So, Halfbrick just announced “Age of Zombies,” a PSP mini infesting your Playstation Network on February 25th. What’s brilliant about the announcement itself is they’ve already defeated all your arguments.

#1: ANOTHER F&!@ing zombie game? | Yes, because zombie games make money, and people buy them.

#2: I’m actually tired of killing zombies! | Really? What about zombie dinosaurs and zombie mummies and junk? That’s what we thought!

#3: So it’s just a zombie shooter clone with mummies and dinosaurs? | Hell no! The Halfbrick dev team actually travelled back in time to experience first hand what it was like to shoot ancient zombies in the face. Creative consultant Anthony Hansen said “I learned how to make moonshine in the 1930’s!” And lead artist Murry Lancashire: “I like shooting cavemen!”

To summarize then: Barry Steakfries is going to use time portals to stop the evil schemes of Professor Brains, and blast a crap-ton of zombie dinosaurs and mummies in the face using a crap-ton of weapons and explosives.

February 25th. Mark your calendars.

And Halfbrick? How about a zombies vs twilight expansion?

SCREENIES!

This week there are two games that caught our eye.

Your Doodles Are Bugged by Spyn Doctor

Similar in concept to games like Line Rider, here we have another “Draw Your Own Adventure” title (I just totally made that up).

Take your magic pen, fill the shoes of the Master Doodler, and help guide hundreds of doodle bugs to safety using your wits & creativity. This one definitely belongs on DSiWare and the iPhone, but the current Xbox Indies iteration looks more than competent.

GRAB THE DEMO HERE

Yet Another Zombie Defense by AwesomeGamesStudio

The developers of last year’s Duel: The Art of Combat are throwing their hand into the zombie ring with what looks like great results. Yet Another Zombie Defense is a dual-stick zombie shooter (I know, right!?) mixed with the tower defense genre. You’re able to choose from nine unique weapons and mount them onto auto turrets or set up defensive barricades to survive as long as you can…and it’s only a buck!

GRAB THE 8 MINUTE DEMO HERE

We just got wind of Space Ark, an upcoming Xbox Live Arcade title from the Derby, UK based independent developers. A deliberately bouncy and bright homage to late 80’s arcade games like Arkanoid, Bubble Bobble, Rainbow Island – and what the heck, Pinball! – Space Ark follows the adventures of the space-faring animal Arkonauts as they try to inhabit new planets after their solar system was wiped out from a black hole.

Space Ark will deliver 180 levels of gem collecting, bouncing, fruit, power-ups, retro goodness, and bonus levels. It remains to be seen if the bright, bubbly graphics and cutesy gameplay will appeal to the hardcore, but there’s nothing wrong with transforming into the Peggle-loving casual gamefan once in awhile…

Space Ark hits Xbox Live Arcade this spring.

Cargo Bridge, from Limex Games, is a physics game where you get to build all the bridges in the land. God help all the people who have to cross them. The object of the game is to build a bridge so the works can get the cargo from one side to the other. Sounds easy, no? Of course not! Like real world bridge builders, you’ve got to cut corners to fit in a budget and you have pieces that aren’t long or strong enough. That’ll make you think the next time you go over a bridge.

It’s a point and click control scheme and the sounds isn’t at all important, so it isn’t likely your supervisor will notice your slacking. Your brain, however will be engaged with trying to figure out why the hell that awesome design broke halfway through sending your movers plummeting to their deaths. Or if you’re like me, you get a morbid fascination by the failing of the bridges and the tumbling moving men. Maybe you’ve had one too many bad moving experiences.

So live your life dream of being an architect and be very happy that I’m not one!

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Vitals:

• Release Date: January 13, 2010
• Cost: 80 MS Points
• Developer: Derrick Hopkins
• Xbox LIVE Demo

As the name implies, eventually, you will die. Though there is a serious lack of options, no power-ups for your ship, no energy boosts, only one weapon (and that being your standard space blaster), no in-game music, only one enemy and quite possibly the most cliche background ever seen in a space shooter, this game is one of the most addicting games out there.

Never congratulating you on a hard fought battle, never showing any sign of weakness, a taunting voice will be the only thing you hear in between rounds as your enemy continues to grow stronger. Enemy upgrades (which include laser cannons, heat seeking missiles, energy orbs and many, many, many more deadly contraptions) will be added to your opponents ship at the beginning of every round. Even if you destroy the new weaponry, it all comes screaming back at you at the end of the level.

