Exelinya Burst (Xbox 360)

It's time for another Japanese Xbox Live Indie Game, and in it, the player controls a tiny sukumizu-clad girl who flies aroun d with a big grabby-arm device. Using said device, they must grab and throw enemies, who come in the form of crudely drawn vegetables. Though the game bears some superficial similarities to Bangai-O, as well as a shared obsession with explosions, the way it plays makes it a pretty unique game.

You character is unkillable, with the only real foe being the time limit. Before time runs out, the player has to score as many points as possible, by grab the enemies and throwing them into each other. Thrown enemies explode, and enemies caught in explosions will also explode, and so on. There's also bosses, who come in

the form of flans and milk cartons, who shoot streams of carrot and radish-shaped missiles (the carrots go in a straight line, the radishes are homing).

There's also a power bar at the bottom of the screen, which goes up and down depending on how many explosions are currently happening. The more full it gets, the larger the explosions get. When it's completely full, large red explosions will occur, that also slightly increase the amoumnt of remaining time. So obviously, the game revolves entirely around creating more, bigger explosions, to score points, to regain time, and to cause more explosions.

Obviously, the time lmit and constant explosions give the game a manic pace, and this is also aided by the

music. There's a few different tracks, and the game seems to switch between in a semi-dynamic way. I'm not sure exactly how it chooses which track to play at a given time, whether it's based on the current amount of enemies or explosions on-screen, or maybe the remaining time or some other myserious algorhythm, but it always fits.

Though it's not a must-buy like Chieri no Doki Doki Yukemori Burari Tabi, I still totally recommend Exelinya Burst. It's only 69p, and the nature of the game means you can probably easily fit a whole credit into the 8 minute default demo time that XBLIG games offer to see if it grabs you.

Sanrio Carnival (Game Boy)

So, it's a puzzle game featuring Sanrio characters on the menu screens, and their faces on the blocks. Match three of the same and they'll disappear, the ones above will fall down, leading to the possibility of a chain. That's it, as far as the core mechanics of the game go. It's a slow rip-off of Columns, with music so awful it can only be that way on purpose.

But! That's not all there is to the game! There are three modes of play available, High Score, Endless and what the fan-translated version of the game refers to as just "Complete Stages". The first two are, as far as I

can tell, identical to each other, and they're the typical puzzle game single player mode in which the player just has to last as long as they can, scoring as many points as they can until they fill the screen up and the game ends.

The third mode is much more interesting, and probably the only interesting thing about this game. In it, there are five stages, each charging the player with a different task, the first and third are trivially easy: clear thirty sets of three or more, and clear five sets of four or more. Stages four and five are a little more challenging: clear ten "doubles" (a double being more than one set of three or more at the same time) and make ten chains. The second stage is the hardest, however, requiring 50,000 points to be scored. It would sound like a lot in most games, but the points in this game go up very slowly, and it's made even harder by

the fact that the well into which your blocks are falling is really small, possibly the smallest I've ever seen in a puzzle game at only six blocks wide by eight blocks high.

Of course, you could, with a bit of practice, complete all the tasks easily. But why would you bother? The game just isn't any fun. The stages gimmick is interesting, but the game itself is so slow and plain, there's just no excitement in it. Considering that it's for the Game Boy, facing stiff competition from many, many better puzzle games, therre's just no reason to ever play Sanrio Carnival. Apparently, the Sanrio name and characters were enough to get it to sell on release, though, as it did receive a sequel two years later.