Developers Summary:

Enroll as an agent to capture the one who has plagued our nation. Intensive training, aerial combats, ground battles and a car chase for a plethora of medals, glory and recognition in this action adventure. Find it tough? Enroll an accomplice and play as a team! Aim for 20 medals and 5 stars and build up an impressive profile.

What We Think:

I’ll say this first: Kapture is one of the more ambitious games I’ve played on the Indie blade. It involves flying an aircraft into enemy territory, storming into an enemy base on foot, and basically closing in on an enemy warlord regardless of what it takes. It sounds like it could hit all the right buttons for those craving a decent side-scrolling shooter.  Does it deliver the goods?

The training at the outset of the game will take you through a quick crash course of all of these elements before launching you into your mission proper. Aerial assault, ground assault and finding cover, driving and grenade throwing are all covered. Then, your briefing maps out that fine points of the mission.  The evil warlord Ozhaka has done it again.  What exactly he has repeated is not revealed, but I just assumed it was pretty bad.  You will fly in, engaging aerial defenses until you can safely land, you will fight troops on the ground, the warlord will escape (this is already known?), at which point you will drive after the boss who is attempting to escape in a car. You are told all of this before the mission even begins. It’s a tried-and-true plot structure, but having it all mapped out essentially derails any level of suspense that might have built as the game is played.

The controls throughout all parts of the game are exasperating. In the aerial assault missions, your plane can stop on a dime, hovering up and down on the screen (or east or west?). I would advise hugging the top of the screen, as flying down seems to be faster than flying up.  If you have to ascend to fight an enemy, expect to be peppered with bullets until you can fire off a round at him.  Enemy planes also seem as if they are hovering, and regardless of your speed, the rate at which the distance between you closes doesn’t change.  If you get to close to a plane, it will start turning the aircraft equivalent of cartwheels.  I’m sure it was meant to be a evasive tactic, and though it does make them harder to hit, it looks pretty silly.  Many of of the enemy anti-aircraft structures are colored in a way that matches the backdrop, which makes locating them difficult. You’ll have to wait until they shoot to determine where they are before firing back. Opening up a semi-automatic can of whoop-ass is inadvisable, as you have a limited stock of ammo. I would recommend a conservative play-through, but taking too much time will result in your plane running out of fuel.

The ground battles use a similar control mechanic, although you now control a soldier through a top-down view of the battlefield. You need to scroll right, moving up and down, and grabbing cover to avoid enemy fire. I found it frustrating that the up-and-down controls were on an axis pivot. In many cases, I’d try to move out of the way of enemy fire, only to find that the axis had planted me in the middle of a pile of sandbags. If this should happen (and it happened to me more than once), you can wiggle up and down to free yourself, but I think this is more a case of poor collision detection than a design choice.

Once you’ve cleared Ground Battle A, you’ll be running through Ground Battle B, which looks almost identical, save for the appearance of what appear to be heat-seeking grenades (thrown from off-screen by the warlord). They will fly in physics-defying patterns to find you, and getting out of the way of one requires as much luck as it does skill.  Getting hit by one of the projectiles will decimate your health bar, and being hit by two in a round will easily end your soldier’s life, sending him back to the very beginning of the stage to start again.

After these stages are cleared, the warlord hops in his car and drives off, and you must give chase in a top-down view of the roads that lead to the docks, where an escape chopper awaits. This chapter was easily the most flawed part of the game. The road looks as if someone held up two arm lengths of ribbon by one end, and let it drop. There are roads that do nothing but run into each other, roads that go nowhere at all and there is only one that leads to the docks. Running off the road even once will result in a crippling loss of speed, after which, it’s almost guaranteed that the warlord will escape unfettered. Want to try again?  Too bad. Once you reach this stage of the game, you either apprehend your target or you don’t.  There are no continues, and if he gets away, the only way to try again is to play through the entire game another time.

The weapon stores that appear between levels are a nice touch. You’re going to want to buy ammo, and switching weapons will add some variety to the ground assault missions. There are awards to be gained, so perfectionists way want to take more than one run at it. With the controls as they are, any difficulty setting above Easy is going to make for a very long, frustrating play-through.

Ultimately, Kapture is a lofty attempt at a multi-faceted shooter game that unfortunately falls short. That said, it costs a mere 80 Microsoft Points.