There are two things that have been generously given to you from the start of the game, a shield (which can block any attack from your opponent) and the ability to recharge the health of your ship. Only problem is, using either of these will drop your score so fast that you might as well have gone out in a flaming ball of death. So if you want to top the leaderboard, don’t bother using either of them, they’re only there to stop your progress.

The dual analog controls work extremely well, making fans of games such as Geometry Wars instantly familiar. There were never any hiccups in the controls, however at the end of every round while the mothership is exploding, I found myself losing energy during the cut scene. Come to find out there’s a glitch that allows enemy fire to hit you if you’re in the path when the round ends. Players can’t control their ship once the round is closing, and there’s no energy bar on your opponent to know when you should make sure you’re clear from one end of the screen to the other. It’s a minor flaw, but when you’re a few thousand points away from a high score and your game comes to an abrupt halt due to something you couldn’t avoid, it can be a hassle.

This is a shooter for the hardcore. The crybabies who need their hand held as they try to shoot down space aliens need not apply. To achieve a high score in this game you’re going to need skill, you remember what that is don’t you? Skill is that thing that most gamers left on their NES. Not to go on a “back in my day” rant, but You Will Die is a love song to fans of the more difficult games from way back when. So if you’re a shooter fan who’s up for a tough challenge, then this is the game for you.

The Independent Games Festival is a popular industry event that highlights and awards the talents of independent game developers. Every year, IGF recognizes outstanding indie game development that takes place on school and university campuses around the world. The showcase winners will go on to compete for the Best Student Game Prize, announced on stage at the Independent Games Festival Awards, held Thursday, March 11, 2010, in San Francisco at GDC 2010.

Student Showcase-winning games each win $500 and GDC 2010 show passes, and will go on to compete for an overall Best Student Game prize, which includes a special trophy and a $2,500 cash prize. This years winners had the toughest competition yet, as IGF had a record 190 entries, which is a 30% increase since last year alone. So without further adieu, the Student Showcase Winners of 2010 are as follows:

Boryokudan Rue (UCLA)
Continuity (Chalmers University of Technology / University of Gothenburg)
Devil’s Tuning Fork (DePaul University)
Dreamside Maroon (DigiPen Institute Of Technology)
Igneous (DigiPen Institute Of Technology)
Paper Cakes (Utrecht School of the Arts & USC)
Puddle (ENJMIN, France)
Puzzle Bloom (DADIU, Denmark)
Spectre (USC Interactive Media)
Ulitsa Dimitrova (Kunsthochschule Kassel, Germany)

Best of luck to all of the finalists who are headed to GDC, from all of us here at Indie Arcade! Everyone else should stop reading now and start playing these games! Links are included with the titles, so go have a blast and let us know which one you think should take home the Best Student Game Prize.

VITALS:

• Release Date: January 12, 2009
• Cost: 400 MS Points
• Developer: Protege Productions
• Xbox Live Demo
• Won the IGF China 2009 award for Excellence in Audio

I love fighter jets. When I was in elementary school, every recess and lunch hour was spent on the swings with my friends pretending to be fighter pilots. The Air Justice Task Force was our name, I think. I can’t tell you how many VHS copies of Top Gun I’ve burned through. The entire Ace Combat series is proudly displayed on my shelf. I’d say I was born with a flight stick in my hand, but that sounds kind of dirty.

What I can say, though, is that when I saw the screenshots of Armor Valley, I got excited. A game that was both flight simulator, and one of my other loves, real time strategy.

In Armor Valley you take on the role of a Captain piloting a hovercopter, a craft that looks like a cross between the Marine’s prototype V2 Osprey, Command and Conquer’s Orca Assault Craft, and the Scorpion Gunship from 2009’s confusingly successful Avatar. But where most games would be set giving you this craft and letting you unleash absurd amounts of fiery death upon your opponents, Protege Production ups the ante by making you the loose sort of field commander, pestering your base for AI controlled reinforcements to bring the ground-based fiery death to your opponents front door.

