Xbox Live Indie Games: A guide to the gold

[KennyMan666]

XBLIG is kind of a jungle. There's thousands of games of varying quality, and when I say that, I mean that most of it is shit.

But I've taken a dive into it. Scrolled through nearly 3000 games. Downloaded trials. Tested them. Deleted most.

And, in some cases, bought.

Because there are a few nuggests to find in there. Therefore, I present an alphabetized list, so you don't have to scroll through 3000 games to find the percent that's good.

I'm now including XBLIG shmups in this topic too, even though we already have a dedicated thread for XBLIG shmups. But the selection I include here is somewhat more limited, so you might want to check that thread out, too.

Adventures of Captain Becky ($1) - Okay, not entirely sure how much I recommend this. I mean, despite the disturbingly extensive character editor, I consider it to not be a bad game, but I primarily bought it for the speedrunning potential I saw in it. So, I'll take this opportunity to remind you that for pretty much every game on this list, try before you buy applies - there's of course trial versions for every game, so make use of that fact!

Aeternum ($3) - This, right here, is in my opinion the best game on XBLIG. A shmup with Touhou influences, but not really a clone. Should be mentioned, however, that it's also available for Windows for the same price, and in a slightly more updated version. So...

Bitstream ($1) - Anyone remember Dotstream, the Bit Generations GBA game? Bitstream is HD Dotstream. If you don't remember Dotstream, it's a kind of racing game where you're a line and try to reach the goal first by turning as little as possible and not running into things.

Bleed ($3) - A game you might already know. It's been released on Steam as well, so don't be surprised if it turns out you've already bought in in some indie bundle that was on sale and then forgot about it. Twin stick sidescrolling 2D action.

Chronoblast ($1) - I have an interesting relation to Chronoblast as I often speak to the developer on IRC and we disagree a lot. But I'm still going to recommend Chronoblast, because it's not a bad game. Cave-inspired shmup with purple lasers from hell.

Cubicity! ($1) - Back on XBLIG, and for a third of the price it was during its brief stint there earlier! Magnet-based puzzle game where you move cubes around.

Echoes+ ($1) - What I thought was only neon twinsticker Asteroids turned out to be something much more fun. So, that's the description you get: neon twinsticker Asteroids that really grows when you've played a while.

Escape Goat ($1) - Retro graphic puzzle platformer where you're a goat who wants to escape. A purple goat. With a mouse companion.

Explosionade ($1) - 2D twin stick-action with some fun mechanics, like bouncing around with the shield. Mechas, monsters and explosions! Can't go wrong there.

Figment ($1) - Another one I bought for speedrunning potential. Cute little platformer with nice graphics and musics.

FromPulse ($1) - The trial stage ended up being pretty much the best stage in the game, so it ended up being a minor disappointment, but it's just $1 and not a bad rhythm game.

Grid Space Shooter ($1) - This right here is everything that Geometry Wars ever wanted to be. So, a twinsticker with lots of enemies. And bosses. And fun.

Infinity Danger ($1) - A quite good twinsticker that takes most... well, all of its cues from Warning Forever. So you start out fighting a small boss that grows and evolves in different ways depending on your playstyle.

Lumi ($3) - Cute platformer with a fun mechanic where you ride wheels of light in the air and toss your little character around.

Magicians & Looters ($1) - A quite nice Metroidvania, with three playable characters you can switch between at save points and a fairly large map with lots of things to explore. I consider it to be one of the five best games on the platform.

Maid-san's Caving Adventure ($1) - A Japanese platformer where you, as you might glean from the title, play a maid who's in a cave. Avoid enemies, collect stars, and don't be in the water for too long because it'll make you sneeze which attracts enemies. Tremble to avoid enemies. Free pantyshot with every jump!

Mount Your Friends ($1) - The best dollar you'll spend in your life. Mount Your Friends is the game of the year - every year. Best way I can describe it is QWOP meets Cho Aniki. Single best party game that has ever been made and will ever be made. Of course, in my personal top five.

One Finger Death Punch ($3) - KUNG FU ACTION. Fantastic game. Only uses two buttons, but is absolutely amazing. One of the five best games on XBLIG.

Parasitus: Ninja Zero ($3) - Sidescrolling action game in a 16 bit style with speedrun potential. Has a bit of a Castlevania/Ninja Gaiden feel. A prequel that's more like Contra exists, Invasion for $1. It's... not as good, but it's not bad either.

Prismatic Solid ($1) - Shmup with really nice and colourful graphics, and a fun weapon system where the weapon you have selected also controls the position of the three barriers you have that blocks shots. Some dexterity required.

