Weekly Xbox Indies - 10/3/09

Yay
- Arkedo Series 01 JUMP! - 240 MS points. JUMP! is a platformer with delightful HD pixel-art visuals. Giant iron crabs have scattered bombs around each level, and you must collect them all before they explode. In a deviation from platforming conventions, in JUMP! you cannot jump on enemy heads to defeat them and instead must use items like knives that are scattered in a limited number around the levels. It's a great retro-styled game and should not be missed by platformer fans.
- Alien Pyramid Challenge! - 80 MS points. Alien Pyramid Challenge is a puzzle platfomer created by the fabulous gay game developer over at Peacock Games. The game has your little alien stacking boxes to climb his way through the levels. Avoid obstacles like spiked pits, and use tools like springs and ladders to help you navigate the levels. The challenge can get pretty difficult in the later levels, but it always has that "one more try" feeling to keep you going.
- XCross - 240 MS points. I absolutely love Picross games. They are completely addicting, and XCross is no different. XCross is a puzzle game where you are given the number of squares to fill in each row and column of a grid, and when all are filled correctly it creates a picture. In addition to over 100 regular puzzles, XCross includes 3D puzzles that make you think in a whole new way. For any puzzle game fan, XCross is a must-have.
Ay?
- Junkyard Battle - 80 MS points. Junkyard Battle is a multiplayer tower-building puzzle game. You control a crane in a junkyard and must build your junk tower as tall as possible before your opponent. The game is entirely physics based though, so keeping that tower standing is no small feat. There are also a few single player levels that act as training stages, but unfortunately there is no option to challenge AI opponents. The meat of the game is in multiplayer, so only download if you have someone else to play it with.
- Rail Gun Charlie - 240 MS points. Rail Gun Charlie is a third-person shooter where you are defending planets from, what else, evil aliens. Earth has sent colonizing pods to various planets, and a group of aliens want to steal the pods. You must shot down all of the alien ships so that colonization can begin. The controls in Rail Gun Charlie were a bit too loose for my liking, but the more I played the more I got used to them. It's fun in short bursts, but it gets repetitive quickly, and can sometimes be hard to distinguish enemies among all of the swirls of color on-screen.
- The Adhara War - 240 MS points. Adhara War is a combination of turn-based tactics and space shooting action. You control ships in a grid solar system, sending them out to find other planets and build new space station. When one of your ships comes into contact with an enemy ship the game goes into a top-down shooter style where you and the other ship fight it out until only one ship remains. There is a slight learning curve to get used to the controls, so don't get frustrated if you don't get it right away. The biggest drawback of the game is that it's not much to look at with some pretty basic, and often difficult to distinguish, graphics used for ships and planets.
- Criminals Under Arrest - 80 MS points. Criminals Under Arrest is a fairly standard beat-em-up with some of the best graphics MS Paint can produce. I was only able to play the trial version of the game, which only let you play as one character with hardly any combo moves at all. Apparently though you only play as that character for the first level, with all other levels letting you control someone with a much more robust move list. It's the potential of that other character that saves this game.
- MoleGame - 80 MS points. MoleGame is a simple game of Whack a Mole. Each hole corresponds to pressing a direction on either analog stick, making the controls very easy to get into. It's a very basic game, but that doesn't mean it's not still fun.
- PushCrates - 240 MS points. PushCrates is a Sokoban-style crate pushing game where you need to push the crates into the right positions to complete the levels. I swear I've played these exact levels before in other similar games on my iPhone, so if you've played a lot of this style of game it's probably levels you've seen before. But if you haven't played many crate games in the past it's still a fun puzzle game.
- Picture Slider - 80 MS points. Picture Slider is a game where you slide tiles into the proper place to form a picture. There are plenty of pictures to choose from if you like this style of game, making it a nice choice for sliding puzzle fans.
Nay
- Lander Mania - 80 MS points. Lander Mania is a game where you try to safely land lunar landers on moon platforms. The collision detection is a bit off in my experience, with my ship crashing when not touching any part of the environment, which is a big drawback.
