Crosstown - a rather enjoyable retro Action/Shooter/Maze game – has recently had a price drop to 80 MS points. I thought it’s initial price of 400 was a bit much compared to the competition, but at its new dirt-cheap price, I highly recommend it.
VVVVVV
for PC & Mac
When I saw my first screenshots of VVVVVV, I was a bit incredulous. Someone wants to charge $15 for a platformer with graphics that even I could draw? There’s retro and then there’s RETRO and VVVVVV definitely falls under the latter category. Still, I was willing to give Distractionware the benefit since I enjoyed one of their earlier freeware titles (Don’t Look Back) and I’m glad I did, because VVVVVV is one of the finest platformers I’ve had the pleasure to play.
The premise is simple – you’re the captain of a spaceship, something goes wrong, and you have to rescue your scattered crewmates, using only your ability to run and flip gravity whenever you’re standing on a solid surface. The game is part exploration game (in addition to your main goal, there are twenty trinkets hidden throughout the game), part puzzle game (one optional puzzle in particular really impressed me as being very creative), but mostly it’s a reflex-driven action game where you’re trying to avoid spikes (hence the name) and enemies. It’s very hard, but more importantly, it’s very fair. Respawn spots are littered generously through the game, teleporters to get around the map are frequent, and all of the game mechanics were very obviously presented to the player so if you can’t solve a puzzle, it’s your own fault.
VVVVVV’s level design is masterful. Rarely is there a wasted moment and the player is constantly being introduced to new challenges. The game is largely non-linear, although there are a few levels in set points like the beginning and end. Generally non-linear games suffer from uneven difficulty, but here it works out just fine. Each level has its own unique feature (like gravity reversing trampolines or automatically scrolling rooms) with each level starting out easy and getting more and more difficult the further you get in.
Despite my initial hesitation, the graphics grew on me. Sure, it’s low tech, but it’s got style and reminded me a little of ZZT (an old favorite of mine). The music, on the other hand, was simply fantastic and would have done even the best NES game proud.
The game took me a little over 2 hours to complete and about 30-60 minutes extra to acquire all twenty trinkets. That’s admittedly short, but after beating the game, there are some extra modes like time trials and a very difficult action-packed survival mode so you could end up spending far more time if you like chasing high scores.
Is VVVVVV worth your money? That depends. If you’re low on cash and looking for a game that will last you a long time, then probably not since there are many games that are much longer or have more replayability. On the other hand, if you’re looking for a great memorable experience like Braid or Portal, then I highly recommend VVVVVV. I thoroughly enjoyed it from start to finish and I’m sure I’ll return to it later this year to work on my time trial scores.
Recently, I’ve had a trial of faith when it comes to game development. Let’s look at the sales statistics of my first two games, shall we?
Epiphany in Spaaace! (released Oct 20th) (Purchases/Trials)
October – 322/2418 = 13.32%
November – 96/284 = 33.8%
December – 90/263 = 34.22%
Total 2009 – 421/2965 = 14.2%
Molly the Were-Zompire (released Dec 10th)
December & Total 2009 – 355/3651 = 9.72%
Now, on the one hand, I know I should probably be pleased with these figures. I’ve made two interactive novels that are almost entirely text based on one of the most powerful gaming systems available at the moment and I’ve sold several hundreds of copies of each, which is far more than some games on the service has sold. On the other hand, you have other games that have made their creator’s over $100k so as someone who was hoping to turn independent game development into a viable part-time job and maybe even a full-time job, making around $500 for your first quarter is disheartening.
Even moreso than the money, Molly the Were-Zompire’s reception has been discouraging. Despite my thinking that it was the superior game, it’s getting worse ratings that Epiphany in Spaaace and is selling slightly less despite getting more trial downloads. Still, there’s no point in getting too depressed about the matter. Rather, I’ve been trying to figure out what I did wrong with Molly so that I can do better with the next game. After much thought, here are some things that I think may have caused its poor performance.
1 – The pictures may have thrown people off. In Molly, I put in around a dozen intentionally bad pictures as a joke. I’m afraid that some people may have found these pictures to be less funny and more bad.
2 – Less focused. In Epiphany, I received some complaints that the humor was too focused – all sci-fi cliches and not much else – so with Molly, I tried to do a wider range of humor. So in Molly, you got some 4th wall jokes, RPG cliches, various gaming references, undead stuff, and just random silliness. People knew what to expect in Epiphany (Star Trek & other sci-fi cliches) whereas with Molly, there was less certainty.
3 – It’s essentially a stand-alone expansion pack. Sure, the plot & characters are all new (like many expansion packs), but nothing else is substantially different than Epiphany. In both games, you read a story, make choices, and see what the result of those choices are and that’s it. Either game can be experienced in a single play session of an hour or two. Had the second game had substantial improvements like beautiful artwork, new gameplay elements, more content, or drastically better writing, I think it would have been received much better.
I think that last reason is the key. It’s evident from these two games that there’s an audience for straight Interactive Fiction on the XBox 360, but it’s not a horribly large one. If I drastically improved my writing skills or art skills, that audience would probably increase, but I imagine not drastically. On the other hand, if I was to expand my games so that they’re not just interactive novels but also traditional RPGs with all the character building & strategic combat that a good game on the genre entails, I think I would hit a much larger demographic. RPGers aren’t necessarily attached to great graphics – just look at the niche popularity of text-based roguelikes – so I think that a quality entirely text-based RPG could go over very well.
So that will be my next project – a text based console-style RPG. My working title is “Mulan vs. the Zombie Apocalypse.” I’ll talk about some of the gameplay specifics in my next post.
Hi guys. Sorry for not posting much lately. Christmas was distracting as expected. This week, when I was planning on getting back in the game, I not only got fairly sick, but fairly injured (head injury – bloody and painful, but thankfully not a concussion).
XBLIG have been pretty quiet as far as interesting games go of late. I guess it makes sense – if you had a game that was almost done, you probably wanted to release it before Christmas rather than right after.
Anyway, here are a few games released recently that I thought were worth checking out:
Tobe’s Vertical Adventure – Here’s a platformer where you descend into caves, grab the treasure and then have to hurry back out before the cave collapses. Fun with cute graphics.
Twin Blades – This sidescrolling action game where an anime nun runs around killing zombies with melee & gun attacks has some of the most gorgeous graphics I’ve seen on the service. Gameplay seemed a bit repetitive, but the developer has said that they plan on adding to the game so it might be worth keeping an eye on.
Pixel Whirled – It’s basically playing 2 games of Space Invaders at the same time. Kind of fun, but what really got me was the pitch perfect replication of the 8-bit NES era in the presentation (check out that box art!).
Arkedo Series 03 – Pixel! – Arkedo is the XBLIG developer to watch IMO. This 2D platformer has a unique minimalist look, a good sense of humor, and fun run & jump gameplay.
I’m not sure when it’ll go up, but Samurai vs. Zombies was quite the fun 3D brawler when I played it in playtesting. Hopefully, it’ll go up soon so that all can enjoy it.
Anyway, that it’s for tonight. In my next entry, I’ll be talking about my current game project. Stay tuned!