Rad Raygun ($1) - Sidescrolling Game Boy homage. Oldschool style platformer that, if you know how, can be utterly broken apart.

radiangames Inferno ($1) - Twinsticker, but with stages rather than being an arena shooter. The only actual good game of all that radiangames has out on XBLIG.

Redshift ($1) - A very red shmup with somewhat randomized stages.

Score Rush ($1) - This, more than anything, proves that XBLIG is where you can find the good twinsticker games because Score Rush is the single best twinsticker game ever made. A bullet hell that can and will fuck you up if you don't pay attention.

Seeds of Ralark ($1) - Grappling hook game, except you're a lizard and instead of a grappling hook it's your tongue. Fun but short if you know what you're doing - my personal best is under three minutes.

Shoot 1UP ($1) - A shmup where all your extends are given to you in realtime, meaning that each time you get an extend you get another ship in your squadron. Creative and fun.

Sins of the Flesh ($1) - One of the weirder games I've played. Black and white (and red) twin sticker that's not like any other twin sticker - the character moves automatically, and the two sticks shoot different types of shots. There's some storytelling and some... other... stuff involved... very weird.

Snops Attack! Zombie Defense ($3) - Quite good shmup with nice graphics and good gameplay. A small minus for not having customizable controls, though.

Speedrunner HD ($3) - I'm a sucker for games with grappling hooks even if the grappling hook in this one was kind of a disappointment, but it's not a bad game. As the name implies, the point is to beat stages as fast as possible.

Super Amazing Wagon Adventure ($1) - It took a while for this to really hook me, but when I got a game where a unicorn led me into a unicorn ambush with a dragon for a boss and I then jumped into orbit around the earth where I had to dodge asteroids and then fight a satellite followed by an event where everything was made out to be glitched to shit, I was convinced. So maybe you need to play the trial a few times to see why it's fun.

T.E.C. 3001 ($3) - Here's another one with a focus on speed. This time, it's 3D stages where you play a robot who runs fast and collects batteries.

The Tempura of the Dead ($3) - 8-bit-graphic platform/action game where you can switch between two characters, a samurai with a sword and the president of the United States who totally isn't supposed to be Obama. He looks like Lupin III on the "boxart", actually. Gets kind of hard in later stages. When enemies have been killed, keep attacking their head to juggle it for more points and stuff.

The Useful Dead ($1) - This is what I imagine a Happy Tree Friends video game would be like (there probably already are Happy Tree Friends games but still). A puzzle platformer where you have a stock of 100 cute (and stupid) little critters, and the puzzles are solved by killing the critter so the next one that spawns can use its corspe as a platform or to hold down a switch or something of the sort. So if you're a fan of the cutesy morbid gig, this one's for you.

Twin Tiger Shark ($1) - Retro-style shmup without those things that make retro shmups stupid. But we have this and this thread for it already.

Uncraft Me! ($1) - If you like boobs and platformers this game might be for you. Okay, the boobs are actually unimportant, and can be replaced with kitties if you're some kind of prude. But despite Minecraft graphics and anime girl fanservice, Uncraft Me is a surprisingly good little platformer where you instead of a jump have a jetpack. And jetpacks are never wrong.

Uncraft Me 2 ($3) - More of the same. But, well, perhaps not as much despite the 3x price. Only got eight stages as opposed to the original's nine, but is still a solid platformer with boobs. And this time there's no kittens.

Vampire Rage ($1) - Another shmup, this one comes with a bullet reflecting sword attack and big sprites.

Vorpal ($1) - Even more shmup, but this time it's a bosses only one. Choose a character and then fight most of the other ones in a story mode. Simplistic graphics that use only black, white and red.

Weapon of Choice ($5) - While a bit on the pricier side for XBLIGs, Weapon of Choice is another solid release from Mommy's Best Games. Sidescrolling action/platforming game with a variety of control options, but probably best played as a twin sticker.

ZP2KX: Zombies & Pterodactyls! ($1) - Fun and frantic multiplayer focused 2D action by Ska Studios. Online multiplayer capable, which isn't all too common for XBLIGs.

Next up is games with Japanese titles - so you can't actually search for them (unless, I assume, you're on a Japanese X360). However, at least on my dashboard, all three of them are the game that's the furthest to the right when you enter the category they're in, so that'll be included.

