Dualing for ‘Shelf’ Space

This is the latest video on the (presently) indie shooter Duality XF which, right now, is attempting to get an XBLA publishing deal so they aren’t shoved into the ghetto hell of XBLIG:

DUALITY ZF is a 1-4 player shmup, featuring dual play and g-mode, the ability to control two fighers at once.

DUALITY ZF is a Dream Build Play 2009 and 2010 finalist:
http://xona.com/2010/05/04c.html (#1 in Canada, #5 in the world)

DUALITY ZF features 6 GAME MODES:

8-STAGE CAMPAIGNS:
1) DUALITY ZF — Duality ZF, the game.
2) BULLET HELL — More bullets, slower game.
3) HARDCORE — Quick-reflex, arcade experience. For true shmup fans.

CHALLENGE MODES:
4) SURVIVAL — 1 life, survive as long as possible.
5) SCORE RUSH — 3 minutes, infinite lives.
6) BOSS RUSH — Fight end bosses in sequence. Harder bosses.

Working with XBLA publishers as I type this. Coming to XBLA or XBLIG soon… hopefully XBLA.

Hopefully, since games have a habit of pulling an Amelia Earhart once they enter the airspace of the Island of Misfit Games, e.g. the XBLIG shop–good luck, guys! (Though they might wanna think about just going to PSN since MS is such a b*tch about their precious XBLA ‘shelf’ space being cluttered by ‘second-class’¹ games they can keep in steerage.)

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^{1 This refers to the fact that quality isn’t the overriding concern on XBLA but, rather, the closed nature of it which prevents games without big-time publishers from getting on the service at all, neutering the original intent of XBLA in the process.}

WTTW: Mr.Driller Meets Satan

Mr. Pick Axe

It’s called Hell, and it’s a (free) Mr.Driller clone:

Just go to hell and find out it’s secret in this puzzle/arcade/platform game. You have to dig all the way down through caves filled with water, lava, boulders and enemies. You can avoid suffocating and kill enemies controlling flow of water and lava by digging holes in walls of caves. You can also push a boulder on the filthy worms and bats.

Being a Mr.Driller clone it shares some of that series noxious addiction factor, so enjoy this non-work WTTW on this sunny (hopefully) Saturday.

TinyRPG: The World’s First FRPG

There aren’t many RPGs set in Mexico

That’d be Fortnight RPG, for those struggling with other, more profane, solutions to this ‘riddle’:

Indie game maker Andre Spierings has thrown down the gauntlet to bigger members of the role-playing game cosmos.

It took Square Enix over five years to create Final Fantasy XIII, and Blizzard’s been hard at work on Diablo 3 (pictured) for almost a decade. By contrast, Spierings has managed to push out his isometric click-fest Tiny RPG in just two weeks.

That’s pretty impressive for what is a dandy¹ little time-waster.

The Facebook page for the game is here and the website is here, but appears to be down.

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1 Yes, today’s anachronism is “dandy”.

It’s Not Such a Small World After All

This is a pretty interesting little experimental game (mind you: it’s very, very light on actual gameplay) where your avatar navigates the world and, as you expose more of the map by pushing back the ‘fog of war’, the world zooms out accordingly, so that the more you uncover, the bigger (and smaller!) the world gets:

Our hero: undaunted before he is daunted¹

Note: both screens are exactly the same pixel size, so that itty-bitty avatar on the right is actually itty-bitty on-screen.

I can see the germ of an awesome game in here but, really, it needs some actual conflict or puzzles rather than just wandering around, pushing back the fog, and zooming out the camera as you skip from world to world, but it has a great conceptual base, and the creator is working on another game which you can read about here.

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1 Funny how nobody ever uses the word daunted, innit?²
2 Brain to ECM: yes, because a lot of people use the word “undaunted”, right?

Revived: Dracula Menaces Castlevania III Once More

This is, as yet, merely a demo for something that will, hopefully, yet see the blinding light of dawn, but it is a very good one:

You can stake out the demo here.

h/t: Pixel Prospector

Why Most Indie Games Suck

(Too many) Indie developers: I gave that game the best 15 mins of my life!

