See what I did there? It's an entry praising / advertising Zeboyd Games. So I wrote 'Let's Hear It For Zeboyd'. See, 'Zeboyd' has the word 'boy' in it, and (this is where it gets good) the 'Ze' bit sounds a bit like 'the'. So it sounds just like 'The boy'. And I'm PRAISING Zeboyd, so it...
So many levels.
----I was contemplating writing a second proper 'XBox Live Indie Games review' and I still might. I dunno - after writing mine I found out it wasn't such an original idea and there are already a ton of reviews for these things. Plus, I think I played the wierdest/most interesting ones already. But I did find some other good ones.
To hell with it - I recommend 'This is Hard', 'Space Milkman' (a neat Mario 3-style platformer where you abduct cows, then get one glass of milk out of them before eating them as steak... how is that a milkman?! It's more like a space cattle-rustler) and 'The Impossible Game'.
Also he collects cakes and sweets? They go so well with steak and milk. Seriously though, this game is pretty neat! If it were on Super Nes, it would have been a hit.----
If you read the previous blog you might remember me raving over 'Molly the Were Zompire' after the first impression really... impressed me. Well I played every square inch of the game, and I'm still very impressed. Yeah I said impressed three times.
It's a short but brilliant text adventure game - much like a 'Choose Your Own Adventure' book except really funny.
I used to read those 'Choose Your Own' books when I was a kid. The first one I had was an official Super Mario thing... and it was really bloody hard. I remember finding the tons of sad endings really depressing and grim. As a little boy, I was well and truly creeped out, reading about Mario failing in lots of ways. I was used to seeing him die of course, but this was different. I don't think I ever even found the happy ending. It was hidden away for only cheaters or those who could solve complex puzzles and would read every outcome. After that I found some of those R.L. Stine 'Goosebumps' books which were so popular back then. And there were a couple of Choose Your Owns in there too.
There it is! Now it's on DS?!
----This may be a very long article. I keep losing track. Right - 'Molly the Were-Zompire'.
You decide the fate of Molly Desper, a grad student who is sucked into a varied and super-generic fantasy land and is simultaneously bitten by a werewolf, vampire and zombie. From this point on (and before that actually), it's up to you where she goes - does she run from the monsters who turned her, attempt to join them, or just wuss out and let them take her to the Big Bad? Does she join forces with a ninja pirate lady, or flee and make a bargain with the Grim Reaper? Does she save the world from the coming invasion of octopus-headed men? Does she sign up with the Table Tennis Club and fulfill her destiny that way? (That was my favourite.)
If you're on Xbox Live, this game comes highly recommended by this random blog author. What's particularly awesome about it (aside from the professional quality of the writing) is that all of those options I mentioned are pretty-much seperate and all individually awesome. Unusually for this sort of adventure, there is no 'correct' or 'true' version of the story that's significantly longer and better than the rest. There's just a big bunch of brief, disparate and hilarious paths to take. Some result in sadness and death, and others in various heroic endings. Way more than half of them made me laugh out loud.
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Anyway... enough of this. The point is, it's great. Inspiring to me as a writer, and very amusing to me as a bored fantasy/SF fan with nothing to do one evening. And there was a link to the creators' website on the game so I checked them out. This blog is just to tell you they're awesome.
The website is actually full of Indie Game reviews (and helpful ones at that, with nary a massager in sight). So check that out too.
Hey the site also has a free download of Molly for PC - at http://zeboyd.com/free-stuff/
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Well now I'm losing track of everything and kind of bored. I was going to say that I found two other Zeboyd games on Xbox Live yesterday, and gave them both a brief run to check them out.
Unsurprisingly, both of them are great and very funny. They're just a cut above the rest of the Indie Games I've seen. Really, something else.
'Epiphany in Spaaace!' (their first game on Xbox Live) is very similar to Molly - but sci-fi instead of fantasy. All right! I look forward to reading every possible outcome of that one night soon.
The newest game is reeeally interesting. This one, unlike almost everything on the Indie Games list... is an actual game. It's long, and has gameplay and characters and a substantial world map. That's pretty awesome value for 80 gamer points.
The name is 'Breath of Death VII: The Beginning'. It's a comedic spoof-RPG which sets out to mock NES-era top-down RPG's, (from the end of the title I'm assuming the early Final Fantasy installments are a big target).
I've only had time to play about half an hour of it so far - but hell yes. After a neat little NES-like story into that starts with a Mega Man joke and somehow moves seamlessly on to Fallout 3, you start in a dungeon, playing a stoic skeleton warrior named Dem. After making good my escape I had only time to explore the home village a little. The fighting is solid, the story is already fresh and funny, the music is nice... it's a comedy FF/Zelda-style RPG. For ONE dollar!
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I think I've plugged this small games company enough, now. It's just that I'm very impressed by them and I think this writer Robert Boyd ought to be a LOT more sucessful than he is. He needs to be publishing bestselling novels, writing these jokes into mainstream games, maybe even hosting the Tonight show. At the least - his games on the DS would be a whole lot better than Mario's bloody Monster Mix-Up.
My buddy Tillian has intentions of writing a full-comedy RPG. I always thought it was an awesome idea, and I'm looking forward to it. With Breath of Death, this guy apears to have proved her right!
Let's have more of this, game companies. I know you all read my blog.
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They're currently working on another RPG and the working title is 'Cthulu Saves The World'. Somebody start paying these people!!
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