moonshine for 10, then wait 3 days, and sell. Look for a liqour that is low then buy and wait for it to rise. I bombed past the dev's high score table in Quickplay mode pretty quickly doing this.

Quickplay only lasts 30 days and I don't think it has the police raid option turned on. I'm going to try a longer game soon, you can set the game to last up to 365 days, and adjust the frequencies of  raids. Although in Moonshine, a raid is simply a loss of a portion of your liquor stores.

The game is currently on the top downloads list so there is some interest in the game, hopefully it is enough to spur the developer into working on Moonshine V2.0

-Darthy

Singularity

Click To Download

Another relativistic space game? Or is this a simple asteroids clone? It is both, and it is neither, and yet I can't stop playing.

I've been trying just about every game to appear on the xbox indie channel as of late, much like the folks over at Xnplay. But where they deem every game worthy of at least an incomplete sentence, I can go months without sparing a word for anything. At any rate, Singularity has affected me enough to make a new post.

A simple splash screen tells us that we are trapped, along with our mothership, in orbit around a black hole. Then the game begins. Asteroids start flying in form the corners of the grid, shoot them! No wait, conserve your ammo and let them drop into the singularity. We should only destroy them if they are a menace. My mothership circles the other side of the blackness unprotected. One impact, then another, and finally she explodes. I take a look at my fuel gauge, pretty good for awhile. But what hope is there, in the emptiness of deep space. A warning klaxon breaks the silence, oxygen levels critical. I wait as long as I can, but the oxygen eventually runs out. A short burst of the thrusters and we drop into the depths.

Docking Maneuvers

Singularity boils down all the complexities of a physics based space maneuvering game into an easily playable experience. No complex HUD, no ridiculous tutorials, just play. And then die, but at least you get to post your time to a scoreboard to keep track of how long you lasted.

One thing I did find odd though, after docking with your mothership for refueling you are soon ejected back into space. I couldn't understand the reasoning behind this. The mothership doesn't have any cannons, so I guess that might be it. But seriously, why would you design a mothership with no offensive capabilities?

If you enjoy the calmness that only deep space can provide, occasionally punctuated by an exploding asteroid or two, then why not,

Click To Download

Avatar Showdown

 

Click To Download The Trial  

Jump to Token Contest

I've been a bit of an agnostic when it comes to the Avatar Marketplace. I haven't partaken of the real money for fake clothes debate, which usually boils down to someone being an idiot in every discussion anyway. I am a huge fan of funny hats though and when I saw this gem I just had to have it.

Yeah, that's me!

You might notice I bought some sweet goggles and a tshirt as well. I purchased these items before the release of Avatar Showdown but they have definitely come in handy for the game. 

Smackdown!

 

My hat and goggles combo evokes a sense of silliness in my competitor which in turn leads to a lowering of my foes defenses. Their demise quickly follows. And by quick I mean between 3-7 seconds, which is your window of random opportunity for mashing a button and bringing the pain. May those with the quickest fingers and the fastest connection reign supreme!

I asked some of the devs at Jforce Games, the team behind showdown for more features, for some reason I always want more features, and here is a response, "The goal of Showdown was to have a quick dev time, very simple game that would raise awareness and money for Unstoppable. So right now we don't have any plans to add to it apart from fixing the online mode."

Well, I am definitely more aware of Unstoppable now and with over 1400 sales in two days, I think Jforce games is well on their way to the raising money portion of their goal as well.

So what are you waiting for?

Click To Download

By the way, I've got three tokens for this game to give away, so if you would like one, just send me a link to your avatar in the comments or by email (operativewords@gmail.com). You can look at your avatar here, scroll down to the view images portion on the bottom right. Modifications to the image are fine!

http://www.xbox.com/en-US/live/avatars/

The three funniest avatars get the tokens! 

We have our first entry!! YAY! A happy droog from A Clockwork Orange. Pretty neat, do you have a funnier Avatar? Another Entry!! Sort of an older, happier mario lol. I suppose this contest will end in a few days perhaps Tuesday March 2.

                                              hodsey2008                              cagix

Contest is over, congrats to the winners!!

-Darthy

Soul

 

Click to Download the Trial  

The latest offering from KYDOS Studios: Soul, now available on the Xbox Indie Games Channel is a very artistic and sometimes extremely difficult dexterity game. Categorizing Soul thusly might actually be a little naive but we must place things into their proper genres until such time as they break free into new and unexplored gameplay territory. Let us take heart in the fact of the to be continued message upon completing Soul, and let us hope for an even greater amount of experimentation from KYDOS with the games sequel.

