King Swing is a platformer that functions more like an endless runner (aka autorunner) as the goal is linear and control is limited. Taking on the role of an ape of presumably high social status, players must swing from one rock outcropping to another in a 2D setting. Rather than grab vines, the player shoots them in his or her direction of choice hoping to latch onto the rocks. When successful, the ape travels through a pendulous swing and the player presses a button to release. Success is all about building and keeping momentum, so aiming for a suitable rock face and releasing at the appropriate point in the swing are both paramount. While it is possible to get the monkey going again if the player messes up, coming to a dead stop is generally a fatal situation. Even with some success. the player will eventually succumb to the piranhas waiting patiently at the course’s bottom.

As clinical as that description is, the game actually IS fun to play once the player gets a feel for the mechanics. When everything’s going right, building that momentum up can create that wonderful “in the zone” feeling. I say ‘can’ because there are some design issues with the game that make this more difficult than it should be. Aiming the vines feels like an inexact science where it’s difficult to be certain what part of the rock face the vine will hit or if it will even hit at all. Should the player send the monkey hurtling too high, he disappears off the top of the screen with the camera following part of the way. Because of the change in view, it becomes really difficult to anticipate where he’s going to come down. This means players will have to guess if there are any rocks to grab onto when the camera shifts back into its regular position. The fact that the ape hurtles downward faster than normal gives players very little time to react. There’s a difference between edge-of-your-seat, intense action and putting players into a situation where they’re riding on a hope and a prayer. Far too often this game falls into the latter category.

Try as you might, you’ll eventually end up in the drink.

King Swing does have some other good features going for it, though even these have their limitations. I’m a sucker for a leaderboard system and thankfully this game includes global leaderboards, a rarity for XBLIG titles. There are separate rankings for each of the three game modes: Endless (the default mode), Ropes, and Time Attack, with the latter two being shorter variations on the main mechanic. Ropes challenges players to see how far they can get with only ten ropes in their arsenal. Time Attack gives players one minute to travel as far as possible. While these are both fun in their own right, they’re not different enough from the default mode to breathe new life into the game for very long. With the touted inclusion of ragdoll physics and painful deaths, early on I had hopes that the experience of playing and failing at the game would be as entertaining as Trials HD or Trials Evolution. Here, though, there aren’t a lot of laughs to be had, so it would’ve been nice to have seen this taken further.

King Swing is a bit of an odd egg. It has potential, but there’s just something missing. At times it almost seems like it would be a better fit on a different platform, and I think my fellow XBLIG reviewers agree. For those on the fence, the developers are aware of the issues and are working on an update to fix some of the flaws. With a modified camera, fixes to the targeting system, and inclusion of an extra mode/feature or two, this would be a highly recommendable game for the casual crowd.  As it exists right now, the game’s a bit shallow but still worth giving the trial a go.

Overall Rating: ★★★☆☆ 

What does this score mean?

© 2013, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

Despite it’s title, Arcadecraft is not yet another Minecraft clone available through the Xbox Live Indies Games market. Instead, it’s a game that puts players in the role of an arcade manager in that scene’s heyday of the early 1980s. Arcadecraft plays on actual history by including events like the video game crash of 1983 and ending with a nod to the release of the NES in 1985. Through it all, it’s up to the player to ensure that their arcade is remaining popular with the crowds and racking in enough money to pay the bills.

Shown from an isometric perspective, the empty arcade is the player’s canvas for creating a gaming hotspot. As the ever-running calendar moves from month to month, game publishers release new arcade cabinets available for purchase by the player. These cabinets vary in initial cost, genre, control method, number of floor spaces occupied, power consumption, and a few other characteristics. Once purchased and placed on the floor, each cabinet will begin drawing in money based on a few factors including the arcade’s current popularity rate and the popularity of the individual machine. The newer a machine is, the quicker it makes money. That money must be repeatedly collected from the machine by the player, otherwise the game stops raking in coins.

I give credit to the developers for trying to add strategic depth through individual game cabinet settings. However, I found that the game suffers from a pacing problem that interferes with the use of that level of customization. The early portion of Arcadecraft speeds by too quickly to really get a grasp of how or when the settings will affect that cabinet’s money-making ability. Early on there’s not much incentive to fiddle with the defaults because of the risk of failure, and later in the game there’s simply too much money-collecting taking place to do anything else. It was only once I hit the final year of the simulation – when no new arcade cabinets are available for purchase – that I really started toying around. There are lessons to be learned from the first full play-through of the game, but it’s doubtful most players are going to go back and repeat the exact same sequence of events using that newly-gained knowledge. I think if the developers had decided to include a controllable speed setting, just like in Smooth Operators: Call Center Chaos, it would give players a chance to run their arcade at a pace that allows for experimentation.

Individual machines can have their pricing and difficulty settings modified.

One of the best aspects of the game has to be the homage to the gaming industry of three decades ago. It’s an interesting look back at the evolution of technology as newer games offer varying cabinet styles and control methods. There’s also a bit of a nostalgia factor as a number of the games in Arcadecraft are parodies of classics like Donkey Kong and Space Invaders. Some of the game publishers even release sequels to their titles ala Pac Man and Ms. Pac Man. If the player manages to hold onto the original and can seat the sequel(s) next to it, each machine gets a popularity boost.