Rating: ★★☆☆☆ 

Kapture available at the Indie Game section of the Xbox Live Game Marketplace.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times – XBOX 360′s community games were renamed Indie in 2009 and we saw a huge surge in the number of releases, many of which flew by, and for good reason, for looking like nothing but rehashed version of startup kits with little imagination and far less game theory or design practice implemented. That said, we also saw some truly remarkable and imaginative choices from micro developers. XBLIGR (XBOX Live Indie Game Reviewer) chose ten games that, while no competition for Dragon Age, let alone Splosion Man, certainly did what indies should do: offer legitimately fun, engaging, pretty to look at, edgy content for less than five bucks, or in some cases less than a song on iTunes.

It is so important to encourage the indie gaming community; despite many shoddy releases, behind those titles we often find eager and ambitious young minds who dedicate an awful lot of time to getting their title ready and conformed for the indie marketplace. So we ain’t knockin’ ‘em, we are just waiting to see what they come up with next!

Here are our ten favorites, some which came from reader suggestions with which we were in agreement. We hope you get a chance to play them and enjoy.

Here’s to all the great new titles that await us in 2010!

Trino

Developer: trinoteam
Genre: Shooter
Price: 240 MS Points

What They Say:

“TRINO, an evolving alien, must escape the NANITES, an insidious nano-robot swarm, that have imprisoned trino for his powers! Use TRINO’s powerful TRIANGLE TRAP to defeat the Nanites and break free from their Laser Prison! Evade, outsmart and destroy over 15 types of deadly enemies! Evolve for power! Over 48 challenging levels! Live scoreboard! Save trino!”

What We Think:

The Qix and the Dead.  Guide your alien pod through each area, using your capture beam to trap Nanite enemies.  Ensnare multiple Nanites to rack up big points and bonuses.  As your creature evolves, you’ll be able to link up additional triangle force fields, and you’ll need them!  Act fast, because the fields don’t last.  Don’t let the leisurely feel at the start of the game fool you:  you’d best get used to the trap-and-collect mechanic while the enemies are somewhat docile.  As the levels progress, the enemies get more aggressive, and you’ll have to trap on the fly.  Trino is sleek, fast-paced, and highly addictive.

Screenshot:

Solar

Developer: Murudai
Genre: Action & Adventure
Price: 80 MS points

What They Say:

“Solar, a space simulation/action game where you play as the sun itself. You can complete a myriad of challenges or simply mess around in an infinite, sandbox universe.”

What We Think:

Here is what our reviewers thought when we originally covered this title:

“Players are put in the role of the sun and they can collect other celestial bodies to complete different tasks. You can choose between two modes of game play: the first is called Sandbox and this mode allows you to explore and navigate freely throughout the universe. Adding planets to your orbit and destroying stars for the fun of it makes this mode addicting.

The second mode is called Challenge and is comprised of eighteen levels in which you complete objectives to get more skills. The purpose of each level is pretty straightforward and the overall appearance is very clean and modern.

Solar does not have a multi-player mode and it is suitable for all ages. It isn’t extremely violent and is completely unique compared to other games out on the market. The music is ethereal and really creates a sense of being in outer space. This game is very relaxing and can be played for hours at a time. There are no sound effects when the sun smashes into stars or planets. I think it would have taken away from the whimsical feeling of the game if there were loud crashing sounds.

I would highly recommend Solar to other Xbox Live users. This game is so cool that you are almost sad when it is over.”

Screenshots:

Miner Dig Deep

Developer: Robir
Genre: Action & Adventure
Price: 80 Microsoft points

What They Say:

“Dig and expand your mine to find greater treasures from the depths. Build the deepest mine so you can make your fortune in rare gems and metals from the earth below.”

What We Think:

Here is what we wrote about Miner Dig Deep in 2009:

“Miner Dig Deep is a great looking game with excellent sound design and music (the soundtrack sounds like a hip Silverlake indie band) and most importantly: the five-second play cycle is perfectly executed – easy to pick up, detailed enough to sustain interest and very responsive to user input.

Far too many developers fail to understand that if a game doesn’t work at the basic control level, if a user does not “get” or feel comfortable with how to puppeteer their avatar, let alone how it looks when it moves, then the rest is irrelevant.  Too many games, even those with multi-million dollar budgets fail at this basic level.

Miner Dig Deep has a brief but logical learning curve.  It then succeeds at the next flagpole: the five-minute play cycle offers the player opportunities for simple level advancement by virtue of the stickiest game ploy of all – improve your abilities, sell stuff you have found questing for cash with which to upgrade your gear, rinse, repeat – addictive gameplay.  Of course this simple formula in and of itself is not enough to make a great game, but in this case, the blend of Dig Dug, N+ problem solving and Arkadian Warriors simple upgrading systems make this one a winner.

