Windows Phone users will soon have a flashy new way to browse and purchase Xbox Live Indie Games on the go. The XBLIG Companion App, which is being developed by Casey Young at Eleventy-Aught Twelve Studios, lets users browse new releases, updated titles, and recommended lists from developers and fine establishments like IndieGamerChick and Armless Octopus [Full Disclosure: Managing Editor Dave Voyles has been testing the app and volunteered to do PR for the project].
The app is about 90% complete and “works by scraping the RSS feeds of XboxIndies.com, as well as the XML and CSV data for all of the games,” according to Voyles. It will link each game to its page on the Xbox Live Marketplace, where you can log in if you want to pull the trigger and purchase a game. “From there, you can remotely activate your Xbox, and the title will be downloaded and installed in one fell swoop, without you ever having to physically touch it yourself.”
As is clear from the video, Windows Phone 7 is the current development platform. But if you don’t have a Windows Phone, just sit tight, Young plans to port the app to iOS and Android. We’ll have more information on the app as it gets closer to release.
Microsoft has finally tacitly admitted what pretty much everyone has been screaming for months: the Games Marketplace is completely busted. The latest unannounced dashboard update, which hit American Xboxes last night, goes a long way toward solving that problem by mercifully euthanizing the jump-kicking “Game Type” girl that has acted as a storefront for XBLIG, XBLA, and Games on Demand since Metro debuted. After the update is applied, you can go to the Games Marketplace and scroll over to “Games” to see separate tiles for each type of game.
The new update also returns the ability to sort games by category, a feature that was also absent following the Metro update. The Marketplace also now lists “Kinect” as a category, which is a bit odd since indie developers do not have the ability to make Kinect games. This could be a hint of the long-promised Kinect support for XNA, or it could be a product of a system that created the same categories for all types of games. We’ve contacted a Microsoft representative for comment. For right now, the update only appears to be live for American users. A Microsoft representative told us there were no details regarding if and when the update would be available in other regions.
As you might imagine, developers are mostly happy with the changes. “I think it’s a great change, and not just for XBLIG fans and developers. The Games tab now seems much more intuitive for gamers interested in, well, games! Putting Arcade, Games on Demand and Indie up front gives players what they expect to find when browsing the marketplace. It just makes sense now,” said Ben Kane of Going Loud Studios.
Ian Stocker of MagicalTimeBean agreed, but was a bit more hesitant. “It seems good that it’s one fewer barrier to entry for customers… it’s always hard to predict though,” he said.
It’s been a wild, twisted ride for the nomadic Xbox Live Indie Games: they began as Community Games, morphed into XBLIG, were buried in the Specialty Store during the New NXE, then migrated back to the Game Marketplace only to be mysteriously hidden behind that Game Type girl that made it incredibly confusing for the average person to even find an XBLA game. Hopefully this latest update sticks, and Microsoft continues to find ways to move forward, not backward.
The college lacrosse season hasn’t started just yet, but don’t tell Crosse Studio, publisher of the last four lacrosse games that have appeared on XBLIG. Beginning Thursday, February 16 on their Facebook page, fans of lacrosse will have the opportunity to vote on College Lacrosse 2012′s cover art and design.
Is it about time that lacrosse finally makes it up to the big leagues and onto additional platforms like XBLA and PSN? A recent interview with Inside Lacrosse reveals that it’s a possibility. When pegged with the question, studio founder Carlo Sunseri responded, “Yea, we’re working int [sic] the development of 2012, and in 2013 looking to get a big-time publisher behind the game, the NCAA, get the game out on Playstation, Wii and hopefully smart phones. That’s the game that’ll take the video game to the next level.”
College Lacrosse 2012 will be available on XBLIG by Memorial Day Weekend, the same weekend as the NCAA Championships, and retail for $5 (400 MS points).
Fans will vote on the photo and design of the College Lacrosse 12 cover.
Pittsburgh, PA, February 14, 2012 – We are proud to announce our annual cover contest for COLLEGE LACROSSE™ 2012. For the second year in a row fans will determine what cover will be used for the newest game by voting on the College Lacrosse Facebook Page beginning on Thursday, February 17. http://facebook.com/collegelacrosse
“It’s very important to me that the fans of College Lacrosse are involved throughout the development of the video game. What better way than to let them decide the cover for College Lacrosse 2012?” says Carlo Sunseri, founder of College Lacrosse video games.
“When there are so many fans who are passionate about our lacrosse video games it makes people take notice.” said Carlo Sunseri. “The lacrosse community has waited for years to have a lacrosse video game of their own and we’re doing everything in our power to have them be a part of the process.”
Voting starts on Thursday, February 17th at http://facebook.com/collegelacrosse and continues until the College Lacrosse video game fans make a decision!
