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Your Doodles Are Bugged! is quite the game. Created by German developer Spyn Doctor (responsible for Golden Tangram and Kuchibi), this is one of the most unique, personal games on Xbox Live Indie Games.

So, what the heck is it? Well, to speak in gamer’s terms, it’s a combination between Lemmings and Paint. It’s genius in it’s simplicity. Your task is to guide the little bugs to the jar of honey, passing the various “doodles” that block your way or form your path. To do this you basically draw lines for the bugs to jump and walk on. The gameplay is almost rudely intuitive and it’s a breath of fresh air in an ocean of twin-stick shooters, platformers and massaging apps.

You control your doodling pen with the right analog stick that responds pretty well to your touch. To draw you hold down A and to erase you hold down X, simple as that. You can go faster by holding the right trigger, a much appreciated addition for the bigger levels, and you can undo with the B button. The most important control feature is the ability to zoom. The levels in YDAB! are remarkably advanced at times and without zooming on you wouldn’t have much luck trying to complete it.

To add a bit more depth to the gameplay you have a limited supply of ink. This might seem obvious and harmless at first but really provides a challenge in the later, densely doodle-populated levels. It’s really good fun trying to figure out the best way through the dragons and clouds and fishes and smiling faces and trolls and squids and trees and birds and.. oh sorry, kinda lost my trace of thought there. What I mean is, there’s much challenge in just finding the least ink-draining route. You soon figure out that you might only need a little dot to get your bugs over a gap that a lesser player just would’ve made a bridge over. Overall it’s a very rewarding albeit sometimes time-consuming experience to make it perfect. Add to this a classic timer to compare your high-score to your friends and you’ve got some terribly addicting gameplay. Add to that some very clean and pretty the doodled graphics, in-game tutorials and an adorable story and you end up with quite the package.

I have a few very minor issues with the game though. The first, and least intrusive, is in regards to the music. There’s only one track looping infinitely and even though I appreciate chiptune-infused folk music for mandolin and accordion as much as the next guy it gets a bit grating after a while. Another issue is that the bugs can be quite the little assholes at times. If one of your drawings is a pixel off that might result in a squadron of bugs leaping to their death. It does add a lot to the challenge and you get used to it but it’s still a bit disturbing.

Overall though, YDAB! is one of the absolute best on Xbox Live Indie Games. The amount of love and polish in this game is just amazing. There are plenty of levels and they’re suitable for a pick-up-and-play session basically anytime. I mean really, for 80MS (1 PUNY EARTH DOLLAR!) you’d be an idiot not to pick this up. There I said it, you’d be an idiot.

Square Off is a Xbox Live Indie Games title from Australian developer Gnomic Studios. An arcde-style shooter with a distinct cartoon art style, Square Off is one of the better games available from Microsoft’s indie platform. Why? Here’s why:

The concept of Square Off is rather simple really. You play as a little genetically engineered square made from a mad professor’s brain cell and some alien DNA and your job is to wipe out the ongoing alien invasion. In practice this translates to a twin stick shooter with some twists. You control your little square (equipped with an adorable jetpack) with the right stick, aim with the left stick and shoot with the right trigger. During gameplay you can pick up an assortment of wondrous little powerups including a shotgun, a triple-barrel gun, bombs and a rocket launcher. The gameplay is very smooth and responsive, as it should be in a shooter, and the controls are simple yet functional.

In the main mode, the one were you fend off previously mentioned aliens, the game is split into 6 stages. These generally take the form of a few rooms connected by smaller corridors and they’re all positively swarming with aliens. Again the gameplay is very basic but enjoyable, shoot the alien spawn and destroy the motherships and you move on to the next level. It’s actually quite unforgiving at times for the lonely player, if you can’t keep up with the alien spawn rate you can easily find yourself trapped in a narrow corridor unable to get through because your standard gun can’t keep up with the rate of alien spawns. A small design flaw but it’s uncommon during the game if you’re playing on a decent level.

What makes Square Off stand out are mainly two things. First and foremost it’s the focus on multiplayer. The main game (although a bit short) can and should be played with a friend or three. This makes the sometimes unforgiving levels both more fair and more enjoyable. Even the classic co-op “THAT POWERUP WAS MINE YOU IDIOT!” is there and I’m loving every second of it. This also takes care of the difficulty one might encounter when playing alone, it’s clearly designed around multiplayer play. There’s also a Death Match mode with three different gameplay options: To The Death, Frag Race and Time Limit. Going head to head with a few good friends in your couch makes for quite the killing fest.

