XBLIG prices can be changed every 7 days starting May 23


Big news from Microsoft today, as they announced via the App Hub, the official MS forums where XBLIG developers Read more

Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 2 Review: Rolling in the Right Direction


A new Sonic game always brings a level of uncertainty with it. Sega’s mascot has seen more highs and Read more

One Million Fans Take a Stroll with The Walking Dead Episode 1


Comic books, television, and now video games: is there any form of media that The Walking Dead can't conquer? Read more

Kittens Spit Fire When Serious Sam Double D XXL Assaults XBLA This Fall


Take a long, hard look at you what is on your screen right now. Yes, that’s a kitten, spitting Read more

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Interview: Adam Anderson Sheds Light on Dawn of the Fred

Posted on March 17, 2012 by Mike Wall in Interviews, PC, xblig | Leave a comment

It’s beyond ridiculous how many zombie games there are on Xbox Live Indie Games, but people love killing the undead and developers love coming up with new ways to kill the undead, so it’s likely a reality that isn’t changing any time soon. Not content to merely craft one game for their first project, Sticky Dpad Games is currently developing a pair of zombie titles set for release later this year. We sat down with up with Lead Designer Adam Anderson to talk about Dawn of the Fred, the twin-stick shooter prequel to their upcoming zombie RPG, Night of the Fred.

There are tons of zombie twin-stick shooters on XBLIG, so what set Dawn of the Fred apart from the hordes of competitors?

It’s a tough question, with there being so many great ones to choose from on XBLIG. It’s hard to summarize our approach to it, but our main focus is fun. Seriously, we mean that. We’re trying to offer the most enjoyment we can fit into a $1 package. It’s going to be full of weird guns, crazy weapons and creepy zombies. Not only that, but with the variety of game modes on offer, and a giant list of unlockables, it’s an XBLIG game we hope gamers will keep coming back to time and time again. Either on their own, or with friends.

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Interview: Robert Boyd on Cthulhu Saves the Worlds massive PC success and the studios future

Posted on July 24, 2011 by Mike Wall in Interviews, PC, xblig | 2 Comments

the creator speaks!
Breath of Death VII and Cthulhu Saves the World were already two of the most successful games on the XBLIG platform, and yet its PC release managed to out-gross more than an entire year’s worth of XBLIG sales. We asked Zeboyd Games’ lead developer Robert Boyd about what that success means for the company, and what the future looks like for the developer. If you’d like to know more about the history of the company and the games’ developments, check out our previous interview.

Armless Octopus (AO): Can you fill us in or give us any details on how well exactly the PC release has done thus far?

Robert Boyd (RB): Due to our agreement with Steam, I can’t go into any great detail on our sales stats, other than to echo the statement that we made on our website – in less than a week on Steam, we made more revenue than we had made in the entirety of our time on XBLIG.

AO: What kinds of expectations did you have for it?

RB: Again, I can’t get into specifics but before launch, I set three marks for number of sales for July – a low mark that I thought we would definitely surpass, a mid mark that I thought would probably be around the amount we sold, and a high mark that I thought we probably wouldn’t surpass. Right now, we’re a little over the mid mark and we have about 10 days left in the month so we’re very pleased with how everything has turned out.

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Interview: Swing Swing Submarine talks about Blocks That Matter

Posted on July 7, 2011 by Mike Wall in Interviews, PC, xblig | Leave a comment

Our game's non-robotic heroes

Swing Swing Submarine’s exceptional 2D puzzle-platformer, Blocks That Matter, meshed together a number of genres to create a game that’s oddly familiar, yet completely fresh. We talked to its creators William David and Guillaume Martin about its development and the future of the studio.

How did the concept for Blocks That Matter come about?

Guillaume: Blocks That Matter came from our desire to give the players (who were asking us) some sort of sequel to Tuper Tario Tros. without making a Tuper Tario Tros 2 because the concept of TTT was funny but somewhat limited. Moreover, we wanted to give a tribute to all the blocks games we love.

William: First we thought we could use colored blocks to mix Tetris with a sort of match-3 game, but we weren’t that excited by the mechanics we found. The blocks of matter came naturally and the link with Minecraft too cause, well, we are players before being developers. To be very honest, we were a little bit worried at the beginning of the development that people can think we were stealing Markus and Alexey’s works, but the combination of mechanics created a unique experience that has very little in common with Tetris and Minecraft in term of game experience and that’s exactly what we wanted: combine elements from existing games to create a new game.

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Postmortem: Astro Cluster – Scott LGames

Posted on June 8, 2011 by Dave Voyles in Features, Interviews, xblig | Leave a comment

In this Armless Octopus postmortem, Scott Lowther discuss the development process of  his first XBLIG release, Astro Cluster, which was recently released on the Xbox Live Marketplace, and currently holds a four star rating.

How did you get into indie game development, and where did you get the idea for your game?

This may seem like an illogical progression, but I recently left a career in retail games to pursue indie game development. Before starting Astro Cluster, I was employed for quite a few years as a programmer at The Creative Assembly studio in Brisbane (now Sega Studios Australia). I was lucky enough to work on the Total War franchise (PC), Stormrise (PC, 360, PS3), the recently announced Olympics 2012 and a few other unnanounced projects.

