SKA Studios bring us the best game in the world ever, well maybe

And who are we to argue with James Silva developer of Dishwasher and general XNA legend.

To download the game and see user reviews click here.

Press release:

Ska Studios LLC today announced a truly epic title in the true tradition of epicness with its latest video game entertainment product release, I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MB1ES!!!1, set for release August 16, 2009 on the Xbox Live Indie Games for 80 Microsoft Points.

Presenting a familiarly themed, engrossing and stylized “game universe,” then adding zombies to that world, I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MB1ES!!1 aims to completely revolutionize the videogames industry, destroy it in fire a thousand times, and resurrect it as a phoenix sitting on a unicorn atop a shiny city of golden gumdrops. As we say at Ska Studios LLC, “our games will pique your interest and defenestrate your cats.”

I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MB1ES!!1 represents a culmination of years of intensive psychological research, bleeding edge engineering, and artistic collaboration by over two dozen internationally recognized art houses that may or may not exist, using such technologies as the HYPERMAGIC 3.0 engine to power never-before-seen eye candy and the MEGACORE X parallelization processor for smooth-as-glass presentation.

“You can make a game,” said Ska Studios Lead Engineer Gato Maria Hernando Rodriguez-Rodriguez in an exclusive interview with Chairman Meow Magazine, “but what happens when you put zombies in it? Nobody knows, but they’ll find out soon. We’ll all find out soon.” And, with Xbox Live Indie Games interest flagging under reports of poor sales, difficulty locating the section in the Dashboard while inebriated, and super-smart people saying super-smart things on web forums, the game couldn’t be released at a better time.

“We were following trends and noticed that most people were buying Xbox360s for the DVD player, the Xbox Live Vision Camera, and the Calculator app on XBLIG, but not for games,” Gato continues, “I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MBIES!!1 will change that. You’ll be playing our game. It has zombies in it. Ok bye.”

I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MB1ES!!!1 will arrive on Xbox Live Indie Games on August 16, 2009. It will cost 80 Microsoft Points.

JForce: UNSTOPPABLE – Gameplay

Jermaine Ubenheimer is on a quest to find out
what he values most in life, though he may run into trouble along the way in this action-packed
top-down shooter. Featuring more weapons
than you can imagine and a story you will
never forget.

HIGHLIGHTS:

-EPIC STORY with fully animated cutscenes, copious amounts of blood & gore, crazy plot twists, and PUNS.

Sequence Dream Build Play ’09 HD Trailer

Combining the rich mechanics of an RPG and the frenetic action of a high-octane rhythm title, Sequence is the story of two mysterious people, struggling to discover the secrets of the Tower.

Spirit Whirled review

By Lollyblast

Spirit Whirled official description is as follows:
“What will Spirit find along the way this ghost adventure!? Guide Spirit through seven progressively challenging levels while picking up spiral energy to unlock the Doorway of Light! Avoid hazards and enemies on your way to your friends!”

Spirits Whirled is a basic platform game where you are a blue ghost who has to collect a certain amount of spirits (orb objects) to open the ‘Door of Light’ to progress to the next level. The only enemies you come across are vacuum cleaners which you jump on to kill.

The controls are very basic with ‘A’ to jump, ‘A+A’ to glide and the joystick to move left and right.
The graphics on the game are ok nothing amazing. The background is not very interesting to look at and becomes boring very quickly as does the music with the same notes being played over and over again.

The game play is very basic and with no real story line the games became boring very quickly.

Spirit Whirled is a good game for children or people who enjoy coin collecting games, but with no other objectives
I can’t recommend this game for hard-core gamers or people who get bored of doing the same thing repeatedly.

I give this game an average rating of three joysticks.

Head Shot review

Head Shot is one of the latest $1 (80 MS points) games to hit XBLIG.

The idea of the game is to use your telescopic rifle to take out the gunmen in the crowd with a head shot and keep the rest of the stickmen safe.

The controls are simple an easy to use and on initial play I quiet enjoyed the game. The crowd roam around with lots background chatter from the stickmen, then all of a sudden the calm is broken by screams as the gunman reveals himself. It’s then up to you to find the shooter and take him out with a head shot. If you are successful you progress to the next level if not it is game over.

So after the initial enjoyment of the first few levels one of the faults with Head Shot becomes apparent. There is no change in the background at all, you just have a mottled green field. It would have been good if there were varying locations for the gunman to strike. For example have the stickmen wandering around shopping malls, libraries, theatres etc. to give the game some variety.

