A lot of people will boot up their Xboxes, either go to the dash to look for videos or arcade games, or just boot right into whatever disc based game they may have in their drive. They are happily going about things they’ve always done on their Xboxes. Lurking just underneath the NXE dash however is a breed of games designed by regular people like you and I who want nothing more than to make games they hope others will find exciting. These people generally have regular day jobs like the rest of us, but at night, they don their gaming hero costumes to put together experiences that while often over looked by the mass-media, can be considered true gems of our gaming era. Here is a top 10 list of the best Xbox LIVE Indie Games (with prices, all have a free demo to try) currently available for download via the Marketplace (click the game's name to go straight to it's download page on Xbox.com).
10. 3D Infinity (400 MS Points): Infinity is an on rails shooter with a slight twist. It supports 3D gaming. Not only does it use traditional Red/Blue 3D, but it also can do side by side if you have the means to support that. My only complaint here is it doesn’t support the ColorCode 3-D glasses that were given out in droves for the 2009 Super Bowl (the one pair of 3D glasses I actually have). Aside from this minor draw back, it is a fun little game that plays like most on-rails shooters. You have the ability to fire regular bullets through the Vulcan cannon or fire heat seeking missiles and stages are topped off with larger than life bosses. 3D support and a decent price of 400 MS points makes this fun little indie game really “pop out.”
9. Arkedo Series – 02 SWAP! (240 MS Points): This is a fun little puzzle game that takes the rules of Tetris Attack (a personal old school favorite of mine) and twists them up a little bit. The object is to match four or more bricks of the same color either in a row or a column. Bricks come up from the bottom of the screen and you are able to swap any two bricks left and right or up and down using the right thumb stick. There are a few modes of play available. The always classic arcade mode challenges you to see how far you can make it on varying levels of difficulty. In Castle Mode King Kat has lost his castle and needs you to traverse five stages to get it back. Finally there’s Challenge mode that gives you puzzles to clear blocks in a certain amount of moves. The only thing missing is a vs. mode. That aside, 240 MS points is a good pricing point for this game.
8. Groov (80 MS Points): What Groov lacks in UI it makes up for in interesting combination of concepts. The game starts out looking like your average Geometry Wars clone. Your preconceptions are shattered however with the first shot you take. This game is Geometry Wars mets Rez mets Electroplankton. Every shot you take adds a note to the song. Hitting an enemy marks it for death and as they explode, they are also added to the intergalactic jazz fusion orchestra. Don’t worry about marked enemies harming you though. As they are marked, you are free to fly through them as they please as they await their entry into your piece. Every enemy has its own sound effect as it dies. As you survive, the song picks up tempo which increases your firing speed and the amount of enemies on screen at once. Dying in this game feels less like a death and more like a momentary rest measure in the music. You start with three tempo reducers and this, as the name implies, slows the beat of the music slowing everything but your ship speed. As a guy who grew up playing the trumpet in both a jazz and orchestra band, I absolutely adore the musical styling you are able to create through the method that you play. Groov is only an 80 MS point game that every music lover owes to themselves to pick up
This feature top 10 list concludes on the next page, please click below to continue with our next couple top Xbox LIVE Indie Games.
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