Xbox Indie Games Review - Breeze

This is kind of similar to Blow since you're blowing something around and gravity and other factors are in the game to hurt/help you. You control a fan that rotates around a flower and you blow it around the level to collect sun orbs and reach the exit. The closer your fan is to the flower, the quicker you can blow it around. If you touch anything around the level though it's gameover! Some levels you need to collect a certain amount of sun orbs before the exit opens up and some levels you just need to get to the exit before time runs out and without hitting anything in the level. I've played through 25 out of the 60 levels so far and there's only been 1 level that I died 15+ times on.

There are 2 things that I dislike about the game though. You can move the fan in any direction around your flower but if you come in contact with it you lose! It rarely happens on the less difficult levels but I noticed it happening a lot more often on harder levels because I had to stay close so I could move my flower on a moments notice. The second problem I had is when you collect a sun orb you get a bright glow about 4 times the size of the orb itself, which covers your flower and/or fan. When you're navigating tight spaces and you collect one of these it's anyone's guess where you'll end up with the bright burst fades away. Making it more transparent so you can see through the burst or moving the flower/fan on top of the burst would've helped out.

In general, if you enjoyed Blow or you're a fan of puzzle games (that you need to take your time on) then check out Breeze.

Rating - 8/10

Xbox Indie Games Review - Monsters (Probably) Stole My Princess

There's a few flaws with an otherwise really fun game. The general story of the game is... yep you guessed it. You're run through a total of 5 levels in order to get to the princess.

The gameplay has you jumping on platforms, which increases your combo until you jump on the same platform again, and you need to double jump to hit the monster and hurt it. Each monster takes 3 hits and when you hit it once it jumps up the screen a ways so you need to start, or continue, your combo while making your way back up to attack it again. You have to be quick though because if the monster makes it to the door at the top you will fail and must retry the level. Levels are as wide as the screen but plenty high so you'll do plenty of climbing to reach the monster as they float up.

There's cutscenes in between each level which are fun and a little quirky since the main character, dracula, is a little full of himself. I found them to be quite enjoyable though and they help move the story along.

I loaded up the game and jumped right into story mode and about 10 minutes later I beat the game. I failed once on the first and second level since I was learning to play but otherwise it's pretty easy if you want to just beat the game. You can always go back through the Donkey Kong style map and replay levels to get a higher combo. There's also awards and a scrapbook of unlockables you can earn so while the story mode is very short there's still more you can do before you put the game down.

Overall, it gets a 8 from me because it's terribly short. It's presented in a cool way so you should at least check out the demo and find out if it's worth your $3.

Rating - 8/10

Xbox Indie Games Review - Hypership Out of Control

If you're a fan of retro shooters, look no further!

Hypership has you starting at a fairly slow pace but as you progress your max speed increases and you start going faster and faster. There's a handful of powerups that can make you invincible for a period of time, allow you to shoot through walls or a shield to give you a free hit instead of exploding.

The game doesn't really have enemies or bosses that most other shooters have but it's replaced with moving blocks and skinny passages that you have to navigate through. You can shoot the smaller object to blow them out of your way but the bigger stuff you'll have to navigate (unless you have the powerup that lets you shoot and destroy anything).

There's 10 waves and once you beat all 10 they start over again. Your speed increases level by level so eventually, based on your skill, it'll just be too fast for you to react to anything and you'll die.

There's a handful of modes that let you practice, play with 3 lives, play with 1 life and a mode called coindown that you must collect coins in order to stay alive. There's plenty to do here instead of just the usual 'normal' mode.

There's one flaw to the game that I think will be a deal breaker for some people. If you don't have very good hand/eye coordination or your reflexes aren't what they used to be then you're in for a rough ride. The increasing speed will just make it too hard for some people to react and could get frustrating especially if you're not very smooth with your flying and find yourself always running into walls.

If you have the patience and memory to find the perfect paths through a level and the reflexes to navigate through some small spaces at a fast speed then you'll find yourself constantly coming back to get just a little bit further than your last attempt. Highscore leaderboards should keep people competitive and push the bar further than anyone thought was possible.

I highly recommend everyone to at least give it a shot because it's one of the games I find myself coming back to play every once in a while!

Rating - 9/10

Forge World in Halo: Reach

Not really relevant to anything we're working on but I figured it's somewhat related to game design in general (Forge World being a level editor). Forge World is basically a huge world in which you can create a level inside of it using any amount (big or small) of the world you choose. Most Bungie made levels made with Forge World only use 1/5 of the space (guessing) so there's plenty of room to work around. If you really wanted you could use teleporters to navigate the huge terrain in an Invasion map or such.

The good:

• You can edit coordinates for each piece you place so you can line things up almost perfectly. 
• The different physics modes (Normal, Fixed, Phased). Normal lets object react to explosions and stuff so you can move them around the level. Fixed lets the object react and collide with other objects while you're placing it (also good for making things line up and NOT overlap) but it doesn't react to explosions so once you place it that is where it'll stay. Finally, Phased allows you to overlap objects so you can build stuff in the sides of mountains or inside of other buildings. 

The bad:

• No undo button! Even if you could just undo your last move that would be greatly appreciated for when you accidentally delete something. 

Features I wish they had:

• The ability to make myself the only person that can edit the map and anyone else in the game can only play and not move my stuff around. I like showing my friends the progress on my level but it always ends up with everyone dropping in stuff all over the place... It's a good thing to save right when someone joins and don't plan on doing anything productive while there's someone else in the game because they may fly to some random corner and place 47 warthogs in the corner of the map. :) 
• To make objective gametypes (capture the flag, etc) you need to change the gametype before you enter the game. There's a gametype called 'Basic Editing' which just lets you edit levels without scoring or objectives and that's what I always used. When I wanted to add flag spawns to my level I had to quit out, change from 'Basic Editing' to a capture the flag gametype and then I was finally able to set some properties to actually get my flags to work in game. It's not really a bad thing but it's a little bit of a hassle to change through gametypes to get all of my objectives to work.