The XNA Creators Club, is a program created by Microsoft to allow budding programmers create games for the Xbox 360. According to Microsoft, the program has been downloaded over 800,000, at $99.00 a pop. That’s a lot of dough.
At the GDC, last week, Microsoft released a XNA downloader on Xbox Live Arcade, so the rest of us could download the demos and try some of the games out. Unfortunately, if you’re reading this on Monday and you haven’t downloaded the XNA Creators Club off of Xbox Live, you’re out of luck. Fortunately for you, I’ll let you know what you should check out and what to avoid if and when they’re released on Xbox Live in a few months.
There’s a total of seven game demos released through the XNA Creators Club Downloader. Here’s my impressions of the demos.
Culture- It’s basically just a bunch of minigames where you put flowers on a board to draw a picture, or remove weeds. It’s really boring. Not even worth a download, unless you love paint by numbers and/or digital flowers. Who am I to judge?
Jelly Car- It’s basically Loco Roco, but drawn in crayon and with a car. That’s it. Pithy commentary aside, I really enjoyed the heck out of the lengthy demo. You basically navigate a car from right to left through various puzzles that you navigate by shrinking, or enlarging your car. This can be done at will, although you have a timer for how long your car can stay Super Mario sized. This one is definitely worth checking out, when it makes it to XBLA.
Little Gamers- Based on a web comic (?), this game is basically a side scrolling beat em up, that uses melee and ranged weapons to dispatch baddies. It has a cutesy cartoon hero and tons of l33t speak. Yep…. l33t. Don’t scroll down to the next game yet though… This game’s actually kinda fun and has a little bit of a fresh take on the genre. The hook? You can take your enemies weapons and use them on them. Some of the weapons include chainsaws, machine guns, knives, miniguns, spears, clubs and the occasional bazooka. The controls gave me fits at times, although I don’t think the analog stick is the best type of controller for these types of game. Controls aside, if you like the animation of South Park and the play style of Ghosts and Goblins, this may be worth checking out if/when it hits XBLA.
Proximity HD - A classic hexagonal strategy game, except without any characters, story or any compelling reason to play. You basically get five chips at random and place them on a board. If you place a chip with a higher number next to a lower number, you take over that chip. That’s basically it. I’m on the fence with this one. It seemed like I was getting crap chips every time I played. The highest numbered chip you could get is a 20 and I don’t think I had a number higher than 18 throughout all of the games I played, while the computer regularly slammed me with 20’s… I think this could be a lot of fun with three other humans to play against… We’ll see if it makes it to XBLA, but I don’t think this is a buy, by any means.
Rocketball- Crappy dodge ball basically played on two planes. You can switch between the upper level or lower level and throw a ball at the other player. It’s really basic and kinda boring. Do not want.
Check out the rest on the next page.
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10 responses so far ↓
1 Sean "rothbart" Workman // Feb 25, 2008 at 1:49 am
I’ve asked this question for quite a while… why in the hell should we care about XNA?
We’re going into the THIRD year of being told to be excited for XNA. Frankly, if nobody’s delivered anything compelling from it, stop wasting my time Microsoft…
I frankly feel this latest stunt of theirs, showing us XNA stuff that’s not ready for release, is designed to distract us from the fact that not much interesting is coming out via XBLA. Cumulatively speaking, a _very_ small portion of the XBLA offerings are worth a second glance in my opinion… most of these didn’t deserve the first…
2 ZayneAshe // Feb 25, 2008 at 9:26 am
I’m with you on this one. The idea was great, until they dragged it out, but if these 7 demos are any indication of what they have to offer us … I’ll pass. Well, except in the case of The Dishwasher, which I played almost non stop the second it began, because it’s actually fun, creative and well put together! A concept the rest of the demos forgot to add.
3 patrick // Feb 25, 2008 at 12:20 pm
To His Majesty King Lono
3 out of 7 games is bad ? According to you then EA sucks,take two sucks,activision sucks well hell every game company sucks. It’s too bad every game in the world won’t live up to your high standards , my only question to you is where the hell have you been for the last 30 years ? Are you new to gaming ? . 2 out of 10 games is about right , thats the same ratio I buy arcade games on xbla it’s the ratio I own for console games. Most games released on xbla,xna and sony’s psn will suck that’s just the way it is and always has been since the atari 2600 in 1977 which had 1 out of 100 games worth playing.
4 some guy // Feb 25, 2008 at 1:40 pm
As a “budding programmer” I think that XNA is great. People like me get to have their games played by a wider audience, while everyone else gets tons of free games. Yes, a lot of those will be of marginal quality, but the best ones will quickly get recognised so the crap can be filtered out. Even if just 5% of them are worth playing, it can’t be a bad thing, can it?
5 Lono // Feb 25, 2008 at 3:04 pm
@patrick - I’d say 3 out of 800,000 kinda sucks… but that’s just me.
6 Yoooooouuuuuuuu // Feb 25, 2008 at 8:01 pm
Jelly Car FTW!
7 oberonix // Feb 25, 2008 at 8:04 pm
“800,000, at $99.00 a pop. That’s a lot of dough.” They can’t have that many creators club members, just people downloading the XNA stuff, most people won’t get to the point of wanting to publish something to their 360 at which point you’re forced to be a member.
8 irapotato // Feb 25, 2008 at 8:18 pm
@Lono - Well, unfortunately, when you’re EA or (wow, it feels good to get this off my chest) Ubisoft, you’re putting out games that will make money, no matter the quality. If you had the choice between getting $1,000,000 without putting in very much work (EA, Ubisoft,) and working your a*s off for it (Valve, Epic, Rock star, the list goes on), which would you pick??? (Not that I’m saying the money justifies the fact that the games are crap)
9 DJ Res // Feb 25, 2008 at 9:24 pm
I played all these games, and besides Little Gamers and Jelly Car, I didn’t like them at all. Lono is right it is basically 3 out of 800 000.
10 Clstirens // Feb 25, 2008 at 10:04 pm
Don’t be so harsh on the XNA. it isn’t 3 out of 800,000, most of those people haven’t even STARTED a project. I downloaded it, but never used it. Guess that means my game fails. OH WAIT I never made one!
I want to you go out, get a ratio of games (games PERIOD) released in the past 12 months. Compare the number of good (not necessarily great) games to the number of bad games. I’ll even give you some leeway. Only go back 6 months on the Wii.
3 out of 7 games SHOWN (aka, released) aren’t too bad compared to commercial games.
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