004 PLATFORMANCE: Castle Pain

Here’s a real gem of a game! Platformance: Castle Pain revels in how old school and punishing it is. See it’s deceivingly simple, and honestly the easier difficulties don’t prove to be much of a challenge at all. But once you crank up the difficulty, it becomes a gauntlet of countless deaths and infinite frustration. And it’s glorious.

This is a platformer in its purest possible form. You don’t attack, you simply jump and move. There are no real enemies, just obstacles that you can do nothing against other than dodge. Traps, fires, spikes, moving stones, more spikes, axes and even ghosts attempt to hinder your way through the castle to your prize of a princess. It’s beautiful really, technically and graphically speaking. It’s not an advanced game rather embracing its old school nature, which I find a lot of Indie games tend to do, but that is in no way a negative thing!

When the game starts it shows you the whole level, the entirety of it. The game only has this one level however, and at first this may come across as way too simple. Start playing though and you realize just how devious the designers are. Again, play on the easier difficulties and anyone with even the most rudimentary of platforming skills will easier conquer the game, but that kind of defeats the purpose, aside from a warm-up run to get used to the layout.

As you tackle the harder versions of the stage you quickly realize how true the subtle is. Dying in an almost constant stream due to almost bullshit tricks, but it’s designed well enough that whenever you die you know, deep down, it’s your own fault. And that’s a good thing. When a game keeps killing you because of something either inherently broken, or just poorly designed it quickly wears on you. But when it’s your own fault it pushes you to try harder, to finally overcome your own short comings as opposed to having to deal with the games own failings. It was a difficult go, but it was satisfying once you finally make it all the way through.

Aside from the beautiful game play bits, the game itself is really a joy to look at. There’s a pretty surprising amount of level diversity considering its just one big level. It doesn’t all take place in castle halls, and I’m incredibly grateful for that. The character and objects sprites are well designed, all fitting together well and though there is very minimal animation involved it works really well. With the nice simple look it forces the game and the player to focus more on the game play, and that’s all that really matters with a game like this.

I really wish I had more to say about this game. I mean, I really enjoyed it, but due to the nature of the beast there just isn’t a whole lot to talk about. This is most definitely a good game, and if you’re a fan of old fashioned platformers then by all means hurry up and plunk down the dollar for this game. You won’t play it for too terribly long, but your time with it will be sweet, and it might be worth a look at in the future at some point. Maybe suggest a friend plays it to laugh at their misery?

PLATFORMACE: Castle Pain is owned by Magiko Gaming

003 Nuclear Wasteland 2030

I really want to open with "this game is garbage", because as much as I really hate this game, it's not technically garbage. Pointless, not great.. but not garbage. The main problem is that this game has no real reason to exist. It's an FPS for a dollar, and boy do you get what you pay for.

See, it "works". You can do everything you need to do in an FPS game, shoot, reload, aim, but it's.. hollow. It's cheap. The animation isn't awful, but it's very robotic and very unappealing to a fault. The gameplay is a simple constant wave of enemies affair, and it gets old before the first wave is over. I think you can unlock new weapons aside from the default loadout, but I'm not really sure as I grew tired of this quickly.

In the still shots, it looks alright, but it's unbelievably hideous in motion. I didn't grow up with FPS games, I'm pretty much rubbish at them and get tired of them quickly. If you grew up on Quake, or Counter-Strike then you might be able to appreciate these games a tad bit more than me. But truthfully, I hope not. See, there's a lot of shit on XNA, and this is one of them.

Now mind you, this game is FAR from the worst offender, but it's thoroughly pointless. My friends you do enjoy FPS games laughed this game off, citing it for the same problems as I did. For a dollar, it lives up to it's promise of being a cheap FPS game. But a cheap FPS is not worth it. There is little to no value here. Save up your money and buy a REAL FPS. You can get older ones that are great for fairly cheap now. Modern Warfare 1 or 2, Left 4 Dead, Borderlands, all sorts of interesting and quality games for not a lot of cash.

