Welcome to the inaugural entry in a new ongoing feature series highlighting gaming’s best independent titles. If music and movies can have their “indie” titles be cutting edge and hip, why can’t games? The advent of digital distribution and micro transactions in the gaming industry has allowed more independent developers a shot at producing quality titles without a huge budget. While you may or may not have heard of the titles featured in these spotlights, rest assured that they come wholly recommended and are solid purchases for your gaming library.
Undertow is a new Xbox Live Arcade game from Chair Entertainment available for purchase today for 800 MS points ($10). The developer is best known for employing many of the driving forces behind the 2005 adventure game Advent Rising. They are also involved with Ender’s Game author, Orson Scott Card, in developing games based on the author’s Empire universe.
The game is essentially a 2d Battlefield 1942 that plays like Geometry Wars. Players use the left thumbstick to move their character and the right thumbstick to shoot in 8 directions. In addition, players can drop depth charges (read: grenades) with the left trigger and dash with the right trigger. Each team starts off with a certain amount of “tickets” with the goal being to deplete the other team’s ticket total. To accomplish this, teams vie for the control of several “bases” on the map. The more bases your team controls, the faster the opposing ticket count will decrease.
Undertow packs a surprising amount of depth into its 50mb body. There are 3 races with 4 character classes each to choose from. That’s right, character classes ala Team Fortress. You can choose from classes with different weapons ranging from a normal machine gun to a heavy weapons dude that shoots giant missiles. There are tradeoffs with manueverability with the different classes, though. On top of this, you are able to upgrade your character within a game in a sort of simplistic take on Call of Duty 4’s perk system. Killing enemies will net you more points and as you cross certain point thresholds, you are able to upgrade to a more powerful class. In the spirit keeping gameplay simple, you can only upgrade to a maximum of 3 levels.
In addition to 16-player (!) multiplayer matches, there’s also a robust single player/co-op campaign as well. That’s right, unlike Battlefield’s nonexistent single-player, Undertow comes with a fleshed out multi-act single player campaign replete with in game cutscenes and plot development! The gameplay is pretty much the same as in multiplayer, but the cohesive single player experience is certainly welcomed.
The game is built upon the ubiquitous Unreal 3 engine, which virtually guarantees that the game will be very pretty. I’m truly impressed by the engine’s ability to scale from a small 50mb arcade title to a giant production like Gears of War. The graphics are obviously not as detailed as a big budget production like Gears, but at the same time won’t be an eyesore.
For only 800 MS points, Undertow feels like a steal compared to many other arcade titles out there. There’s so much fun content packed within that you’re getting an incredible value for your money. If the game reaches a big enough userbase, I can see the multiplayer community having legs. The core gameplay is very addicting due to its deep, yet simple nature. At the very least, give the trial game a shot, you’ve got nothing to lose.
Read Shacknews’ interview with Chair’s creative director [Shacknews]
