Noodle mouse?

Sometimes I can’t help but be impressed at what’s being done in the “Indie-circuit” of gaming. Now I know there isn’t really a fair way to describe what could be considered “Indie”, but I’m trying to think of it in the same terms as how films are cast into that category.

That being the games are developed and released using a budget and person power much less than that of the tens of millions of dollar heavy hitters people are seeing released today. Many of these big league games have teams of over a hundred working for four or more years to complete. Thanks to the internet and general word of mouth, much in the way that anything from fine art, films, and comics can catch on due to shameless self promotion, video games are now enjoying that same success.

X-Box Live Arcade has released a few games in the summer months that have totally blown me away. Two of which I have never mentioned, one of which, “On the Rain Slick Precipice of Darkness” was produced by Independent Vancouver based developer Hothead Games showed me a polish that I had was surprised to see. But the recent releases of “Braid” and “Castle Crashers” are truly something else. Both are completely different genres of gaming (a puzzle-platformer and a brawler respectively) but both show an incredible amount of dedication to making the game they really wanted to make.

First there’s Braid, a game that has challenged me in a way that no game I’ve played in a long while has managed to do (although I don’t own a DS and would like to have tried Mysterious Village). Jonathan Blow spent almost $200,000 of his own money to develop an absolutely beautiful and mind-bending platformer that is so well done you feel like you are playing a re-release of a game from the 1st or 2nd generation of gaming. Matt Helmann, the artist behind the characters and backgrounds created something that is truly aesthetic. The music thankfully due to the nature of this game is far from annoying as you often have to rewind time since you missed an opportunity you didn’t even realize existed, and may have to be subjected to same five to six second clip of music repeatedly as you work your way through. The story is interesting enough to propel you to solve each level’s puzzles, with cryptic storybooks in the beginning of each world as well as the puzzle pieces you collect in each level coming together to reveal why exactly the protagonist Tim is stuck in a weird world trying to rescue a princess.

Next there’s The Behemoth’s Castle Crashers. I remember playing Alien Hominid on my old laptop when I probably should’ve been doing something else, and vaguely remember the follow up game on Newgrounds that was a brawler but with the same punishing difficulty level in Alien Hominid. The art direction from The Behemoth always cracks me up in the same dark-humored way where something so “cartoony” can hack off the head of its equally “cartoony” looking enemy, but thanks to the art style it is hardly the same as aiming a sniper rifle at the forehead of an enemy and watching its head explode into giblets seen in games like GTA or Call of Duty (both of which are fantastic games in their own right). Anyone who grew up with gaming from the 8-bit era can tell that the people behind Castle Crashers did as well, and it shows in this clever nod to the brawlers of the past. Although more Golden Axe than Final Fight, I tackled the demo to the best of my abilities and enjoyed every second of it. The chance to customize your avatar’s abilities to what you want allows you to add your personal touch and the mini-games seem like they can maintain an enjoyable experience longer than a playthrough of FPS Timeshift’s single player campaign.

What’s the difference between games like Braid and Castle Crashers when compared to games with massive budgets and huge development teams? Both of which are available on Live Arcade for 1,200 points ($15)! This amount of money, relatively speaking, is almost nothing for the amount of enjoyment and time you can spend with each of these titles. At a quarter of the cost of newly released console games, these seem like a smart buy, and when you break it down you’re supporting independent developers to keep putting out games that have a unique flair to them that you might not see elsewhere but from something that has passed through the hands of the few as opposed to the hands of the many.

Bottom line: Download Braid and Castle Crashers!