Previews: Flotilla and Frozen Synapse

By: Derek Yu

On: January 28th, 2010

Flotilla is a new space strategy game from Brendon Chung, who’s best known for his stylish spy game Gravity Bone. Even if it ends up being a more awesome version of Weird Worlds, I’m sold. Coming soon to PC and Xbox Live Indie Games.

Also, Mode 7 Games is working on Frozen Synapse, a tactical squad combat game for PC. That’s really all I know about it. But it looks neat, too, doesn’t it?

(Source: Kieron Gillen, via Rock, Paper, Shotgun)

Xbox Live Indie Games Sales Data 2009

By: Derek Yu

On: January 28th, 2010

Gamerbytes, a downloadable game blog affiliated with Gamasutra, has an interesting report that reveals sales data for Xbox Live Indie Games titles in 2009. The data is heartening, and shows that the service can be lucrative. Hopefully these reports will drive more developers to XBLIG and start a positive cycle that will increase the quality and visibility of these games.

Also, please check out this thread on the XNA developers forums, where much of the data was gathered.

Square Off

By: Guest Reviewer

On: January 26th, 2010

[This is a guest review by anosou. If you’re interested in writing an article for TIGSource, please go here.

Square Off is an Xbox Live Indie Games title from Australian developer Gnomic Studios. An arcade-style shooter with a distinct cartoon art style, Square Off is one of the better games available from Microsoft’s indie platform. Why? Here’s why:

The concept of Square Off is rather simple really. You play as a little genetically-engineered square made from a mad professor’s brain cell and some alien DNA and your job is to wipe out the ongoing alien invasion. In practice this translates to a twin stick shooter with some twists. You control your little square (equipped with an adorable jetpack) with the right stick, aim with the left stick and shoot with the right trigger. During gameplay you can pick up an assortment of wondrous little powerups including a shotgun, a triple-barrel gun, bombs and a rocket launcher. The gameplay is very smooth and responsive, as it should be in a shooter, and the controls are simple yet functional.

In the main mode, the one where you fend off previously-mentioned aliens, the game is split into 6 stages. These generally take the form of a few rooms connected by smaller corridors and they’re all positively swarming with aliens. Again the gameplay is very basic but enjoyable – shoot the alien spawn and destroy the motherships and you move on to the next level. It’s actually quite unforgiving at times for the lonely player. If you can’t keep up with the alien spawn rate you can easily find yourself trapped in a narrow corridor unable to get through because your standard gun can’t keep up with the rate of alien spawns. A small design flaw but it’s uncommon during the game if you’re playing on a decent level.

What makes Square Off stand out are mainly two things. First and foremost it’s the focus on multiplayer. The main game (although a bit short) can and should be played with a friend or three. This makes the sometimes unforgiving levels both more fair and more enjoyable. Even the classic co-op “THAT POWERUP WAS MINE YOU IDIOT!” is there and I’m loving every second of it. This also takes care of the difficulty one might encounter when playing alone, it’s clearly designed around multiplayer play. There’s also a Death Match mode with three different gameplay options: To The Death, Frag Race and Time Limit. Going head to head with a few good friends in your couch makes for quite the killing fest.

The other thing that makes Square Off stand out is the delicious art style. Clearly inspired by The Behemoth’s games, the cartoon style with the thick lines and great attention to facial expressions works very well. There’s hardly anything to complain about here, this is definitely one of the better looking games on XBLIG. The sound and music almost reaches the same level too. The sound effects work perfectly with the game and the dramatic music gives the game a tongue-in-cheek serious tone.

Square Off does have some small issues though. The first and arguably biggest is the lack of online multiplayer. While this is uncommon for XBLIG titles in general, it would’ve taken this particular game to the next level. Other than that there could’ve been more variation when it comes to the enemies, most of them are of the same type (and look) and just keeps chasing you. To be completely fair these are minor things when you look at the whole package. Square Off is one of the better games on XBLIG and for 240MS (3 PUNY EARTH DOLLARS) you can’t go wrong with this. If you have friends to play with that is.