Have you ever wanted to traverse a duodenum?

Upon starting Soul we are presented with very little in the way of options. In fact we are only allowed three customization choices, Wimp, Normal, and Hardcore. As has been my style of late, I firstly chose to experience Soul at the Hardcore setting. It appears that these settings affect a number of variables in the game, including but not limited to the speed of your soul, the veracity of the soul eaters as well as implementing a timer for each level on the hardcore mode and a limited number of lives. If you have mastered The Impossible Game and are looking for a bit more depth, Hardcore Soul might be the game you are looking for. One of the game's developers, Christophe has professed to beating the game on Hardcore, albeit only once.

Needless to say, after a few minutes at this level I switched over to the lowest setting where I was able to take my time and I began to really enjoy the game. Souls gameplay really emerges on one of its early levels, The Elevators. This is also the level that might bring you close to your frustration threshold.

Never Give Up

Just about every level afterwards introduces a new mechanic, one of my favorites is the limited view level called The Cavern. As I made my way through this cave I wondered if it would be possible to create a type of random cavern generator, complete with functional treasure chests and varied obstacles. I could definitely see myself spending quite a bit of time in those caverns.

Soul shows us there are still numerous gameplay mechanics left for us to explore in 2 dimensions and if you are an indie games developer or perhaps aspire to be one, Soul will probably give you a few ideas for your own game project.

-Ben

Hypno Vol. 1

Click to Download the Trial

Hypno Vol. 1 is dark, but its a good kind of dark. The kind that lets you enjoy traveling around the city forcing complete strangers to strangle themselves. Yes there are missions to be done and objectives to complete in this latest addition to the Xbox Indie Games Channel, but I feel as though the game's strengths lie with a sort of free play that can happen as you venture around, trying to come up with new and improved ways to kill.

The main character in our story is Lydia, a hypno.

 

She has been gifted with the ability to imprint on people's minds anything that she has previously ripped from the minds of others. In the beginning, Lydia's powers are weak. All she is capable of are simple things like forcing people to strangle others, or themselves. But her powers grow by feeding on the depravity of those around her. And new abilities are unleashed as she reaches milestones of mayhem, such as kill three innocents at once.

Hypno opens with a very disturbing cinematic, which is sadly not shown in the trial version of the game. The developer, Andrew Gaubatz told me that it's absence in the trial was due to the eight minute time limit Microsoft imposes on all trial versions of indie games. The cinematic's inclusion would have meant all you would see of the game in the trial would be the cinematic. But after seeing the cinematic I think anyone with even a modicum of decency would instantly purchase Hypno Vol. 1.

Did I mention that Lydia is blind? To her the city is a perfect grid, free of the colors and distractions that others face as they walk through its streets. All are the same in Lydia's world. All are but thoughts to be changed and manipulated as she sees fit.

Each death is accompanied by a very nice and very graphic depiction

Yes, You are the green dot. Your potential victims are the numerous black dots, each with a personality, each with a trait to be stolen or manipulated.

What are you waiting for?

Purchase the Game.

-Ben

Alien Breed: Evolution Episode 1

Can we call this one an indie?

 Click To Download the Trial

Jump to Xbox Indie Channel Specific News

I just rewatched Alien, Aliens, and got about halfway through Alien 3. These films are best enjoyed by turning off the lights, turning up the sounds and watching those hapless miners get eaten one by one. This is how you should play Alien Breed as well, barring the getting eaten part. Although on Elite difficulty this is sure to happen on numerous occasions.

 

I normally don't even bother with the hardest difficulty settings, leaving them for that special breed of gamer occasionally called hardcore. But Mark, the Team17 PR guy told me to check out elite and write about my experiences.

I started limping towards the end of level 1, those damn bugs had gotten to me, the screen greyed out, my heart started pumping, but I had already lost so much blood. One more bite and I'm dead. I loaded the last of my shells into the shotty and prayed I would make it to the elevator. 

About halfway through level four I got pinned in a small room, out of ammo and healthpacks. Knowing that just around the next corner a swarm of bugs is waiting and all I have is a puny pistol. No chance, lol. I plan to start over on Elite and watch my ammo usage but for the time being I turn the difficulty down a notch and do the old run and gun through the whole game

Alien Breed Evolution Episode 1 was released in December to the Xbox Live Arcade and it has been my main game ever since. The first part of a planned trilogy, with the other two parts to be released sometime in 2010.


The Xbox Arcade has come a long way in its 5 years,

 One of the service's first titles. And one of my favorites.

