The Indie Games channel on the Xbox 360 is one of my favorite things about Xbox Live. Every week, a new batch of games arrives — games made by students, hobbyists or even small studios just looking to get their names out there and who have found the path Microsoft is providing through the Indie Games channel to be the cheapest, fastest way to get your game onto a current-generation console. As a gamer looking for an experimental, unique gaming experience, however, the Indie Games channel is a treasure trove. While you do have to dig through a lot of rough before you get to the diamonds, you can usually find a few games that are definitely worth the asking price in each batch of new releases. Here are a few of my favorites.
“Solar” is an extremely simple game that has an almost Zen-like quality to it. You start off as a star, shooting through the cosmos and crashing into space debris, absorbing it and growing as you collect more and more. From there, you attract larger asteroids, pulling them into your orbit and smashing them into other asteroids so that they can grow into planets. Eventually, as these planets evolve, life begins to form on them and a space-faring civilization launches to help defend from enemy stars that are doing the same. Aside from this basic idea and a few challenges to keep things interesting, there’s no real goal. You can play the game any way you want. Collect as many planets as you can, grow your star as large as possible — the choice is up to you.
If you like your games a little more goal-oriented, “Dungeon Adventure” might be more your style. “Dungeon Adventure” harkens back to the very early days of PC games where graphics were a luxury few could afford. It’s an action role-playing game that features extremely simplistic graphics and even has an ASCII mode to really immerse you in that old-school experience. If you love “Rogue”-likes or dungeon crawlers in general, definitely do not miss “Dungeon Adventure.”
“Miner Dig Deep” is an extremely addictive game that I couldn’t stop playing until I finished it — and then I went back for more. The whole premise of the game is to dig deep down into the earth, collecting precious gems and minerals to bring back to the surface where you can sell them to buy better equipment and go even further down. It’s also extremely challenging as the threat of cave-ins or getting lost and falling to your death are constant. It can seem like a lot of work, but it’s actually a lot of fun.
“Along Came a Spider” is a more recent entry, having just been added to the Indie Games channel a few weeks ago. You play as a spider that leaps from platforms made of thin silk, collecting flies and trying to get to the exit of each level. The mechanics of swinging from strands of silk and performing acrobatics just to get from one platform to another are interesting and feel very natural. Like most of the games in the Indie Games channel, the graphics and sound are very simplistic but also very beautiful.
“ZP2K9” is best described as a multiplayer, 2D, platform shooter. Jumping into a game over Xbox Live can be a chaotic, challenging experience. The high-intensity action really keeps you on your toes as you run around, shooting and dodging other players. Then you have the various other play modes like “Capture the Flag” and “Team Deathmatch” to keep things interesting. It’s a lot of fun, and there’s usually a bunch of people available for an online match.
So, the next time you log into Xbox Live, make sure you stop by the Indie Games channel and look around. You might just find your next favorite game!
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