まもって騎士 (Mamotte Kishi/Protect Me Knight) ($3) - And here's the fifth game I consider to be in the very best of XBLIG. 8-bit action, pick one of four characters to protect a princess against monsters pouring in from every direction. Can be played with up to four players locally, and with how amazing it is in single player I can only imagine it gets even more so in multi. Sorted under Action/Adventure.

みみ いんざ すかい (Mimi in the Sky) ($1) - Twinsticker arena-ish shmup with Ketsui scoring, meaning you want to be close to enemies when you kill them to collect the big point items. Use your dash attack to collect other bonus items and activate FEVER which I actually have no idea what it does. Should be sorted under Shooter.

ゆっくりの迷宮 (Yukkuri no Meikyuu/Labyrinth of Yukkuri) ($1) - I could try explaining this game, but I wouldn't be able to do it justice. It's the biggest case of try before you buy on this list, and even if you don't have any interest in a game based on a Touhou meme, you should locate the game just so you can read the description because it's pretty fantastic. Is for some reason sorted under Platforming.

So if you've found any other XBLIG games that don't suck, go ahead and post about them. I might very well have missed something fun.

[KennyMan666]

Bumping this with my latest find:

Magicians & Looters ($1) - A quite nice Metroidvania, with three playable characters you can switch between at save points and a fairly large map with lots of thigns to explore. Once I've beaten it I'm going to figure out how speedrunnable it is.

[shmuppyLove]

Mount Your Friends ($1) - The best dollar you'll spend in your life. Mount Your Friends is the game of the year - every year. Best way Ican describe it is QWOP meets Cho Aniki.

With articulated penises.


Penii?

[Pretas]

All the XBLIG games I own:

Jewelry Master Twinkle
Protect Me! Knight
Downtown SMASH Dodgeball!
Prismatic Solid
Crosstown
Wizorb

[Moniker]

A game that I personally didn't like but some of you might is Aban Hawkins & the 1000 Spikes. It's pretty much Rick Dangerous.

Aban Hawkins is probably my favorite on the platform. Also highly recommend Tempura of the Dead (same dev). I've got somewhere in the neighborhood of a bajillion XBLIG games, so I'll be sure to post my picks later on tonight.

[CStarFlare]

Bumping this with my latest find:

Magicians & Looters ($1) - A quite nice Metroidvania, with three playable characters you can switch between at save points and a fairly large map with lots of thigns to explore. Once I've beaten it I'm going to figure out how speedrunnable it is.

The controls are bugging me - the delay between when you start moving and when you hit running speed is a pain in the ass. I think it would be perfectly enjoyable if not for that, though.

[ancestral-knowledge]

Hurdle Turtle - awesome little game with amazing music

[guigui]

Just bought One Finger Death Punch ($1) cause of this thread.
Gameplay is amazing, potential is great. Hope the harder levels will stand up to the beginning.

Thank you.

[quash]

No mention of the Mukagosoft gems? Leucistic Wyvern is the greatest terrible game I've ever played.

[KennyMan666]

Two new ones added to the OP, Maid-san's Caving Adventure (old release I've missed) and The Useful Dead (was released this week).

[guigui]

Thanks to this thread, I now spend that few spare time of mine playing One Finger Death Punch.

Boys this game is good. Just finished the Beginner mode and begun Master mode Those stickmen are fast !

Also beat Survival and Blind Survival mode, and unlocked ... No luca no mode, that one with the black cat

[KennyMan666]

Latest addition to the thread is credit to system11 for finding and telling me about in #shmups, Uncraft Me! Block graphics platformer with big anime tits. (or kittens. If you're some kind of prude.)

[Ed Oscuro]

Latest addition to the thread is credit to system11 for finding and telling me about in #shmups, Uncraft Me! Block graphics platformer with big anime tits. (or kittens. If you're some kind of prude.)

also it has a cock on the title screen, apparently (facing off against a pair of wind-up chompers).

[KennyMan666]

Somewhat major update, a few new games added and to standardize my XBLIG recommendations I'm now including shmups in the list here as well. Our XBLIG shmups topic seems to be pretty dead anyway.

Apart from the shmups, I think the new additions are Cubicity, Escape Goat, Super Amazing Wagon Adventure, The Tempura of the Dead, Uncraft Me 2, Weapon of Choice and Wizorb (decided to include it because it's a good game and it's on XBLIG, even if it's not the version I have as that was just a silly way to think).

[Friendly]

Don't mean to be a party pooper, but do you realize that these games are only playable as long as your 360 is connected with Xbox Live? You can't play them offline, and as soon as MS shuts down Live for 360, your games are gone.