Alien Breed Evolution is one of the latest

The graphics on the Arcade have certainly improved quite a bit, While the pricing has remained curiously similar.  Average price per game, ten dollars. I doubt those early ventures into Xbox digital distribution had a development cost of nearly two and a half million dollars American though. Which is how much Alien Breed cost to create. To cover that, Team17 needs to sell roughly two hundred and fifty thousand copies. This is a trilogy though, so we have to divide by three.

83,000 copies of each episode sold to break even, but who wants to break even? Lets hope Team17 sells millions of copies!! If we take a look at the leaderboards, we can see about 10,000 users. Team17 has told me that this is not an accurate representation of their sales figures, but even if we double this number there is quite a few more sales to be made before they hit the 80,000 mark. This feat of sales is certainly possible, take a look at this handy chart showing users for arcade games. A number of games far surpass the one hundred thousand user mark.


 Worms, an earlier release from Team17 has nearly five hundred thousand users.

But for every Worms there are hundreds or thousands of Crazy Mice. Games which for some reason or another don't sell nearly as well as the developers wished they would.


I mentioned above how Alien Breed has been my main game for the past two weeks. What else have I been playing? 

RogueTouch  $2.99
Rogue   Free
Nethack   Free
Cavern   $2.99
iNetHack   Free  
Sword of Fargoal  $4.99

Yes, those are all iPhone ports of  The original Rogue.

The graphics of these games aren't quite up to the quality in Alien Breed,

 Cavern

Rogue Touch

But I have been playing the shit out of them!!

There's just something about the Rogue type of gameplay that has kept it fresh these past 30 years. UberGeekGames is even developing a Roguelike game for the Xbox indie channel which is currently available for 240 Microsoft points. Dungeon Adventure Trial. Uber is taking a retro approach which is commendable.

UberGeeks Dungeon Adventure

 But I believe there is a huge untapped market for a game that looks like this,

Alien Breed Evolution

And also has the infinite replayability of the Roguetypes. To test this theory I have been playing Alien Breed in the Rogue style. I start a new game on a random difficulty and choose a random freeplay level. I then zone into the game's core, disregarding all communication from npc's, ignoring the minimap. Actually, the game plays much better this way. Thankfully, the devs made all interactable objects green, so all I have to do is run up to the object and hold A, and the next door opens. At the end of each level the game scores you for things like speed, ammo conservation and avoiding damage. Similar to the scoring systems in Roguelike games. 

Yesterday I cranked it up to elite and loaded level 1, with the intention of playing through without using any healthpacks or grenades. There's an achievement for this, probably achieved by most players on rookie difficulty though. There's also an achievement for not taking any damage on Level 5, but it might be bugged. I was doing pretty good and thought I might actually make it, but a couple of brownie swarms ambushed me near the end and I lost some blood, and started limping through the corridors. A pack of facehuggers finally finished me off right in front of the elevator, and I got to watch them chew on my corpse. Maybe tomorrow I thought.

During a recent run and gun, I found the atrium. The amount of details put into some of the ship's interiors is pretty amazing.  After quickly dispensing with a few brownies I was able to really look at some of these plants. Exobotany is an area of special interest to me. To be honest the field is pretty theoretical at the moment. It doesn't even have a wikipedia page. But that looks like a pitcher plant on the left there, albeit a huge one.

 

As I strolled around the atrium, examining the rest of the ships flora, Something kept nagging at the back of my brain, I wondered why would anyone grow such a Nitrogen demanding plant inside of a spaceship, where the Nitrogen is sure to be in high demand. I also noticed the screen starting to dim a bit. And then it hit me, They use this mutated version of Nepenthes truncata to recycle their waste, it makes perfect sense. The shape of the plant is perfect don't you think? The screen suddenly greyed out and I heard "Oxygen levels Critical". Oh yeah, this was the room where you had to turn the gas back on.


Alien Breed Evolution is an episodic game in three chapters. Partly because the game file would be quite large to download all at once, and partly because Team17 thinks that an episodic game will be better able to recoup the costs of the game's production.

Each Alien Breed episode will feature unique selections of weapons, environments and aliens. I am personally hoping for much more of an emphasis on alien plant life, maybe even getting the chance to visit the alien planet that the ship is currently on a collision course with. Vehicle exploration would be cool as well. (Sadly, these two features are not planned for Alien Breed Evolution) 

Team17 hasn't released pricing details for Episodes 2 and 3 but I think it's safe to assume they will each be priced similarly to Episode 1, ten dollars. So, thirty dollars for the entire game. Dead Space is currently available to download for twenty, more on that below, and certainly the scope of that game is much larger. Team17 believes that Deadspace is a different game with a different market and that twenty dollars is still a large chunk to pay out for a single digital download. They are interested to see how Deadspace fares in the On-Demand section of Xbox Live however.