There are a number of other interesting strategical decisions that the player must make during the lifespan of the arcade. Periodically a pro-gamer will stop by and want to try one of the most popular machines. If he manages to beat the high score, a popularity boost will temporarily be placed on that machine. The trade-off is that while he’s hogging the machine it’s not earning any money. From time to time, a vendor will stop by and offer to buy one of the player’s classic gaming arcade cabinets for a high ticket price. However, to keep a machine around long enough for it qualify as a classic generally means its old and far less popular (read: cost-ineffective) than the latest and greatest cabinets.

Succeed by creating a customer-friendly layout and buying a wide variety of cabinets.

As with many simulation games, Arcadecraft suffers in its endgame. Once the player has reached the two-year mark and paid off their debt, most of the challenge is gone. Truth be told, I failed to pay off that debt during my first go-round, but that experience was an education in the keys to winning: start slow and continue to replace old, unpopular machines as soon as you can buy new ones. Once the player figures that lesson out, the challenge changes from mental strategy to menial labor as he/she has to repeatedly run around in a frenzy emptying coin boxes. It becomes tedious very fast, and the ability to hire an automated helper does little to relieve the effort of maintaining a large number of cabinets. At this point, the goal becomes simply trying to collect as much money as possible before the simulation ends. Unfortunately the lather-rinse-repeat process happens earlier in this title than some of the similar games I’ve played on XBLIG. Ultimately I would have liked to have seen a slower-paced game with more to do during that time than collect money and fix broken machines.

Arcadecraft‘s premise and early execution show so much promise that I was doubly disappointed when I became bored by the end. One or two design choices made differently would have been the difference between this being a decent game and a great one. It’s obvious that the developers put a lot of work into the presentation. I fear, though, that the 240 Microsoft Point price tag in a typically 80-Point market may keep even the most curious of players away. I think it’s still worth a look for those who enjoy simulation/strategy games and those who can still remember the golden age of arcades.

Overall Rating: ★★★☆☆ 

What does this score mean?

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

© 2013, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

Microsoft aimed to bring indie games to their console by creating the Xbox Live Indie Game (XBLIG) service. With XBLIG, developers could approve each other’s games, making it fast, cheap, and easy for indie developers to release their games.

Why Microsoft Created XNA

Microsoft also wanted to make it easier for developers to make games for their systems. To do this, they created XNA, a set of tools intended to streamline game development and to make it easier for indie studios to create games. Many of the most popular games on the system have been created using XNA. Despite its popularity, Microsoft recently announced that they would no longer be working on the toolset. I asked them what the situation was, and what discontinuing XNA would mean for indie developers. Here’s what a spokesperson had to say:

“XNA Game Studio remains a supported toolset for developing games for Xbox 360, Windows and Windows Phone. Many developers have found financial success creating Xbox LIVE Indie Games using XNA. However, there are no plans for future versions of the XNA product. Game developers have a wide set of options on Microsoft platforms, ranging from XNA and managed code to DirectX and native code. Microsoft provides developers the options they need to be successful.”

To find out what developers thought about the decision to stop work on the platform. I spoke to David Johnston, of Smudged Cat games, makers of Timeslip, Gateways, and The Adventures of Shuggy. Here’s what he has to say about developing games for Xbox using XNA:

David Johnston – Smudged Cat Games

“It’s been exciting to develop games for the Xbox. I started with Shuggy which was actually an XBLA game in the end. I tend to play games on consoles more than on PC so it felt like the right place to be releasing games for me. It’s great to think of people chilling out on their sofas and playing a game that I made.”

”XNA has been fantastic. I’ve developed games on and off for most of my life and struggled with various different programming languages and APIs but using C# with XNA has been by far the easiest to get to grips with. It removes so many of the mundane tasks related to game. It’s great that it’s inspired so many people to actually bring those game ideas they’ve had in their head into reality.”

”There’s bound to be a decline in the number of indie games that are released now as people looking at XNA will be reading “XNA is dead” everywhere. However, it’s not quite as straightforward as that. The MonoGame project has been around for a while now offering a cross-platform solution to XNA. It seems that MonoGame is now going to take over, it’s being actively worked on and will soon be a complete solution for making XNA games even on future versions of Windows. ”

”I’m curious to see what Microsoft announce about support for indie games on the next Xbox. Given how things have gone with the current Xbox it’s debatable if there will be any support at all. I really hope there will be something but I’ll certainly be approaching it with caution this time round given the way the current channel was promoted and lack of profits from it. I’ve certainly had better figures from Steam and am currently more interested in the Ouya and Steam box at the moment.”

I also spoke to Shahed Chowdhuri of OnekSoft games, creator of 2D Math Panic as well as Angry Zombie Ninja Cats. Shahed has also developed tools to help indie developers make games with XNA. Here’s what he has to say about XNA and indie games on Xbox:

Shahed Chowdhuri - OnekSoft Games

“Developing games for Xbox is a childhood dream come true. Completing a game project and putting it out on the world’s (arguably) best game console is a great experience.”

”When I first learned about game development, I worked with C++ and DirectX, and tried out some basic samples on Windows. But XNA changed everything. I was suddenly able to write a video game for Windows and Xbox 360 at the same time, using C#. My day job requires me to work primarily with C#, so this was definitely a plus for me.”

”XNA has made it easy for me (and countless others) to create Indie games that would not have been possible without it.”

