Crate Expectations - XBL Indie Game

Hey folks! Thought I'd do a wee plug for my new game "Crate Expectations", seeing as a whole lot of you have Xbox 360s! It's just gone up on Xbox Indies for the low price of 240 points (£2, $3) this very day. We'd really appreciate anyone taking a look - whether just the trial or the full game - and rating it *5* whatever you *5* think it *5* deserves.

*5*. Ahem.

A little over 2 months ago myself and 3 work colleagues decided to make a wee Xbox Indies game in our spare time. We set out to make something really simple in a week or two, and although the game was technically "finished" at that point, we decided we'd spend a bit more time on it and get it polished up with decent AI, online play, and more. Crate Expectations is the end result.

So what is Crate Expectations? Well it's a strategy game, but not in the typical video gamey way. This is chess style strategy. You and up to 3 opponents each have a start point and a delivery point, and need to deliver a number of crates from one to the other before the others beat you to it. Between the start and end point is one of over 60 different icy mazes, each named an often cringe worthily bad, but occasionally downright fantastic, crate-based pun. The game plays out in turns, and although it may seem initially simple to just plot the most efficient route and slide your crates along it, the real fun comes from screwing each other over by blocking paths, ramming their crates out of the way, and generally being an asshole!

Here's a bunch of stuff to look at to try and sell you on it

THE FACEBOOK FAN PAGE!

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Crate-Exp ... 491?ref=nf

THE TRAILER!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=

Awesome, hope you guys enjoy it

Also, just realised that as this is a finished game I maybe should have posted in Work Release. God it's been so long since I posted anything in there! If any mods see this and reckon it belongs in there rather than here then go ahead and move it. Cheers.

Cool, thanks mate

Oh, one more thing I meant to link to - the marketplace page. You can queue it up for download on your 360 from there as well as rate it.

http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/games ... 0258550345

Hehe, I was thinking that very same thing when I posted the link here actually. Hadn't really thought of it before but it would make a good name for a warehouse level!

We built the game using XNA so it runs just fine in Windows as well as on the Xbox, but we couldn't get a steam slot for distribution at the moment so we're considering our options. We might wait - we were encouraged to reapply at the beginning of next year - but we're looking at other possibilities as well such as Impulse, D2D, or just selling it ourselves via paypal. Sadly whatever we go with it isn't as simple as just tossing it out, as we take advantage of certain Xbox LIVE features that we'll need to change for a PC release if we want online multiplayer. It definitely isn't off the cards, but for the time being we're just pleased to get the Xbox version live.

Nah sadly not. We made the game using XNA, so a port to PS3 would be a pretty non-trivial undertaking. Not only that but it would probably need to be polished up quite a bit further in order to pass through Son's vetting process for PSN titles. Xbox Indies is nice and easy to get onto without having to jump through hoops since it works on a system of peer review.

As mentioned though, a PC version isn't off the cards just yet, so there may be some hope of you getting your fix of crate based asshole behaviour at some point

Oh, and on a rather positive note, after posting on Reddit we bumped our

views from 350 to over 3600! WOW, that place is a dream for free advertising; had no idea it was that popular! We're hoping that Digg will come through for us in a similar way, so if you use it, then give us a hand please!