Indie Games 3: positive edition

First off - a warning to Canadian actor Ryan Reynolds. After spending about half an hour writing about his performance in the Green Lantern movie, I got my PC infected with malware while looking for pictures of the smug, character-ruining bastard. And I had to reset the PC to factory settings, and re-install everything and lose a lot of files. All because of Ryan Reynolds's performance in Green Lantern.

Look here now, Reynolds: I know you read my blog. I'm going to get you back for this. I'm going to get to the gym and work out, and gel my hair, and appear in some rubbish teen movie, and then bit by bit I'm going to destroy you like you've been destroying me for all these years. And one day, when you hear that I've landed the role of Hal Jordan in a film and simultaneously married your dream-girl... I will break your damn computer, right before you go to work at 2AM. And then we'll be even.

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Now. I wanted to write about Xbox Live Arcade Indie Games again. I really love these. If you're not aware of them, they're in this odd little hard-to-reach corner of the 'Xbox Live Arcade', where you can download small (usually either retro or interestingly pioneering) games for about a pound each -- and absolutely every one has a free demo, so you know what you're getting. They're made by amateur game designers and members of the public, and there are LOTS of them now, all just thrown in there like some strange lucky dip of amateur games. A lot of them are appalling, some of them are very close to being good but are simply broken.... and a handful are absolutely superb.

Going into the Indie Game page and downloading games based on their titles and descriptions feels wonderfully like exploring. Or better, it's like going into the game shop when you were a kid, before the internet and free reviews were available - the days when you looked at the title and the few screen-shots on the back of the box, and thought, 'Okay I'll try that!' Sometimes you discovered The Legend of Zelda and sometimes you wasted your money on Hydlide. It's just like that. Except they have free demos.

In my previous two Indie Game round-ups this time last year I mentioned a lot of bad ones and tried to be funny, like I do. In the ensuing 12 months, I've played lots and lots and lots of very bad Indie games... and a handful of really good ones. For a change I'm going to be positive and just stick to recommending the gems. So I'll start with a recent hit...


THE AVATAR LEGENDS

As a rule, I recommend staying the hell away from Indie Games with 'Avatar' in the title - Avatar Fighter, Avatar Warriors, Avatar Zombie Massager Extreme (no really)... all terrible, mostly broken. But The Avatar Legends by Barker's Crest Studios is something special. It's a silly, tongue-in-cheek single player 3D Zelda-esque RPG... but with your Xbox profile avatar as the hero. It seems like a cheap gimmick, but it's just a wonderful feeling to see a little cartoon version of you, perfectly animated, running up a volcano fighting monsters with a sword and spells, off to save the world in his little Mass Effect t-shirt and glasses.

One of several themed worlds, like snow, beach, swamp, mountain and farm - but all of them are fun to explore and full of charming little old-fashioned NPCs.

The combat is repetitive and extremely simple, and the story is basic but sweet, so don't expect some kind of modern epic here... but.
The game is really special. It's adorable. The level-up and dialogue systems are great, the game world is much bigger than you might expect, the characters are funny, interesting, well-written and occasionally quite moving. Seriously, I was moved several times, by little avatar people with big heads telling me to fight skeletons for them. I spent a week on this. I kept going back to my profile to change my little Buch avatar's clothes, so that he was wearing a jacket in the snow world, for example. Just to make it that bit more fun.
This game is very popular at the moment and is getting high scores with critics and on Xbox Live itself. It's cheap and cheerful, but the designers have put a LOT of effort and love into it, and it shows. There is even a complex tool-set where you can make your own quests and worlds. The Avatar Legends. Excellent work.

Four an a half silly Star Trek jokes out of five.

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Okay I'll try to make the rest of the reviews a bit shorter... getting the length right on a blog is hard, man. Next up is...


ABAN HAWKINS AND THE 1000 SPIKES

And this is one of the easy levels.

Here is an NES-style 2D platformer that is very hard and uses a (deliberately) obvious Indiana Jones rip-off as its player character. It is, however, a truly excellent example of the genre, and has a cute sense of humour about itself. I firmly believe that if this had been actually been released on the NES, it would have been one of the console's biggest hits. It's a damn shame that nowadays Xbox live Arcade is the best exposure a game like this can get.
Aban Hawkins and the 1000 Spikes by 8Bits Fanatics is aptly-named, as almost every block puts you at risk of spikes, arrows, bottomless pits, fireballs or scorpions, all of which will kill you in one hit. It's one of those games where the extreme difficulty is the whole point, and the designers have luckily balanced the frustration and fun of that challenge very well. Every level (and there are just enough) is excruciating, but the first time you die - probably via some hidden spike that appears if you stay on the first block for more than a second, is always very funny. The sheer cheekiness and inventiveness with which the game whittles away your 1000+ lives (so you have no excuse not to keep going) is just so charming that it's hard to hate even the nastiest traps. The end boss has a particularly sadistic move he pulls, after it's dead, which just... I nearly cried.
From the mis-spelled gibberish instructions to the music, every bit of this is designed to perfectly replicate and simultaneously send-up the hardest NES games you remember, like Ghouls and Ghosts or Contra. Very funny, very addictive, and also - the control system is innovative and brilliantly balanced.