”Technologies come and go, and XNA is no different. Although Microsoft won’t release updated versions of the XNA framework, that won’t stop us from using Visual Studio 2010, C# and XNA to create games that run on Windows Vista, Windows7, and even Windows8 (non-RT version). For the rest of the year, we can also continue to publish to Xbox Live Indie Games on the Xbox 360.”

”As a whole, XBLIG developers will have to migrate to other areas. Some of them may gravitate towards development strategies that allow them to use the same language they are used to. And some of them will learn other languages (e.g. Java and Objective-C) so that they can develop native games and apps for Android and iOS, respectively.”

”Another portion of XBLIG developers may go the multi-platform route (e.g. Unity) to create high-quality games on both iOS and Android, with proven tools and technologies.”

”I think that the future of Indie Games on Microsoft’s next platform will ride on their ability to show off what the Indie world has to offer. This is a tricky situation, because they have made it clear that they want to separate out the $1 XBLIG games from the $60 AAA titles, with distinct marketplaces. Heck, there’s even a middle ground with Xbox Live Arcade, where some Indie games (e.g. Fez and Super Meat Boy ) have found success.”

”Apple and Google have shown the world that you can place professional games and homebrew indies in the same marketplace, and let the customers decide what they want to buy. Microsoft has started to move towards this trend with their Windows Store for Windows8, so there may be a chance that Indie developers will get better exposure on the next Xbox console.”

”Many developers will definitely switch to other platforms (as they have been), but they can also be wooed back to Microsoft’s corner if their needs can be appeased.”

The Future of Indie Games on Xbox

Developers are clearly uncertain about their future with XNA, and with Microsoft systems in general. When Microsoft created XBLIG and XNA, they hoped to attract indie game developers to their system. Looking at the statistics, it seems like they were succesful – there are 2,837 games in the XBLIG marketplace. The best selling title, Castle Miner Z, has sold over a million copies.

But for every game that succeeded on XBLIG, there are a handful that didn’t. Many developers have not seen the profitability they had hoped for, and in financial terms other platforms are far more attractive. Take developers Zeboyd Games, whose RPGs Cthulhu Saves The World  and Breath Of Death VII sold more in a week on Steam than they did in a year on XBLIG.

Microsoft hasn’t abandoned indie game developers completely. There are still a range of tools which developers can use. But by discontinuing XNA, Microsoft will surely push some indie developers away from Microsoft systems altogether. It is strange that after so much time fostering a positive and productive indie community, Microsoft seems to have turned its back on the developers it once supported. If XNA is to have a successor, it will have a big act to follow.

© 2013, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

While Squadron Scramble offers a myriad of game options, the standard mode pits the player against a customizable number of opponents. Each player by default starts with four pilots, but only one pilot is in the air while the rest remain in the hanger. There are exceptions to those rules depending on game settings. Each stage consists of a base and a hanger. Pilots emerge from the base and must run to the hanger to board a plane and start racking up points. Each opponent shot down earns that individual pilot a point which goes towards the team total. When a player is shot down and survives, he/she has the option of running back to base to switch pilots, or return to the hanger to grab another plane. The player with most team points when the timer runs out wins the round.

While the trial doesn’t convey the fun factor of the game, the full version doesn’t do the best job in terms of immediately hooking players either. While every fresh startup of the game displays the basic rules to live or die by, it’s on the player to figure out how to really play the game. There are hints provided between rounds that clue players in to the layers of strategy hidden just under the surface of the fly-and-shoot theme. At first, most players will simply be flying around trying not to get shot down while erratically firing off their own armaments.  However, once the player realizes how the scoring works, that’s likely to change. Each pilot on a team has their own score, and if that pilot dies while on the ground, he remains out for the round and his score goes to zero. Scores also carry across rounds or “sorties” when playing a multi-round match.

Using cloud cover to hide is a useful, learned tactic.

After learning the ruleset by playing the game a handful of times, I was able to use better defensive strategies like keeping high-score pilots in the barracks as much as possible. Going on the offensive became more focused as I began trying to gun down the opponent’s vulnerable pilots as they tried to run to the hangar. Team-based dogfights have their own strategies to learn as well when dealing with a partner. There are even considerations when flying the plane. Doing too many loops will slow the plane down, and flying straight upward can stall the plane. The simplistic graphics really belie what’s under the hood. The game has a lot of depth that’s not apparent when firing it up for the first time, or even after a few rounds.

Squadron Scramble is a multiplayer-centric game, and the developers have gone to great lengths to tout the support for up to eight players at one time. In the event you can actually round up seven other human beings, two players can reportedly play on one controller, though I have to imagine that’d be an uncomfortable arrangement. Regardless of how many people are playing, all players can be divided up into at most four teams. With roughly a quarter to a third of the screen being taken up by the score counter, I assumed that trying to play with eight planes flying around the screen would simply not work. That’s not the way it plays out though, as at any given point half the players are likely to be on the ground racing for the base or hanger, or they’re parachuting down from their destroyed plane. The skies never get too crowded, so kudos to the Depth Charge Software developers for keeping the game balanced even with all of that pandemonium.

