Echoes+ (Xbox LIVE Indie Games)

[fog]

A bit of shameless self promotion. Not sure how that goes down around here, but if I don't do it nobody else will

Echoes+ is currently in Creators Club playtest and will hopefully be released on Xbox LIVE Indie Games in a week or two.

Anyway it's the sequel to the Binary Zoo freeware game Echoes (no way!) which someone on here might have heard of. Doubtful but you never know

6 different game modes, 4 difficulty settings, 100 Trials (Achievements), multiple powerups and weapons...and other stuff.

Feel free to make derogatory Geometry Wars comparisons...you wont be alone

Youtube playlist showing a few of the game modes.

Thanks for your time.

[kengou]

I really enjoy Echoes. I'd love to play the sequel (on PC). Try and get it on Steam!

[neist]

I have in fact heard of it! It's in my spreadsheet.

I didn't know there was going to be a sequel though. Shameless or not, I'm glad you plugged it.

[kong]

I love Echoes and I"m really looking forward to Echoes+. How many points is it going to cost?

[Van_Artic]

hey, this looks good, i'll buy it as soon as it's available

so many good games coming for the XBL Indie

[t0yrobo]

I loved the pc version, this looks great.

[fog]

Cheers guys. It's reassuring to know that some of you have heard of Echoes because I really wasn't sure.

I love Echoes and I"m really looking forward to Echoes+. How many points is it going to cost?

I'm going with 240msp. There should be enough content in there to justify that price (it seems strange justifying a price of a couple of dollars, but that's the way the market is right now)

I really enjoy Echoes. I'd love to play the sequel (on PC). Try and get it on Steam!

Well the good thing about XNA is the same code gives you both 360 and PC versions, so I already have a fully playable PC game. Unfortunately I still have the tedious task of adding all the PC specific stuff for multiple resolution and controller support etc. but a PC version is planned in the future. I'm not putting any date on that though

I've no idea what getting on Steam involves, but I doubt it would be possible. Who knows.

[fog]

Just a quick heads up to say that Echoes+ is now available on XBox Live Indie Games.

http://marketplace.xbox.com/games/media ... 258550336/

The whole development process, learning a new language etc has been really enjoyable and the Creators Club Peer Review process was a lot less painless than I feared.

Anyway I look forward to any feedback

Cheers.

[ASK]

Must...resist...insert derogatory Geometry Wars comparison here

In all honesty, is there some sort of IP law that could be pulled on you over it? I guess if it got through the review process, MS' vultu-...lawyers... gave their nod.

Looks good though! Good luck on it being a success in the market place (especially with the rebranding they did). Looks a couple notches above the majority of stuff on there.

[bcass]

Geometry Wars is hardly unique. Spheres of Chaos on the Acorn Archimedes was doing the whole millions-of-particles-arena-shmup thing nearly 20 years ago.

[No_not_like_Quake]

Gave the trial a go and I like it, will purchase when I get a card (the price is fuck all anyway, and I want a go at the 3 minute mode).

On a technical note, I like the big horizontal explosions.

[TodayIsForgotten]

This game is pretty sweet, but do you think you'd ever implement some sort of online leaderboards? I know its kinda bunk on the service but this is keeping me away from purchasing the game.

[Danbo]

it looks polished enough, but to be brutally honest i would take the shittiest programmer art over Yet Another Thing With Coloured Lines and Shitloads of Particles Making It Difficult To See Clearly , also I'm guessing xbox indie has about a bazillion arena games by now. Gimme that tasty vertizontal action any day

[originalz]

Not that I need another twin-stick shooter, but this game is pretty cool. Bought it mainly to support a fellow forum-member, but I guess there's enough here to justify $3.

[fog]

Many thanks to those who have bought it and to those who at least took the time to try it. I'm not expecting to sell more than a handful of copies so it sounds like I'm part way there. Much appreciated.

This whole project was done to keep me sane during a lengthy illness so I'm happy with how things turned out regardless of other factors.

This game is pretty sweet, but do you think you'd ever implement some sort of online leaderboards? I know its kinda bunk on the service but this is keeping me away from purchasing the game.

That's a tricky one but I did look into it for Echoes+. The problem is that with 24 different leaderboards you potentially need to make some crippling compromises to handle that much data as the P2P system just doesn't scale well.

I've got a system in my current mini-game that should work, however I've restricted that to just 1 game mode so that there is much less P2P data to handle and the leaderboards should be more reliable.

P2P leaderboards are definitely better than nothing but not much.

[bcass]

Microsoft need to sort that out. Even if it's just a scaled down version of Leaderboards that they allow with a limit of, for example, a thousand entries per game. It's extremely mean-spirited of them to remove something like this, where hi-score competition would likely be the basis of a lot of the simpler games on Indie Games.

[fraggore]

congratulation on a class game i picked it up last night and man i addicted to it all ready you all should are give it a try well worth its price.

beating the high scores are gonna take some practice.

it really needs a high score on live so you can challenge your mates.

[bcass]

Just played it. Technically, it's excellent, but as a game, it's far too similar to a million and one other arena shmups for my liking. Hopefully you can add some interesting gameplay twists next time.

[Erodion]

Insane its like pfffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff

[fog]

Thanks again guys

Just played it. Technically, it's excellent, but as a game, it's far too similar to a million and one other arena shmups for my liking. Hopefully you can add some interesting gameplay twists next time.

Well if you've tried anything else I've done then I like to think I do put "some interesting gameplay twists" in normally. Like I said, E+ was done for a reason

[bcass]

There's absolutely no shame in ripping stuff off from other games, so long as you add some of your own interesting elements to the gameplay. If you did add anything interesting to Echoes+, it wasn't apparent from playing the demo. I haven't played your other stuff yet. I'll give them a whirl.