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The Top 10 Xbox Live Indie Games of 2011

Posted on January 9, 2012 by Mike Wall in Features, xblig | 2 Comments

Two thousand and eleven was a bittersweet year for Xbox Live Indie Games in many ways, featuring a ratings scandal that divided the community and several prominent developers leaving the platform for greener pastures and an ambition to actually make money for their hard work. Their successes are a validation of the innovative ideas that the community fosters and a testament to the potential that lies within the platform, even if it winds up as a breeding ground for talent. There were 728 Xbox Live Indie Games released this year. That’s a hell of a lot of games to sift through to find that talent, but once in a while you come across something that is not quite like anything else out there. Those unique games are what this list is about. You won’t find any spurious Minecraft rip-offs or something that is impressive merely because it’s like some other game, only not nearly as cool. This list represents everything that is distinctive about Xbox Live Indie games.

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Prices Plummeting for Cthulhu Saves the World, Soulcaster 2, and Other XBLIGs

Posted on January 6, 2012 by Mike Wall in News, xblig, XBLIG News | 4 Comments

James Earl Jones once commented that if you build it, they’ll come. I’m pretty sure he was just talking about a hot dog stand or something, but the same sentiment seems to ring true for XBLIG developers and the freedom to control prices. It took about four minutes for a flock of devs to drop their games down to $1 after Microsoft granted them the pricing flexibility. The list includes Cthulhu Saves the World, Soulcaster, Soulcaster 2, Antipole, Take Arms and Revolver360. Escape Goat will also be fleeing from the tyranny of a $3 price tag in February. Check out Vamn’s thread in the CAG Forums to follow all the prices drops.

Sound Design In Gaming: An Art Not Yet Forgotten Part 2

Posted on October 3, 2011 by Dave Voyles in Features | 1 Comment

In part 2 of this sound design in gaming feature, we investigate the technical limitations placed on sound designers and how they overcome them. Also, we ask industry composers how to best enjoy their works and which way the industry is headed. Before we can truly know where we are, we first must come to understand how we got to the point we’re at now.

Each console generation has been armed with unique features that allow its platforms to stand out from their predecessors, and it’s safe to say that the display features have certainly been one of the defining points as of late. Where does that leave audio? For the most part, not much has changed lately in terms of audio hardware. The Wii doesn’t even offer discrete 5.1 audio, and the Xbox 360 still uses the same compressed Dolby Digital 5.1 format from the previous generation. Only the Playstation 3 offers uncompressed, 7.1 surround sound in the form of DTS-HD Master or Dolby True HD. But, both of these require HDMI connections and not every title supports them.

The forefathers of gaming sound design were limited in their approach to the field, as the 80s and much of the early 90s hardware could only reproduce sound through the use of MIDI, or Musical Instrument Digital Interface. MIDI is an industry standard that enables the communication between electrical instruments such as synthesizers, keyboards, and computers. The major benefit to using this technology was twofold:  small file sizes and adoption by various hardware and computing manufacturers.

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Saturnine Games’ ceiling-crawling Antipole to be released for DSiWare, PC to follow

Posted on May 3, 2011 by Dave Voyles in News, PC, PC News, xblig | Leave a comment

Saturnine Games has recently submitted Antipole to Nintendo for review and plans to release it within the first half of 2011, a quickly approaching deadline. We recently reviewed Antipole, which was well received, as well as gave away a copy to one fortunate reader. It is currently primed to be released for DSiWare, with a PC port to follow shortly after. All of the enhancements from the DSiWare port title need to be ported back to the XNA toolkit to allow for a seamless PC release, thereby requiring more development time.

The DSiWare version will include a few bonuses as well: an additional mode where some of the elements featured in a previous title developed by Saturnine Games, Cosmos X2, will be added. Due to the limitations of XBLIGs, it was unable to add such functionality. Furthermore, the DS version will run at a crisp 60 FPS, as opposed to the XBLIG version which suffered from the occasional frame drop, as well as some minor bug fixes.

Saturnine Games told us it always intended for Antipole to initially be released as an XBLIG title, with the PC to follow, all the while keeping a DS port in the back of their minds, but it looks like the roles have reversed. While not radically different from one another, the DS game was coded in C++, whereas the XBLIG version was coded in C#. By choosing to avoid features from one language which wouldn’t easily translate to the other, the port didn’t require extensive amounts of time. In total it was two months of work, plus an additional month for a final polish and a buffer for the business side of things such as the ESRB rating.

We’re certainly looking forward to the re-release of one of our favorite titles in recent memory. How about you? Would you like to see some of your favorite XBLIGs appear on other platforms as well with additional content?

Contest: Win Antipole for Xbox!

Posted on April 5, 2011 by Mike Wall in Contests, xblig | 15 Comments

no hands!

We were quite attracted the stylings of Antipole’s polarity-reversing 2D action, so we’d like to give one of our readers the chance to join the fun. The game will be coming out soon on DSi and PC, and we’re celebrating by giving away the old-fashioned Xbox Live Indie Game version. Okay, they’re pretty much the same, but this version is, like, 2 months old now. That’s almost as old as its fashionable hero’s wardrobe!

Read our full review to find out why we were so smitten with Antipole.

There are two ways to win, and you are encouraged to enter both ways! One random winner will be picked Friday at 7 PM EST.

1) Post in this thread about your favorite 2D platformer

2) Follow @armlessoctopus on Twitter and tweet the following: Visit @armlessoctopus to win the Xbox Indie Antipole, an excellent 2D platformer coming to DSiWare and PC soon http://bit.ly/esN34j

GDC 2011: Interview with Antipole developer Edward Di Geronimo

Posted on March 5, 2011 by Dave Voyles in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

no hands!

It may not have garnered the attention or accolades of VVVVVV, but Antipole proved there is more than one way to design a gravity-flipping 2D platformer. I had a chance to sit down with lead programmer and designer Edward Di Geronimo of Saturnine Games and talk about the changes it went through during its development and their next project, Turtle Tale.

Where did you guys get the idea to do something with flipping gravity?

It started off awhile ago I was working with a platformer engine just to see where I can go with it. I enjoy those kind of games always, just to see where it goes, and I was talking with a co-worker and he just said to me ‘how hard would it be to reverse gravity?’ and I said ‘oh that’s really easy to do,’ so I just tried it and messed around with different things. The first thing that came to my mind was the time limit on it and to see what you could do within that. I think this was going on probably about the same time VVVVVV was being created and they took a very different direction. And we both ended up with spikes all over the place, and we realized that once you throw in the gravity, bottomless pits don’t work.

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Antipole Review

Posted on February 12, 2011 by Dave Voyles in PC Reviews, Reviews, xblig, XBLIG Reviews | 4 Comments

The Xbox Indie platform lends itself well to the platforming genre (demonstrated by the number of titles released in the past year alone), but don’t let the wild flood of similar titles scare you away, because Antipole deserves a bit of your time.

I’ve played my fair share of platformers in my day, and often I find myself turned away from the genre due to the punishing difficulty. What I found most refreshing about Antipole was how well balanced the difficulty was. Throughout my gravity-warping adventure, a wave of irritation never washed over me as the platforming elements, enemies and variety of environments proved to be an ideal combination.

The physics are the selling point of the game, and the game executes its system very well. Seemingly impossible jumps across pits donning spikes on both the ceiling and floor are made possible by the well-tuned engine, which allows you to nearly float across the screen with the precision of a laser-seeking missile. I only ran across a handful of opportunities where I thought I died from a cheap death, and those were from typically when I couldn’t see a spike or enemy off-screen.

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