Title: Go 3D
Creator: FrogSlayer Studios
Genre: Card & Board

Price: 200 Points

Countries: Canada, France, Italy, Spain, United Kingdom, United States
Languages: English

Publisher’s Description
“FrogSlayer Studios presents, Go, an ancient Chinese game of strategy now available on XBox Live Community Games. Learn to play with our interactive tutorial and then play against your friends locally or against players at all skill levels via XBox Live.”

What We Think:
I recently read a tattered, vintage paperback copy of the book The Master of Go by Yasunari Kawabata which revolves around a newspaper journalist’s chronicle and analysis of the last great Go competition with the master of the old school of Go in Japan that took place during the early part of the 1900’s.

While some of it is fictionalized, the book, a winner of the Nobel Prize in literature, uses a spare and honest look at the actual plays made during the game and how the incumbent young champion manages to defeat the old Master. It is  a strangely compelling and easy read, but despite all sorts of updating graphic charts of the gameboard, nowhere in the the book is there an actual explanation of the rules of the game.

Deeply curious as to how this simple game could be so devastatingly complex that some tournament matches could drag on for three months, I was delighted to find Go 3D in the Xbox Indie Game marketplace and dropped the two dollars to check it out and see if I could learn something.

The Xbox version comes with an easy to understand and rather comprehensive tutorial that relies on, and even seems to come from the American Go Association.  With hands-on lessons, this alone was worth the price of admission.

The game’s design uses a true three-dimensional object for the black and white stones and game board, so that it can be rotated and viewed from all angles.  The game does not have AI built in, however, and I imagine that trying to create the AI for something as rich as Go would be extremely daunting  as Go quickly becomes as challenging if not more so than Chess, so one can not expect this from an indie Xbox game.  Instead the developer allows you to play both the black and white stones while enforcing legal moves in solo mode.

Everything works out just fine in two player mode as the game has solid implementation for two controllers.

An excellent way to learn and practice the game, with a lovely Zen score and pretty visuals.  A strong recommend from us for this commendable and needed effort.

Rating:  

Have you played Go 3D? What were your impressions?

Title: Chalked
Creator: rece
Genre: Action & Adventure

Price: 400 Points

Countries: Canada, United Kingdom, United States
Languages: English

Publisher’s Description
Save the city… or destroy it! Play as the hero and save the city by calling in tips, surrounding suspect buildings, and running down the bad guys. Or choose to destroy the city by avoiding the patrolling heroes and setting bombs inside the buildings – leveling the city building by building.

What We Think:
Chalked succeeds where so many other game developing upstarts have failed – the basics.  With simple and intuitive controls, wonderfully inventive and beautifully realized black and white visuals (the characters look like faceless Gumbys) and an awesome soundtrack, this seemingly simple take on Simon – that is, matching button combinations, is rather more challenging and multi-layered than it seems at first glance.

The game actually combines a variety of games – the Simon element, a puzzle solving element involving figuring out what buildings to topple in strategic sequence, and then the classic Pac Man – run from the ghosts element.  You see – you play the role of a miscreant with an insatiable lust for bombing buildings to the ground.  When destroyed, a building dissolves into the ground leaving a space where once it stood.  Then the “good guys” come after you for your misdeed.  It’s not an easy game at first, but it’s easy enough to navigate and fun enough to look at that it holds interest long enough to figure out some basic strategies.

We wish all community games merited the 400 points like Chalked does.

Rating:  

Have you played Chalked? What were your impressions?

Microsoft is pushing it community games development angle hard with the release of Kodu  (formerly known as Boku) – a code-free game development tool available for US$10 from the XBLA marketplace that allows players on an Xbox or a PC to design and develop complete games that can be played on either platform using nothing more than a controller and without any need for code.

During a keynote speech at the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, 12-year-old student, Sparrow joined Microsoft’s President of the Entertainment and Devices Division, Robbie Bach on stage to demonstrate the intuitive game that lets players choose from a variety of visual building blocks in order to develop their own unique creation.

At the same time, MS has decided to offer a free trial version of its XNA Game Studio version 3.0 software for those interested but not yet sure about diving into the world of independent game development.  Games created with XNA that are approved can be distributed through XBOX 360’s live marketplace and get in front of millions of eyeballs.  Better yet those games can be sold for Microsoft points and earn the micro-indie developer a return for their blood and sweat.

Download the trial version of XNA Game Studio 3.0 now [Direct Link]

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