Welcome to space, where no-one can hear you scream. That is, welcome to Xenominer, a game by the folks at Gristmill Studios introduced during the Indie Uprising III event on Xbox Live Arcade. Xenominer is a voxel-style base building game that tests your survival in an alien world. Before continuing, this is another voxel game where you can dig and build any structure you can imagine. But if you are expecting another Minecraft clone, you are missing out on a lot if you dismiss it as such.

When Xenominer begins you wake up on an alien world, the lone survivor of a crash. With nothing but your survival suit, a small tank of oxygen, and the messages from an A.I. named DAI-SE you journey into a strange unknown world. A far-out landscape filled bizarre “trees”, floating landscapes, and the odd alien structure or two, there is the possibility of riches buried deep within.

That is all fine and dandy until the local star begins to rise, then you must secrete yourself away into the nearest cave lest you be burnt to an irradiated crisp. While Xenominer does not have hostile mobs in a traditional sense, the dangerous radiation of space will cut short your future plans of galactic conquest if you don’t seek shelter regularly. Hope you like digging, because you will spend the majority of your journey underneath the surface, away from the harmful rays and radiation in your cramped and claustrophobia-inducing underground quarters. At least until you upgrade your gear.

Speaking of upgrades, you have access to a plethora of building options and equipment. You can raise your chances of survival, assuming you have the materials to create them of course. They include suit and oxygen tank upgrades, sturdy building materials, more powerful tools, and even gravity boots.  See a piece of iron or diamond on the ceiling? Simply use your gravity boots and walk up the walls, humming the theme song to Spiderman while you are at it.

One feature that stands out from the rest is the use of a robot to do your dirty work. Once you acquire it, the bot can lighten your work load immensely by doing many repetitive tasks for you. You can have it tunnel a mineshaft, build your new space castle, or whatever you want it to do. If you can figure out how to actually program the darn thing, since the interface for it is in alien language. The scripting interface uses a strange pictographic command language which can be a bit daunting to decipher.

You have any idea what’s going on here? For the longest time, neither did I

For the longest time, I could do nothing but scratch my head while trying to get my own script going. After many fruitless attempts and carefully examining the built-in scripts, I was able to figure out what the symbols meant and began building my own script. When I activated my custom mining script I was as giddy as a schoolgirl as I watched the little bot go about its duties. Soon my galactic headquarters will be complete, with my little bot to do my bidding.

I enjoy this title, and there is very little I have against it. While it does have a lack of ambient music or sound, that suits the outer space setting. Only the ominous tone announcing the rising of the sun or the hum of your mining pick break the silence.

The user interface text is rather difficult to read. I played on a standard definition TV and the majority of the interface was simply too small to be clear. HD users will have no problems, but people who still play on standard sets may have some difficulty reading the HUD.

This review took too long for me to write. I have been playing for the better part of three weeks, and since the Indie Uprising event Gristmill has been able to implement many welcome improvements to the title. I continuously had to revise my views on the game as each patch brought welcome improvements. If you liked it at launch, you will enjoy the game even more so now.

I heartily recommend this title, and at a low 80 Microsoft points you have absolutely no excuse not to pick it up. Go grab it now before Gristmill realize they can charge more.

Go buy it. GO NOW!

Overall Rating: ★★★★☆ 

Additional coverage:

Review on Clearance Bin Review

Review on Indie Gamer Chick

Review on theXBLIG

© 2012 – 2013, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

The puzzle element of the game is a genuinely interesting idea and the strong point of the game. Your protagonist must use their imagination to build a bridge, connecting each node with how many corresponding lines are needed depending on the markers on each node. This, however, has two major flaws. Firstly, the controls are fiddly and makes the most taxing affair of the puzzle actually getting between each node and selecting to build or delete the bridge; secondly, and this applies for the game in general, you are left to your own devices to some extent to figure out the mechanics, because the game does a poor job of explaining what needs to be achieved. The second issue coincides with the platforming side of the game and is one of many, many issues that turn a promising indie game into an infuriating experience.

You need to build bridges with your imagination to progress further.

Let’s turn to one of the worst games ever released for a major console; The Wizard of Oz (Snes 1993), which is an abhorrent game that highlights the two big no-no’s you must consider when making a platformer. Firstly, if you have a platform to jump towards and you land on the corner of said platform but fall through to your death – you have a bad platform game; secondly, if you fill the screen with small platforms but fail to tell the player that a number of areas to land on are actually fake traps – you have a bad platform game.

Now to Mega Man 2, which is an example of a good platforming game that highlights how to explain to your player that a potentially lethal trap is coming up ahead. It carefully shows, even with a subtle hint, that a trap is imminent. For example, in stage 3 of Dr Wily’s castle, the player will encounter invisible platforms like the ones found in Sententia, but the first one you fall through is only back to the floor below, meaning the player is not cheated out of a life and they now know to be careful. Now, in Sententia you have unlimited lives, so a cheap first death does not have as many potential issues that exist in Mega Man 2, but that only serves to purpose lazy game design and thus it is inexcusable.

Look easy? It isn’t.

In twenty years or so of playing any of the 2D side scrolling versions of the Super Mario Bros series have you ever felt that you died because of poor controls? It is probably only a handful of times, even if that, because the games give you full control over every jump. So death only comes at the hands of tricky platforming and well thought out game design. Sententia has neither of these things and death usually comes in the form of terrible controls or unfair enemy placement – which brings us onto combat.

There is only one mechanic for combat in the game, which comes in the form of projecting words from the avatar’s mouth towards an enemy, who in return fire back at you. It creates a unique visual that flows along nicely with the art style of the game as a whole, but the mechanic creates a level of annoyance by not giving you the ability to shoot while jumping in the air and the enemy placement at times demands the need for such ability – it just adds to the non-stop frustration. It does not even end there, because even when you kill an enemy the damn thing will respawn almost instantly, utterly defeating the purpose of having any form of combat in the first place. Getting through any screen on the game feels nothing short of a chore.

Ultimately there is small reward to be attained from playing Sententia; which is a shame, because the concept behind it is interesting. The art style is unique, albeit the animation needs refinement, and the puzzle mechanics have potential, but it is all hidden behind a mess of poor game design on even the most basic of levels.

Overall Rating: ★☆☆☆☆ 

This game was reviewed using a copy provided by the developer for that purpose. 

Additional Sententia coverage:

Review on theXBLIG.com

Review on Clearance Bin Review

Review on Indie Gamer Chick

Review on Indie Theory

© 2012 – 2013, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.