Working at The Creative Assembly was very rewarding and I loved the experience. Where else could I hang out with a bunch of awesome, talented and creative people and talk about games all day! Despite this, I wanted to expand my understanding of other areas of game development, particularly art and audio creation, and turn some of my own ideas into real games. I also had a long commute to the office and needed to spend more time with my family, so I felt it was a good time to take the leap into indie game development.

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Get to know your XNA MVPs Part 2: John Defenbaugh

Posted on April 17, 2011 by Dave Voyles in Interviews, News | 2 Comments

In parts 2-4 of our Get to know your XNA MVPs feature, we’ll be welcoming and interviewing two of the most recent additions to the team, as well as one veteran. Recently I had the opportunity to interview John Defenbaugh, better known as @SigilXNA on the AppHub Forums and Twitter.

I’ve always been curious as to how many of our MVPs got their start in the XNA community, and as I conversed with more and more of them I quickly began to realize that they all come from a diverse set of backgrounds. John Defenbaugh is no different. A childhood love for tinkering with games is what initially sparked his interest. “I’ve been tinkering with games ever since I first started programming, but didn’t do much seriously with it until college. I got involved with a collaborative online game that turned into a business opportunity when some of the developers got hired to build a game for a Japanese university,” Defenbaugh said.

Despite having a programming background, he decided to pursue an MBA, eventually getting hired as an analyst for a management consulting company, in turn leaving his work with videogames on hiatus. It wasn’t until he picked up the original Xbox that sparked his interest in development again. “I heard about XNA, and was looking for an outlet to do more active development and learn something new, so I decided to start learning it.”

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Interview: Brian Provinciano, creator of Retro City Rampage

Posted on March 31, 2011 by Dave Voyles in Interviews, XBLA | 2 Comments

I had a chance to chat with Brian Provinciano of Vlank Entertainment, best known for his upcoming title Retro City Rampage, the 8-bit GTA game that started out on a hacked NES and is now set to debut on XBLA this summer.

So Brian, why don’t you tell us a bit about yourself and the game briefly before I really start to grill you with questions?

Brian: Well I’m a game developer who pretty much does everything from the programming to the art, design, and business – definitely wearing the indie hat for sure. I used to work in the industry for many years, and before that I was a hobbyist, or “indie” before the term was coined. I’ve been working on Retro City Rampage, or at least a retro-style GTA game for…..wow…..over seven years now, and I went full time about two years ago and have just been plugging away, and it will come out on Xbox Live this summer and WiiWare this fall.

So what finally pushed you over from being a part-time indie developer, I guess a “garage” developer as Reggie from Nintendo would say, to something full time?

Brian: Well I really believed in the project. It really was, and is, my passion. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time but, I was just scared. Giving up my security with a day job and the health benefits – all of that stuff; a mortgage included. So in those years I was saving up and all of my money was going in my bank account with the idea that I would pull the trigger one day and work on this full time. Eventually I did, it was definitely the right decision – I’m so glad I did it. It’s not without a lot of risk and scary times though. There were moments of doubt here and there but you’ve just got to push through.

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Interview: Shining Gate Software sheds light on Decay’s conclusion and history

Posted on March 25, 2011 by Mike Wall in Interviews, xblig | 2 Comments

first images of decay 4 - comfortable sofa

Shining Gate Software reanimated the creepy point-and-click adventure genre with its disturbing series, Decay. With the final chapter nearing release, I spoke with its creators, Fredrik Westlund and Johannes Rae about what’s new in the fourth chapter and what’s next for the studio.

So where in the world did the whole idea for Decay come from?

Fredrik: This may sound like, weird, but I actually woke up in the middle of one night and couldn’t stop hearing the words “Fallen Angel” repeating in my head. I remember that I was on vacation with my girlfriend on a Swedish island called Gotland when it happened. The only thing I knew at that point was that we had to create something inspired by the 90’s point & click horror games 11th Hour and Phantasmagoria and that it should be titled Fallen Angel. The name was later changed to Decay.

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GDC 2011: Interview with Greg Kasavin, creative director and writer of Bastion

Posted on March 9, 2011 by Dave Voyles in XBLA | 3 Comments


oooooh colorful!

Of all the titles I had the opportunity to experience at GDC 2011, Bastion is one which stood out in my mind far after my time with it. The visual flair and art style are breathtaking and command your attention, while the stalwart voice of the narrator chronicles your journey each step of the way. This offered tremendous depth and ambiance to my adventure. Naturally, I sought after the man behind the work, Greg Kasavin, creative director and writer for Supergiant Games to talk about the game and its development.

So where’d you guys get the idea for Bastion? Or, what is a Bastion?

Bastion; our use of it is meant to be kind of open to interpretation, but you’ll sometimes hear the expression, “the last bastion of hope,” or “America is the last bastion of democracy,” or some crap like that. So it means a safe haven, right? Like a place where something can be defended. People sometimes use the term both kind of cynically and sometimes sincerely. So in the game you’re trying to find a safe haven, um, after you’ve played for some of it—

Yeah, you like wake up and you go to a bar, it’s kinda destroyed.

Yeah, you start off and there’s some sort of surreal catastrophe has happened, and your character heads to this place called The Bastion, which was your people’s safe haven. When you get there though, all you find is an old man who believes he has the ability to restore it, um, restore whatever it is that went wrong. So he kinda recruits you to help out cause he needs to, he needs… he’s got this location with these kind of unusual properties but it’s not fully formed yet, so you work together with him to finish the job. So that’s the basic premise.

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