New Release: Echoes III now available on Steam

Shoot'em-up afficionados rejoice: a new challenger has entered the arena! Last week, the third iteration of Echoes, one of my favorite twin-stick shooters, was released on Steam. I was not even aware that this game was in the making as developer binary zoo hasn't been promoting the title much except for a few tweets on Twitter. His website doesn't even mention the game and it certainly isn't easy to find among the many new releases on Steam. If you don't want to miss out on this retro shooter, head over to its store page and check out the trailer, which unfortunately can't be found on YouTube.

Review: Echoes+

Back then, one of the first games that got me hooked on the now extinct Xbox LIVE Indie Games channel on Xbox 360 was Echoes+, an excellent twin-stick shooter by one-man developer binary zoo. It was an eye-opener with regards to the kind of quality that could be found on the service amongst all the rubbish that used to be prevalent there. Quality-wise, the game is easily on par with Geometry Wars, which was a huge success on Xbox LIVE Arcade at the time and obviously served as an inspiration. Echoes+ doesn't need to hide behind Bizzare Creations' game, though, neither in terms of gameplay nor amount of content.

IndieWatch: XBL Indie Games get proper promotion on german dashboard

Somebody's Watching Me

In the UK, there's currently a dashboard promotion for a deodorant that will make hot angel chicks fall from the sky. Why am I telling you this? Well, as I don't intend to ever review a game by Silver Dollar Games, I assumed this would be a good chance to mention hot babes in my blog at least once. Also, there are no such super model angels to be found on the german Xbox LIVE dashboard (no, they don't even have the IGN Strategize babe), but someone came up with a really good idea instead (yes, I'm finally getting to the point of this post). The german GamePro magazine now has a bi-weekly series called 'IndieWatch' on the Inside Xbox channel with videos promoting selected XBL Indie Games.

Review: Dirchie Kart

Roaring retro racing

The first attempt on XBLIG to capture the spirit of 16-bit kart racers like Super Mario Kart was Wacky Karts, but this title suffered from an unforgiving balancing and "wacky" controls that made it mostly unenjoyable. Now a new contender by independent developer BrownBot has arrived on the marketplace, and their game Dirchie Kart does a way better job at delivering a fun kart racing experience. The full version includes ten different race tracks, three game modes, Avatar support and four player split screen matches. Battle and Drag events are accessible only in multiplayer mode and offer three Battle arenas and one Drag track. Due to a lack of multiple players, this review focuses on the single player component but will at least give some impressions gained from plugging in a second controller and checking out some two player split screen features. The standard single player race mode gives sufficient insight in what this game is about, though.

Brilliant Blue-G sketching out a classic platformer called Chester

Have you ever played a game thinking something like "Oh, cel shading would have looked really cool in this level!" and felt like changing the graphical look of the game at your will? Indie title Chester, an old school platformer by one-man-indie-developer Brilliant Blue-G will soon give players the opportunity to experience all the levels of the game in any of six different visual styles, provided that they have collected enough coins to purchase the unlockables. These styles comprise for example a pixelated 8-"bit" look, a "sketch" book style or gameboyish looking "lcd" visuals. All the graphics are completely hand-drawn, offering a unique scenery in three different settings. The game world gets torn apart by "The Bad Guy" who's also stolen all of the sweet cup cakes, and now it's Chester's turn to restore peace and retrieve the cakes. So much for the story, but what's the difference in rescuing a princess or securing some bakery products anyway? I don't care as long as the cake is not a lie...

Trial impressions: Adventures of Rocaman

Decent retro platformer being a little too classic

The first thing you notice when the title screen of this old school platformer shows up is the lack of support for widescreen displays and how blurry video output appears to be. Obviously, this game is trying to be overly accurate in emulating the retro experience a Super Nintendo console provided when it was plugged into a CRT television by applying an image post processing effect. Some people propably appreciate this kind of authenticity, but I was put off by the huge black bars on both sides of the screen and the poor picture quality only a cheap composite video cable would produce (without IPP). I have just recently bought a new HD widescreen television and I've come to expect no other than crisp, crystal clear visuals when booting an Xbox 360 game, but in this respect Adventures of Rocaman intentionally refuses to deliver. Other games such as Super Meat Boy or The Tempura of the Dead prove that you can be true to retro aesthetics without denying the advantages of modern display technology, which is why I disapprove of Syndrome Games' approach. But this is just a matter of taste and opinion and the gameplay certainly doesn't suffer too much from this design decision.

Spooky Squid Games working on bloody XBLIG platformer 'They Bleed Pixels'

The canadian indie developer Spooky Squid Games Inc. is currently working on a very promising looking title called 'They Bleed Pixels', a game they describe as "a fast paced, gothic, low-fi pixel art, platforming beat'em up". Its platforming gameplay is slightly reminiscient of N or N+ while its beat'em up component comes across as the 8-bit 2D equivalent of Bulletstorm, enabling the player to humiliate opponents by finishing them off with aerial kills, kicking them into spikes or stomping them into a bloody pulp.

So the game's title fits perfectly and with neat retro visuals and lovely chip tune music by DJ Finish Him, it's a game to look forward to for all fans of old school platformers. They haven't announced a release date yet but it's sure to hit XBLIG sometime this year.

More articles on platformers>>

More news>>