As a party game, Squadron Scramble is insanely fun. Having acquainted myself with the subtleties of the game, I brought in three friends who – with a little guidance – were able to play competitively almost immediately. Squadron Scramble includes that essential “screw over your friend” element that makes local multiplayer so enjoyable. Alliances are forged one minute and dissolved shortly after when the tables have turned. It reminded me a lot of playing Bomberman 64 back in the day. Any game that can elicit cackles, squeals, and cries of lament from a room full of grown men deserves some lavish praise.

Thankfully the developers remembered that  not everyone has an entourage at their beck and call, so they’ve included AI opponents to fill in whenever necessary. Everyone’s experience may be different playing the game, but I found the challenge level of the AI to be pretty well-balanced. I won most matches, but very rarely swept every round. The enemy planes were also smart enough to fire at the pilots running for cover on the ground. There are no difficulty settings to play around with, so it’s a good thing the developers nailed it right the first time.

Player assignment isn’t the only variance in the game. There are a few additional modes included that shake up the rules in terms of how many pilots are on each team or how many shots can be fired in a burst. And for a truly tailored experience, there’s a custom mode that allows modification of just about every setting including number of rounds, timer duration, and stage selection. The stages have their own quirks like environmental and man-made hazards that some players may like or dislike. Providing the option to jump immediately to or stay away from any of the five stages is a nice feature.

As an intended party game, Squadron Scramble soars, but not before having a little trouble getting off the runway. There’s a bit of a learning curve that must be overcome through simply playing the game. I really struggled with what review score to settle on. However, the fact that this now sits along with SpeedRunner HD and Hidden in Plain Sight in the echelon of must-play XBLIG party games, settled the matter for me: 5/5. Grab a buck, some buds, and some brews and have a blast.

Overall Rating: ★★★★★ 

A review copy of this game was provided by the developer for that purpose.

© 2013, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

By now much of the gaming world has experienced all of the wonder that the Portal series has brought to the industry. Developer David Johnson of Smudged Cat Games takes inspiration from those fun physics-based puzzles and quite literally turns them on their heads. SPOILER ALERT: Taking on the role of a scientist stuck trying to escape his own lab, players unlock additional guns that allow them to change their character’s size, repeatedly travel back and forth between time, and change the orientation of the game world. The first and last of those guns are fairly intuitive once experimented with a couple of times. On the flip side, the time travel gun really takes some getting used to. The same people who skip through EULAs and never read the fine print are the ones that are going to run into trouble.  With all of its nuances, time travel in Gateways is not the easiest concept to wrap one’s mind around. It took me reading the multi-page help menu explanation before it finally clicked. The application of this one gun alone probably make it worthy of its own game. When combined with the abilities of the other guns, there’s really an amazing amount of reality-bending power at the player’s disposal.

The game is structured in a Metroidvania style, with new powers and abilities helping the player open previously impassable doors. One of the niceties in Gateways is that shortcuts can be opened up within the lab that allow the player to quickly travel back to the earlier areas almost in a hub-like design. At times though, it’s easy to feel lost if you don’t know about the existence of the overworld map. I’d played through a good portion of the game before realizing it was there, which would have saved me a lot of time. Having that map at my disposal definitely changed my overall opinion of the game. Backtracking can get a little tedious, especially if you have to repeatedly perform the same series of death-defying feats to reach a particular room. But as long as players use the map to get a general feel for where to go next, they should easily avoid some of the headaches I ran into.

The difficulty of the puzzles later on can get a bit frustrating. Smudged Cat even released an update that allows players to select a ‘Normal’ mode to tone things down a bit. I never got to the point where I threw down the controller in disgust, but there were times where I certainly recognized that saving the game, walking away, and coming back with a fresh mind was the way to go. One of the smart design choices was to only allow a single gun to be used in solving the first 90% or so of the puzzles. Otherwise, it would’ve been far too daunting a task to figure out which guns to whip out and in what order. However, late in the game the rules change such that you’re going to need to use multiple guns in sequence to solve getting through some of the doors. Most of these really tough puzzles can be solved with patience and determination, but even I had to eventually throw in the towel and either search for a solution online or purchase the answer using orbs collected in-game. Difficulty is always a subjective quality to judge, but I honestly feel like Smudged Cat was trying a bit too hard to boggle our minds. As a reviewer, it was a bit stressful trying to hurry towards a solution, but gamers taking on the challenge at a more casual pace will likely appreciate the pacing and challenge more. Overall I felt like the quality of the puzzles is not only great for an indie game, but puts it right on par with the best to be found in the entire video game industry. With only a few exceptions, they’re that good and that fun and certainly elicit that ‘a-ha!’ moment when solved.

Gateways is not all about the puzzles. There is a light amount of platforming, but a good portion of it takes place in between unlocking doors to new areas, rather than being central to the puzzles themselves. There are, of course, exceptions particularly when dodging one’s own clones in a time-travel solution or when changing the orientation of the lab. I thought this aspect of the game was very well done, especially with the feel of jumping. The right flightiness of jumping is not something that every XBLIG manages to nail, but the developer was successful here.

As with all of the other Smudged Cat titles I’ve played, there’s a high level of refinement in the presentation. Yes, the visual quality is, for better or worse, decidedly retro. However, the music is atmospheric, the menu system intuitive, and the help very… helpful. I mentioned before that there’s a great series of instructions in the help system for how each of the guns work, and I would consider it a must-read. The visual effects produced by opening the different gateways provide that same wonder first experienced with Portal. Though lower-res, I think it is even more awe-inspiring here when you can see clones of yourself running around in different stages of time traveling.  It’s easy to tell from the way the whole package is put together that Smudged Cat has been down this road before and learned a thing or two about how to assemble a finished product. That’s something that’s usually lacking on the XBLIG service.