The other thing that makes Square Off stand out is the delicious art style. Clearly inspired by The Behemoth’s games, the cartoon style with the thick lines and great attention to facial expressions works very well. There’s hardly anything to complain about here, this is definitely one of the better looking games on XBLIG. The sound and music almost reaches the same level too. The sound effects work perfectly with the game and the dramatic music gives the game a tongue-in-cheek serious tone.

Square Off does have some small issues though. The first and arguably biggest is the lack of online multiplayer. While this is uncommon for XBLIG titles in general, it would’ve taken this particular game to the next level. Other than that there could’ve been more variation when it comes to the enemies, most of them are of the same type (and look) and just keeps chasing you. To be completely fair these are minor things when you look at the whole package. Square Off is one of the better games on XBLIG and for 240MS (3 PUNY EARTH DOLLARS) you can’t go wrong with this. If you have friends to play with that is.

IGF was just done and an early build of Kaleidoscope was entered. The judges all left feedback that we then got e-mailed to us. I was sad to see that the audio was mostly overlooked but pretty much all criticism was spot-on and has since been remedied. Here’s what the judges had to say:

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I know, I know.. I really play too many arcade-style shooters. I don’t care, they’re awesome. Atomhex is a dual-stick arena shooter, that means it shares the same basic concept with Robotron or Geometry Wars.  Aromhex is a breath of fresh air when it comes down to what’s beyond the controls though, we’re talking gameplay, baby.

Atomhex adds some new and interesting things in the mix to spruce up that dual-stick gameplay we know and love. The thing it does best is without a doubt the enemies. The different kinds of strange beings you encounter during a gameplay session all have their own unique ability, pattern if you like. These enemies spawn when the atoms and hexes that appear on the playing field collide, the atoms sticking to the hexes when they get close. The atoms and hexes can’t hurt you, you collect atoms to change the color of your shots. Hexes you can actually poke around a bit (try it, there’s a secret hidden here!) to only get atoms to the hexes you want. The more atoms on a hex, the tougher enemies that hex will spawn. To quote the creator Incitti himself: “The Vespas will compete with you for Hexes. The Cholox will grow to block your path. Grex will charge at you and detonate. Crux will freeze you and  then try to fry you and the Puncti will bounce around randomly and get in your way.”  You’ll learn it, live it and love it. This right here is great game design that, while hard to do justice in words, works so stunningly great in-game it brings tears to my eye.

There are even more things to watch out for too! When to atoms collide they create a Karkata. These buggers always go straight at you, stealing some of your energy and then trying to create a web you have to shoot to get past. The only way to kill these is to shoot them from behind, quite a challenge when the whole screen is filled with other nasties. Like I said before, the atoms all have different colors, the amount of colors increasing as you progress. When you collect an atom your shots will turn into that color and when an atom and a hex has joined, only shots of the right color will hurt it. Combine this with the fact that you get a higher multiplier and score if you collect many atoms of the same color and you get a very interesting gameplay element, the balance of when to shoot things and when to focus on gathering. With a multiplier that goes up to 10000x your score the system allows people who master it quite ridiculous scores, a very rewarding thing.

But wait, there’s more! When a hex is joined with six atoms you go SUB-ATOMIC. All the enemies disappear and the atomhex grow to epic proportions. This mode plays more like a boss battle with the six atoms circling around the hex core. Each atom has three Quarks in it and each quark has petals in each of the six game colors. You change the color of your shots by shooting the hex core and you need to constantly match the petal colors to get rid of the quarks. You can rack up some great scores in this mode and when it’s over it’s back to the regular game, hopefully with an even higher multiplier. There are quite a few power ups too, ranging from freezing everything to firing rainbow shots these will certainly help you on your quest for the highest score.

All this tasty gameplay comes with a great visual presentation, good audio, 100 in-game achievements to get and a local leaderboard so you can flash those high scores. And for 240MS (THREE PUNY EARTH DOLLARS!) it’s a steal too. Atomhex is the evolution of the dual-stick shooter gameplay and adds some much needed strategy and variation to the mix. When compared to say, Geometry Wars this game is years ahead in the actual gameplay. Escapist Games did console gamers a great favor when they ported this game to Xbox Live Indie Games. Both their and Mark Incitti’s effort should not go without appreciation, I suggest you buy this game RIGHT NOW!

