Robert
Just saw this via twitter – a rather well-written post-mortem of Dysnomia. Quite interesting from both a programming aspect and a business aspect. You can read it here.
And if you haven’t played it yet, I highly recommend giving Dysnomia a try. It’s a high quality Aliens-esque shooter similar to Alien Breed. Well worth the $3. And to be honest, I’ve enjoyed it much more than the official Alien Breed remake on XBLA that came out last year.
Some more Cthulhu Saves the World media for you.
First, we have some screenshots of the first town in the game. Townsfolk haven’t been added yet, but this ought to give you a nice idea of the kind of visual improvement we’ve made since our last game.
Next, we have some animated GIFs of 2 of our main characters – Cthulhu himself and the lovely Umi.
Finally, we have some additional songs from the game. We’re planning on releasing the entire soundtrack for free when the game comes out, but in the meantime, we hope you enjoy the music from two of the dungeon types - Caves & Shrines.
“I have never heard you laugh so hard at a movie that did not involve Joel and the bots.” – my wife
We’ll have some new area screenshots out later this week (maybe today), but in the meantime, here are some new battle screenshots from Cthulhu Saves the World.
Leave Home – a truly fantastic sidescrolling shooter where the level changes depending on how well you’re doing – just had a price drop to 80 MS points recently. It was well worth the higher price point before so now you have no excuse.
Black Chicken Studios sent me a review copy of their new PC life-sim RPG, Academagia a little while ago and I’ve been playing it off and on. It’s basically a Harry Potter life simulator minus the license. And you know what? It’s pretty fun.
After you’ve created your character, you enroll at a big magic academy and then we’re fully in life sim territory. You’re given a calendar of events and the ability to choose up to 3 activities for each day. You have a ton of activities to choose from (with more being added as you progress) and at first, it’s a little overwhelming, but I quickly got into the groove and settled into a routine of attending classes, studying, improving skills, and trying to improve my relationship with other students. There are adventures you can embark on, areas to explore, and tons of random events (which play out in a Choose Your Own Adventure fashion where your stats and skills determine the success rate of the various choices).
The presentation is functional – lots of text, with some still images – with calm classical music. Everything’s text and menu-based so twitch gamers beware, but for fans of calmer turn-based fare, there’s a lot to like here. The full version is a little pricy for an indie game at $25, but there’s a lot of content here, and the game feels like it’ll have a ton of replay value so the game should keep you busy for quite some time if it’s up your alley.
I just realized that I haven’t said anything about Ophidian Wars: Opac’s Journey which is a shame since it’s a quality game. It’s basically Metroid without enemies and with the ability to purchase upgrades ala an RPG. It’s a little rough around the corners, but even so, good Metroidvania-style games are hard to come by and this is a good Metroidvania. If Small Cave Games has done this well with their debut title, I can only imagine how awesome their next game will be (which from what I’ve gathered is more of an Action/RPG).
Ophidian Wars: Opac’s Journey is available on XBox Live Indie Games for 80 MS points.
I love RPGs, but sadly, there isn’t a whole lot to choose from in this genre on XBox Live Indie Games, especially when you consider that the service is almost two years old. There’s our game, Breath of Death VII. There’s Light’s End which is decent and sort of an RPG (although despite its RPG-esque visuals, it really has more in common with the old graphic adventure games that Lucasarts & Sierra used to make). There’s Dungeon Adventure which is supposed to be a decent rogue-like (but all things considered, I’d rather just play Nethack for free). Then you have Star Cross, ZenHak, and Legend of the Rune Lords, all of which have major issues. And that was pretty much it for the RPG genre on XBLIG, up until yesterday when Aphelion: Episode One – Graves of Earth came out.
Aphelion looks great. It’s by far the most professional looking RPG on XBLIG and wouldn’t look out of place on XBox Live Arcade. It’s not perfect, and the indie nature of the game peeks through here and there (like in the running animations which feel out of place), but overall, the visuals are one of the game’s strongest points.
The music is solid. Everything ranges from decent to good, with one or two great song. No complaints here.
