S&S; Indie Review: Andy's Notepad [Saucers]

Title: Andy's Notepad // Format: XBLIG // Release Date: 06-29-12 // Publisher & Developer: Coneware // Price: 80 Microsoft Points //Violence: 0/3 // Sex: 0/3 // Mature Content: 0/3
Every day there a number of indie games released through Xbox Live, there are some good games, but a lot of bad ones mixed in along with em'.  Luckily Andy's Notepad is a great big breath of simplicity.

Core Gameplay and Presentation: The presentation in Andy's Notepad is a special, everything in the game is basically hand drawn.  From the simple written out tutorials to the space fields, it all looks like this cool Andy guy I keep hearing about, sat down and drew in his little notepad.  Besides the cool visuals, the audio in the game is just as good.  There is one looping track that hypnotizes you throughout your 20 rounds of hectic space gameplay.  The sound effects are pretty amusing, when you fire certain weapons, you would think that some strange kid is making gun sounds right behind.  If you've ever played Playstation Home's Scribble Shooter, the sounds all sound familiar.  When it comes down to the gameplay, its basically a twin stick shooter.  From the moment you start the game up, you're thrown right into the mix, with just a couple of pages handwritten tutorials that sum everything up quite nicely, I might add.  My suggestion would definitely be to read every page that Andy has given you.  I went in blindly and thought the game was broken, but when I went back and read everything, the game started to click with me.  You choose from 9 different spaceships, and you can either play alone or with friends.  The simple goal of the game is to survive the 20 rounds.  The difficulty of the game really ramps up right around the fifth round, so don't expect a cake walk.  After every round you can upgrade your weapons, making them stronger.  This basically rounds out the game, there isn't much else to the game. Final Thoughts: From what I've played in the game, Andy is a pretty talented guy.  His visual talents really flourishes in what is a very simple twin stick shooter.  I wish he had added more to the game, but at a dollar, you can't really complain. S&S Rating: 7/10