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.

Score Rush

Pixel Perfect Production Proudly Passes Peers, Presents Players Performance Proudly.

Click To Download the Trial

I must admit to being a little concerned about my ability to play this game. My concerns were unfounded of course, especially once I realized that my ship's collision box wasn't actually the entire ship. No, that tiny pixel there in the lower right of the screenshot above, surrounded by a green energy field is. It's actually a 4x4 pixel grid.

Maneuvering that tiny dot through the stream of rainbow colored bullets required me to sit extremely close to the screen and my speakers. Something I highly recommend that everyone does. Please remember to always go to 11.

Score Rush, developed by Xona Games as a part of the indie games winter uprising is not quite horizontal and not quite vertical. Actually my knowledge of SHMUPS is not extensive. Luckily others have expounded on the matter in great length and detail. The playfield under consideration is similar to Geometry Wars, as in slightly bigger than my television set. It allows for a bit of movement to the game's camera which is nice but I'm still a bit undecided about the style, part of me wants to see everything and part of me likes to imagine the unknown.

The Geometry Wars reference is not without its merits, indeed,

Brittany says, "It looks like Geometry Wars, MAKE SOMETHING DIFFERENT. Stop writing everything I say." She doesn't call herself a gamer but I know better.

I don't mind that Score Rush recalls memories of such a classic game, and the fact that we are only charged a tenth of what we were charged for Geometry Wars is pretty interesting I think. I still play Geometry Wars from time to time, and that game is going on five years old. Will Score Rush hold up to this test of time?? Or is it even supposed to? 


Xona Games The developers of Score Rush, call it a spiritual sequel to Duality ZF, their upcoming XBLA release. Score Rush uses the same engine as Duality ZF. I believe that Score Rush is more of a tech demo actually, showcasing to the gamer what their engine can do. But here we begin to blur the lines of what exactly constitutes a game and so we must retreat.

At any rate, Score Rush is probably in the top five percent of enjoyable titles on the indie channel, at least to me. 1500 games on the channel, 75 that I have thoroughly enjoyed. That sounds about right.

When I play SHMUPS, score is not my main concern. In fact I purchased Geometry Wars about the same time I got my first HDTV. I was interested in how the colors would look mostly. Score Rush definitely delivers in this regard. My only problem is that my ship always tends to explode just when the screen is being lit up to its full capacity. But is this problem worth looking into and fixing?

Whenever you start a playthrough you are offered a helpful tip on the loading screen. One said, "Find your path through the stream of bullets." A bit Zen there but I did make some attempts. Perhaps this game does require the player to enter into a sort of trance while they play. To that end,

Auditory stimulation of the senses. Sound is extremely important to any game,  perhaps even more so than the Visual aspects. 

Copy from the Xona Press Release,
"The 60 fps adrenaline-rush experience is complemented by a hard-rocking Dragon Music Productions soundtrack" 

I'm not much of a fan of the game's soundtrack but I just load up whatever I think will get me into the zone and blast it at maximum value. Adult Contemporary usually results in very short games, but I've been having excellent results playing along to Dan Deacon,


 

One of the game's menu screens encourages the user to Blog about the game and SHMUPS in general. Which I am doing now as you are of course aware. Matthew from Xona Games has also asked bloggers to blog about XNA Connect issues, which affect the future of the XBOX Indie Channel and so are good to vote on. Making and voting on Connect issues is one of my guilty pleasures in this life,

http://giveusthisdayourdailygame.blogspot.com/2010/12/rise-up-gaming.html

Rise Up, Gaming...

Well, I hope you have been enjoying some of these Xbox Indie Uprising Releases as much as I have. We are about halfway through it and I think the best of them are still yet to come. I'm particularly looking forward to Alpha Squad myself.

To me it's not so much the games, but the ideas behind the games, and the process that must have occurred for these games to appear on our 360 Dashboard. A space for independent developers on a consumer games console with limited oversight from the console manufacturer on what shall and shall not appear in that space, That kind of thing just doesn't happen overnight. The Indie Channel spent a good portion of time as a beta on the web and then a beta on the dashboard before it was ready for primetime as they say. And here we are two years later with nearly 1500 games on the service. Some are great, some are not, and some should probably be sent back to the drawing board.

I'd like to draw your attention to Microsoft Connect. It's a website where users of MS products can easily submit feedback and log bugs concerning Microsoft Products. There is a page on this site dedicated to all things indie games and there are a number of suggestions listed currently which you can vote and comment on. Here is just a sample of them,

Create an "Indie Game Winter Uprising" list under the XBLIG dashboard

Optional Free Playtesting Membership

XBLIG Leaderboard/Highscore Access

XBLIG Achievement Access 

To access these issues and vote on them just click on the link below,

http://connect.microsoft.com/directory/accepting-bugs/developer-tools/

And scroll down a bit, looking for the XNA Game Studio line, there should be a sign in link on the far right. Sign in with your Windows Live ID and you can start voting on issues that affect XBLIG Development, Distribution, and Our Indie Game presence on the 360 Dashboard among other things. Vote Early, Vote Often and leave lots of comments. Come on now, who doesn't like leaving comments??

UberGridder

Deep space welding by wire

No, but that robot did cost a few million to manufacture, is it the same?

Click To Download the Trial

UberGridder from BadgerPunch Games continues the Winter Uprising. It's a sort of thinking man's pacman where you don't actually have to think. The protagonist is a nicely rendered three dimensional robot who is displayed on a two dimensional plane.  Programmed to build in a vacuum our robot finds company where there was expected to be none. The work continues regardless.

I've often wondered what we will be listening to when we finally reach the stars, and are given eternity to contemplate.The background music to this game sounds like it might be pretty close. I found it very relaxing.  There might be a couple tracks that the game loops through so I will have to play again to hear more.

Here's the website of the game's musician, pretty good stuff, http://xerxes-music.com/

I played through the trial a few times on the XBOX, not really anxious to get the level complete, I just knew that it would eventually get done. If it wasn't for those pesky monsters! For some reason I got stuck on level 3. The high score table lists a nine as the highest level so I assume there's that many levels. Unless it is endless.

Interestingly I had a look at the developer's website and noticed there was a windows version available for download.

UberGridder for Windows

The version plays very similar, although I found the arrow keys to be a simpler control method.  

Our robot is designed to continue on his path until he reaches a junction or receives input from the user. Input being a direction of movement along the construction grid. What I liked about the game was sending the directional input before the junction, and then releasing the button to watch as the robot processed my command and turned at the appropriate time. I made it to level four on the windows version of the game, and noticed the speed had increased significantly, kickin' it up a notch

How much would you expect to pay for this casual mix of hardcore gameplay? If you said 80 MS Points you are correct. If you're addicted you will probably buy this game, if you're like me you will create a website devoted to XBOX Indie Games in order to obtain copies of the games released there. Either way, as long as everyone plays.

-Benhamish

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