Miasma is a turn-based strategy/RPG hybrid that rightly received accolades upon its release for its depth and fantastic graphics, but received criticism for its short length. That has been in part rectified by a price reduction from 400 points to 240 MSP which, while it doesn’t make the game any longer, at least makes the game’s short length much more palatable. This game struggled to stay under the Xbox Live Indie Games file limit as it was, so it can neither add more content nor drop its price any lower than 240 Microsoft Points (you have to under 50MB to sell a game at 80 MSP).
Miasma’s graphics speak for themselves, so I’ll let the trailer do the talking on that front. However, at even the most casual glance it’s clearly the equal of most of the best Xbox Live Arcade Games (games that cost more, and have much larger file sizes, I might add). It’s not just the lens flares, poly counts, and textures either, the game has great art direction and a fabulous soundtrack. So where does it stumble? Not in many places, though a few of the character animations seem a tad clumsy on occasion, and the game’s story feels like it’s just starting to build when it abruptly is resolved. Hopefully a sequel will flesh things out more in both the levels and the story department, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t play this impressive effort now at an extraordinarily reasonable price for how ambitious an effort it is.
Writings of Mass Deduction 