ZP2K9 (Cool new XBLA Community game)

Nice little multiplayer sidescrolling deathmatch game reminiscent of Soldats just came out, made by the guy who created The Dishwasher if anyone remembers that from the community games trial they had last year (it’s apparently graduated to being a full XBLA release). Just 200 points and it has 10 player deathmatch, ctf, team dm, king of the hill modes. The controls seem to me a bit sluggish movement-wise but the aiming and weapon switching is perfect. The demo is pretty indicative of the full game, the only difference being you can play online and there are more maps.

http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/games/media/66acd000-77fe-1000-9115-d802585501ba/

I was just going to ask what happened to that kid, but now I realize the RSS feed of his blog is broken. Even though I don’t have an Xbox360, I kept an eye on him for PC releases because I loved Zombie Smashers X2, and it’s also cute to see a scenester developer!

Looks like he also had time to release ZSX4.

Wake me when he gets back to PC.

I really wish they would get around to releasing The Dishwasher instead of doing these minigames. I wonder if they are having cashflow problems.

He says it passed certification. What would be the holdup at this point?

Getting stuff up on XBLA proper is a lot more tedious than getting a community game up. With a real XBLA release you are subject to the whim of Microsoft, their strict technical requirements for everything including localization and their own marketing schedules. They decide when you go up, pretty much, and this may be weeks or even months after your game is completely finished, including meeting all the requirements.

With Community Games, the games are just peer reviewed by other developers and tend to go live very, very quickly… So you should not read anything into this game coming out before The Dishwasher as far as the health or sanity of the developer goes. One release path is completely different than the other even though both end up on the Xbox 360.

His blog said he cooked this up while waiting for it to pass cert so the holdup is all Microsofts.

Also this game controls/plays waaaaaaay better than Zombie Smashers X4.