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A whole bunch of hopefully good titles are on the way to Xbox Live Indie Games over the next few days, and Louis serves up mini-previews of every one.
What's an Indie Games Winter Uprising, you may be wondering. Well, it's a flurry of quality Xbox Live Indie Games worth your space bucks, which kicked off with the release of Epic Dungeon on Tuesday and doesn't stop until another dozen or so games come out over the first week of December. Keep reading to see what some of XBLIG’s premiere developers have in store for you!
This role-player is from Zeboyd Games, the developer behind the Winter Uprising event and indie hit Breath of Death 7: The Beginning. The game follows Cthulhu, an antihero on an adventure to regain his powers and save the world so he can destroy it. The title features a 16-bit art style and promises witty and sarcastic dialogue akin to Zeboyd’s first release. As an RPG fan, this is one of my most anticipated titles.
This strategy-adventure dungeon crawler had me at exploding skeletons. I haven’t played the first title, but the sequel promises 30 new levels, new monster types (exploding skeletons!), and plain old better AI and graphics.
The latest from (former Red Faction developer) Luke Schneider and radiangames looks to be another high-energy arcade shooter where warping from the top to bottom of the playfield is the signature maneuver. New to the series: a ship upgrade system and online scoreboards for bragging rights.
A title featuring Street Fighter strategy with four-player Super Smash Bros. antics can only end up one way: awesome. Oh, and developer Tribetoy (which has been working on this game for over two years) thought it’d add time manipulation to ratchet up the craziness.
This dual-stick shooter fused with an adventure game has the kind of slick look you'd expect from an Xbox Live Arcade title. In a dystopian future ruled by a military dictatorship, your team of mercenaries has been marked for death, and it’s time to fight back either solo or cooperatively with up to four people (locally or online). Choosing which levels to progress through impacts the storyline.
This dungeon crawler snuck out a day early, but that’s OK in my book. With 50 dungeon levels and four playable classes, the title looks to give quite the bang for your space buck. I can’t wait to get my hands on an Orcish Quarterstaff and bash some skulls in.
Break Limit is a vertical- and horizontal-scrolling shooter reminiscent of Gradius. I’m not the most die-hard fan of scrolling shooters, but one with weapons that get stronger as you play and switches up viewpoints mid-mission seems like it's worth a try.
This sequel is a shooter promising “insane firepower” and “pure arcade action.” I don’t know much else about the game, but if the prequels are any indication, it looks to be a Space Invaders on 'roids and Red Bull.
Aside from having the best name ever, Asteroids Do Concern Me is all about avoiding asteroids. Avoid asteroids; prevent death. Everybody wins except the murderous asteroids.
This isn’t actually a new game but an update. The main addition to this vertical shooter full of spaceships is the ability to reverse enemy waves for all five of the game modes. New online high scores for reverse modes, wider lasers for less cheap deaths, and a new song are also in the remix.
ZP2KX: Zombies And Pterodactyls
“In a dystopian future where humans love guns and zombies just want to be left alone, the pterodactyls have seen to it that everyone has to be miserable together,” reads the game’s description. ZP2KX comes to us from the developer behind Dishwasher: Dead Samurai and I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MB1ES!!!1 1NIT!!!1. Blades, guns, grenades, and the ability to level up and customize player features and skills mean I'm already sold.
Aphelion: Episode Two: Wings of Omega
Players once again assume the role of Savion Mercarte and his allies as they battle enemies on two fronts in their race to find the truth behind an attack on Earth. The developers promise a new playable character, new skills, better animations, status effects, side quests, a faster pace, and an intuitive interface. If you haven't played the first game I suggest you download it straight away in preparation for this potential indie hit.
The main character looks like Wall-E, but you can call him Robert. Robert needs to repair grids and ultimately fix a spaceship. Unique items like Monster Chew will help our robot hero avoid one-eyed aliens that want to make him their next snack.
RvA is a cel-shaded 2D shooter pitting Eddie Rickenbacker’s SPAD biplane against relentless alien invaders. The aliens, used to manipulating politics before they send in their strike teams, foresaw Germany as winners in World War I. They were wrong and have since joined the fight to conquer the world. Their greatest enemy: a farm boy from Ohio. This game is going to be epic.
This preview also appears on Digitalhippos.com.
