I’m purchasing an Xbox Live Indie Game (XBLIG) 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 #371, and today’s game is “Big Tidy Up”.
“Big Tidy Up” is a minigame compilation with a lot of charm and an environmental theme, but strip that all away and it plays surprisingly well. What I like about it is that the central theme running through it ties the minigames together, but it is just there as a backdrop and is never “in your face”.
First, from the developer (ton3s):
“Grab your friends and duel it out in three action-packed mini-games! Test your reactions in ‘Wastefall’. Put your memory to the test in ‘Carnundrum’ and hone your button bashing skills in ‘Poodamonium’!”
Any minigame comilation is going to live and die on replayability, and my early impressions are that this is something that many people will want to come back to. I particularly found that of the the minigame where you have to remember what was littered, where it was littered, and what car the litter was thrown out of, a memory game that invokes childhood memories of playing Clue (it was Professor Plum in the Library with the candlestick!). These are great games for a family to play together, and for the solo players amongst us the computer AI is surprisingly competitive. Only 80 Microsoft Points, so definitely worth a trial.
Writings of Mass Deduction 