Download Games Roundup
Indie Games Summer Uprising Special!
Train Frontier Express
- Xbox Live Indie Games - 240 Microsoft Points - £2.04
It's like they knew. With my nipper resuming his choo-choo obsession these past few weeks, Team Train Frontier's sterling efforts couldn't have arrived at a better time.
A sandbox landscape-builder and train-riding game will either sound like some kind of cruel and unusual punishment or a soothing, absorbing means of messing around with computerised model railroading. Either way, I wouldn't blame you for spraying coffee across your keyboard.
But if tinkering with pretend trains is your guilty pleasure, this is a remarkably fully featured offering, with an impressive number of different props, trains and carriages to place at your leisure.
More importantly, it appears to have been designed by people who understand that intuitive interfaces make people feel all warm inside. With nary a line of tutorial guff to put a crimp in your day, you're off placing tracks and morphing landscapes with ease, and plopping down a strange assortment of houses, roads and billboards to give it personality.
Then when you're done creating your masterpiece, you can choose from a couple of dozen trains, add an assortment of carriages, and ride it to your heart's content, with various zoomable camera angles to coo over.
Once you're happy with your baby, you can share it with the rest of the world, or see what others have been up to by downloading theirs. And it won't take long to realise that plenty of people take this sort of thing very seriously indeed, with some impressively elaborate creations to mess around with.
For the sake of two quid, Train Frontier Express could well be the cheapest form of childcare ever invented. It certainly beats laying track out all around the living room, let me tell you.
8/10
SpeedRunner HD
- Xbox Live Indie Games - 240 Microsoft Points - £2.04
If you're the kind of cool cat that follows the Flash gaming scene, you may already be well aware of SpeedRunner's energetic 2D platforming charms.
Buffed up in HD, its arrival in the Indie Uprising line-up proves to be welcome thanks to the effortless comic-book charm of the visuals and the purity of its frantic get-to-the-bomb premise.
In common with other madcap platformers, progress relies firmly on diligent use of your abilities: in this case, grappling hook, homing missiles and wall jump.
But what promises to be the indie scene's answer to N+ and 'Spolsion Man falls a little flat through a combination of slightly flaky wall jump controls and a lack of levels to play through.
As much as you'll want to admire DoubleDutch's efforts, you'll rip through most of the levels without breaking much of a sweat, and just as the game is getting interesting it's all over.
Matters are salvaged somewhat via the four-player same-screen multiplayer, with everyone racing for the prize by way of evil sabotage tactics.
As a proof-of-concept demo, SpeedRunner HD is definitely worth a look, but unless you plan to torment your friends repeatedly any time soon, the price tag starts to look a little steep.
6/10