The effects seen by approaching open gateways provide a cool, visual treat

Gateways not a perfect game, but it really raises the bar for what puzzle games on XBLIG should aim for. I lost count of how many times I thought to myself “What a wonderfully crafted puzzle, you tricky bastard.” A lot of people are going to draw the obvious comparisons between Gateways and Portal including me in this very article. In its own indie way Gateways goes on to do so much more. Perhaps the best praise I can heap upon this title is to say that it wouldn’t surprise me to start seeing Gateways-inspired titles start to pop up in the near future. Despite some gripes about the difficulty, I can say with full confidence that I consider it a polished gem, and I believe most players will agree.

Overall Rating: ★★★★★ 

Note: This review was conducted using version 1.11 of the game.

Additional Gateways coverage:

Review on theXBLIG.com

Review on Indie Gamer Chick

Review on Clearance Bin Review
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© 2012 – 2013, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

In City Tuesday, players take on the role of an unnamed citizen tasked with stopping the machinations of a bomb-crazy criminal element. There’s very little backstory for who these villains are, and there’s never an explanation for who the protagonist is or why he alone is responsible for saving the city. The goal is clear though: capture all of the bombs before time runs out.

The player does have one thing working in his or her favor: the ability to relive that same momentous day over and over again. At any time, players can rewind the clock to restart the day, though any bombs that have been captured don’t need to be obtained again. In true Bill Murray fashion, the day can be spent gathering information about the personalities and movement patterns of citizens of the city. This gives the player a timetable under which they can operate to ensure they’re in the right place at the right time. This implementation of time travel in video games is not a wholly unique concept, classics like Majora’s Mask immediately come to mind, and even though it’s not implemented as deeply here, it’s done reasonably well.

The complexity of the puzzles quickly ramps up, but never gets too difficult. City Tuesday begins with simple one-screen brainteasers to introduce players to the controls and shortly afterwards to the time reset concept. There’s a running timer and non-controllable events are set for specific times, because of this it’s impossible in the latter stages of the game to collect all of the bombs in a single run. Players will have to talk to citizens to learn passcodes or follow them as they move from one location to another as their actions set new events in play. Often movement to specific locations is restricted by security guards, so learning how and when to slip by takes some cunning and patience. There are plenty of red herring characters and events thrown in that serve to make sure the solutions aren’t too obvious and to make the city feel more alive. There’s also a good amount of humor to be found in the information about all of the people encountered along the way.

Coming into the 2012 Indie Games Uprising event, of which City Tuesday is a part, this game was at the top of my radar and it all started with a look at the visual style. The design was inspired by help signs seen in public transportation. All of the characters are drawn as stick figures and the settings involve a lot of train stations, parking lots, and other public transit-based themes. The game also opens up with an artistic opening cinematic that has to be seen to be appreciated. I came away very impressed with the aesthetics of this game.

The signage-based design is a visual treat

Unfortunately, there must be some inherent flaw with creating a mad bomber game. Much like last year’s SpeedRunner HD – also part of the last Indie Games Summer Uprising – City Tuesday is incredibly short. Less than an hour after sitting down to fire up the game for the first time, I reached the rather abrupt and ultimately unsatisfying ending. The game had just hit its stride with four or five bombs spread across a dozen or so screens, many of which had events cross over between them. Just like that, though, the game was over. There wasn’t even a closing cinematic to tie a ribbon on the story. Just a bland end screen that I wasn’t even sure at first was an end screen. It’s disappointing on a few levels. Having just pumped hour after hour into Smooth Operators, it was surprising that this game was over. Since there’s no variability in the way events play out, there’s no reason to play through the game again. Honestly, though, I think the biggest reason I was disappointed in the game was because for that one hour I saw a ton of promise as the game kept building up the puzzle sophistication. The puzzles were fun and there was personality. Sadly, in the end it felt more like a proof of concept than a full-fledged game. Hopefully the developers can take this solid framework and make a fleshed-out sequel.

I had no trouble with finding a voice for the things I loved and hated about City Tuesday. What was problematic was trying to assign it a review score. The content of the game is good, even bordering on great. But is there enough to justify a solid rating? The crushing disappointment of the game’s brevity is counterbalanced by the fun factor of the puzzles. In the end, it was the game’s visual style that gave it the slightest of nudges into recommendation territory. Buyers beware, though, as those expecting a full-length adventure will be the ones blowing up.

Overall Rating: ★★★☆☆ 

Review on The Indie Ocean

Review on Clearance Bin Review

Review on Indie Gamer Chick

Review on theXBLIG.com

Review on Indie Theory

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

Faster. Higher. Stronger. Not only was it the motto of all Olympians from earlier this summer, it’s also the creed by which players will create their empire in Smooth Operators: Call Center Chaos.

This indie Xbox strategy game from Andreas Heydeck Games challenges players to mold a lean, mean, support center machine. While it’s possible to achieve greatness after a handful of hours, at some point players may be questioning whether they’re ruling the game or the game is ruling them.

