xbox live indie game reviews

Let me first say that I liked Artoon. It's a cute little puzzle game with a fair bit of charm. The game features a single player mode with 18 levels (and a tutorial), a simple multiplayer mode, and in-game achievements. The 18 single player levels are broken up amongst 5 varying worlds, each with its own style (a.k.a. renderer) and music. Each of them is farily unique and all of them remind me of Rez (which isn't a bad thing!). The similarity to Rez actually made me wonder why the developer bothered to anthropomorphize the ball--I think it would've worked better as an abstract sphere (especially if it means doing away with the corny backstory!).

The camera controls take a little while to get used to, but don't get in the way too much. The game vibrates in all the right places, which might sound like damning the game with faint praise. I think the challenge with community games, though, is to not do anything that makes the the player feel like the game was made by amateurs. It's a small touch, but it was one of the things that sealed the purchase for me.

Not everything comes up roses with Artoon. The levels are fairly well-designed, but there's a huge variety in what you're expected to do. Some levels (like the "Maelstrom" world) are more like logic puzzles while the "Interference" world mostly involves leaving the camera frozen in place while you follow an exact bounce path. For the levels that involve a linear bounce path, more often than not I got an A or A+ score on my first time through. The fact that my "style" score (awarded for doing high and low bounces) was close to zero on some of these leads me to belive the bar could've been raised a little higher to try and warrant repeat plays. The moving platforms that come with later levels spice things up a bit, but some of them are impossibly hard compared to other levels.

The bouncing mechanism can be frustrating at times. To bounce higher or lower, you press A or X while on your way down. This was counterintuitive to me, as I often found myslef pressing A to high-jump immediately after bouncing. The end-result is that you accelerate back towards the ground--and more of than not, to your death. I think a better scheme would've simply been A to boost yourself further up and B to slam down from wherever you're currently hovering. The other issue I had with bouncing is how slow the pace can get. Though you can jump higher or lower, the relative "beat" of the game is relatively unwavering. As a result, in more challenging levels I often found myself "shadow-watching." Instead of watching the ball, I merely watched the shadow of the ball as it moved across the platforms.

The game could've used a few acceleration points to break up that beat pattern. The closest analogy I can think of is pinball. For the most part, the ball rolls and bounces at a fairly constant rate (gravity aside). If you get the ball wedged between a couple of bumpers, though, it'll bounce around like crazy before shooting off in a random direction. I felt Artoon was missing those sort of hightened excitement moments. One way to address this may've been in the underdeveloped "style points." Adding Tony Hawk style tricks, even as simple as pressing one of the two unused buttons (B/Y), could've added a lot more excitement value.

Finally, there's the game's multiplayer. It was a nice touch to add this, but I don't think it really adds anything. I played a few rounds with my roommate, but basically whoever gets an early advantage is going to win it. Most of the time this was me, and I could just follow my roommate around and instantly convert his bounces back to my color. I was already satisfied with the single-player gameplay by this point, so the lack of good multiplayer didn't really bother me.