XBLIG New Release Roundup for The Week of January 29

We knew we shouldn’t have sold all our stock in voxels 2 years ago! We were a bit miffed when when Minecraft sold a billion copies, but now it’s downright embarrassing. It seems like every other game released is aping that blocky look. Yet, somehow, none of them managed to make it onto our recommended list for this week. Sadly, that won’t prevent them from showing up on the Top Downloaded list though. Without further blabbering, enjoy this week’s crop of demos to check out!

Armless Octopus Bloody Tentacle Award of the Week

Katana Land – Dave

This 2D platformer gets all of the basics done right. Attacks are smooth, as are movement and animations, and it even offers a neat climbing mechanic. Your ninja can jump or drop to any platform, and the way the developer implemented it was done wonderfully. Katana Land is one of the best platformers I’ve seen on XBLIG in some time.

We Recommend

L.A.R.A. – Taylor

Based on the cover art, I was expecting much more of a mediocre experience than what L.A.R.A. actually provided. Though it does look and play like Perfect Dark 64, it gets a try in my book for rocking the nostalgia vibes.

 

 

Brand – Dave

A beautiful, yet flawed 2.5D platformer where the player must navigate 3 dungeons in a Metroidvania constructed environment. The game itself boils down to a series of simple fetch quests, which grows tedious quickly, though. With a bit more work it really could illustrate what XBLIG is capable of. Some of the basics (collision, floaty controls) need some work, but I’d still suggest you at least give it the 7 minute trial.

Picbox – Mike

It took a little bit to get a hang of this demo, but it’s kind of like a mixture of Sodoku and Minesweeper. You have to use your noodle to figure out which boxes are empty and which ones should be marked by comparing the numbers on the sides of the columns and rows to see where the empty ones might be. I was starting to get the hang of it right as the trial expired, which left me interested to keep playing.

MXHD – Taylor

I was pretty impressed by MXHD’s presentation. It’s a dirt bike racer with an emphasis on physics realism. In other words, be prepared to crash, a lot. It’s fun in its accident-prone absurdity.

 

 

 

Bug Ball – Erron –

It’s like volleyball or tennis, except it’s teams of two bugs. There are a variety of things you can do in the limited amount of space, such as dash back and forth and perform a kind of rocket-jump to grab the ball out of the air, and there are some peculiar scoring mechanics. It might be worth checking out.

 

LCD Dungeon System – Dan

The game attempts to capture what people loved about the old Phantasy Star series by offering a first person perspective while moving through a labyrinth. The game takes one step further into nostalgia land and puts the whole thing on a LCD screen like the Tiger handheld games of old. The appeal is extremely limited with no story or in game music, but the game is unique enough to warrant a cautious “try.”

Other Releases

Avatar Onslaught 2 – Mike – Once again your friends are proving what jerks they can be. You move from left to right protecting your outpost by picking off your Avatar buddies with a water balloon gun. If they break through the barrier, you’re toast. It doesn’t do a bad job of replicating an arcade experience, but I also didn’t really feel much of a need to play more than the few minutes in the trial.

Avatar Thunder Cars – Mike – This game will assault your senses with some of the most obnoxious music as soon as you start the demo. You’re racing on a spherical planet that revolves as you drive, and you have to jump to new planets every few seconds. But, there are no other cars on the road, after the third planet the planets repeat, and the demo was limited to 40 seconds. I’m just not sure what the point is.

Hardboiled Pinball – Dan – This is a pinball game at its simplest. If Pinball FX and Metroid Pinball have taught us anything, it’s that videogame pinball games don’t have to be simple and boring. While the noir style presentation is appreciated, it’s not enough to save this title from being a “pass.”

Miner Style – Erron – I assumed this would be another Minecraft knockoff. What I found instead was even less of a game than that. It’s a 3D world builder using what appear to be Minecraft style assets and terrible controls. I’d skip it, but someone out there must like this sorta thing.

Avatar Block War – Mike – While I can’t say that I can differentiate the horde of Minecraft games on XBLIG, this is the only one I’ve played that puts you on a totally flat landscape with no terrain or sky. There are also other Avatars randomly walking around, and despite my best efforts to bury them alive, they somehow managed to float out of my solid stone cages.

A Voxel Action – Taylor – This is a bad mix of voxels and Super Mario Bros.. The camera angle, while adjustable, is not favorable, and the backgrounds of the game make it inherently difficult to distinguish your character and the enemies from the game environments

Space Pirates Adventure – Dan – Space Pirates Adventure is less of a game and more of an interactive comic. It’s nice that the developers took the time to tell a story and draw custom art for each frame, but they should have sprinkled in some more “game” as well.

Kingdom – Dave – This is a turn-based RTS game. It’s not the prettiest thing out there, and I doubt it will convert any non-believers towards the genre, but if that’s your cup of tea, then by all means check it out.

Marathon Monk – Erron – The things most people don’t realize about endless runners is that the challenge is in the running. Adding additional things to do only complicates the entire game, and this is a game guilty of that in spades.

By Mike Wall at February 8, 2012.