Smooth Operators builds upon a tried-and-true formula of micromanagement and patience. In this particular case, it’s building up a call center by creating a self-supporting ecosystem. In order to make money, it’s necessary to build operation rooms and hire call-takers, telemarketers, and fill other similar roles to help meet daily quotas for clients. In order to keep those employees happy and up-and-running, players need to create service rooms and hire janitors to clean their workstations, as well as hire IT staff to fix their absurdly fragile computers.

Creating a thriving business is not all about hiring grunt workers. In order to reach for the skies – quite literally – the solution is to bring in a variety of management staff to open up new opportunities over time. Of course it’s necessary to feed everyone and allow them a chance to use the restroom, so those types of buildings are important as well. It’s quite possible that the most crucial piece of the puzzle is developing an efficient transportation system within the building. Creating a logjam keeps employees from returning to their desk and earning money, and it can also upset them to the point they eventually quit. There’s a solid tutorial that introduces players to the roles and functions of each of these pieces. It doesn’t take too long to learn how these parts all work together, but it can take a bit of struggling and patience to learn how to balance everything out.

As with similar games like Nimblebit’s Tiny Tower and Pocket Planes, there’s almost always a business deficiency the player will need to overcome. Perhaps there’s not enough of a certain kind of call-maker on a particular contract, or the elevator system gets too crowded causing employees to miss their daily quotas. Maybe the player’s waiting on their Account Manager to land them a higher volume contract to start using some of the idle employees. The concept here is the same as seen in a lot of RPGs: the dangling carrot. The idea that once the player overcomes some obstacle, it’s going to be smooth sailing keeps them reaching for that goal. While that can allow the player to reach a new, higher plateau, it also produces an even newer, shinier carrot. That’s not to say there’s anything wrong with this system. I absolutely love the two titles from Nimblebit and have been playing Sim games for years. I even continued playing Smooth Operators long after most players would’ve gotten their money’s worth and walked away. It’s the best one of these small studio micromanagement games I’ve played, and the addictive quality is second to none.

Smooth Operators: guaranteed to be your best experience ever with tech support.

I feel like Smooth Operators can be played in one of two ways, at least early on. Players can manage every bit of their business by keeping the clock slow and watching trends and inefficiences in their employees’ movement patterns and schedules. Or, in a very Rube Goldberg-esque manner players can set everything up, ramp up the clock, and watch how everything unfolds at hyper-speed. It’s really up to the player to determine how involved they want to get in the action. While I’m sure the former method provides successful results, I veered towards the latter, more hands-off method. I was able to achieve the desired results, though it may have taken longer. It’s nice that the game doesn’t require an extreme amount of vigilance, though some may point to that making the game too easy.

With no clearly definable end goal though, playing Smooth Operators will eventually lead to player fatigue. There are a number of reward-based objectives that also earn players extra money. These may offer an extra incentive for completionists to continue long after the objective money has ceased to be useful, but they only go so far. Although I have some gripes with the efficiency of the pathfinding logic for some of the characters – I’m looking at you, janitors – the biggest problem is certainly the endgame. The game just doesn’t scale well once players have put a healthy amount of time into it. There will inevitably come a point where all daily contracts are being fulfilled and no one’s quitting because everything has been made as efficient as possible through the purchase of better transportation methods and upgrading employees and buildings. The map has the potential for 40 floors of rooms with multiple columns, but players will likely never need more than a tenth of that to build an unstoppable juggernaut. I’m not sure what the point is for all that space since it’s not likely to ever get used. Up until players reach that point of continued success though, I think the game is a blast.

Incentive-based objectives may keep some players going after the game starts playing itself.

It’s difficult to say with any degree of conviction that every gamer should try Smooth Operators. I think it’s built for individuals who love a high degree of micromanagement or for casual gamers who get their kicks via similar games on Facebook or iOS devices. While it doesn’t quite reach the polished heights of a big budget SimTower, a game credited with inspiring this one, I think it matches or surpasses the best of the casual empire-building games currently available on the market. Its charming, cartoonish visual and audio presentation only lend to the appeal with some of the music feeling very Sim City-esque. It’s certainly a unique experience for the Xbox platform, and I think it’s a great choice to represent the indie development community as part of the Indie Games Uprising event. For 80 MSP ($1), I think most gamers would be hard-pressed to find a more addictive experience that they can play for a few minutes or for a few hours at a time.

Overall Rating: ★★★★☆ 

Additional Smooth Operators: Call Center Chaos coverage:

Review on theXBLIG.com

Review on Clearance Bin Review

Review on IndieGamerChick 

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

Old CAN be new again which is immediately evident when looking at the indie game qrth-phyl from studio hermitgames. This uniquely-named title was chosen to lead off the Indie Games Uprising III event and it’s certainly made a splash among the press sites covering this event. Matt James, the creative force behind qrth-phyl, was able to answer a few questions for us regarding where the inspiration for this arcade reimagination comes from.

Hello Matt. Thanks for agreeing to talk to us today. Can you tell us a bit about hermitgames and your role within the studio?

Hello. I started releasing stuff as hermitgames in 2002 ish, as a label for just my own stuff, that I was solely in control of. If I’ve made something I want to release to the public I’ll do it through hermitgames.

You have an interesting backlog of games you’ve created. One of the things I noticed is that unlike a lot of the other XBLIG developers taking part in the Uprising, your history seems to be very PC-centric. Is there a particular reason you’ve always targeted PC, and why go to XBLIG now?