Screenshot:

Decimation X

Developer: Xona Games
Genre: Shooter
Price: 80 MS Points
Players 1-4
Co-op 2-4

What They Say:

“1-4 player intense retro shmup. Classic 2D fixed gallery shooter. Features: Insane firepower, progressive defences, tons of power-ups. Smooth 60 frames per second, pure arcade action.”

What We Think:

Holy particle emitters Batman!  If you like Space Invaders, and you like glow sticks and maybe water bottles and pacifiers and plush to backpacks, then you literally could not find a more perfect game to suit your cerebellum.  Fast and furious shooting to a throbbing trance soundtrack and more flying sparks than your eyes can eat, Decimation X is a space shooter of the highest caliber, and a price that can’t be beat by any Arcade game; at 80 MS points, it’s a complete steal.

Screenshots:

Storage Inc

Developer: Stolpskott Studios
Genre: Puzzle & Trivia
Price: 400 points
Players 1-4
Co-op 2-4

What They Say:

“Cooperative arcade puzzle game for 1-4 Local players. 100 Maps, all with full coop support. Easy to learn. Simple controls. Work together as goods keeps dropping in. Organize stored goods to save both time and well needed space. Plan ahead, and make sure ordered deliveries are out in time.”

What We Think:

A well designed, addictive and increasingly complex game requiring that you organize stored goods to save both time and well needed space. Plan ahead, and make sure ordered deliveries are out in time.  We really liked the challenge ramp up as organizing the incoming and outgoing orders, while negotiating available space becomes ever more demanding.  Kind of like a day job, but far ore fun due to the ability to watch the havoc ensue with impunity.  Would be even more fun if knocking over towers of boxes with your forklift meant destroying an entire vodka factory.

Screenshots:

Arkedo Series – 03 PIXEL!

Developer: Arkedo
Genre: Platformer
Cost: 240 MS Points

What They Say:

“”MORE BLUE” : Arkedo/Pastagames’ answer to Avatar.”

What We Think:

Hip to be Squares – If Mario ever had a Tamagotchi, his virtual pet would be PIXEL! the cat.  This platformer may not be a big spender in the graphics department, in fact paying tribute to 2-bit graphics, but what it lacks in flash, it makes up for in charm.  All of the character sprites and playable areas are constructed using monotone pixels, but the animations slather this title in all kinds of awesome.  The soundtrack is enjoyable, and the gameplay, while a bit repetitive, is tried and true.  If you’ve been itching for a good side-scroller, PIXEL! will find the sweet-spot under your chin.

Pixel! released at the tail end of 2009 is already one of the Xbox Indie blade’s top rated games (by users).  See also Jump! and Swap!

Screenshot:

Square Off

Developer: Roonda
Genre: Shooter
Cost: 240 MS Points

What They Say:

“Wield shotguns, bombs and missiles in up to four player co-op or deathmatch action. Features beautiful sound and graphics, LIVE online highscores, hordes of vicious aliens and absolutely loads of addictive fun.”

What We Think:

With bright and well done animation, excellent sound design and even some well integrated particle physics, this Castle Crashers styled science fiction platform shooter allows up to four players in co-op mode.  You can always tell the game is working when you hit the demo timer expiration and huff a sigh of frustration that you have to go to the purchase screen.  It’s another good sign when you forget you are playing an indie game because you go to look for it under your Arcade menu.  Solid all around, not perfect in that at times the play density can get a little thin, but better than most.

Screenshots:

Platypus

Developer: Escapist Games
Genre: Shooter
400 MS Points

What They Say:

“Platypus, the acclaimed and thoroughly addictive claymation shooter, comes to the Xbox360. Fight your way through 20 stages of intense action, either solo or cooperatively with a friend. Countless enemies and end of level bosses to beat, plus loads of bonus pickups and other treasures to help you on your way. Can you defend your home planet of Mongola and defeat the invading plasticine army?”

What We Think:

Smoosh!  Headshot!

Imagine an army of 10-year old boys had access to an unlimited supply of plasticine, and decided to construct not only a massive air force, but a landscape and sky for that force to dominate.  Toss in an inspired soundtrack reminiscent of the Commodore 64 days, and see how long it takes to figure out that some part of us just never gets any older.  Platypus harkens back to the glory days of games like R-Type, but gives it a nice squishy coat that you just want to sink your hands into.