I feel bad riding this game, but it really does deserve it. It was for a while on the Top Downloaded list, and it really does not deserve that, but a lot of crud is still clogging up the Indie Channel. Like I said, this isn't the worst offender, but it's unworthy of your attention. It's an alright start I guess, if the developer puts some more effort, or time, or whatever into the animation, and actually came up with some interesting gameplay, or at the very least standard gameplay conventions they could very well make a quality game.

The Indie Channel is not the place for an FPS game though. They aren't supposed to be big titles, and I don't really see an FPS being made on the cheap being worth playing. I don't know, maybe a call back to classics like DOOM and Castle Wolfenstein, but certainly not a 3D one. Put some more effort into making it a full game and try to get it released on XBLA, or as an indie title on computer. There are lots of options for games like this, this outing just fell short.

Nuclear Wasteland 2030 is owned by SickKreations

002 Breath of Death VII: The Beginning

How about we kick this off with the game that cemented my faith in the Indie channel in the first place? Breath of Death VII: The Beginning, a retro style RPG that parody’s pop culture and the RPG’s of days long gone. It might not sound terribly exciting, and truthfully I’m one of the few people who still really enjoy JRPG’s, but it really is amazing.

The setting is fantastic. The world ended in a war, and hundreds of years later the undead now rule the land. The opening cinematic is fun and sets up the bizarre, comical mood that is seen throughout the entirety of the game. The graphics are obviously 8-bit retro inspired, so they look a tad aged, and there aren’t too many exciting looking locales, however what’s there looks nice, portrays what we’re supposed to be seeing, and fits in with the rest of the world. There are also hand drawn portraits for characters when they talk, which are mostly hideous, that work surprisingly well due to the absurd nature of the game.

The writing is the next thing you’ll notice. It’s not technically spectacular, and it’s definitely not some high level English that’ll paint an epic story for you. The story is really cliché, but that was sort of the whole point anyway. See Zeboyd Games, the guys who made this, really wanted to make RPG’s. They had a lot of ambitious ideas, but they’d seen how many RPG’s failed to take off due to how overly ambitious they were. So instead they settled for a nice, simple, quick 8-bit RPG to get started. So no, nothing overly complex plot wise. Where was I?

Right, the writing is nice and clever. The hero is a typical silent protagonist, but this is due to him being a skeleton that obviously lacks the proper organs for speech, so we can read his thoughts. The first party member you get is a ghost who can read his mind as well, so he’s not really left out of things. The dialog between characters is usually clever enough to; if not warrant a chuckle, make you crack a smile. They really used the cliché’s to their advantage too. Late in the game as you enter a dungeon the ghost chick professes her love to you, and then claims she can see the same love in your eyes. You then gain the combo move “True Love”. Right after this exchange, your other two companions have a similar exchange. Where the male professes his love and the lady rejects him, which unlocks the “Scorned Love” move. Which I thought was really clever. They reference other games as well; the Earthbound reference stands out above the rest for me personally.

Simplicity is the name of the game here really. Like I said the graphics are standard 8-bit RPG goodness, the battles harken back to the original Dragon Quest with black backgrounds. When in battle you have the option to Fight, Tech, Magic, Item and Unite. Fight’s obvious, Tech are your non-magic based skills, Magic contains all the spells you’ve learned, Item is just potions, and Unite are cool Chrono Trigger inspired super moves where two party members unleash a, usually, brutal attack. The simplicity even reaches to the items in the game. Potions and equipment, that’s all you get, and you only get five weapons and five sets of armor for each character. That is so limited, yet it works. Usually I’d complain about how little the game is offering, but again, it works in the games favor. You don’t have to stress finding those really rare items, because as long as you’re diligent you simply won’t.

The best part of this game by far, however, is the combat and leveling system, I don’t get why it hasn’t been done before. It’s just a thing of beauty. First off each area has a set amount of battles, so you’ll never over grind and just rape everything in your path. They don’t leave you weak, mind you, you’re just not able to become a Superman and destroy everything by staring at it hard enough. Secondly, random encounters are a breeze for the most part and you can rapidly get through them by bashing A and attacking. Thirdly you don’t really need to worry about health except during boss battles, for at the end of every battle you heal completely. Do you not see the brilliance here? This eliminates the main reason grinding is horrible, the constant need to heal back up, by either wasting items, mana or trekking back to the last town. That’s about it for the combat itself. It’s one of my favorite combat systems in an RPG, so simple and easy to level up, but boss battles are still bitches, but the game gives you room to be more tactical about it, and those boss battles are not only challenging, but pretty rewarding once you finally kick their ass.

