The Shrine

We already talked about Breath of Death, which is a really good indie game. I was going through the top downloads for the indie games and found a few others.

Soulcaster - The price is a tad expensive (at 240 points), but this is a very fun "tower defense" game that isn't really a tower defense game. You are a mage that has no fighting ability, but you can put down these different soldier types. You can covert them back to souls at any time, though you have a limit amount you can put at a time. You are constantly moving in this game, so it's not like typical tower defense where you have some sort of permanent position. Pretty good music, too. The game is somewhat short at about 90 minutes or so, and it doesn't use saves (uses some stupid password system), but it's still worth a buy.

The Impossible Game - I've talked about this one, too, but it's worth a look just to see how far you could get.

I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MBIES 1N IT!!!1 - Shit, this one goes without saying. Again, the song alone is worth 80 points.

Shoot 1UP - An interesting take on a shooter. All of your ships are on the screen at once, instead of going one at a time. The more spread out they are, the more powerful the weapons, but also the more likely you're going to kill off some ships. I didn't end up buying this one, but again, worth a look, anyway.

Olu - If you want a total and complete rip off of Rez with horrible music, boy, do we have the game for you. This one is worth downloading and trialing just to see how bad it is. Then when the time limit ends, you can say with 100% certainty that you want to delete it off of your HD. I know that this is an indie title, so we aren't supposed to be looking for the kind of quality that is in commercial products. But for all of the good music out there on some of the indie games (like Breath of Death and Soulcaster), it's disappointing that an indie title designed to be a music game has such bad music.

Kodu Game Labs - This is a great game maker kit, but I really wished it had better sharing capabilities. If there was some sort of server where these games could be stored or shared, it would make this game much much better, and worth even a bit more than 80 points. Even without that, it's worth the 80 points just to play around with it. It has a ton of logic to create anything you want. (The trial probably isn't long enough to figure things out, but again, worth the buy.)

Anybody have any other neat indie games? 1UP has a few of these games reviewed here, including one I hadn't looked at yet.

My bud and I actually played I Made A Game With Zombies In It and The Impossible Game. Neat games (yes, the song was awesome) but honestly, not worth more than a 5 minute demo. We also tried that one that was a fighting game with the digitized people (runs 240 points) and same thing, fun for 5 minutes but that's about it. We tried a few every month but those were the only real memorable ones.

Really, the only indie game that was worth even the 80 points (ie. it was worth play for more than a demo) that I've found was Breath of Death. Hell, you get more game in that than you do the vast majority of XBLA games (how many regular XBLA games last 8 hours?). Value-wise? It's easily the best

Well, I would say that Soulcaster is worth the 240 points as it's a fun game. I've been playing Miner Dig Deep, which is a mining sim, and it's only 80 points. Surprisingly addictive.

I'll review more of these later on. There's a lot of gems out there if you look for them.

I'll give Soulcaster and Miner Dig Deep a shot. I've been a little lax on the indies the last month or so.

Yeah, I've been playing Miner Dig Deep for several days now. You would think a game as simple as a mining sim would be boring, but it's not. At 80 points and how much time I've spent on it, it's easily one of the best indie games out there. Other reviews:

Beat Hazard - This game has an epilepsy warning that you have push A to continue. As soon as you push A, you realize why the warning is there. This looks to be a pretty neat music game with a ship shooter mechanic, but man is it BUSY. It's worth trialing to just to see what I mean, but I didn't end up buying this game.

Leave Home - Really neat ship shooter. Instead of trying to complete several levels of enemies and all these options, the game is designed around a 5 minute course, switching to different layouts every minute. The object is to get the best score. You have infinite lives, but dying costs you time and points. Holding right trigger will adjust the guns from right to top-bottom to left, depending on how hard you press the trigger. Oh, and it has really cool graphics and music. I did end up buying the game, though I need to try it out some more.

Run Away - It's a funny premise, but it's a jumping game, and too hard for my tastes at that.

ZP2K9 - This is supposed to be a multiplayer 2D deathmatch game, though you can play with bots. Seems to have a lot of weapons and stuff, but I just found walking around to be slow. For something to be a deathmatch, I'd expect to be running around faster and just something about the mechanic of walking around seemed sluggish. It was enough to turn me off to the game. Besides, I'm sure it's hard to find people to play with at this point.

Arkedo Series - 01 JUMP! - Seems to be a jumper platformer game. Graphics look good and it's got a good sense of humor, but not enough for my tastes. I will try out PIXEL later on, since it seems to have scored higher.

Biology Battle - Bought this a while ago. Very good single screen space shooter. Reminds me a lot like Mutant Storm. At the more expensive side (400 points), but Shellie and I both had fun with the multiplayer mode.