As part of the Xbox Live XNA Game Studio announcement at the recent Game Developers Conference, a game based on the popular webcomic, Little Gamers, has been released as one of seven demos for possible future video games.
I’ve taken all seven games for a spin and though they offer a wide breadth of gameplay types, Little Gamers the demo is up against another game in its side-scrolling beat-em’-up genre, The Dishwasher. Both feature stylized graphics, though the gameplay of The Dishwasher stands out a bit more by offering more depth than the move left or right and hit attack straightforwardness of Little Gamers. Dan “Shoe” Hsu, current Editor-In-Chief of Electronic Gaming Monthly, sounds off on his blog by saying:
Potential audience: Those kids that secretly like to run over kittens with lawnmowers when no one’s looking.
This is as no-thrills as a side-scrolling beat-em-up can get. Unless you count corpses that burst into bloody little bits as a “thrill” (it’s really not). Just move left and right or down and up, and explode bodies with your bullets, ninja stars, bazookas, and even mech rockets. The graphics are simple-cute, making the violence somewhat humorous, but man, is this game basic. No combos, no techniques, no nothing…. Executive Editor Shane Bettenhausen says it’s like a Flash game. That actually makes sense now that I think about it….
Go check it out for yourself and support Christian Fundin and Pontus Madsen, creators of both the Little Gamers webcomic and the game, and download the demo from Xbox Live! It’s free through midnight tonight (that’s Sunday, for you lost-in-time types)!
Update: According to the Little Gamers site, the time limit for downloading the demo for free has been pushed back to Thursday, so you’ve still got time to try it out for yourself!