The new COLLEGE LACROSSE™ 2012 builds on the exciting lacrosse action and swag of the past two video games. It will feature improved online play, player movement, controls, all-new game lighting, and enhanced camera angles. The upgraded COLLEGE LACROSSE™ 2012 gives fans the opportunity to face-off in a game of lacrosse, compete in season mode, own people on Xbox LIVE, and create their own team roster and jerseys.
COLLEGE LACROSSE™ 2012 will be available in time for Memorial Day Weekend as a digital download on Xbox 360 for $4.99 (400 MSP).
About Carlo Sunseri and Crosse Studio, LLC.
Carlo Sunseri owns and operates Crosse Studio, LLC. Mr. Sunseri has extensive experience as a lacrosse player, coach, and instructor. He founded Crosse Studio in 2009, and developed the industry’s first field lacrosse video game, College Lacrosse™ 2010. Through Crosse Studio, Mr. Sunseri also produced NLL Lacrosse 2010 and 2011, two indoor professional lacrosse games fully sponsored by the National Lacrosse League. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Sports Management from Robert Morris University and currently is an Assistant Coach for their Division I lacrosse program. For more information visit http://collegelacrosse2011.com and http://facebook.com/collegelacrosse
I’m sure you’re curious as to just what Super Meat Boy would look like as a zombie. Well, so that you don’t have to delve into the bowels of Deviant Art to find out, we’ll leave it to Sticky DPad Games for the answer. The anthropomorphic wad of meat is currently planned to be an unlockable character in the open-world RPG, Night of the Fred, which is coming to XBLIG and possibly PC this October.
After wondering what Super Meat Boy might look like as a zombie, co-founder, art, and design guy, Adam Anderson, drew up some concept art for Night of the Fred featuring the hardcore platforming superstar. Then, he thought it might be a good idea to share it with guys over at Team Meat, for obvious legal reasons, but also just because he wanted to share it with a team whose work he appreciated. “Before going back to work on the in-game work, I thought I’d tweet the image to Edmund McMillen, just for fun. Alongside it, I joked that I didn’t want a lawsuit!” he said.
But Anderson got a reply that he wasn’t expecting. “Minutes later, we got a response, saying we could use it, and that he didn’t mind at all. We thought he was just joking around at first! But I emailed him later that day to confirm it, and he was being serious.” It’s always great to see indie studios supporting each other, even if it’s a simple gesture such as allowing the use of a character as a cameo. Anderson doesn’t take the gesture lightly either. “It’s a major honor, seriously!”
While Night of the Fred will focus on a large main quest and tons of unlockables, two extremely important components of any large-scale RPG, Sticky DPad also has another game in the works. Dawn of the Fred, slated for this summer, is a zombie-survival game promising to be different from the rest, though the details are a bit reclusive. The main mode will be a multiplayer survival game currently meant for local co-op, but possibly online multiplayer as well. There’s also going to be a one-to-two-hour campaign providing some background story as to the events preceding Night of the Fred.
Chaosoft Games unleashed an update for EvilQuest that makes the game quite a bit less evil to play. The Version 1.2 patch fixes many of the nagging problems that we noted in our otherwise glowing review, such as increased save points, a delay for enemy respawns, and tweaked enemy health and damage. The studio has also added a feature to disable effects that could potentially cause seizures for some players. Head over to the official site for all of the changes.
Geese, Pigeons, or Owls? One of history’s great debates can finally be settled after a glance of BitPhase Entertainment’s newest trailer for Windhaven. When we last saw Windhaven this summer, the visuals instantly grabbed our attention, as did the fluid flight mechanic.
Included in this updated trailer are all six alien creatures, of which only two were seen previously. Furthermore, all magical attacks, nine in total, are showcased too. Voice acting even manages to make its way into a title where the protagonists are predominantly a breed of fowl. Howard The Duck, anyone? The soundtrack is performed by Zack Parrish, who also did the work for the Summer Uprising trailers, in addition to Cute Things Dying Violently and one of our favorite titles of 2010, Antipole.
Bitphase is “now reasonably confident about a summer 2012 release,” so you may not to wait too much longer before booking this flight. How do you think this is shaping up compared to its XBLIG competition?
Smudged Cat Games has released a new video demonstrating the variety of tools that you can utilize in their Portal-ish Metroidvania platformer, Gateways. The video, hosted by developer David Johnston, shows off portals that function like those in Valve’s seminal classic, ones that let you rotate the screen to walk on walls, and a time-traveling gateway that creates a replicant of the old scientist. Smudged Cat is aiming to let you take control of the Gateway gun on XBLIG and PC this June.