Five 'YOU ARE DEAD!' screens out of five.


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TECHNO KITTEN ADVENTURE!

You know that simple game with the helicopter where you just have one button and the screen scrolls left to right while you go up or down to avoid obstaces? This game is that, but your character is a flying cat ('kitteh') of some description and while you're trying to dodge the walls, the game tries to throw you off-balance by hurling harmless but distracting images of pterodactyls, angels, UFOs, pirate ships, hearts, eyes, hands, strobe lighting, butterflies and even the giant flashing high score reminder right in your face, from all angles, all choreographed to bubblegum danceclub music. I know that sounds like the worst game you can imagine, but I rather suspect that's the idea. I hate lolcats and I hate dance music. But...

Only the white stars can hurt you - the dragons, music, 'meows' and endless light effects are just there to piss you off.

The details are just fantastically cute. They have three levels and three records, and they're synched together very carefully. The singer will sing 'I will reach up high like a rainbooow...' and the game will have a hand reach up from the bottom of the screen and vanish, then use obstacles to force you to go high, as a rainbow shoots across the screen in an effort to blind you. Then the song will speed up and flashing lights will blast all over the screen in tune with the bass. (It is genuinely not playable if you have epilepsy - they don't give you this warning but seriously, take heed.)
A lot of Indie games try and grab you with silly titles, but this is one of the few that actually delivers what it rashly promises - intense, carefully-plotted stupidity to make you chuckle guiltily. Well done, 21st Street Games. I downloaded this one because I thought it would be something to sarcastially mock. I've played it every day since.

Three and a half little hands pointing at the top of the background for 'Have you ever touched the blue, blue skaaayyy?' out of five.

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This is getting far too long. I'll wrap it up.

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JOHNNY PLATFORM SAVES XMAS!

Another one where the amusing title won my interest (this has evolved into maybe Indie Games' primary marketing technique), this second Johnny Platform game is far, far better than the first thanks to some clever, fluid controls and gimmicks, and a long series of impressive puzzles, ranging from easy to damned hard. The time trials and improved wall-jump mode give it serious longevity too. Well worth a go. Five hot Xmas puddings out of five.

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NINJA BROS.

Yes, yes, another attention-grab title. I am the target demographic of insulting sales ploys. But as it happens, Ninja Bros. is a brilliant, tense little timing-based puzzle-platformer. What makes this one special is that you control between two and four ninjas at once - they move down, left and right simultaneously on seperate screens but each have their own jump button. So you're forced to multi-task, essentially playing two, three or four levels at the same time. Very tricky, well worth the effort. Four pseudo-Japanese translations out of five.

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PLATFORMANCE: CASTLE PAIN

I wanted to end this round-up with yet another difficult retro 2D jumping game (I like them). In the same vein as Aban Hawkins, Platformance aims to test your patience to its limits. It has one level, but that level is large, cleverly designed to fill a screen, and will kill you with everything that moves in it, at least once each.

You're in the bottom left, the damsel is in the top right. It's just one level, sadly, but what a level.

Here there are endless lives and very generous checkpoints... but the aim of this one is to survive with as few lives lost as possible. Finish with under 30 deaths (no easy feat at first) and the Princess you save will ask you to try harder next time. Die less than 5 times and she's mildly impressed. But if, by Herculean effort and the training and dedication of a chess master, you finish the level without dying once... then you're the King of the god-damned world, man. The Princess asks you to marry her and you're like, 'whatevs'. There are three difficulty levels, and the hardest is just ridiculous. This game is very small and has slightly wonky controls, but it's very enjoyable, has great music and is beautifully drawn. The difficulty levels even translate to slight differences in the game's appearance, such as bronze, silver and gold picture frames.

Will you manage to finish it in a good time, let alone with less than five lives lost? Well, maybe...

Will you finish the game in Hardcore mode without losing a single life, and in only 4 minutes 46 seconds at that? Unlikely, chum, because it took me about a month of practice! But by GOD, I did it. Today. Just in time for the sequel - 'Temple Death' - to be released.

DO YOU SEE THAT, REYNOLDS? FOUR MINUTES FORTY-SIX SECONDS WITH NO DEATHS! HOW'S THAT FOR AN ACHIEVEMENT? SCARED OF ME NOW?!?

Four out of five.