The Release Date of P.B Winterbottom

By: Xander

On: January 15th, 2010

As reported today by the ever lovely Destructoid, The Misadventures of P.B Winterbottom will finally be released on the XBLA come Febuary 17th for 800MS points, which is probably something like $10. As I understand it the game is good enough to be deserving of any quoted sum. Regardless of your stance currently though a demo will naturally be released on the same day so if you aren’t happy putting down the money straight away then be sure to check it out then!

The one major grievance is that there doesn’t seem to be any news of a PC release. Given the amount of XBLA titles we see make the jump to PC, with relative ease too, it’s rather disappointing. Still it’s been a long road for The Odd Gentlemen and I’m glad they’ve finally reached the end of it. Expect impressions come release day.

Leave Home

By: Guest Reviewer

On: January 9th, 2010

[This is a guest review by anosou of an XBLIG game.]

Leave Home is a procedural, scrolling, score attack shooter. This basically means that the “levels” take shape depending on how you play. You can simply describe it as “do good = more stuff” but there’s a bit more to it than that. The smoothness of how the levels change is admirable – during my first couple of playthroughs I didn’t realize it got progressively harder the better I was playing. When I started learning the enemy and bullet patterns, thus scoring more points, I began to see the subtle and not-so-subtle differences between a good and a bad playthrough. For example I reached an area in the third stage I had never seen before when I had racked up some massive points, it was quite the revelation. There is much more under the hood than just “more points = more enemies” and it’s incredibly satisfying to explore this.

At heart Leave Home is a scrolling shooter with a lot of what comes with the genre. Luckily Hermitgames has worked on these before (Fren-zE for example) and knows exactly how it’s done. There are plenty of nods toward established games in the genre but the game still manages to feel fresh. The side-scrolling first level has a distinct Gradius-flavor, even similar enemy patterns. The fourth level feels like a nod towards Treasure’s Ikaruga and a late part of level 3 is pretty much an homage to Jeff Minter’s unreleased Unity project for GameCube. The two bosses you face at the end are very challenging and brings a definite bullet hell flavor to the game. Overall Leave Home feels like one big love letter to the shmup masters but because of the procedural nature it manages to keep it interesting. One of the more original gameplay elements is the ability to split shots with the right trigger, nothing fancy but it gives you a lot of extra control over how you play since the game lacks power-ups.

Leave Home is a fixed length game which essentially means a session will always take the same amount of time to complete. The beauty of this score attack mode of play is how it’s evolved in Leave Home as a result of the dynamic levels. If you do very good on level 3 for example you get to new parts of level 3 faster and these places generally have more possibilities to rack up a good score. The different ways you can play through a session, even though they’re all the same length, are staggering because of how the different stages change depending on how you do. If only XBLIG supported Leaderboards like XBLA does.. this would be the game to compete in.

Oh hey, did I mention that this game takes Rez and makes tough love to it to produce it’s graphics? The future-retro (yes, future-retro) flavor really makes the game pop out of the screen. Things explode into bursts of glowing particles and the clean cut shapes and black background work as great contrast to this light show. The music isn’t half bad either. Distorted squeaky acid basslines, glittering crunchy pads, Roland drum machines and other goodies go very well with the visuals and change seamlessly between levels.

The game is available for Xbox Live Indie Games for 240MS (roughly three puny earth dollars) and there’s a free demo to go with that too so I urge you to take a look.

TIGdb: Entry for Leave Home

ASCII in HD

By: Alehkhs

On: November 23rd, 2009

Xbox Live is starting to look up; with well established Indie names making their way to the Xbox in the next year with Polytron’s ‘Fez,’ and Derek Yu’s ‘Spelunky,’ heading to the XBLA in 2010, and XBLIG starting to have actual, non-massage games, the Xbox is slowly becoming an Indie portal.

However, even with these fine names coming to XBL, there’s a few things I demand before I will consider XBL a true host to the Indie community.

First and Foremost: Roguelikes, and lucky me – not one, but two roguelikes are headed to XBLIG this winter.