New Life Interactive’s cancer-curing, voxel-based game, Cell: emergence finally has a release date. The “action surgery game” will be released on February 9 on Xbox Live Indie Games for $5 (400 MS Points). Cell: emergence HD will also be released for PC for GamersGate, Gamestop PC Downloads, Green Man Gaming, Playism, and Desura for $8.95. The extra four bucks nabs you almost twice as many cells to destroy, along with improved sound.
You might remember Cell: emergence as that trippy-looking game written by Sheldon Pacotti, the writer of the seminal Deus Ex. You play as a microscopic nanobot fighting against diseases inside a the body of a sick child, and you have to stunt the growth of the rapidly-reproducing malignant cells by employing a mixture of RTS tactics and good old fashioned arcade shooting. Sound confusing? Check out the developer walkthrough video (conveniently embedded above!) for a glimpse into this unique game.
The action surgery game “Cell: emergence” will be released Thursday, February 9th on Xbox LIVE Indie Games, GamersGate, GameStop PC Downloads (formerly Impulse), Green Man Gaming, Playism, and Desura. A free demo will be released on Tuesday, February 7th.
In the game players fight a nanoscale war against disease inside the body of a sick child. The fast, deep simulation of tissues, antibodies, germs, nanomachinery, and other elements is achieved with a “dynamic voxel” gameworld, within which every visual detail has meaning, reacts to the player, and interacts with its neighbors.
The Xbox version of the game, selling for 400 MS Points, offers a world of almost half a million cells, and the “Cell HD” version on PC, selling for $8.95 USD, offers a world of nearly a million. The HD version on the PC also provides higher fidelity sound and more frenetic gameplay tuned exclusively to the mouse/trackball/touchpad.
The Xbox version will be available in English and in English subtitled for Japanese, German, and Spanish. The PC version will be available in the preceding languages plus Italian, French, Russian, Simplified Chinese, and Korean.
Inspired by “hard” ’80s arcade games like Defender, Centipede, and Missile Command, Cell offers 17 punishing levels that require players to decipher a level’s “cellular automata” simulation and then battle living processes with speed and dexterity.
The game’s story, written by Deus Ex writer Sheldon Pacotti, is a first glimpse at a near-future fictional world where war is fought in code and chemistry and the inner workings of Nature.
ABOUT NEW LIFE INTERACTIVE, LLC
New Life Interactive, LLC is an indie game studio based in Austin, TX specializing in massively reactive gameplay.
Green Man Gaming (GMG) is the leading UK-based independent digital retailer for PC games, selling more than 700 titles from 75 publishing partners to 146 countries around the world. Thanks to its unique proprietary technology, GMG offers consumers the ability to trade-in their digitally downloaded games for new purchases, while enabling publishers to generate on-going revenue from their intellectual property. Green Man Gaming is the only games retailer to pay a royalty back to a publisher on all pre-owned sales.
Whenever someone disagrees with a critic, their first reaction always seems to be “I’d like to see you do it better.” Well, Nick Puleo is going to try and do just that. The founder and managing editor of Co-Optimus has teamed up with longtime friend Dave Paul to form Brian Shape Games, and their first release, SCHAR: Blue Shield Alliance, is due out later this year for Xbox Live Indie Games and PC.
As you might imagine, SCHAR is a cooperative experience and looks to spice up the twin-stick shooter experience by adding strategy and RPG features. Set in the year 2997, you play as one of four unique ships in the Blue Shield Alliance, which is humanity’s last hope against the Constituents of Nothing, a bunch of aliens with a penchant for antagonizing human colonies.
“I’ve always been interested in game development, and have been tinkering with it for many years. I’m a programmer by nature and have been doing it since I was 12 or 13,” said Puleo. The pair have been developing games casually together for about 20 years, and have been working on SCHAR at night and on weekends.
The trailer is heavy on story details, but light on actual gameplay. “We’re only about halfway through the development process at this point, and we have a lot of work to do on things like art, sound, and level content,” Puleo wrote on a post on Co-Optimus. We’ll have a better feel for it after we get our mitts on it this spring at PAX East.
Reality TV shows are all the rage. I mean who doesn’t want to watch short-tempered wealthy housewives duke it out in their own little worlds? There isn’t much for us gamers though. Sure, Sony has The Tester, but that’s more absurd challenges as people make their way toward simply testing games. But what about seeing the process of developing a full game, from inception to completion, along with a few kinks in the chain? Fortunately, IGN has concocted such a show, titled The Next Game Boss.
XBLIG developer Team2Bit has made the cut, and the duo of brother’s Matt and Jake Lewandowski illustrate their newest game concept in the first episode that aired yesterday on IGN’s YouTube channel. They “operate under the moniker ‘Team First Puncher,’” which is also the name of their upcoming XBLIG title, explaining “Yeah we couldn’t be ‘Team Team2Bit.’”
You can root the XBLIG developers on and follow along their progress through their Twitter account, @Team2Bit.
