The Lost Indies in Due Time

Indies in Due Time is coming back this week.  There hasn’t been a new installment since October, and the reason for that is we haven’t had enough developers send us trailers for the feature.  In the four months since it went MIA, I’ve had dozens of requests to bring it back, but when the time comes to actually work on it, nobody sends me their trailers.  Apathy gets you nowhere.

Oh, and there was that time those one guys sent me a bogus cease-and-desist order over one installment of Indies in Due Time because I pointed out that their game was kinda close to another game and the fonts were very similar to a registered trademark of a highly litigious entertainment company and they got bad advice from someone with a vendetta against me who figured they could bully me off the Indie scene so that their site would reap all the kudos in for eliminating the threat of me or some such delusional nonsense, but that’s neither here nor there.

Well, the feature is coming back.  I’m opening it up to Indie games across all platforms.  I define “indie” as a game developed by a smaller, self-funded (or angel-investor supported) studio.  If that includes you and you develop for Xbox Live Indie Games, iOS, Androids, or PCs, I’ll take your trailer.  If you need a reminder of what Indies in Due Time is like, what follows is the “lost episode” that we got halfway through way back in October.  We simply ran out of trailers.  In general, Brian and I prefer a minimum of five.  We’re willing to bring this back as a once-a-week feature, but we need you, the development community, to be active in it.  If necessary, coordinate together.

Expect it to return sometime this week.  Until then, enjoy this lost episode.  Yes, one of these games is already out.  What can I say, I hate for any of my writing to go to waste.

Demon House

Kairi: So what’s Demon Houge about?

Brian: House.

Kairi: What?

Brian: It’s Demon House.  H-O-U-S-E.

Kairi: It looks like a G to me, not an S.

Brian: Well, okay, it does a little.

Kairi: See.

Brian: Anyway, this is Ghostbusters: Steampunk Edition.

Kairi: Oh.  Hahaha.

Brian: What?

Kairi: Oh, I just pictured Egon and Bill Murray if they were stuck in Bioshock.

Brian: .. Wow, that is pretty funny.

Kairi: Fuck, try not to picture Dan Aykroyd as part of it.  It kind of ruins the visual.

Brian: Well, you shouldn’t have told me that.  I did picture him and it did ruin the visual.

Kairi: Sorry.

Brian: Wait, I’ll try to picture him as one of the Big Daddies.

Kairi: .. .. And?

Brian: It.. just kind of made it worse.  In fact, I’m pretty sure I just ruined Bioshock for me forever.  Damn it.

Kairi: Well, don’t we just suck?  So how about the game?

Brian: It looks good.  Very clean for an XBLIG shooter.

Kairi: I know it’s supposed to be demons or ghosts or whatever, but the ray gun and enemies remind me of Mars Attacks.

Brian: A little.  The enemies seem like they take too long to kill too.

Kairi: Hopefully that gets fixed.

Brian: It looks like it’s still got a long ways to go before it’s ready for release, but it really does look good.

Gateways

Kairi: Here’s the entirety of the planning session for this game: “Guys, PORTAL MEETS BRAID!”

Brian: Portal was cool.  Braid was cool.  And this looks cool.  Go figure.

Kairi: This is the perfect Indie trailer.  No text.  No explanation needed.  Just show the gameplay footage and trust that those watching will say “Oh, I get it.”  It’s awesome.  If you want to know if a trailer is successful, show it to someone.  If the first words out of their mouth when it’s over isn’t “I want this game!” you’ve failed.  I want this game.

Hidden in Plain Sight

Yes, I realize this game is out, and that it’s very popular as far as XBLIGs go.  I’ll review it proper soon.

Kairi: This is sort of a low-tech take on the multiplayer they had in the recent Assassin’s Creed game.  You have to figure out which of the on-screen characters are controlled by the other players.  This is actually a game where a trailer could never really hope to explain everything.  It’s very high-concept.  So my apologies to Adam for busting on him for sending me an eleven-minute trailer last week, which you can find here.  You really do need to have Hidden in Plain Sight explained to you.

Brian: I know you hate local-only multiplayer, but this really does seem like something that you need to be near other players to enjoy.  It’s a game about deception and deduction, and being able to see the other players in the same room might lend itself to that better.

Kairi: Maybe, but I still stand by my bigoted point of view.  It’s the Xbox 360.  It’s a console designed with online play in mind.  Take advantage of that.

Brian: You’re racist.

Kairi: Non-online games aren’t a race.

Brian: The voters will decide on that in November.

Kairi: Whatever.  Anyway, this is the best looking multiplayer game I have seen on XBLIG.  It does look fun.  Well, at least the first two games do.  Despite the developer’s glee, I thought the last three games shown in the big video looked kind of stupid.  Death Race especially.  The first two seem to lend themselves to more strategic gameplay.  That one seems to lend itself to a schoolyard game of Red-Light, Green-Light.

Brian: Oh, so now you’re racist against Red-Light, Green-Light.

Kairi: IT’S NOT A RACE!

Brian: That’s what all racists believe.

Kairi: I hate you.