Last week, Xbox Live introduced a new feature (and if it’s not really new, it’s still new to me), called XNA Community. With XNA, people from all over can make little games and send them to Microsoft. And some of them they’ll put up as demos and maybe full games for everyone to play on Xbox Live! Now, I’m not exactly sure how the game making process of XNA works. I’ve been a gamer all my life, but I’ve no interest in making games myself. I’d rather just play them. But I do know you can now download seven new XNA demo games on Xbox Live right now! I figured I’d make a little blog about them. Now, keep in mind that these are demos of games that are works in progress, so anything negative I say about them isn’t really a bad thing. Just some things that might help improve the full copy of the game if it ever came to that.

Culture
This is actually a collection of three mini-games all based around planting and growing flowers. Yes, flowers. In the first game, you move a dot around a grass filled sphere. Your job is to clear the sphere of weeds, and you do so by drawing a line of flowers around the weeds like a circle. You use and move the dot cursor around to grow flowers. Now, only a circle of flowers of the same color can kill weeds, and there is a line that shows what color flowers are going to come out of your dot next, so you can kind of plan ahead. You can run over weeds directly with red flowers. Kill all the weeds to move on to the next level. It kind of reminds me of walking around the little planet in the first Katamari Damacy game. But since there’s no way to die or lose, as far as I can tell, you just keep going and going and going and it doesn’t seem like much of a game right now.

The next game on Culture is like paint by numbers, but with flowers. You plant different colored flowers to make a picture. I never thought someone would make a paint by numbers game. It gets really hard when there’s only a couple of little squares left and you have to scour the page to try and find them.

In the last game, you must plant and breed different colors of flowers. I think you do this by planting other colored flowers next to each other. I think it works kind of like the flower breeding in Animal Crossing DS. And since I didn’t like breeding flowers in that game, I really don’t like it in Culture either. But even though I don’t have much positive things to say about Culture, I do like the idea of a non-violent, tranquil gaming experience on Xbox Live.

Kid Factor:

Of all the XNA games, Culture has the least amount of violence. But since there’s not much of a game here, kids may also get bored quickly. Patient kids may enjoy the paint by numbers game somewhat.

JellyCar
This is one of my favorite XNA games. You have to drive a squishy car through obstacle course levels. Since your car acts like it’s made out of jelly, you can squeeze through small gaps. For a limited amount of time, you can press a button to make your car grow so you don’t fall through some obstacles. Play control is easy to figure out. Just press the R trigger button to put on the gas and go forward, and the L trigger to brake and go backwards. Only problem is it’s easy to make your car flip over. If they gave the car some more weight to keep the car from flipping over, and maybe added a jump button and a ton of levels, I’d probably buy a full version of JellyCar on Xbox Live if it didn’t cost too many points (really, most games on Live aren’t worth more than 400 points). I really like the audio and visuals of JellyCar. The graphics look like crayon doodles on a piece of notebook paper, and the sound effects are all just someone making car noises with their mouth. Kind of reminds me of Panic (Switch) for the Sega CD.

Kid Factor:

Young gamers will enjoy the simple gameplay and visual style of JellyCar, and it’s also one of the most kid friendly XNA demos. However, they’ll probably get frustrated quickly at the poor controls and how easy it is to get stuck and flipped over.

Little Gamers
This one’s a side scrolling beat em up, despite its rather misleading crayon scrawled title screen. It looks like a cross between EarthBound/Mother, and South Park. The characters and graphics are simple like EarthBound and also are filled with little kid Charlie Brown-like characters. But it’s also like South Park because there’s lots of cartoon blood and violence. At first you just beat up a bunch of other kids in a house, then you go to a graveyard to beat up kid zombies, then hop up a building avoiding snipers, and then tromp around in a mech on the roof. You can pick up all sorts of weapons. Knives, swords, chainsaws, pistols, rifles, bazookas, and other guns. Normally I like old-school style side scrolling beat em ups like Final Fight or Streets of Rage. But I didn’t like Little Gamers as much because there was only one ‘punch’ button and you only moved around one plane, so it was very simplistic. Maybe if they added a fun yet simple fighting combo system or something. The kiddy violence comes off as more immature than anything, too.

Kid Factor:

Despite being called “Little Gamers,” this game is not for little gamers. Even though the violence is cartoony, there is a lot of cartoon blood and beheadings. It’s even more disturbing since the characters look like kids.

Proximity HD
This is a simple strategy board game for up to four players. The playfield is a bunch of hexagons and each player gets a color. Then you get a hand of five numbers, and must place a number on the grid each turn. If the number of your piece is higher than the other players number next to yours, their piece will change to your color. And whoever has the most points when all spaces are filled wins. Only problem is that in this early demo, the game ends without telling you who won! I do like the simple, easy to read menus and graphics, though. A lot of the XNA games’ menu screens were hard to read. I think Proximity HD would make a better DS game, though. It just screams ‘touch screen control’ like the TouchMaster games. But since I’m not much of a big fan of strategy board games, I still didn’t like Proximiity HD as much.

