Anyone else try out Kingdom for the Keflings? It's simple as hell and not even challenging enough to really be considered a "game", but God help me, I was hooked half way into the brief demo. I bought it right away. It's so much fun to guide your little avatar around like a (usually) kindly giant. Hell, I'm just a big sucker for its charms. My daughter got a kick out of using her avatar as well to help out.

Anyone try the first Community game, Coliseum? It sure looks nice -- very high production value. Still it seems very repetitive to me. The use of the second analog stick for combat moves works, but feels very awkward and counter-intuitive. Like I said, it's not too bad, but it sure is overpriced at 800 points (especially with no Achievements). Not the best way to introduce this line of games, IMO. Curious to see what the buy through numbers are on 360voice.com tomorrow.

I really enjoyed the sliver of time the demo to Coliseum gives you but i am really irritated by how limited it is. I'm cool with demos giving me only one or two levels or even giving me a limited clock but the clock needs to be enough to actually do something. I played a character wielding the hammer and couldn't even finish off Wave 1 before it timed out on me.

I also really liked what i played of Blow but that one was even worse. The timer didn't even give me enough time to make it all the way through the tutorial.

Hardly the first community game. They've been adding 3-5 to the service every day since the preview waves started, and there are probably more than 30 on there now.

If they generate enough interest around here, I think they should be split off into their own thread. They're not XBLA games (no achievements, etc), and are done by mainly amateur programmers (usually just one guy).

I've heard Weapon of Choice is an awesome Contra-style shooter with multiple levels and weapons. It was done by (I believe) the weapons designer over at Naughty Dog.

I'm probably going to start working on some type of a game to hopefully go up sometime early next year, but have no idea what yet.

A release date with no concept? Are you sure you're not in the corporate world?

I meant I will start working on something early next year.

XNA is a really quick development API, and wouldn't take long at all for me and a couple co-workers to bang out a game. The largest part of the process would be in the design and finding someone to make the assets for us (since we're all programmers and not artists).

Kingdom for Keflings is great. I like how it has the resource management and build trees of an RTS with none of the conflict. It's not for everyone since it's so laid-back and there's no combat, but it's nice to have a relaxing experience with an XBLA game now and then. It's very easy to lose track of time while you're playing since there's always an attainable goal in sight.

Got Zuma for 400 points. Really enjoy it and am on level 3. I'm not that good at it but really enjoy it and for 400 bucks, why not. I've played various iterations of that game over the years.

Unless you meant spacebucks.

Oh, compilation deal for those who don't regularly check CAG: The Arcade disc that comes with the Arcade Bundle has 5 full XBLA games (Uno, Pac-Man CE, Boom Boom Rocket, Luxor and Feeding Frenzy). Those games would be 3200 points total, but the disc version is only $5 used at Gamestop (and at my store, they were all brand-new copies). Yeah, it's a bummer to not have the games instantly available on your HD, but for that price, it's a great deal even if you've already purchased a few of those games. EVERYONE should have Pac-Man CE at least; it's certainly one of the Arcade's very best games.

This is no slam on you but I know you seem to like easy games/cheats, so I recommend Luxor 2 if you like Zuma. It is an inferior game for numerous reasons, but it is 10x easier than Zuma.

They don't have achievements? WTF? I thought everything designed for the 360 on Live had to have achievements.

I can never find this on their website to check stock. Do you know if it is or how to ask for it in store? And when you say they were all brand new, you mean they were sealed but classified as used since they were part of a larger package?

They're not licensed games that have to through MS's strict approval process. They go through a small approval process on the XNA community website, and then are added to the 360 servers after getting X amount of positive votes.

If the games had achievements, then developers would be able to create games that were all as easy as Avatar and sell shitloads of copies.

They're not meant to be viewed as XBLA-style games, but more of a way for amateur programmers to get a little bit of exposure, and maybe create some more game programmers in the process. It also widens the arena as far as genres, as there will be (and are) community games that would probably never be released as full-fledged XBLA titles.

Then the games ought to be really cheap to buy. Perhaps i'm misremembering but i thought they were 800 points to unlock the full version. Do you know for sure? 400 should be the max for a game that is setup to be such a boutique title.

There are price points at 200, 400, and 800.

I don't know who comes up with the pricing. It might be the developers being greedy, or it could be based on reviews, file size, length of game, no idea?

The two i looked at yesterday i would consider buying at 400, would absolutely buy at 200, and would not buy at 800.

My big complaint is the demo were time limited and didn't even give enough time to try everything out. That frustrated me more than anything else.

They were in a "$14.99 Or Less" bin in the front of the store, not on the shelves. They were in opened green 360 cases with no manuals, but clerk said their copies were all brand new and from Arcade bundles that they had to replace with a different disc (I think it includes Sega Tennis now, IIRC). I didn't totally understand it, but at least my disc was pristeen and my store had like 5-6 copies available in the bin.

I had read somewhere that the very best-received of these games (i.e. The Dishwasher) would be made into XBLA games.

Charging 800 points for Colosseum is totally insane, at least based on my limited play time with it.

Thanks. Think a 20% of Used coupon will work with it since I doubt they're considered "new" in the system at all?

But how long will that take? Didn't we play the Dishwasher almost a year ago?

I do wonder if price is based on size of the game though. Coliseum is a 128 meg game. Though I did really enjoy the minute and a half the demo lets you play.

As long as they have a yellow used label you're good. I've seen no less than 6 copies each at my local gamestops and all have the yellow used label/sticker.

I've been polishing off the Geometry Wars 2 this week, and really gave sequence a real try (I didn't like it at first) and holy shit! This is addicting. I was in love with pacifism for a while, but this week waves and that glorious sequence mode have really clicked for me. This game just keeps on giving.

And Pacman: CE is still fun. These are easily two of my favorite games of all time.

ANyone spend the cash on Keflings? I tried the demo, and it felt like Settler's light... not sure if that's a good thing or not though.

I bought it (as I posted a page back). It's very cute and very laid back. I don't really even consider it a game, per se. It's just fun to build things -- it has a lot of charm. It kind of reminds me of the fun I had a decade ago playing Roller Coaster Tycoon. It's just a fun little time waster and I know I've spent 800 points on far less enjoyable experiences.

One disappointment though -- I can't play a co-op game with my daughter on the same console. It's only online for multiplayer and that's a shame since we really wanted to play with our respective avatars and because she needs help with these sorts of games (actually she needs help with absolutely every game). Pinball FX is also limited to online multiplayer only. It's a shame.

Thread's too long for me to read fully.

Thanks for the feedback - might pass then if there's not too much of a challenge then