I’ve not really actively chosen to concentrate on PC. It’s only recently there have been options to distribute on xbox or iPhone or whatever without signing to a publisher. My previous game Leave Home was on XBLIG before PC.

I stand corrected! What do you feel are the strengths of each platform, and do you have a preferred platform to develop for?

Mostly I want something with easy distribution, getting stuff ready for public release is a right pain so anything that makes it easier to give a game out to people and it work is good. That and lack of interference from the platform owner, or anyone else, is what I want.

Let’s jump back for a minute to the game we just mentioned, Leave Home which I recently had a chance to play. For a lot of indie developers, the side-scroller SHMUP seems to be a go-to genre for learning the ropes of development. However, you took something commonplace and made it unique. Leave Home rewards or punishes players depending on how well they’re doing. Stages not only scroll, they also rotate. It’s also an intentionally short game. What are some of the elements – design or otherwise – that you’re most proud of in Leave Home?

I’m pleased to have finished it. It ended up feeling how I wanted it to feel which is good.

What have you been able to take from your time and experience developing Leave Home that has helped you with qrth-phyl?

Loads of the algorithmic generation stuff was useful. qrth-phyl takes some of that a step further by mutating the generation algorithms themselves.

Let’s dig into qrth-phyl. In your words, tell us what this game is all about.

It’s an arcade game. It’s about BLOCKADE, the 1976 first snake/maze style game. It’s about what gets left behind. It’s about spacial navigation. It’s about old computers. It’s about progression. It’s a videogame.

qrth-phyl is taking Snake into three dimensions

Why BLOCKADE though? Was there something appealing about taking a classic game and putting a big twist on it?

Initially with the prototype I did in 2004 I didn’t even know about Blockade. I was just fiddling with the challenge of making a 3D snake type thing. It wasn’t until 2010 ish that I discovered the Blockade and Lane Hauck story and thought I could bring that and my prototype together.

What do you find to be the most interesting or enjoyable aspect of the game?

Feel/Atmosphere. The really difficult small 3d levels where it feels like everything is going off and you’re just surviving.

What’s been the most difficult part of development for you?

Just getting stuff finished for release, all the little edge polishing. Also it was quite tricky doing both PC and XBLIG versions for release at the same time.

Well, qrth-phyl is already garnering some positive attention. It was named one of the finalists for this year’s Dream.Build.Play competition. Are you surprised, excited, or some other response?

I try not to look at the response. I want it to do OK, mostly so I can make another game.

What’s next for hermitgames?

I have like 3 things on the go that might release next. A 2D arcade style game, a 3D game built from some of the same code as qrth-phyl and a slower PC type release. Depends which ones I lose interest in.

For our readers who are curious about qrth-phyl, can you give us a pitch on why they should try it?

It’ll do your head in.

For more information on hermitgames and the studio’s catalog of titles, be sure to check out their official site.

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

There’s not much in the way of an introduction to Diehard Dungeon when the main character wakes up within a dungeon cell. After a couple of minutes spent in two or three different rooms, players learn that they must travel from room to room to escape. To proceed, each room has a hidden key or goal that will open up the barred gate to the next area. The main character is accompanied by a sentient treasure chest that holds all money collected and can eventually attack the enemies that mill about. The action unfolds through an isometric view, only further leading to a Zelda-like feeling.

As the game progresses, players will rely heavily on their trusty sword and a few other obtainable weapons to defeat a variety of enemies and bash open about a million containers (some of which contain money or other items). In another likening to the Zelda series, a life meter sits atop the left corner of the screen and is represented by hearts. The life meter is extended by collecting hearts that appear within containers or by defeating enemies. In true roguelike fashion, when your life meter hits zero the game is over. There are no retries or continues, only permadeath, which seems to be getting increasingly more popular among the hardcore players. After a few attempts navigating the dungeon, players will likely be familiar enough with the enemy types, the traps, and the weapons that health will rarely be a concern. That’s not to say the game is easy, it’s just manageable with a bit of patience.

Diehard Dungeon has it all. Combat, treasure, and a million or so crates.

There are a couple of ways to beef up your character, which I really liked. For instance, treasure chests are periodically found that offer players a chance to win zero to three spins on a slot machine. Each spin on the slot machine has a completely random chance at earning the player a stat boost, a special combat or defense ability, extra loot, and more. Occasionally it can mean the difference between life and death when the player is low on health, or it can make a strong player powerful enough to wreak havoc. The chests are also spaced out enough during the game that it doesn’t make things too easy for the player. At one point in each level, the player is presented with a maze mini-game in which they play as the treasure chest. Players must collect 100 flames spread along the paths of the maze without being touched by one or more roving enemy treasure chests. The more flames the player collects, the faster the enemy chests move. Reaching the flame goal causes an item to appear on the map. If reached, it adds an extra ability to the sword attack. While not vital, obtaining one of the three possible abilities can make combat less of a slugfest for the player.