It’s when you get back to the menu page, Head Shot’s major fault is found. There are no leaderboards, a game like this needs world-wide leaderboards, using the well established peer to peer sharing system.

With no score to beat Head Shot has almost no replay value, so yet again a developer rushes out an XBLIG in a half arsed manor. Which is a real shame because with some extra work this could have been a very good game. So unfortunately even at $1 I can’t recommend Head Shot.

Lets hope that the developers are reading this and planning to do an update, then I would be happy to re-review this game.

We can only give Head Shot a score of 2 joysticks in it’s current state.

Aztec Games MEGA prize give away

Closing date 21st August 2009

Aztec Games have announced a price drop for their Xbox Live Indie Game DoubleVision to just 240 Microsoft Points ($3) and to celebrate XboxHornet have teamed up with Aztec Games to give away nine, yes we said nine games.

There are three prize packs, each containing download game codes for The Collector, Tic Tac Toe and The Amazing Rumbling Hypno Disc.
Three lucky readers picked at random will win all three games, just for downloading the FREE trial version of DoubleVision and answering one simple question.

“Think you have good vision? Put it to the test! Spot the differences in the pictures. Arcade has you race the clock to get the top score. In freeplay you can relax by yourself or compete with a friend. Want something different? Try PuzzleJunk and put your mind to the test! There are over 150 different puzzles!!! There is something for everyone in this one!”

So if you want the chance to win three Xbox live Indie Games keep reading for details of how to enter the prize draw.

Not only that, but everyone gets two chances to enter the prize draw and be one of three lucky readers to win a three game prize pack.

Your first chance to win is to download the FREE trial version of DoubleVision from the Game Marketplace (click here to take you to the Game Marketplace), Xbox Live Indie Games section. Play the trial and then send the answer to a simple question to : xboxhornet@gmail.com only one entry per person.

Your second chance to win is to follow us on Twitter at www.Twitter.com/xboxhornet and retweet our message about this competition. Only one retweet entry per person. To retweet a message on twitter you need to copy our message and prefix it with RT @xboxhornet before sending.

The Question:

In DoubleVision is the Y button used for:

A – Moving the cursor
B – Using a Hint
C – Select/Click

Email your answer to xboxhornet@gmail.com and title the email Doublevision. Good luck.

Rules:
Make sure you follow us at www.twitter.com/xboxhornet so that your retweet entry counts, non followers may not be able to receive their winning prize
Winners will be chosen at random.
Game codes may not work in regions that do not have Xbox Live Indie Games on their Xbox dashboard, there are no alternate prizes in these circumstances.
There are no alternative prizes if the game codes do not work on your Xbox.
Winners will be announced on this website.
Closing date for entries will be announced on this website.
Our decision is final and can not be appealed.

Avatar Sports- Indies lead the way

The Major development houses have been fairly slow to pick up on adding Avatars to their games, obviously the amount of time it takes to develop a disk game for the Xbox has had an effect on this too. So is has come down to the indie game developers to take the lead and since the addition of Avatars to XNA 3.1 a lot of them must have been very busy.

In just a couple of months since the release of XNA 3.1 several Avatar games have been announced and sport seems to be a popular subject. It is not hard to see why, most nations have a good percentage of their population that are sport mad and what could be better than playing a game with a mini version of yourself.

So here are the games Avatar Sports games that have been announced so far.

Kickers – Avatar 3 on 3 football (soccer of the uninitiated)

Avatar Golf
Based on the excellent Easy Golf, with the course editor and course sharing, Avatar Golf is going to be a sure fire hit.

Basketball Three – Three on three Avatar Basketball

With Avatar Karting and Avatar Bowling in the works it is clear that Indie developers have a taste for Avatar sports games and I pretty sure there are a large number of Xbox owners who do too.

Now there are going to be a lot of people that scream the all these games are just a copy of Wii Sports, but in truth that argument just does not stand up. There have been sports games since day one of gaming and this is just a the natural progression of the use of Avatars so let’s hope that all these games play well and get the attention they deserve. After all the guys who have made these game look like they are doing a great job with the tiny development teams they have.

We look forward to trying them out soon.

Kickers – Avatar football DBP09 Trailer

Play the worlds favorite sport with your own Avatar! Kickers brings 3 on 3 Arcade Soccer to the Xbox 360 with full Avatar support. Play by yourself or with up to three friends in local matches (Six player online support coming soon).