admin
A new version of Breath of Death VII was just released to the marketplace today. This version is just to fix a few small bugs that we discovered recently; no new features have been added (maybe next time).
Sorry about the lack of updates recently – I’ve been busy moving to a new place so game development and reviewing has taken a backseat. We finished moving today, however, so expect more reviews and more news about Cthulhu Saves the World soon.
RPGamer.com just posted an interview of yours truly talking about Cthulhu Saves the World. Click here to go read it.
Progress report, we’re up to 123 monsters for Cthulhu Saves the World and we’re not done yet. For comparison, Breath of Death VII had 100 monsters, about a third of which were palette swaps. Cthulhu Saves the World does include some monsters that are variants of other monsters, but the percentage is smaller, and in most cases, they aren’t just palette swaps, but have other variations as well. Not only are there going to be noticeably more monsters in Cthulhu Saves the World, but I really think Bill outdid himself with the quality as well.
To whet your appetite, here is a sampler of some of the monsters we have done yet.
Click on the image to see them at full size.
Remember FMV games? Remember how much fun they were? Yeah, I don’t either, because aside from the novelty factor of the early stuff like Dragon’s Lair, FMV games were about as fun as you would expect watching poorly done movies that keep rewinding on their own would be.
Bloody Death doesn’t buck the trend. Although I applaud the fact that they were able to make an FMV game at all given XBLIG’s size limitations, that’s about all I can applaud them for. The acting & directing are laughable, the plot is non existent, the pacing attrocious, the visual quality of the video is horrible (no doubt to fit under the 150MB limit), and if all that wasn’t bad enough, it’s very obvious that there was not one native English speaker to work on the game so not only are you watching a bad student horror flick, but you’re watching a bad student horror flick with hard to understand accents, out of place swearing, and poor grammar.
Come on developers! Start releasing more good games so I don’t have to review dreck like this. We had a wonderful stretch earlier in the year with great game after great game coming out on XBLIG. What happened?
Breath of Death VII: The Beginning, the first RPG from indie game developer, Zeboyd Games, has achieved a LTD conversion rate of over 66.6% with sales of over 20,000 copies in the first 70 days since release. Conversion rate is defined as the number of sales divided by the number of demo downloads. Breath of Death VII has also achieved the second highest user rating of any XBox Live Indie Game on the US marketplace with an average rating of 4.75 out of 5.
“We are thrilled with these results,” says Breath of Death VII creator, Robert Boyd. “Most casual game developers consider their game a success if they manage to achieve a double digit conversion rate. To have achieved a rate of over 2/3rds is just phenemonal.”
“I attribute our high conversion rate to the high quality of the game, the positive press we’ve received on sites like Yahoo and Kotaku, and the tremendous value the game provides. In a world where even indie RPGs frequently have price tags of $20 and above, being able to buy a great RPG like Breath of Death VII for $1 is unheard of.”
Zeboyd Games’ next RPG, a dark comedy called Cthulhu Saves the World starring the insanity-inducing monstrosity from the horror fiction of H.P. Lovecraft will have a slightly higher price tag of $3 due to price/size limitations imposed on XBox Live Indie Games ($1 games are limited to 50MBs, whereas $3 & $5 games can take up to 150MBs). However, the developers at Zeboyd Games are hard at work to make Cthulhu Saves the World just as much of a value as Breath of Death VII.
“Cthulhu Saves the World is longer, the visuals look better, the gameplay is deeper and more balanced, there’s more music and the music we are using is of higher quality, and the story is more interesting than the already great Breath of Death VII. Not only that, but there will be greater incentives to replay the game with multiple difficulty levels and three unlockable bonus modes, one of which (Cthulhu’s Angels) will include new dialogue and a bonus playable character.”
Breath of Death VII: The Beginning was released on April 22, 2010 on the XBox Live Indie Games Marketplace. The demo and full version can be downloaded at http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/games/media/66acd000-77fe-1000-9115-d802585504bd/ or directly on the XBox 360 Games Marketplace.
Cthulhu Saves the World is currently scheduled to be released on the XBox Live Indie Game Marketplace at the end of August 2010.
Just a quick note to let everyone know that my first e-book game, Epiphany in Spaaace, is now available on Kindle for a mere $0.99. It’s the same as the version available on XBox Live Indie Games, except now it’s portable!
You can get it here.
If you enjoy Epiphany in Spaaace, please show your support by writing a positive review on Amazon.
Cthulhu Saves the World has 3 post-game modes that are unlocked when you beat the game.
Score Attack is the same as it was in Breath of Death VII – i.e. random encounters turned off and you gain points for beating bosses at lower levels.
Highlander – Cthulhu is the only character useable in battle. XP gain rate is increased.
and finally…drum roll…
Cthulhu’s Angels – The details are a secret for now, but I will say that it is going to require substantially more work on my part to add than the other 2 modes.
The title says it all. A new preview for Cthulhu Saves the World is now up on the Game Informer website. Check it out here.
Acupwnture is the latest falling block game to hit XBox Live Indie Games. Match up colors to form squares which then explode after a few turns and increase your score. I liked how you could reset the explosion timers by expanding the squares and the overall Asian theme is nice, but if you’ve played one falling block with color game, you’ve played them all and this doesn’t really do enough to distinguish itself from the competition. So in conclusion, pretty fun, extremely hard, and not a bad use of 80 MS points if you want another puzzle game, but far from an essential purchase.
Next up, we have two tower defense games, Towers and Impact of Towers. How’s that for confusing? Towers is an excellent tower defense game that gets everything right. Good interface, easy controls, pleasing visual and audio, and well balanced gameplay all result in an excellent example of the genre. It has a nice balance of simplicity and complexity that I especially liked. It doesn’t do anything especially unique (except maybe the multiple endings), but despite that, I’d say it’s the second best tower defense game currently available on the XBox 360 at the moment (the best tower defense game being Defense Grid).
Impact of Towers on the other hand is less good. It’s not necessarily a bad game, and it does have a decent arsenal of towers, 1-time use items, and levels to play around with, but the controls aren’t the best, the gameplay isn’t as balanced, and the presentation is poor. Oh and it costs 240 MS points, whereas Towers is only 80 MS points. In a genre as crowded as the Tower Defense genre, skipping Impact of Towers is an easy choice.