The other half of the combat system is leveling up, which they handled in a really neat way as well. Every level up gets you the standard stat boost, but along with it you get to choose between two options. This is a choice between the same spell, but one hits more guys for a little less damage, or one for more. Or stat boosts for either physical or magical stats. Sometimes it gives you the option to add an extra hit to your attack and a few other pretty cool things. It’s definitely not as engrossing as some complex systems other games offer, but for a one dollar RPG on the indie channel it is really cool. There isn’t a level cap, so to speak. You stop getting the cool bonuses at level thirty, but you can level up into the thousands if you so chose to, though I have no idea what would possess anyone to do that.

This game is spectacular! It’s fun, it’s simple without being dull, easy enough to play, challenging enough to be worth it, has a hard mode and a score attack mode that unlock after beating it, a secret boss you can fight to get a rare sword, and it’s only a dollar. For a first attempt at making a game Zeboyd Games did a fantastic job. I’m so looking forward to their next game Cthulhu Saves the World, which is set to release in a few days.

I highly suggest this game, if you enjoy RPG’s at all its well worth the dollar. Hmm, this one was pretty up beat. So next up I’ll talk about a pretty bad game.

Breath of Death VII: The Beginning is owned by Zeboyd Games

001 Indie Intro

Microsoft’s Indie game channel is such a mixed bag. As a general idea, it’s beautiful. Let pretty much anyone develop games, let them go through the process of making them, then put them up and sell them online for some small time Microsoft points. Sure it’s like 100 or so dollars to get the development tools, but if you make a good enough game you could quickly make all of that back pretty quickly.

The Indie channel has always intrigued me. At first I just scoffed at it, until I heard about a game called Breath of Death VII: The Beginning. Apparently a really awesome game, but it was on the Indie channel, for a dollar. I had a hard time believing it at first, but after picking it up I realized there are quite a few gems buried in that particular heap. Don’t get me wrong, that heap is sadly made up of mostly utter garbage; however, it’s worth diving in to find the gold.

This is just meant to act as an intro to a lot of me talking about Indie games, but there isn’t really too much to introduce. Basically, anyone who paid Microsoft can make any sort of game, and after getting peer reviewed it gets uploaded and then they get a cut of the profit. Like I said, that’s a really cool idea. Especially since the games never cost more than five dollars.

Herein lays the problem though. Pretty much anything short of pornographic material is allowed. Most games are either, total garbage for whatever reason (graphics, game play, the whole idea behind the game, etc.) or they’re just a crappy rehash of other games. Space Invaders is an especially popular one to copy, as well as Geometry Wars. So it makes it really hard to trust most things. Microsoft doesn’t technically approve any of the games, so quality is really all over the place, content is really all over the place, and like I’ve said a few times now, a lot of these games just flat out suck.

I’ve bought a few of them, especially when I first started buying more Indie games. I never thought to download the demos, which is actually a really good idea. There’s a demo for every Indie game, and it’s the first eight minutes of the game. It’s actually a pretty cool system. You just download the game with a time limit (and sometime a few restrictions) and you during those eight minutes you can usually figure out if the game is a stinker or not.

I don’t have much else to say aside from this advice: if you want to try out some of these really cheap games I highly suggest searching for reviews online, downloading the demo, and after that deciding if you’re willing to throw down on it. I’ve wasted about five or so dollars that could have gone to much better games because I bought something based off the paltry description, or the cool name, and once due to mistaken identity. Just because a game is in the section “Top Downloaded” or “Top rated” doesn’t actually make it worth it. Trust me. People are morons. The only other bit of advice I have to give is that I personally stay away from games that are more than two bucks. There are a few out there that are definitely worth three to five dollars, but I’m extra wary of them. I can forgive a dollar mistake, but when I’m wasting three to five at a time? Ehh, not digging that so much.

I’m pretty excited to finally talk about some of these games, so I’m going to stop rambling on here stupidly.