There has been some chatter on the tubes concerning the similarities between Alien Breed and Dead Space, a scifi alien survival game which was released for the Xbox in 2008 and won numerous awards. Before writing this review I had never experienced Dead Space, having not played a disc based game in over six months. I logged onto Xbox Live to see if there was a demo available, there is.

Try the Dead Space Demo 
Interestingly, you are also able to download the full version of Dead Space for only twenty dollars American.

Something that really grabbed my attention in Dead Space was the way the game displayed information.

Dead Space HUD

That's an image of the holographic display, used for your inventory, maps, and communications. That screenshot alone was enough for me to want to download the trial. The display technology in Dead Space is eerily similar to what they used in that Southpark episode where Cartman travels to the future in search of a Wii.

 The screen was brought up with a simple hand swipe

Alien Breed uses a more 2-dimensional method for information display. 

Throughout the game you happen upon a series of logbooks that give you some textual information abut the characters as well as the aliens in the game. The logs are placed in such a way that you'll find them either shortly before or shortly after you first encounter a new type of alien.

Imagine this with blue static interference lines running through it

Despite the difficulty of reading blue text on a blue background and the paragraph jumping in lieu of actual text scrolling, I enjoyed reading the logs. They do give some good information about the aliens you'll encounter, including  some strategies for dealing with them. The logs are filled with names like maulers, chargers, and breeders oh my. They also give a few physical characteristics to go along with these names.

I tried to tell one of the creatures to hold still while I attempted to determine the length of its mandibles so I could classify it, but it didn't comply with my request. Instead it tried to bite me. Luckily I had my shotgun pointed straight at its head the whole time and quickly fired off a round. The bug's head exploded along with the aforementioned mandibles, destroying any chance at identification.  I decided to give them names that would make them easily identifiable at a distance. This would allow me to choose the right weapon for the situation. These bugs come at you fast and switching weapons can be a bit difficult.

 Facehugger :)

Brownie

MIA and Conrad

The Alien Breed story is advanced by a few comic book style cutscenes. We are shown one at the beginning of the game and more at the end of each level. They are mostly used to outline Conrad's goals for the next mission, but there is an interesting subtext involving Conrad and MIA, the ships resident cyborg. The comics are fully voiced, which I really liked. Unfortunately the only voice overs in the rest of the game come from the ships computer telling you things like "Evacuate the Area" and "Unknown Lifeform Detected" over and over and over. During the actual gameplay we do make contact with MIA, who helps us find our way throughout the ship. Her communications come in the form of poorly contrasted text across the bottom of the screen. I tended to ignore them.


I am quite interested in Alien Breed's story, especially the relationship between Conrad and MIA. The comic scenes instantly reminded me of 2001 nights by Yukinobu Hoshino. These are some pages from my favorite story in Hoshino's collection,

Night 2: Sea of Fertility

Considering the fact that I still remember the details and emotions of this story ten years after reading it, I think it would greatly enhance the player's experience with Alien Breed if Team17 expanded upon the graphical narrative they have outlined in Episode 1. Perhaps we could be treated to a comic prequel of Episode 1, downloadable for free through the Xbox Marketplace as a sort of advertisement for the future episodes.

I try to examine all aspects of the games I play for my reviews but my significant other isn't really a shooter fan so I had to go online to try out the co-op with some fellow xbox live members. My first attempt was marred by serious lag, which I assumed was emanating from the other end. I decided to host a game. I only had to wait a minute or two for another to join.  If you have friends with the game, you can easily invite them through the lobby menus.

There are three levels available to you in co-op play, distinct from the single player missions. I chose hydroponics and loaded it up. We were instantly assaulted by swarms of aliens as soon as we left the elevator. This level equips you with quite an arsenal though, so we cut through them pretty quick. I noticed my partner was standing next to one of those red canisters that make nice explosions when you shoot them, so I did. lol, only way to learn. He got me back with a frag grenade later on though. 

I enjoyed the co-op and will definitely try it again. Dying isn't really an issue since you respawn a few seconds later. Just make sure your partner doesn't die while you are lying on the ground or its game over for both of you. There are some problems with inventory though, a lot of the items are found by searching corpses, and there's no trading between players, so you might end up with one person carrying all the healthpacks while the other is limping along on the edge of death. Communication is essential here I think, letting your partner know what you need so they don't accidentally pick things up.

Or you could just say fuck it and run through the entire level blasting anything that moves. That's always fun :)

-Ben