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Hands-on with Dream.Build.Play
Cat sits down with the winners of Microsoft's XNA Dream.Build.Play contest and discovers that indie games are truly a work of art.
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Sometimes technology lets us down. I'm not talking about red rings, yellow lights or even the great white unicorn of failure sightings: a busted Wii. No, this time it's my recording of my time at the XNA booth at PAX. After spending one great big jam-packed hour with the reps, six games and one of the game finalist developers, the whole thing is lost to the tech ether. My time there, however, was way too much fun to not relive, even if it lacks the punch of quotes and footage. Indie games just rock too hard to be confined by such things. The Dream.Build.Play Challenge is for independent and hobbyist devs, and gamers dreaming of bring a game to life. Using XNA Game Studio they create a game for the chance at a piece of the $75,000 cash prize and having their game published on XBLA. This year's competition saw over 350 entries spanning over 100 countries, and I can hardly imagine the depth of quality in that submission pool after seeing what the finalists delivered.
The first game I played was Dust: An Elysian Tail, from US developer Dean Dodrill. Dodrill is the winner of the $40,000 Grand Prize, and deservedly so. A side-scrolling action RPG the game is beautiful, full of child-like charm, and packs a combat-heavy punch. Set in an eastern-inspired Falana, the level I played opened with some lovely romping deer (the rep commented that I was the first person to come by and not try to kill them). These aren't Oblivion-style, slay 'em and rob 'em of their venison type of dear, fellas, this is Bambi's mom.
Hand-animated and painted, Dodrill's beautiful handiwork is a compelling storybook. As Dust struggles to free an oppressed village and uncover his own past, you get to fight monsters with some magnificent blade attacks, with a focus on stringing together attack chains. The monsters, while demonic, are incredibly attractive. Really, these are some good-looking nasties. Dust is accompanied by a little cat-bat creature, Fidget, and together they find treasure chests, make friends in towns, and stock inventory. With these complementary RPG elements in play, Dust is a fighting game above all.
The second place victor, Max Blastronaut, from Panya Inversin and his US team didn't quite win me over. It has some compelling cooperative and multi-player elements in the 3-D 4-player brawler set up, but I found it difficult to control and just didn't quite enjoy the expected level of awesome. Tasked with saving the galaxy you are armed with a jet pack and blasting power. You must return to the tiny sphere's surface to retrieve fuel, control a mech or even hold a baddie down while your partner punches his face. It all sounds cool, I just didn't get to experience it in practice, though its magic is surely dependent on some multi-player madness. Dream.Build.Play really does seem to reward diverse game types, so this one just wasn't for me.
Nivel21 Entertainment led by Spain's Mauricio Garcia created Rotor'scope - The Secret of Endless Energy, the third place finisher is a beautifully handled puzzler. With a gumshoe vibe you use the "rotor'scope" to complete puzzles on rotating gyroscopic instruments to reveal clues and progress through the story. Puzzles are solved by rotating the plane and shifting the directional fall of the puzzle blocks so that they align and are cleared from the board. I tackled a few of the mid-level puzzles and was hooked instantly. While it doesn't hurt that there's attention to artwork, story and very appealing presentation at work here the gameplay speaks for itself. Moves are tracked, too, so puzzles can be revisited as you try to complete them in as few moves as possible. On the downside, it seems you can so severely botch a puzzle that's its solution is beyond hope. For true puzzle masters there is a puzzle-creator that allows you to build and share; gotta love user created content.
China’s Hu Ling and team nabbed fourth place with a very stylish martial arts action title, HurricaneX2 Evolution. The game was incredibly satisfying to play, and while I am no martial artist it was easy to see and appreciate Hu Ling's attention to detail. Playing as Hua you challenge Kung Fu masters across ancient China spanning temple, tomb and palace environments. Skills and abilities can be acquired from the disciplines of Kung Fu, Tai Chi, Wing Chun and Shaolin. The combat is engaging, beautiful and satisfyingly visceral.
Of the remaining finalists, two other games really stood out to me. Predictably, one of them was tower defense title Sol Survivor! One of the guys from Cadenza Interactive, Dylan Barker, was kind enough to come by and go through some of the game with me, and I had a great time chatting TD conventions and innovations. Sol Survivor handles tower defense in a way not dissimilar from PSN's Savage Moon. Tasked with defending a colony from nasty mechanized creeps you are armed with some serious space support. Operating from the planet's orbit you select areas (most of the map is open for tower construction) to build defenses. Where the game separates itself from the crowd is with targeted attacks that the player controls, like a laser beam you steer from space.
Of course, since it's controlled from orbit you have to account for a little delay in its direction, a nice touch. These attack measures give the player something to do once the tower construction is complete, as well as provide a last resort for those stubborn creeps. In addition to competitive multi-player, the game features one of my favorite elements from one of my favorite TD titles (PixelJunk Monsters): cooperative play. The dark aesthetic isn't really my favorite look, but the visuals are crisp enough that I'm not getting lost in grey mud. Sol Survivor's gameplay is fast, addictive, and more than just another TD offering.
Kaleidoscope, the brave little toaster of entries, appealed to my arty side with it's less conventional heroism and objectives. The game's premise is that you must restore color to a now colorless world that has fallen victim to a "desaturation outbreak". Playing as a "kaleidoscope" named Tint, a little ink dot with legs and paintbrush antennae, you bop enemies on the head and pick up tint that can then be applied to the world. Additionally, each level contains the letters T-I-N-T that you can find and retrieve through some clever platforming. Environmental elements like fruit can be rolled and used to get to higher platforms, and swings can be swung to achieve yet greater heights. Simple, charm-your-pants-off Kaleidoscope stole my heart, even while I was struggling to roll a tomato under a leaf.
If you can't tell, I'm a big fan of Dream.Build.Play and the games they bring to market. Congratulations to the finalists, and to all those daring enough to test their game design cunning and submit an entry. Indie games, industry muses, may your gameplay forever innovate and design aesthetic inspire.
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