Squid Yes, Not So Octopus is one of those great reasons to be alive. It’s cramming everything that’s lovely about those old arcade-style shooters people over a certain age go on about into a high-definition package of concentrated awesome. Created by one-man wrecking crew Robert Fearon and ported by Andy Noble, SYNSO belongs to the ever expanding group of arena shooters (though with no dual-stick controls, you shoot with a button) and it’s more enjoyable than most.

SYNSO is a visual kick in the balls but in a good way, like if you had that strange fetish where you like being kicked in the balls. The love for Eugene Jarvis and Jeff Minter, both masters of fantastic games and pretty graphics, shine through the game. The distinct mix between Minter-esque visualizer explosions and more classic character and enemy design, complete with pretty chunky pixels, fits the game like a glove. Much like Space Giraffe the visuals also become a part of the gameplay. To truly master SYNSO you must not memorize bullet patterns, instead you need to memorize visual effects that occur when enemies spawn and die. I found this a very interesting, hopefully intentional part of the game that led to some proper revelations during play.

The other major gameplay quirk in SYNSO is the timeframe. The main goal of the game is to survive for 8 minutes while scoring as close to 9 as possible. Yes, 9. It’s actually quite clever to use prime numbers since it makes the game feel a little more easy to wrap your head around. The survival format really makes the game a challenge because make no mistake, SYNSO is not an easy game. You will NOT zoom through the 8 minutes in your first couple of playthroughs but it’s enjoyable enough to try until you do just that. Then, when you’ve finally completed the game, you realize that you totally forgot about scoring aspect. The score in SYNSO increases by 1 every minute you’ve played so if you’d score nothing from killing (something that’s obviously not possible) you’d end up with 8 during the end. This is where the secret of the prime numbers come in, you have 8 decimals to go with that. This is your “normal” scoring, complete with multiplier and score when you shoot the baddies. To get as close to 9 as possible you need to make sure you use that multiplier efficiently and if you’re playing REALLY well, lose it so you don’t go too much past 9. Scoring in this game takes a long time to master to say the least but that just make you want to play oh so much more.

For the 360 version (SYNSO was originally for one of those PC things, whatever those are) a wealth of gameplay options has been added to customize the experience. It might not seem like much but it’s full of fun things, including the VERY admirable One Switch control feature for people with disabilities. I know I look like I’m just throwing praise at games all the time but damnit, these are awesome games that I really fancy. SYNSO is definitely one of those games. For 80MSP (ONE PUNY EARTH DOLLAR!) you owe it to yourself to buy this. The man behind the game (and the man behind the port) are well deserving of your money and YOU are well deserving of severe hand sweat.

Hermitgames’s Leave Home is everything that is good about shooters, indie games in general and shows the potentials of XBLIG. Why is it so good you might ask? Well lucky you, I’m here to explain.

Leave Home is a dynamic, scrolling, score attack shooter. This basically means that the “levels” take shape depending on how you play. You can simply describe it as “do good = more stuff” but there’s a bit more to it. The smoothness of the level progression is admirable and during my first couple of playthroughs I didn’t realize it got progressively harder the better I was doing. When I started learning the enemy and bullet patterns, thus scoring more points, I began to see the differences between a good and a bad playthrough. I don’t have all the details on how this works but when I did really well on level 3 I reached a new area I had never seen before and it was quite the revelation. There is much more under the hood than just “more points = more enemies” and it’s incredibly satisfying to explore this.

At heart Leave Home is a scrolling shooter with a lot of what comes with the genre. The side-scrolling first level has a distinct R-Type flavor, even similar enemy patterns. The fourth level feels like a nod towards Treasure’s Ikaruga, specifically it reminds me of chapter 4 a lot. A late part of level 2 is pretty much an homage to Jeff Minter’s unreleased Unity project for GameCube. The two bosses you face at the end are also very challenging and brings a definite bullet hell vibe to the game. Who knows, there might be even more to discover because I haven’t beaten the second of these bosses yet. Overall Leave Home feels like one big love letter to the shmup masters. One of the more original gameplay elements is the ability to split shots with the right trigger, nothing fancy but gives you a lot of extra control over your ship.

