Writings of Mass Deduction

I’m purchasing an Xbox Live Indie Game every day, seeking out the quality titles that got lost in the shuffle and are not well represented in the top 50 lists on the Xbox Dashboard. Today is day #140, and today’s game is “Decimation X”.

I know that Decimation X has already spawned two sequels, Decimation X2 on the Windows Phone 7 platform, and X3 on Xbox Live Indie Games, but I’m a bit of a completionist at heart, and each of the XBLIG versions is only 80 Microsoft Points. Plus, there’s a certain understated charm to the first game in the Decimation X series.

First, from the developer (Xona Games):

“1-4 player intense retro shmup. Classic 2D fixed gallery shooter. Features: Insane firepower, progressive defences, tons of power-ups. Smooth 60 frames per second, pure arcade action. http://decimationx.com/”

This is Space Invaders on steroids. The invaders are more aggressive, your firepower is ridiculously overpowered, and the special effects have been ramped up to the “9”s. Like with classic Space Invaders you have destructible shields, but with your huge increase in firepower you have to be careful not to wipe out those destructible shields ridiculously quickly. Widescreen televisions has changed the game too, giving the aliens more room to manoeuvre as they shift left and right across the playfield.

As is de rigeur today, but wasn’t in Space Invaders’ day, power-ups drop periodically from defeated enemies. You’ll need them, because as you progress through the waves the invaders’ weapons become more powerful. This gets worse as you go further into the game, forcing the player to watch for power-ups and watch the skies even more intently.

Multiplayer for up to four players makes an appearance here, which is a great new addition to the genre, and support drop-in multiplayer as pioneered (to the best of my knowledge) in the Xbox game Brute Force (the only non-Halo game to use the Halo game engine, as far as I know). The new particle effects are also something that Taito probably never invisioned back in the day.

Ultimately this is a $1 that does a lot right, and is a quality release worth picking up for fans of these kinds of shoot-’em-ups.

Click here to download “Decimation X”, and then please come back to rate the game.

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