Kid Factor:

No violence or any other objectionable material, but Proximity HD is best for older kids because of the strategy and math counting skills involved.

Rocketball
It’s a dodgeball game, but don’t get too excited. Of all the demo games here, I think Rocketball needs the most work. Play control and movement is stilted and jerky, and it’s hard to figure out how to throw and catch the ball, and use power-ups. I do like some of the suburban ‘street’ visual themes, though. You can play in places like a junkyard or suburb street, and the energy bars of the players are represented by juice boxes. The game menus reflect this theme, too. But no matter how many improvements they make, I bet it still won’t be able to touch the ultimate dodgeball game: Super Dodge Ball on NES (and GBA). Before Wii Sports came along, my favorite video game sports game was Super Dodge Ball. One of my friends was excited about Wii Playground because a dodgeball game was on it and he was hoping it would be like Super Dodge Ball, but I convinced him it probably wouldn’t be like it. I hope the DS Super Dodge Ball game comes to the US!

Kid Factor:

Even though Rocketball is based on the most dangerous of kids’ sports, it’s not very violent as players who are hit with the ball only fall down with dizzy stars over their heads. But because of the lack of good play control in the demo, kids will probably still get frustrated with it.

The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai
When I first saw the title for this game, I thought you’d be in control of an electric dishwasher possessed by the ghost of a killer samurai. Hey readers, someone please, please confirm with me that you thought the same thing, too. Because if I’m the only one who thought you’d play as a Kenmore, MayTag, or Whirlpool, then that would mean there’s probably something wrong with me and I might be insane.

But in The Dishwasher, you don’t play as a kitchen appliance, but as a guy with two cleavers in each hand. It’s a side scrolling beat em up, but WAY further along than Little Gamers, and much better because of it. You fight hordes of FBI looking suits and robots, and the combat and combo system is fast, fluid, and fun. You can also walk up walls and do air combos. It’s like a fast-paced Comix Zone or Viewtiful Joe. Speaking of which, the dark, comic book graphic style of The Dishwasher reminds me of artwork from guys like Jhonen Vasquez (the only thing I liked from that guy was Invader ZIM). The incomprehensible story is even told with comic book panels. But even though the dark themes and bloody visuals are rather off putting to me, I have to admit the visual style of The Dishwasher is really unique. The game is pretty hard, though. Still one of the better ones in this batch of XNA games.

Kid Factor:

The Dishwasher is the most violent of all the current batch of XNA games. You can perform clean kills and messy kills with your two cleavers, and there’s lots of beheadings and other gory scenes. It’s cartoony in a comic book way, though. In the options screen, you can turn off the blood, but that doesn’t make it any less violent.

TriLinea
This is a two player puzzle game that is like a cross between dominoes and Dr. Mario. You place pieces on a board like dominoes, and when three or more colors match, they disappear. You can even match colors your opponent has places, too. I wish I could explain the game further, but the instructions were really small and hard to read. There are power ups and shapes on the pieces and other things I wasn’t so sure what they did. Note to future XNA game makers: Not everyone has an HD TV yet! Make your letters and menus big and easy to read! But even though I didn’t know what I was doing, TriLinea seemed like it was pretty fun, though.

Kid Factor:

A non-violent choice for kids who like puzzle games. I would say reading is required, but since I think I figured out the general gist of the game without being able to read the tiny instructions, maybe it’s not as necessary.

XNA Conclusions
And that’s pretty much all there is on the XNA right now. Hopefully it’ll take off, because I like the idea. The demos listed here will only last about another week as of this writing, so if you want to try ’em, you need to hurry! Yeah, I know I probably should’ve written this blog earlier to make it more timely, but I’m pretty busy nowadays, and distractions like Apollo Justice and Patapon aren’t helping either!

Jeff says the XNA games remind him of the things you can play on NewGrounds, and that’s a pretty good comparison. It also reminds me of the stuff you could find on the old PlayStation Underground demo discs. Anyone rememeber those? Some had demos of Japan only games, and sometimes they had demos of home made garage games that people made with the PlayStation’s blue systems that let you make games with them somehow. I played a demo of a paper airplane throwing game, a F-Zero knock off, and a demo of a Japanese Tamagotchi game and a cooking game called Ore no Ryouri. At any rate, it’s things like XNA that is making me like the 360 better than…dare I say it, the Nintendo Wii. Sorry Nintendo. Of course it’s not the first time I enjoyed a competitor’s console more than Nintendo’s. I liked the Neo Geo Pocket Color better than the Game Boy Color, and I liked the PSOne more than the N64 (but not by much).

Lastly, I downloaded a demo for a new Xbox Live arcade game. It’s called Triggerheart Excelica, a Japanese 2-D vertically scrolling bullet hell shooter. I haven’t gotten the hang of how you use the anchor yet, though. I’d probably download the full game if it were cheaper and wasn’t so hard and short and I don’t think you can do two players at the same time, either. It would be cool if you can play together with someone online, like with Aegis Wing. In Triggerheart you play as one of two anime women. I picked the second one with purple hair.

And that’s all for now! Later! –Cary

Tags: Misc