In the world of mainstream gaming, few titles grace the originality that indie gamers crave. Fortunately, mainstream gaming is slowly opening its doors to independent developers as well. With mediums such as the App Store or XBOX Live Indie Games come titles that do provide the originality lacking in the giant studios.

UK developer glpeas has taken into account the need for creativity. In fact, they’ve come up with something so freakin’ awesome that I was ecstatic to contact them for the opportunity to review this game. If you haven’t played Flight Control on the iPhone/iPod Touch (assuming you own one), you are truly missing out. Well, in the same vain comes Carcophony, a game in which you must direct traffic and eliminate congestion. Of course, with the debut title always come the ups and downs; here’s my take on this XBOX indie.

Gameplay

The concept is this: you must get each of the colored cars to their destinations, which are also marked by the same color. To do this, you have to go through all the traffic lights at the intersections and change them to green for one route while the other cars wait their turn. Or, you know, do it your own way.

Carcophony certainly has unique gameplay elements. With the five maps that are provided, each one is increasingly challenging and the game’s mechanics are not simple to begin with. Well, they’re simple, just not easy to do. Naturally, you’ll start out with the easiest level first and once you work your way up to the fifth wave of cars, you will unlock the following map. You must do this for all four unlockable maps and boy, does it get challenging! The game has a tendency to make you feel overstressed whenever you look at the shit-ton of cars you have to handle in the later maps, especially with the craziness of the latter routes. However, being able to clear the way out for a group of cars (extra points if you get 10 and higher) and helping them arrive at their destination is a rewarding feeling.

glpeas has given us the obvious “Tutorial” mode, “Single Player,” “Multiplayer Co-Op,” and “Multiplayer Versus” which are all pretty self-explanatory. You can have up to four players on one console for the multiplayer modes. Unfortunately, however, you can only do so locally. Multiplayer does not run to XBOX Live and the game feels empty without this capability.

Style

I love color and my favorite color is green. Thankfully, glpeas has decided that the menus and background of Carcophony must be green; it looks fantastic. You have the option of selecting your own colors for the cars and the designs are very well done. Stylistically, this title looks great, ’nuff said.

Story

Carcophony is devoid of a story, so that’s that!

Everything Else

I really enjoyed Carcophony. Once you get past the initial “how the hell am I supposed to do this?” phase, the game takes a turn for the better. The tutorial is actually clear and should help you out thoroughly, regardless of how clueless you are. I should also note the music in the game: it eventually felt a little dull, but for the most part the sound effects and music complement the style well. At times, the game may feel unforgiving, but the boys at glpeas put in a lot of work to make it enjoyable and in the end, its stylistic appeal and unique elements make it worth the 400 Microsoft Points ($5), especially if you’ve got some to spare!

glpeas’ Carcophony is quite the debut, we’ll be sure to keep in touch with them and see what they will release in the future. For now, we hope they’re patting themselves on the back for an original title. Check out more info about the developer and the game at their website.

[The reviewer obtained a free copy of the game for review purposes.]