Leave Home is a fixed length game which essentially means a session will always take the same amount of time to complete. The beauty of this score attack mode of play is how it’s evolved in Leave Home as a result of the dynamic levels. If you do very good on level 3 for example you get to new parts of level 3 faster and these places generally have more possibilities to rack up a good score. The different ways you can play through a session, even though they’re all the same length, are staggering because of how the different stages change depending on how you do. If only XBLIG supported Leaderboards like XBLA does.. this would be the game to compete in.

Oh hey, did I mentioned that this game takes Rez and makes tough love to it to produce it’s graphic? The future-retro (yes, future-retro) flavor really makes the game pop out of the screen. Things explode into bursts of glowing particles and the clean cut shapes and black background work as great contrast to this light show. The music isn’t half bad either. Distorted squeaky acid basslines, glittering crunchy pads, Roland drum machines and other goodies go very well with the visuals and change seamlessly between levels.

So, if you didn’t get it from what I wrote, Leave Home is fucking fantastic. It’s arguably THE best game to ever hit Xbox Live Indie Games and for 240MS (3 PUNY EARTH DOLLARS!) it’s pretty much the deal of the forever. If you haven’t already bought it while reading I suggest you go do it now, just click this link to the Xbox Marketplace. Hermitgames deserves your money and you deserve this game. Thank me later.

Dear everyone everywhere, Space Giraffe is a fantastic game. In fact I think Space Giraffe is one of the best games that I have ever played. Why? I’ll tell you why.

Jeff Minter is pretty much a video game legend. Started way back in the before-I-was-born and has been actively developing games ever since. Maybe this is why his take on game design is both more old school and more groundbreaking than anything that’s being made today. With roots in the bloody fantastic Tempest, Space Giraffe is a new spin on the fixed shooter concept. Luckily instead of just updating the graphics and adding a few levels/power-ups, Jeff Minter completely re-made how you have to think while playing the game. Space Giraffe is anti-Tempest.

For anyone who’s played Tempest you know that if the enemies reach the the top, you’re basically dead. In Space Giraffe your goal for big scores is to let the enemies reach the top. Here we have the core gameplay concept “bulling”. Basically you can push most enemies off the top of the playing field as long as the “power zone” is active. To keep the power zone active you either have to shoot stuff or jump with a little friend from pods you collect. When the power zone is active you can effectively rinse all enemies and gain pretty a massive multiplier and score. Still with me? Ok.

Beyond this the other core part of Space Giraffe are the visuals. Minter’s background in making virtual “light synths”, basically what most people call “visualizers”, has blessed us with one of the most amazing gameplay concepts ever. The visuals are part of the challenge. The beautiful Neon engine is constantly pulsating and how intense is different between the levels. Sometimes the visuals partially obscure the level (or at least fight for your attention). The interesting thing here is that you’re adapting to these visuals, learning how to see what’s going on and evolving as a player during the game. The learning curve here is incredibly smooth and you pretty much never hit a brick wall in game. Instead it’s an almost religious experience to suddenly realize what’s happening after you’ve died once. It’s very much like those “zelda moments”, you know when you finally get that hookshot and go “OH SHIT NOW I CAN GET TO ALL THESE PLACES I COULDN’T BEFORE” and you get all warm and fuzzy inside. Space Giraffe gently kicks your senses in the balls but in time it feels more like gentle fondling. Spectacular, eh?

Beyond this (quite frankly genius) core lies numerous other twists and elements that makes the 100 levels enjoyable. The different kinds of enemies are all handled differently and when you understand how to deal with a certain enemy in the best way, another one poses a new challenge. I especially like the feedback monsters that distort the visuals when you shoot or bull them, possibly killing you if you’re not used to it. Beyond that there are pretty flowers, enemies who say Ni, zappers and a few other lovely creations. The level design is also varied, some of the harder levels making it hard to see one part of the arc when you’re in the other. Couple this with the ever changing visuals and you have a great variation of levels that you’re eased in to with the smoothest difficulty curve imaginable.