What sounds like a logistical nightmare, requiring finger gymnastics on the 360 is surprisingly well handled by the Protege team. Mash a few quick buttons and your ground force will appear and go do its thing, freeing you to save their butts from the air.

This is the game in a nutshell. Take off, order out some troops, and escort them to the enemy base, and kill everything in the way. A simple formula, but one that kept me coming back through all ten levels. This is how successful indie games work. Find a simple mechanic and exploit the addictiveness of it. Make sure it has an engaging atmosphere, and you’re set.

This is Protege’s debut on XBLIG, and if it’s indicative of the quality of games to come, we’re in for some real exciting releases. But, as with any debut game it is also indicative of areas to work on.

The sound in this game is great. The crackle of bullets, the woosh of missiles create an intense warzone. I appreciated the yell of soldiers as I went blasting over their head. On the other hand, the soundtrack is only halfway there. The compositions are great and rousing, adding to the gravity of the atmosphere, but all the themes were so short and their volume so loud, that I quickly found them grating on my focus, and I relished the Xbox’s ability to choose my own soundtrack (currently the ever ironic Squirrel Nut Zippers), or the ability to force mute the music all together.

The 3-D engine in this game is also a resounding success. Hills climbing up either side of the level, and rolling off into the distance. Smoke effects are great, and I loved the dog fighting. My two wishes were that the maps were bigger, and that I could do loops with the hovercopter to better chase my opponents. I found myself more than once thinking this game would’ve been more aptly titled Armor Canyon rather than Armor Valley.

Flight Sim meets Real Time Strategy

A last complaint, not leveled strictly at Armor Valley, but modern games in general (here’s looking at you Dead Rising) is the readability of text on smaller televisions. Being one who doesn’t have the budget for anything bigger than about a 24 inch CRT, I found myself struggling through the tutorials, and winging it on figuring out what the little smudges on the unit-building menus were. After a few unsuccessful tries, I got past it, but it’s something to consider in future games.

Armor Valley is a fun ride with easy-to-learn but addictive gameplay. A gorgeous first release from Protege Production, I’m eagerly looking forward to their next release.

When I first started playing this game, I immediately thought to myself, “Yeah Moto, you scored the easy assignment this week.”

Boy, was I wrong.

Chris Unarmed, available on the Xbox Marketplace for a cool 240 MS, is a platform gamer that brings back memories of Super Mario and Sonic. You play as Chris, your average big-headed, armless fellow (hence the name of the game) who is off to save the world from a guy named Mango and his monsters. Unlike other games, what you see is what you get with your main character; he’s not going to get any superpowers and he’s certainly not going to sprout arms. Oh, and he’s apparently a very light gentleman as evidenced by the death that occurs when you jump on the monsters. That’s right, no squishery here.

Sadly no, not THIS Mango...

Gameplay here is fairly straightforward; each level has one direction to head in and certain doors that you pick up keys for along the way.  You can also collect coins with Chris’s head on them, but there doesn’t seem to be a point other than bragging rights. In the beginning, the variety of monsters kept the game interesting; I wondered what threat each different color would bring. However, the real gems of this game are the actual levels themselves. It’s obvious that the designer put a lot of thought into each level; this is definitely quality work. The addition of doppelgangers was definitely a nice touch. Some of the levels, though, required the patience of a saint. I don’t consider myself a weak gamer, but there were certain points during the game when I had to ask myself, “Am I just really, really bad at this?” (Don’t answer that.)

What is going on?!?

I’ll have to admit that at first I found the actual mechanics to be annoying; when I jump onto something, I want to get there immediately, not drift like a leaf on the wind. (Geek cred to those who get the reference) However, the further into the game I played, the more that the physics made sense. The amount of time that the slow drift gives you is intentional, since in later levels it becomes important to guide Chris to safety during long falls. Or in my case, it allowed me to continually glide Chris into spike-covered walls. The wall jumping was also designed well; I appreciated not having to change directions as I jumped from wall to wall. In addition, the graphics themselves can be described as utilitarian at best. They get the job done and that’s it. The simplicity of it works though.

To be honest, the soundtrack and accompanying sounds annoyed me after five minutes. It sounded as if someone enjoyed the pipe organ setting on their electric keyboard so much that they decided to make a brief composition out of the keys they were hitting. In addition, the “Urgh” every time you hit a spike or a monster just didn’t seem to fit with the rest of the game. Of course, this could be because I heard it so frequently during my playing, but I digress…

Spiked walls...the bane of my existence!