[HydrogLox]

Evaluated Aqua Kitty - Milk Mine Defender yet (sv-SE Xbox Marketplace)?

Shmups Chat: Aqua Kitty (PS Vita/PlayStation Mobile)

You can't play them offline, and as soon as MS shuts down Live for 360, your games are gone.

I guess you get what you (don't?) pay for.
Some of the indie's are also available on PC, so if you care to use them past their expiry date better get them while they are available.
Or is this another one of your RGH promotions? (i.e. you don't have to worry about it).

[KennyMan666]

Friendly: I'm well aware you have to be connected to Live to play your XBLIGs. During my last birthday party, in a locale that didn't have internet in it, we had my laptop get internet from a cellphone and then share internet through a LAN cable to my X360 just so that we'd be able to play Mount Your Friends. But I wouldn't worry - Live for the original Xbox was supported for five years after the X360 was released, and as the Xbox One has literally just been released and not even worldwide at that, plus the fact that the Xbox Live on X360 userbase is kind of insanely much larger than it ever was on the original Xbox - numbers I find say two million Live users in 2005, and forty-six million in February 2013 - I don't think X360 Xbox Live is going anywhere anytime soon.

And even if it did? Closing down of the online service means no worries about getting banned from it anymore, leaving the field open for hackers to pick such restrictions apart. And who knows, perhaps Microsoft are sensible enough to, when announcing that Live for the X360 is getting discontinued, come with a system update that removes that restriction for indie games. (yeah. Sure. That'll happen. Suuuuuure.)

HydrogLox: Yeah, I've played Aqua Kitty. It's not a bad game as such, but I found it somewhat dull.

[railslave]

Arkedo Series - 03 PIXEL!





Love it, so pretty

[Fudoh]

And even if it did? Closing down of the online service means no worries about getting banned from it anymore, leaving the field open for hackers to pick such restrictions apart.

not that I condone or recommend anything like that, but Indie games are already fully playable offline using a JTAG or RGH 360.

[KennyMan666]

Year starts with Cubicity! returning to the XBLIG store - now for $1 rather than the $3 price it carried earlier! Definitely a buy.

[PC Engine Fan X!]

I noticed that Chronoblast has dropped to a mere 100 yen right now from it's original asking 500 yen tag upon it's debut on the Japanese XBLIG site. Bought it just to play on my JPN region 360 slim setup just for kicks.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[Pretas]

When Xbox Live is discontinued for the 360 in about three years, Microsoft will most likely enable XBLIG games to be played offline with the system's final firmware update. They're not going to deny customers' access to something they already paid for - that's why you can still access games and DLC that have been de-listed from the service, as long as you have the account that purchased them.

[railslave]

When Xbox Live is discontinued for the 360 in about three years, Microsoft will most likely enable XBLIG games to be played offline with the system's final firmware update. They're not going to deny customers' access to something they already paid for - that's why you can still access games and DLC that have been de-listed from the service, as long as you have the account that purchased them.

I should hope so , if id known about that online thing, i would NEVER have bought the many games i did.
I find it disgusting that they would appear to champion the indie scene, only to exploit it and get more people online..disgusting.
Well the indie thing has blown up in there face this time.

[Pretas]

XBLIG and XNA never blew up in MS' face, they just fizzled out. XBLIG failed because it had zero quality control, and was quickly flooded with garbage like "massage" apps and identikit zombie shooters. Which most people had no interest in sifting through to find something actually worthwhile. MS was not proactive in spotlighting and promoting the best that XBLIG had to offer, or enforcing some kind of standards for submission other than "no pornography." So the hidden gems like Protect Me Knight remained buried under a sea of trash, and developers rapidly lost interest in the platform when they realized that the only "games" that could make money on it were $1 masturbation aids.

[KennyMan666]

If anyone's missed the release thread for it, added Twin Tiger Shark. Was about time something good was released on XBLIG again.

[BulletMagnet]

Not sure if this is the best place to sneak this in, but in case anyone hadn't seen it MS is planning to close the XBLIG store sometime in the next year, so if you intend to snag any stuff that hasn't made it elsewhere you might not want to wait TOO long.

[KennyMan666]

XBLIG hasn't even existed on the dashboard for my Swedish Live account for a while. The games are still findable by searching, but it's dumb. At least I can just switch to my US account since it's still available there and download demos, and then I can purchase the full version from my regular account.

Not that anything good has been released in half a forever.

[Damocles]

I've had "Cursed Loot" for a few years now. It's a real-time roguelike, though too easy. Check it out.