Incidentally this is also why most iPhone games suck (well, this and the controls are god-awful):

…due out this May 12th. The game has been in production for a couple of months now, and will feature a level editor to facilitate the sharing of user-created content.

Don’t get me wrong: I like a variety of indie games but spending a “couple of months”¹ on a title seems to be selling both yourself and the player short. (After all, we have plenty of pro developers that do this as their entire biz model–again, see the eleventy-billion ‘games’ on iPhone–though, at least, they don’t usually soar to the ‘heights’ of XBOX Live Indies…*shudder*.)

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1 And before I’m accosted by rabid Nifflas fans: I’m not singling out the game featured here as, by all accounts, Nifflas is a solid creator, but this sort of thinking seems to dominate too much of ‘the scene’, paid and unpaid–just look at the laughable state of XBOX Live Indies or (again, because I like beating this horse) 99% of what’s on the iPhone. (Yes, I know: people have jobs and can’t afford to devote a full half a year to a game, blahblahblah; they’re free (sometimes) blahblahblah; you never made one so who are you to judge, blahblahblah; etc.)

Breathe Some Death Into Your 360

Night of the Living SNES

No, not by turning it on and potentially risking a RROD (except that, well, there is that) but because there’s some small buzz about this latest Xbox Indies title, Breath of Death VII: The Beginning in various, dark, corners of the Internet:

“We’re big fans of classic console RPGs,” said Breath of Death VII designer and programmer, Robert Boyd, “and have been disappointed that this style of games has largely left the home consoles for the portable systems in recent years. Thanks to XBox Live Indie Games, we’ve been able to bring the genre back to the big screen in all its pixelated glory. Not only that, but the game is only 80 MS points ($1 USD). That’s like eighty times cheaper than what these things cost back in the day!”

It’s only a buck¹, so perhaps someone² could could exhale some thoughts in the comments on this pint-sized, pixelly, push into classic console RPG:

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1 If I had a buck for every time someone said that about an Xbox Indie title, I’d own Microsoft.
2 No, not me: I barely have time to play the games on my plate/work/eat/sleep/die live so someone else is going to need to take a bullet give this one a try.

Metroid Dread Not Entirely Dead Making It…Undread?

I’m feeling whatever the opposite of dread is right now, which probably isn’t undread

Because someone decided to keep hope alive by creating their own version of the oft-rumored¹, maybe it will still come out, maybe it won’t, DS game Metroid Dread:

This, along with Project AM2R at least keeps the hope of pure 2D Metroid alive, even if Nintendo (*boo! hiss!*) won’t.

You can grab an engine demo for Project Dread here.

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1 it was real, folks, I can guarantee you that much.

Looks Like I Might Need to Actually Turn My 360 On

Earlier today I posted quick blurb about Ancient’s new game and bemoaned the injustice, the inhumanity the…usual from MS, at how it had been relegated to the Indie game ghetto for its eventual release.

Well, now I’m even twice as annoyed since, as it turns out, it’s freaking awesome:

You can check it out, too, on this PC demo (which has been there all day but, in my haste for the exits this AM, I completely missed).

It’s basically 4-player Robotron (not twin stick, but over-arching gameplay) married to limited tower defense and the only downside (and this is a minor quibble), is that it’s stylized 8 instead of 16-bit.¹

All in all, based on this short demo (only one (of four) characters available, etc.) I’ll actually have to, *sigh*, turn on my 360 at some point in the not-too-distant future, and put myself within range of the clutching, crushing, claws of the Red Ring’s² wrath.

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1 I loved my NES/C64/etc. but I really, really loved my Genesis/TG16/etc.
2 One of the few, the proud, the still on their launch-day 360.

Press ‘A’ To Experience the Miracle of Childbirth

If only it were so easy:

And now you can use avatars! Which is, uh, good?