Story is a mixed bag. The banter between the 4 playable characters is entertaining enough and their personalities are about as fleshed out as you would expect with a 5 hour game. On the other hand, the plot is fairly cliche. Yes, the big bad guy of the game is a mysterious silver-haired swordsman. No, Aphelion isn’t going for parody. Even worse, though, is that since this is an episodic game, there’s no real resolution. The game ends with a climactic battle, but it felt like I had just finished disk 1 of a 4 disk game. Nothing is answered and I didn’t feel like I understood the overarching plot any better after beating the game than I did halfway through the game. Plus, since this is an indie game, who knows if the future episodes will ever get finished?
Gameplay has serious balance issues. There’s a Break bar that fills up as you deal damage or are hurt and after it’s full, you can unleash a crazy powerful attack that can target multiple enemies, deals massive damage, and doesn’t even cost a turn. It’s as broken as it sounds, especially when you consider how quickly you can fill up the bar later on in the game after you’ve gotten several multi-hit techniques. Sadly, the unbalanced gameplay doesn’t stop there. Restoration items are dirt cheap so I was never in danger of running out of EP (the game’s form of MP) so I just unleashed my strongest attacks & spells all of the time. Because of this, random battles would frequently be won before the enemy even got a chance to move. Similarly, I rarely used healing magic in battle since I could just use one of my many powerful Full Party heal items.
The game uses a fun LV-Up system similar to Mass Effect, but here too, the game is unbalanced – each character has 3 skills that they can upgrade to gain new abilities, 3 skills that give party benefits, and several additional skills that just give stat bonuses. The problem is that the stat bonus skills give such small bonuses like +2% per level. Admittedly, these add up over time, but it’s just not very fun to waste a LV-Up on something that has no real discernable effect on your character.
There are a couple annoyances that detract from the game. Random encounters are frequent. Font sizes are rather small, to the point where I leaned forward slightly to make it easier to read. I’m playing on a high quality 32″ HDTV so I can only imagine how difficult it would be to play on a small low quality SDTV. These problems don’t render the game unplayable, but they do make the game a little less fun.
The game took me a little over 5 hours to beat. After beating the game, you unlock a New Game+ mode that lets you restart the game at new, harder difficulty levels while keeping your LVs and equipment from your previous playthrough(s). Between that and a few optional harder bosses near the end of the game, Aphelion could keep you playing for quite a while if you’re so inclined.
Despite Aphelion’s flaws, I had some fun with it. Not enough for me to want to replay the game (although I’m mildly tempted to try skipping straight to the highest difficulty level in New Game+ to see if it offers a challenge), but I had fun getting new equipment (the game has a ton of equipment for a 5 hour game) and utterly decimating everything that stood against me. There were a couple of parts where your party splits up for a short period of time which were kind of cool and a nice change of pace. On the other hand, I can’t help but be disapointed by Aphelion. It’s obvious that many people spent a lot of time making this game so it’s disappointing that the gameplay and story aren’t up to the same high level of quality that the graphics exhibits.
Aphelion: Episode One – Graves of Earth was released on July 7th, 2010. It can be purchased for 240 MS points ($3 USD).
EDIT: This review was done based on a peer review version of the game which had horrible load times. I just tried out the version that you can purchase on the marketplace and I was shocked to discover that the load times are drastically better and are actually rather short, all around. I’m really surprised that there was such a huge difference between the ccg file version that people were playtesting & peer reviewing and the version on the marketplace. I’m sure my overall impression of the game would have been slightly more positive if I had played the version with the short load times.
Radiangames Crossfire Short Review: Buy it as soon as possible.
Radiangames Crossfire Somewhat Longer Review: Picture Space Invaders. Now add modern graphics, the ability to teleport back and forth between the bottom and the top of the screen, a good variety of enemies that compliment each other nicely, various power-ups (most important of which is a power gauge that lets you drastically increase the power of your shots for a short period of time), co-op play, 50 main levels, and 2 unlockable modes (super fast mode & a gauntlet of extra hard levels). The game looks fantastic, it’s a blast to play, and the gameplay has more depth than you might think at first glance. Well worth the 240 MS points.
Radiangames Crossfire is one of the best arcade shooters I’ve ever played.
In short, buy it as soon as possible.
Breath of Death VII just passed 20,000 copies sold!
To celebrate, here’s a little gift – a copy of the Breath of Death VII world map. You can get it here.
