I’m purchasing an Xbox Live Indie Game every day, seeking out the quality titles that got lost in the shuffle and no longer appear in the top 50 downloads. Today is day #70, and today’s game is “radiangames Joy Joy”.
From the developer:
“Experience the fluid and intensely satisfying action of radiangames JoyJoy, the happy twin-stick shooter. This is the first game in the radiangames series. radiangames JoyJoy was the #1 US-ranked game in the 2010 Dream.Build.Play competition.”
Does the world need another dual-stick arena shooter? It does if it’s Radiangames Joy Joy.
Joy Joy was #6 overall in Microsoft’s 2010 edition of the Dream.Build.Play contest, and deserved the accolade. It even was one of only a few indie games ever to be selected for a Microsoft “game night”.
It has an amazing art style, incredibly fluid animation, and features that are not run of the mill for similar games such as 6 upgradeable weapons and co-op play through the entire game. The game doesn’t feel as “twitchy” as most dual-stick shooters have, back all the way to Robotron, and it has several difficulty levels and gameplay customisation options.
I’ve played Robotron, Geometry Wars, “Score Rush”, “Galax-E-Mail”, Groov, “I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MB1ES!!!1”, “Revenge of the Evil Aliens”, “Nebulon”, and “Radiangames Inferno” and enjoyed them all. None of them have anything close to the art style or mellow “feel” of Joy Joy.
While some of the features of Joy Joy do not appear in most other twin-stick shooters I’ve played, there’s likely nothing here that will convert you to the genre if you didn’t like it before. Is that such a bad thing? With millions of people around the world buying annual editions of sports titles, or racks full of games that start with “Halo” or “Call of Duty”, there’s apparently enough room for several quality dual-stick shooters as well. This belongs on that list, and since it only costs 80 Microsoft Points it’s a must buy for fans of the genre.
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