Xbox Indie Games Roundup

Squid Yes! Not So Octopus!

• Price: 240 Microsoft Points

The wonderfully titled Squid Yes! Not So Octopus! (or SY!NSO! to use it's even more wonderful acronym) is an admirably tight survival shooter. The aim is to score as close to nine points as you can, which sounds easy until you realise you only score one point for every minute you survive, and earn only tiny decimal fractions for every enemy destroyed. Oh, and you've only got one life.

The psychedelic visuals are pure Minter, but the game itself owes more to the varied modes of Geometry Wars 2. This isn't a twin-stick game, however, so your only defence is to keep moving forwards and around, blasting as you go. As is typical for this crowded sub-genre, the game piles on more and more enemies, and does its best to distract you with a barrage of lights and neon. If you can make it over three minutes, I salute you.

SY!NSO! doesn't say much for the inspiration, or lack thereof, on the Indie Games channel. Like most of the games in this list, its influences are brazen and its ambitions are hardly lofty. But it is enormous fun, especially for those with a taste for twitchy one-more-go arcade shooters.

7/10

Gerbil Physics

• Price: 80 Microsoft Points

Use a variety of bombs, ropes and disintegrators to demolish towers of cute gerbils, so that they all end up below the red line. That's the easy-to-grasp aim of this slim but enjoyable physics puzzler.

The game takes a while to warm up, and with only 24 levels that's a shame, but the design is fiendishly cruel, always giving you the bare minimum of tools to get the job done. Frugal deployment of your arsenal, as well as a little bit of luck, is the key to success. Despite the simple setup, your task is complicated by structures that must be left untouched, or enormous heavy blocks that require serious effort to shift.

There's no time limit though, so you can dawdle and tinker, and even wait for more elaborate demolitions to wobble and collapse in their own time. The physics sometimes feels a little slow and floaty, and it can be frustrating when sheer bad luck ruins an otherwise perfectly executed plan, but most of the time it hits that puzzle-game sweet spot with impressive consistency. The satisfaction of placing your last bomb in just the right place, and watching that final gerbil sail into the air, compensates for any minor concerns raised by the low budget framework.

Obviously, it's not got the same depth, longevity or polish as World of Goo or even Crayon Physics, but it's yet another example of how the "oh, go on then" 80 Point price-tag can turn a pretty good game into a compelling purchase.

8/10