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First on the list: ASCII Quest, from Jade Vault Games

ASCII Quest was born out of an epic goal, yet as an indie title, quickly ran into restraints. “We realized that the game would require way too many assets; [we were] really interested in making an RPG, but full graphical RPGs take a lot more work than we had time for at the moment,” explained president of Jade Vault Games, Daniel Hanson. “I found a couple online articles on roguelike development, and that inspired me to make a quick prototype. I had begun to notice that there were many people who were asking for a roguelike on Xbox LIVE Indie Games, and realized that there was a market for this kind of game.” Thus began ASCII Quest.

Obviously, aside from crossover pc users, a roguelike will be a new experience for many console players. To this end, ASCII Quest aims to be an “easy roguelike, one that anyone could pick up and play.” Rogue veterans need not worry however, for there are several difficulty levels. The hardest of these levels incorporates several extra features, or rather, it takes away a feature (saving) in leu of another (an online high-score list, the Hall of Heroes).

Although a roguelike might seem a simple project for first-time developers, developing one for the Xbox presented some issues. Hanson explains, “Perhaps one of the most difficult aspects of implementing a roguelike on Xbox 360 is creating an approachable control scheme. PC roguelikes are fond of using most of the keys on the keyboard. Instead of having a universal action key, a separate key is used for each specific action (drinking potions, equipping weapons, and so on). Obviously, this isn’t very feasible when most people have only an Xbox controller. Even something as simple as movement is difficult to get right. Roguelikes are turn-based games, and movement occurs on a tile grid.” In answer, Hanson and his crew have opted for a ‘universal action button.’

“The left thumbstick or DPad is used to aim this cursor around the character. Then the player must press the ‘A’ button to confirm movement in that direction. This ensures that all movement is precise and in the direction that the player desires, which is important in a turn-based game. Movement is also used to perform many actions; to attack an enemy, simply bump into it. In fact, bumping into anything will perform the default action with that entity (open doors, talk to NPCs, and so forth). To pick up items or to walk up/down stairs, stand over it and press ‘A.’”

With the implementation of simplified controls, as well as multiple difficulty levels, ASCII Quest will hopefully be welcomed by players on XBLIG, RL veterans and newcomers alike, when it releases this December for 80MSP ($1US).

[Game Page]

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The second roguelike headed to XBLIG is Dungeon Adventure, by UberGeekGames

Dungeon Adventure‘s development was inspired by the developer’s first taste of the RL community. “I picked up Rogue on the iPhone by chance one day, and became completely addicted to it. I’ve been a longtime fan of RPGs and adventure games, but am always sad when I reach the end of a game since there usually isn’t much more content once you’ve completed the main story arc,” said UG.

Like Hanson of Jade Vault, UG understands that there are obvious reasons no one has put a RL on Xbox yet. “Roguelikes are usually regarded as niche games. But,” adds UG, “I think they have a very wide appeal.”

“I’m trying to bridge the gap between hardcore ASCII roguelikes and more casual gamers,” says UG. Dungeon Adventure incorporates several aspects that might make it a bit easier to pick up; the most noticeable is the option to use a graphical tileset rather than the standard ASCII characters. This graphical set doesn’t break the old-school feel of the game, but will definitely make it a bit easier on players eyes, especially for those newcomers who might never have seen a traditional roguelike before. There is even an option to use your XBL avatar as the player sprite, should you so desire it.

As for the issue of controls, UG has put a ton of time into making sure the player has several options concerning how they want to control the game. Besides the ‘standard’ method, using only a few of the buttons on an Xbox controller, UG has also incorporated the Xbox ChatPad as well as USB keyboards. “And I’ve spent a lot of time just playing the game with each input device to make sure the control scheme is comfortable and easy to use on all of them. This is something that I notice is lacking in a lot of games, especially in Indie games – the developer adds buttons for new actions and features as they are made, and since they are playing the game throughout its development cycle it’s very hard for them to realize that someone who’s never seen the game before may have a problem memorizing a wall of button prompts!”

“One of the most difficult things to get right was movement. Roguelikes demand precise, octo-directional, digital movement, which analog thumbsticks aren’t suited to at all. That probably took an entire month alone just to perfect, but it was well worth it! There are two different control schemes, one where you move the thumbstick or DPad in the direction you want to go, and another that I call Sure-Move, where you use either the thumbstick or DPad to highlight the direction you want, and hit A to move. This is also why I highly recommend hooking up a ChatPad or USB keyboard when playing, since there is just no substitute for the tactile feel of a keyboard when moving around.”