- Galactic Escape - 240 MS points. Galactic Escape is a great looking game that is ruined by terrible controls. I appreciate that the instructions screen lets you practice the controls, but once in the actual game you're navigating tight corridors with a ship that controls like a pinball made of glass: bouncy and fragile.
- Cassie's Corner - 80 MS points. Cassie's Corner is a decent trivia game, but for whatever reason is only a single player game. What fun is a trivia game without competing against friends?
- RadRiverRun - 240 MS points. RadRiverRun is a game about floating down a river and avoiding obstacles. You try and collect as many colored balloons as you can while avoiding floating obstacles and hitting the river walls. Once you adjust to the loose controls it's an alright game, but I'm not sure I can ever really see myself going back to it.
- Alien Encounters - 240 MS points. Alien Encounters is a 3rd person shooter complete with a 3 minute load when you start, stiff animations, incorrectly labeled controls in the instructions screen, and an overall feeling that the game just wasn't finished before it was released.
- The Fart Machine II - 80 MS points. It's a farting soundboard. Select a fart on the menu and listen to it. Or just don't download it, that's the better option.
- D-Cypher - 80 MS points. The classic board game Mastermind comes to Xbox indie games. I used to love playing this game with my brother, but in the digital form it's just not as fun without the option to play with and try to stump another person.
- Fireworks Screensaver - 80 MS points. Yet another screensaver app for the Xbox 360. I'll give this one credit for having a manual mode where you press a button to launch the fireworks, but that's not enough to really make it worth a purchase.
- Jake's Room - 80 MS points. Jake's Room is a flight combat game that takes place in a bedroom. I'm assuming the room belongs to a boy named Jake. The flight controls aren't fun, and fired shots don't seem to fly straight. I can't really recommend this game.
- Paint Boll - 80 MS points. Paint Boll is a top-down multiplayer paintball game. For the most part it's a twin-stick shooter, except that instead of the right stick controlling your aiming direction it controls a crosshair on the screen that you shoot toward. So if you move without moving the right stick then you'll still be aimed at the same spot. The game feels mostly sloppy, with characters able to walk right through obstacles and walls, and there is no option to play in single player whatsoever.
- Tarot - 240 MS points. I've always found the idea of tarot cards interesting, even if I never necessarily put much stock into their accuracy. This app provides three tarot card setups and gives brief, one sentence descriptions of each card when chosen. Where Tarot falters most for me is that the cards for your fortune are randomly generated rather than allowing you to shuffle a deck or select cards, which takes away even the illusion that there is some connection between the cards chosen and the person who chose them.
- SummerVacation - 80 MS points. SummerVacation is a Sokoban-style block pushing game. Perhaps I am missing something about the game, but when you collect items there does not seem to be a way to use them. As a result, I found it impossible to get past the second level of the game. Without any gameplay explanation available (in English anyway) I'm not even sure that I'm supposed to be able to use the items, but I didn't really see a way around the level without them.
- SpiderEvader - 80 MS points. SpiderEvader is one of those annoying "screamer" apps that pretends to be a game. About halfway through the third level a giant spider picture pops up in hopes of scaring whoever is playing. The idea is to play that prank on your friends, but unfortunately the basic game isn't good enough to convince your friends to play in the first place.
- Pumpkin Carver - 80 MS points. Pumpkin Carver is a game that lets you choose parts for a jack o lantern face. It's designed for small children, and there's a good chance that they'll find it amusing, but in a general sense I can't recommend a download.
Updates
FallDown - price drop to 80 MS points.
Jackpot Stadium
Nuke Your Neighbor - price drop to 80 MS points.
Sushi Bumper - price drop to 240 MS points.
Snake360 Lite - price drop to 80 MS points.
Snake360 - price drop to 240 MS points.
Streets of Fury
A Bomb's Way - price drop to 80 MS points.
Meet UR Match - price drop to 80 MS points.
Shaitsu Massage - price drop to 80 MS points.
Halfbrick Rocket Racing
Avatar Golf
Trino - price drop to 240 MS points.
クレッシェンドシンフォニー
それでも、私は愛している
Clock 24-7 - price drop to 80 MS points.








Hi!
I'm the creator of XCross, and I'm glad you enjoyed it.
Thanks for the review :-)