Back At It!

After a long time of being out of commission, I am finally returning to the workforce! Slowly but surely I am resuming my old responsibilities for Aeternus Studios as well as beginning an EDM production career. I apologize for how long it's been since my last post, but I look forward to posting a lot more often again. Videos, music, opinions; Ahhh. It's gonna be a blast!

Sickness and Maintaining a Schedule

Being a lead on a project and finding yourself in the hospital can be detrimental to your team and your project. However, there are ways to make sure that your business doesn't come to a complete standstill in this type of emergency.

1. Make sure that there are tasks that anyone on the team can accomplish. That way the only thing that comes down to the lead and the lead only is the final word. This final word can be given from anywhere considering the ease of communication and cloud. If there is a submission process that you and you alone can handle, then it will simply have to wait for your return... Which leads me to

2. Have other projects that are a lower priority that the team can work on simultaneously. If, by miracle, the top priority project was completed in your absence and simply awaits your submitting it, it's worthwhile to have secondary or tertiary projects that are SMALL in scope that can be finished quickly and without much micromanagement. These projects might keep your company afloat in a serious emergency. They could also be that 1/1,000,000 intellectual property that just happens to strike a chord with the gaming community!

When you're Indie, your not confined by publishing dates, but you are confined by your own strengths and weaknesses as a person who starts and finishes things. Teams like to finish things! Give your team something to finish and take your time working on that "big idea".

Oozi Does It Earth Style

The first thing you will notice about AwesomeGamesStudio’s “Oozi: Earth Adventure Ep 1” is the great hand-drawn artwork. The levels and characters are colorful and stylized which makes this stand out as one of the better looking platformers on XBLIG. The comic book style cinematic approach goes well with the genre and brought me into the story quickly.

The gameplay is sweet platformer goodness, of which I am a fan. Oozi doesn’t have anything in the way of weapons. His only defenses are jumping on baddies heads and a stomp move that he can do in mid-air. But this is all you need to have some really great platformer gameplay. My favorite level is “Dude... Where’s My Spaceship” where the vines with spikes on them are introduced. Climbing around and jumping from vine to vine is great!

I had the most fun playing the Challenge levels that you unlock by completing Story mode levels. Challenge levels have specific goals and sub-goals (i.e. collect all the starts, defeat all baddies) and you have to do it in a specific time limit. I liked the pace that I had to keep to stay on top of the clock. And some of those stars are really hard to get to!
Apart from the fantastic name and the ear to ear grin of awesomeness (does he have ears?), Oozi as a character was a little annoying. The mouse-esque voiceovers get repetitive after only a couple of level retrys. Other than that the SFX and Music are really good. They create the vibe of the crazy foreign world on which Oozi finds himself(Earth); and do it in the proper style.

Physics in this game were really good. I felt like Oozi had just the right amount of hang time to have proper control over his jumps. I also really liked the camera programming for the game. When moving and stopping the camera softly moves to its “home” position and when looking up and down, the camera also compensates softly. This makes the whole game feel real smooth.

Oozi: Earth Adventure Ep 1 is on my list of must-haves. If you like platformers the $1 (80 Point) price tag should put this one securely in your collection.

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Game Reviewed @ xblaratings.com | Oozi: Earth Adventure Ep. 1 Review