Dungeon Adventure is set to arrive on XBLIG this winter.

[Game Page]

Previews: Capsized and Hydorah

By: Derek Yu

On: October 22nd, 2009

Here are a couple of good-looking old-school 2d games coming from teams known for FPS’s:

Capsized is a platform game that’s reminiscent of Exile. Coming in 2010 to Steam and XBLA, from the creators of the multiplayer FPS Nexuiz.

Locomalito, best known for their chunky FPS 8-bit Killer, are working on Hydorah, a Gradius-style shmup. It will be released as freeware at some indeterminate date.

Thanks to Pixel Prospector for the news!

Channel 4 to fund UK Independent Companies

By: Xander

On: September 9th, 2009

Admittedly somewhat of a wry smile, but then I imagine that’s just how you would smile when you’ve just allocated half of your £4.5 million budget on british indie games. Alice Taylor is the Education Commissioner for Channel 4 as that linked interview reports, Channel 4 being a UK TV network already responsible for funding the BAFTA winning web-game Bow Steet Runner, which is a stunning FMV-Adventure style georgian crime drama. And really quite good.

Currently there are a number of companies already signed on, including Littleloud who are producing a web-game penned by PC Gamer and Rock Paper Shotgun Ãœberwriter Kieron Gillen and Zombie Cow Studios of Time Gentleman, Please! fame.

A somewhat worrying figure in the interview is that the scheme will be supporting projects which currently have a budget of up to £800,000. Braid is one of the more recent examples I can think of where a large price-tag was admitted by the author, somewhere around $200,000 dollars, so the idea of helping out £800,000 productions is kind of confusing. The people I think it could help out most are the ones working for a hundreth of that sum, if not less. Still, if there is that much money around and brit-indies are confident in asking far less than that amount in terms of support then I’d be cautiously optimistic for them. Maybe I’m just intimidated by anyone with that much money.

What’re peoples immediate reactions? Are they any british developers who’ll be looking into this as a source of funding?

(Speaking of sources: Rock Paper Shotgun)

Upcoming 2: XBLA Edition

By: Derek Yu

On: September 4th, 2009

Yo, I’m in Washington right now for PAX (first time)! The show starts tomorrow, but today I got to attend a Microsoft event where some indies were in attendence. Slick Entertainment was one of the teams present, and they were showing off Scrap Metal, a “cars with guns” racing game that’s coming out to XBLA next year. As a fan of Rock n’ Roll Racing, RC Pro AM, Off Road, etc., I’m very excited about this one. The handling and physics felt great, and the action was raucous.

The inimitable and cheeky Introversion guys were also present and had Darwinia+ available to play. This game includes both the IGF award-winning Darwinia as well as Multiwinia (shown in the video above). I enjoyed Darwinia a lot but hadn’t ever played Multiwinia, mostly due to my aversion to multiplayer-only games (this might change now that I’ve tried Left 4 Dead 2). But hell, Multiwinia is great fun in singleplayer mode against the computer, too. I’ll be looking forward to grabbing D+ for the full experience.

And finally… Fez wasn’t on hand at the event, but it is coming out for Live Arcade in 2010 and there is some new footage of it in this episode of G4’s Electric Playground (around the 6:00 mark).

Big Spelunky News!

By: Brandon McCartin (BMcC)

On: September 2nd, 2009

First of all, Derek Yu‘s super popular platformer-roguelike Spelunky has finally reached version 1.0! I’m assuming everyone here has played the game. If not, give it a try already — it’s one of the best freeware titles ever, absolutely.

You can find the latest version here, at Spelunky World.


The other, almost bigger news is: Spelunky will be coming to XBLA in 2010. Derek says, “it’s going to be much more than a straight port of the PC game – I’m planning on stuffing it with new graphics, audio, and other features for XBLA users.” The game will be developed under his new label, Mossmouth. (Support of the original will continue, of course!)

All in all, pretty exciting. Check Spelunky World for more information as it’s released.