As with many roguelikes, randomness plays a key role in how Diehard Dungeon unfolds. The map layouts, enemy and object placement. and loot drops change with each playthrough. Because the game is relatively short, this dynamic is an absolute necessity to keep players coming back even if they’ve already made it through the dungeon alive. Branching paths offer up slightly different environments and boss encounters. There’s also a bonus goal of collecting 10 hidden golden keys in order to unlock a different ending. Completing the bonus goal also allows players to have an impact on the games played by other players, but I won’t ruin the surprise. There’s nothing really revolutionary in terms of the structure of the game, but it’s really well done. It never gets frustrating, the power-ups and weapon upgrades make the game even more fun, and it’s just long enough that players can get good at it without getting bored.

Branching Paths = Replayability Win. That’s math, people.

As enjoyable as the initial game is, tricktale has also included a second game mode: Mayhem. While tricktale admits this unlockable mode is a work in progress, I actually found it to be almost as engaging as the main adventure. In Mayhem mode, the player takes on the role of the treasure chest, fully packing an unlimited amount of spikes to shoot. Over the course of three minutes, the player needs to take out as many spawning enemies as he or she can while avoiding enemy attacks. The longer the player can keep the killing going without taking a hit, the higher the point values that will be earned for each kill. It plays very much like a twin-stick shooter with one analog stick for movement and the other for directional firing. The reward at the end of the three minutes is a chance to make it onto a global leaderboard. Thank you, tricktale, for including the leaderboard. It’s such a fantastic addition and has me itching to see if I can climb up the ranks. The guys from theXBLIG.com and Clearance Bin Review still have me beat! It’ll be interesting to see how this mode changes over time with updates, but I feel like it warrants the purchase price even by itself.

Diehard Dungeon is a downright fun time waiting to be had, even for players who aren’t necessarily fans of dungeon crawlers or roguelikes. The game is short enough that the combat doesn’t get repetative, but with a random factor that will likely entice players to give the game another go if they didn’t experience all of the potential endings. There’s even a secondary mode for the competitor in all of us that allows players to see how they stack up against friends and the rest of the world. Diehard Dungeon is a polished package, a fantastic flagbearer for the Indie Games Uprising event, and a must-buy for 80 MSP ($1). Check out our video review below, then go try it.

Overall Rating: ★★★★★ 

Additional Diehard Dungeon coverage:

theXBLIG.com Diehard Dungeon review

Clearance Bin Review Diehard Dungeon review 

IndieGamerChick Diehard Dungeon review

Indie Theory Diehard Dungeon review

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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

For those unfamiliar with Snake, it had the player steering a snake around a 2D stage running over pellets to earn points, but caused the snake to grow longer. The snake never stopped moving and the player had to avoid running it into walls or itself. This game evolves from the long-standing classic by adding in a 3rd dimension. The game alternates between two different kind of stages. Half of the stages are cubes with 2 dimensional faces which players slide along the outside of. By collecting enough little cubes on the stage, a section of it opens up and allows players to pass inside to a 3D stage that allows complete freedom of movement. It is these areas where the game really shines. Players can weave in and out of tight turns and through their own growing snake tail in a tense race against time within an ever-shrinking environment.

One of the most interesting design choices of qrth-phyl also builds upon an older game. hermitgames’ previous title Leave Home had the difficulty automatically ramp up or down based on how the player performed. That design has been carried over meaning no two playthroughs of the game will be exactly alike. Players breezing through the stages will suddenly have tighter confines to work within as walls form and move, and placement of the collectible cubes gets sparser and closer to walls. I think this is a really solid decision by the developer. Although boosting the difficulty often shortens the length of the game, it also means players won’t have to play through dozens of levels to try to surpass their previous records.

Getting a handle on spacial recognition in terms of how far the snake is from a wall or obstacle is difficult. Eventually players can ‘get a feel’ for when to turn away, but ultimately it’s a guessing game. For a game with finite lives that rewards players for extending their current run, it can be a frustrating turn of events for a poor camera angle to cause the loss of a long snake chain or a last life. The same can be said during the stage transitions as the snake enters an outside area. Often I found myself aimed straight at a wall with too little time to react and save myself. The fact that the stages are randomized means that memorization isn’t even a possibility to save you in those situations.

The 3D areas of the game are a lot of fun, but the controls take some practice

This game really wants for a leaderboard. Although qrth-phyl  is a modernization of the classic Snake game, arcade classics were popular in large part because of high score rankings and the bragging rights that come with it. Though there’s something to be said for bettering oneself, it’s arguably more satisfying to topple a friend’s records. I did continually come back to the game to see if I could improve (which I did), but I really wanted to see how I was stacking up against other press reviewing the game and other early purchasers. Although many XBLIG developers complain about the difficulty of including leaderboards in their indie titles, some have done it including fellow Uprising developer Smudged Cat Games in their past title Growing Pains.

I really wanted to love qrth-phyl as not only a nod to gaming history, but as the first title out of the gate for an event aimed at reigniting interest in a gaming service woefully unappreciated. I know the game is fun because I kept coming back to try to better my performance. It’s also frustrating in that the camera can’t show the player everything they need to see in order to succeed. While it falls short of greatness because of a few design flaws, there’s enough solid gaming enjoyment here to recommend players pick it up for the 80MSP ($1) price tag.

Overall Rating: ★★★☆☆ 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Additional Coverage:

The Indie Ocean qrth-phyl review

Clearance Bin Review qrth-phyl review

Indie Theory qrth-phyl review

VVGTV’s Indie Spotlight of qrth-phyl

IndieGamerChick qrth-phyl review

the XBLIG qrth-phyl review

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