The Chick’s Monthly Top 10 Update: January 2012

I probably shouldn’t call this a monthly update, since I didn’t do one in December.  It wasn’t out of laziness or forgetfulness either.  The truth is, nothing made the leaderboard in December.  We all knew that it would come to the point where a month or more would pass between new games being added, and so it shouldn’t have come as a surprise to anyone.

Having said that, there is not one but two new additions to the leaderboard this month.  Well, I guess that’s technically not true because one of them is a former leaderboard occupant that fell off the list and is now back on it.  So what are they?

The new #8 game is Pixel Blocked!  It occupied the #9 spot from August 1 to September 1, way back when Indie Gamer Chick first opened.  In the six months that passed since I first reviewed it, multiple games have joined and fallen off the list.  It says a lot that a game that hit so early in the life of the leaderboard could find its way back on the list after a five month lull.

This drops Blocks That Matter down to the #9 spot.  Meanwhile, Orbitron: Revolution has become the new #10 game.  The glitzy shooter was cut from the same cloth as Defender, but features the same timed-frenzy feel of Pac-Man Championship Edition.  The developers recently had a promotion where they tried to entice people to buy the game with all proceeds going to charity, and still only sold under $50 worth of it.  Hopefully a price drop will come and cause a sales spike.  If not, there’s always a PC port that will run in glorious 1080p.

Drool.

In the “close but no cigar” category, I really, really considered Avatar Grand Prix 2 for a spot on the list.  This awesome clone of Mario Kart nailed most of the fundamentals and also included online play and leaderboards.  Ultimately, it came down to the track design.  Most of them were just too dang short.  Also up for consideration was Lexiv, the Sim City-Scrabble hybrid that was a bit too glitchy, but ultimately rejected because the game starts you off with the letter “V” no matter what.  Petty on my part for sure, but as any word game fan will tell you, completely justified.

Since I skipped December, I figure I should bring up the game from that month that came the closest to making the list: Alien Jelly.  I really enjoyed its wacky “cube puzzle as told by Tim Burton” feel, but I’ve played dozens of games like this over the current console generation, and there’s nothing particularly special or memorable about its gameplay.  But it’s a good game and it’s worth your dough.

And of course, it’s time to say goodbye to the two games that got bumped from the leaderboard: Flight Adventure 2 and Johnny Platform Saves Christmas.  And by “goodbye” I mean “if you haven’t already bought them, they are still worth your money.”  So go get them.  Now.

And thus ends January.  Hopefully February will be an awesome month at Indie Gamer Chick.  The site will reach 100,000 hits sometime early in the month (currently sitting on 96,572 at publication time), an event that will be commemorated with the most requested review I get.  Can’t promise the review will be, ahem, crafted well, so please don’t storm my, cough, fortress if it sucks.

Very subtle.

Oh don’t worry Kairi. If you hate it, you only alienate a million fans.

The first sequel to a Tales from the Dev Side will be posted tomorrow.  Ian Stocker’s first editorial, “Magical Seal Pelts” was one of the most read and retweeted articles ever at Indie Gamer Chick.  Ian is back to update everyone on how his pricing experiment worked.  Last time, he announced the price drop of his popular SoulCaster series.  This time, well, you’ll see.

And I’ll be reviewing the Simpsons Arcade Game, coming February 6 to Playstation Network.  Why?  Well, I’ve never actually played it.  But I know enough to know that the game fucking sucks.  If it really is the old Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game with a Simpsons reskinning, yea, it sucks, and you should know better to be excited for it.  Then again, I should know better than to think you would know better.  Anyway, I haven’t taken the piss out of a sacred cow since December, and like Bart Simpson himself says, don’t have a sacred cow, man.