There really isn’t a lot of replay value of this game, unless you want to try to beat your timer and collect more coins. In addition, there were certain times that my patience was tested to its limits (re: spike-covered walls). However, at around three dollars I’d say you definitely get your money’s worth. Therefore, if you’ve got three hours to spare, download it. Just don’t come crying to me when your arms fall off.

There are two main competitions, one being a student competition and the other the “main competition”. The main competition’s finalist have been announced. Check them out. I know we will be!

Seumas McNally Grand Prize

• Joe Danger
• Monaco
• Rocketbirds: Revolution!
• Super Meat Boy!
• Trauma

Excellence in Visual Art

• Limbo
• Owlboy
• Rocketbirds: Revolution!
• Shank
• Trauma

Excellence in Audio

• Closure
• Rocketbirds: Revolution!
• Shatter
• Super Meat Boy!
• Trauma

Excellence in Design

• AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! — A Reckless Disregard For Gravity
• Cogs
• Miegakure
• Monaco
• Star Guard

Nuovo Award

• A Slow Year
• Closure
• Enviro-Bear 2000
• Today I Die
• Tuning

Technical Excellence

• Closure
• Limbo
• Heroes of Newerth
• Joe Danger
• Vessel

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then developer Gnomic Studios really enjoyed 2008’s Castle Crashers. Don’t construe this as an insult though, unless you’re ready to throw daggers at your favorite band for being inspired by the Beatles.

When Adam from Gnomic shot me an email describing Square Off as “a 2.5D survival shooter with a graphic style similar to Castle Crashers” it made for a pretty compelling reason to at least give it a spin.

Which I did, for about 3 hours straight.

Backgrounds are simple and beautifully rendered

Smile for my pistola!

One look at the screenshots or the trailer (bottom) and the comparisons to Castle Crashers become obvious. The hand drawn characters, the energetic and irreverent attitude, the comical facial expressions, the quirky voiceovers, the techno’ish soundtrack catchy enough to reside in your cranium for days. It’s all here, and yet Gnomic Studios has carefully crafted Square Off’s unique personality, while still paying homage to The Behemoth.

Here’s the verdict if you’re impatient: The game costs 240MS points (about $3 bucks), it has six levels, 4 player coop, and deathmatch modes. It plays a little like Everyday Shooter (twin stick mechanics) and looks charming like Castle Crashers. Yes, you should buy it.

But why? The 5 person team at Gnomic really focused on creating a fun, quality experience. It plays very much like a true addicting arcade game. Square Off doesn’t stick around longer than it should, and it gives you just enough weaponry and items to even influence a bit of strategic gameplay. It doesn’t hold your hand, nor is it impossibly challenging.

It takes true grit. and bombs.

The game progression is simple: Survive 4 waves of the alien horde without dying, then fight a boss. You’ll always have a pistol with unlimited ammo, but destroying what I call “spawn ships” (kill these quickly!) gives you random weapons like a shotgun, bombs, Rocket Launcher, or a spread gun (yep, just Contra!). Since the special weapons have limited ammo, you’ll start to tailor your use of them based on the enemies you’re trying to splatter, because they’re not all a walk in the park! Don’t worry though, the occasional crate can also equip you with a helmet, a rocket pack, or some much needed health.

Where Square Off really excels is the intense, points-driven, survive by the skin of your teeth gameplay. Hearing “DEVASTATION” when you kill a ton of baddies with one perfectly timed bomb is a thrill. The biggest compliment I can pay to Gnomic Studios is that I’d gladly play it again.

While I wholeheartedly recommend Square Off, I’m not without a gripe. The enemy mentality is to swarm you, and sometimes it’s impossible to avoid being sandwiched by 20 alien critters. When that happens, your character can’t move quick enough to maneuver its’ way out, and the result is a frustrating death. That said, you can learn to avoid this completely with the right mix of weapons and strategy, so I can’t necessarily call it out as a design flaw.

So, if you like the intensity of Everyday shooter, the charm of Castle Crashers, and a wonderful soundtrack pulsing in your ears while you rack up points, Square Off is for you. We’re looking forward to seeing what Gnomic churns out next.