The key to Space Giraffe is understanding the core gameplay concept. It’s not your run of the mill FPS or even arcade shooter, you have to approach it a bit differently or you’ll have no idea what’s happening. When you do wrap your head around the game though, it’s one of the most immersive, addictive and mind blowing experiences in gaming. Space Giraffe gets you into a trance-like state, Space Giraffe makes you illuminated. Everything outside of Space Giraffe doesn’t matter and everything in Space Giraffe is all that’s good and logical. It’s also a whole lot of fun.

Platinum Games might be on to something here. The amazing talent that was once Clover have been making tasty games since Viewtiful Joe was ported to PS2 in 2004. All their games have been quite fantastic in my humble opinion but never really sold enough copies, leading to Clover’s fall in 2006 and the forming of Platinum Games after that. Why? Well their games are stylish but quirky pieces that bear a distinct and unique flavor of crazy-guys-from-Japan. Maybe this didn’t go well with the average gaming crowd. With Bayonetta though, I think this trend might change.

After playing the demo I can spot a few things right away that will make this game appeal to a wider audience. You have a choice between ball-busting hardcore gaming with Normal difficulty and above and the much more casual friendly Easy and Very Easy modes. What the latter does is automate some of the tougher parts of the gameplay (in Very Easy’s case, most parts of the gameplay) giving players that otherwise wouldn’t be able to get through the first level a solid serving of the visual explosion that is Bayonetta.

Another thing, Bayonetta has a hot chick. Let’s face the facts here, the majority of the gaming crowd are 15-30 year old men. These men WILL appreciate the fact that Bayonneta wears only her hair and that during the “climax finishers” this hair goes to do something that results in much blood and gore while Bayonetta is pretty much completely naked. I must say though, Platinum Games still does this with style. Bayonetta’s attractive in an otherworldly sort of way. It’s not like shamelessly increasing boob size with every installment of Dead or Alive, no sir. Instead we have a character that surely will go down in history as one of the most unique player designs ever created. Naked climax attacks and hair-leather aside, Bayonetta’s got some serious style in both the way she acts, moves and kicks ass.

How’s the gameplay then? Well it’s smooth as the hair you use to mangle your foes. Bayonetta starts off with a multitude of combination attacks and moves in the demo, all presented in a much needed tutorial mode. As usual you have button mashing combinations, guns and attacks that launch your enemy high into the air. You also have distinct timing for a few of the chains, mostly resulting in some hair-on-enemy action. Another interesting thing lets you interrupt any combo by holding the any button in a combo. When you do this, you start firing wildly out of the limb you used at that time in the combo, making for some pretty neat mix-ups and ways to adapt. There are also QTE-like torture attacks that are rather ghastly, putting an enemy in the Iron Maiden is always fun. There’s also a well implemented dodging system that slows down time when you pull it off just at the right instance, a very rewarding thing to do. One of the most interesting things though is that Bayonetta can pick up any weapon her enemies drop. This amused me quite a bit during the demo and grabbing the first boss’s giant axe and bashing some face with it felt very fresh. I can see this being used a lot during the actual game. The demo did not show any upgrade system or such but I’m guessing there is one since you constantly collect shiny rings. Gotta use them for something, right?

While this might not attract a wider audience, the art direction (again, judging from the demo) is pretty damn awesome. While the DMC4/GoW-inspired statues and enemies might put some people off, it’s clear very early that Bayonetta takes a slightly different approach to the worn out ancient influences. Here most enemies actually look like they should be the good guys. Made from sparkling marble or with angel wings I felt a little bad constantly killing them off. The tiny bit of story you get in the demo implies that you have something to do with dark arts though so I guess it makes sense. Overall though, Platinum Games really followed through with making the game dynamic and constantly intriguing to watch. When a giant statue appears, rips up the bridge I’m standing on and throws it away while I’m still on it I can’t help but gasp a bit.

The final thing I want to mention is the TERRIFIC soundtrack. There are apparently a bunch of composers working on the title but they really added a unique touch to the already outstanding game. The high-speed Neo Jazz madness with incredibly catchy vocals that play during the first battle is just great and adds both to Bayonetta’s obvious sense of style and takes the edge of the otherwise stoic environment. I think the mix between the upbeat and the more serious (they do kill eachother after all) works incredibly well and the game is bursting at the seams with style.

Overall, Bayonetta quickly became THE game I look forward to playing the most. If you haven’t grabbed the demo it’s out now on XBL, don’t know about PSN but hopefully it’s there too. Do yourself a favor and check it out.