As you damage larger enemies, your bullets sink holes into their pliable fuselage until they can fly no more, dropping from the sky with a blast that is also made of clay.  Even the numbers that make up your score mash together to reform as points rack up!  Collect weapon upgrades to keep the gameplay fresh and exciting.  Team up with a friend, and you can both tear Wallace & Gromit a new one.

Screenshot:

Dungeon Adventure

Developer: UberGeekGames
Genre: Role Playing
Price: 240 MS Points

What They Say:

“Classic ASCII dungeon crawling on your Xbox! Customize the game with remappable ASCII and graphical tiles, play with the precision of a keyboard or ChatPad, use your Avatar as the hero, and prove you’re the best on the Global Scoreboards. Unlock a slew of Awardments while enjoying endless gameplay, with an infinite number of dungeons to loot!”

What We Think:

Finally, someone who was clearly there for the good times of Multimate, or inserting a 5″ floppy disk (when they were still actually floppy) into a computer to load the operating system, when MUDs and MOOs and Infocom were teh l33t, made a video game we can play with an Xbox 360 controller.  Although combat involves little more than running into things, there are a lot of choices that can affect how such pixel collisions go – whether it be through weapons and armor, potions or other buffs or level.  The hero can fast travel across the screen when the “ASCII refresh” gets a little slow, but  chance of running headlong into a powerful adversary becomes a risk.  This is just awesome fun, brilliantly executed and totally faithful to the good old days of monochrome monitors and Ultima 1 – when imagination filled in the gaps and no one answered phone calls when you wanted a good game of pencil and paper D&D.  Much love.

Screenshots:

Ninja Bros

Developer: Dot Zo Games
Genre: Puzzle & Trivia
Price: 80 MS Points

What They Say:

“It’s Ninja action puzzle game , wao!”

What We Think:

No Ninja Gets Left Behind! This is one tricky puzzler to get your head around. You can have up to four ninjas on the screen in a stage. To clear the goal, successfully navigate each ninja to the exit door. Not. That. Simple. The left analog stick controls all of the ninjas at once, while each of A, B, X and Y buttons are each mapped to make one of the ninjas jump. Traps abound, and shurikens rain down from above. You must plot your moves carefully if you want to get all of your ninja to safety. If one of your ninjas should meet an untimely end, you must start the room afresh. You have to plan ahead, or try to be mindful of where all of your ninjas are at once. Minimalist graphics, but dying a lot isn’t supposed to be pretty. You’ll get frustrated, but I defy you to walk away from this game without saying “just one more try…” at least a dozen times.

Screenshots:

@udience Favor1t3!!!1

I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MB1ES!!!

Developer: Jamezila
Genre: Shooter
80 points

For a buck, an addictive song and lots of flying zombie guts this little monster of a game pretty much had everything going for it in the popularity contest. And popular it was indeed, even grabbing IGN.com’s Indie Game of the Year 2009 prize. We thought it was alright too.  The only thing it was missing was a half time where someone brought out free hot dogs and Dallas cheerleaders in bikinis washed cars at center field.

What They Say:

“This video game product represents a culmination of years of intensive psychological research, bleeding edge engineering, and artistic collaboration by over two dozen internationally recognized art houses, using such technologies as the HYPERMAGIC 3.0 engine to power never-before-seen eye candy with the MEGACORE X parallelization processor for smooth-as-glass presentation.”

What We Think:

Here is what our reviewers wrote when this title was first released:

“Featuring a twin stick shooter setup, the action will be immediately familiar to anyone who has played the XBLA game Geometry Wars.  In Zomb1es you play the part of, well, a tiny character running around a landscape riddled with zombies.  There are numerous weapon power ups at your disposal, including such zombie bashing classics as the flamethrower, the shotgun, and the machine gun, while adding new favorites like a missile launcher and a weird green tri-attack-star-shooting-thinger.  You’ll also enjoy the occasional extra life, speed boost, and temporary shield.  As you shoot more zombies, the game begins warping to include netherworld like backdrops and puddles of green slime, among other odd creatures.

In all of the simplistic glory that unfortunately too often comes with an Indie Game, I would hesitate to call title truly original or even mildly thought provoking (unless of course you aren’t fluent in l33tsp3Ak and are caught in the headlights by the game’s actual title). That aside, Zombies still has a lot of good things going for it. The graphics are both polished and smooth, the controls are very responsive and the addictive soundtrack is comprised of one long song hammering on about making a game with, well, zombies in it.   At 80 Microsoft points, the zombie killing is frantic, the pace is unyielding, and most importantly, the game costs 80 points.”