Xbox 360 Indie games

[watusi]

Just having a good fiddle with the new dash and noticed there's a load of new community games been added. I'm about to sit and try them all so I'll update this thread with my thoughts.

Seem to all priced at 200 points.

UAV Wars - Link
UAV Wars is a 3D action arcade game where you remotely pilot your Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) and destroy the competing UAVs to win a military defense contract



Lines - Link
Experience a fresh new puzzle game, easy to pick up but fiendishly difficult at high level play. Participate in the Internet Rankings at edngames.com and prove you are the best!



Drift - Link
Drift features gently drifting generative visuals and music. It is not so much a game as a collection of customizable ambient art works.



Bloc - Link
Bloc is a new twist on the top-down shooter. Destroy blocks by firing like-colored orbs while dodging a swarm of enemies.



Brain Party - Link
Brain Party is a puzzle-solving, button-tapping, brain-stretching game for all ages. The more you play, the more minigames you unlock, and soon you'll be ready to take on your friends in the multiplayer Brain Race!



Word Soup - Link
This word game is easy to play and maddeningly addictive. Join the blocks to make words of three or more letters. Blocks can be joined horizontally, vertically and diagonally. When a word is made, the blocks used disappear and the blocks above collapse. Every move creates new combinations.



Being - Link
Can you help this little red guy save the princess, save the world, or whatever else it is that he's doing? I'm sure it's important work.



Space Combat - Link
First person space combat game featuring six degrees of freedom.



Culture - Link
Thwart off evil weeds as they dry to suck the last bit of water from your planet, paint by numbers to reveal hidden treasures and use logic and a car...



Fuel Depot 360 - Link
Fuel Depot 360 is a space combat game. Your mission is to protect the 10 fuel pods from the invading pirate ships. To help you succeed your ship is equipped with a variety of weapons. As you advance to higher levels the game difficulty increases.



Fruit Attack - Link
Match falling pieces of fruit to make combinations in this arcade puzzle game. Four 1-player game modes are available, including Quest Mode, which presents a series of interesting gameplay challenges. Battle Mode allows you to play against a computer opponent. Two split-screen 2-player game modes are also available.

[Oscar]

I have been creating a game for the past few months and have played most of the games listed. I'd definitely recommend trying Bloc and Being at the very least as I enjoyed both.

My own game, Artoon has just passed review so should be up in the next few days. I'm excited to see what everyone thinks!

- Oscar

[toythatkills]

You made Artoon? Excellent, I was just about to come here and post about how good that is. It's incredibly pretty (barring the font ), especially that cel-shaded (or something) level the name of which I forget.

There are so many of these games it's impossible to keep up, I hope yours doesn't get lost too much amongst all the crap that's already on there.

I quite liked Being until the trial ran out, Bloc I'll have to give a go to...

[Family Fry]

This is going to be like the old school of Amiga days of PD and Sharware games, there were some little gems in amongst them.
Must say Artoon is a gem and well worth the 400 points, kinda reminded me of Blob from my younger days on the Amiga (hope you dont mind me saying.)
Visually and musically this is ace though, love the metropolis style moving city levels fit the music perfectly.
Oscar a very fine job you have done, it's very cool to be able to tell that to the programmer himself, also thumbs up on the music too, really enjoying it

I love that these are small teams/groups or even 1 person doing these games, makes you smile when you play something cool and to think a small group or maybe even just one person has worked hard on this.

A mention out to In The Pit also, an odd one but quite original. A sound based only game, black screen throughout where you play a monster in a pit and you have to listen to hear people locations so you can kill them, earphone or surround sound are recommended, worth a try.

So far for me Artoon and Weapons of Mass Destruction are the games to be playing, at the moment need to download them all give them a try.

[Sane]

Where can you find these games?

[ChrisF]

Just watched the video for Artoon. Looks great Oscar. Nice work!

[Charlie]

Anyone checked out Biology Battle - a twin stick shooter like Geometry Wars and Mutant Storm? At 800 points, I believe it's the most expensive community developed game thus far but the production levels are top-notch and it looks better than an awful lot of XBLA games costing the same price. I'm really tempted to buy it.

Videos and screenshots here: http://games.novaleaf.com/biology-battle-trailers

[toythatkills]

That does look quite good. The only problem is that for 800 points I'd expect achievements which it won't have, and at the very least leaderboards, which it also probably doesn't have, judging from all the other community games. Score attack games sans leaderboards?

Loads of new games went up today, an absurd number. Sin(surfing) is the only one I tried, but it was quite cool.

[Brats]

My understanding is that the best community games might be taken up by MS and become fully fledged arcade titles. What they need to confirm is that is you buy the community version, you can download the arcade version for free when it comes out (even if the price goes up which it will for the 200 point games).

Although I think the concept is great, I think MS have been crap at promoting this. I wasn't even aware this was coming as part of NXE until I started browsing around. Even on Major Nelson, on the ten things you must do with NXE, community games were listed as number 10, after deleting your zero gamerscore.

[SCCAAMMM]

Artoon is great! I especially like the music. Well done, Oscar. I'd be proud to have done something like this.

And thanks for not making me use the shoulder buttons!

[EvilBoris]

Here is the download link to que it to your 360

http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/games/media/66acd000-77fe-1000-9115-d80258550111/?p=1&of=1&sb=1#offers

[Sane]

Here is the download link to que it to your 360
http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/ga...=1&sb=1#offers

Thanks, is there no way to do it through the dashboard then?

Edit: says it's not available in my region (Netherlands) and to be sure, they're not on the dutch version of that page. Great...

[Oscar]

Wow! Thanks for all the positive feedback! I knew Artoon was fun when I kept finding myself playing it to improve my scores when I should have been finishing it, but am still amazed at the reception out in the wild!

Yourself and IGN hit the nail right on the head: my inspirations were Rez, Q-Bert and Blob (love that classic). I have no marketing strategy except word-of-mouth, so I hope noone minds me embedding a (low-res) trailer:


A higher resolution trailer and the (free) soundtrack is available on www.okgamescompany.com.

How is everyone finding the difficulty curve? I became quite an expert at Artoon so pitching the curve right was a challenge (hence the high A+ ranking scores).

Also, maybe Artoon could be a candidate for an official NTSC-UK review?

- Oscar

[Charlie]

Oooh, I do like the look (and sound - great music) of that. I'm a sucker for games that adopt a tripped out, psychedelic look/vibe so will definately check it out.

[Womble9]

Is it just me or does the time limit that's placed on the trials seem prohibitively short? Is it set by the developer or by Microsoft?